New Grower Mephisto, Megacrop in soil and autopots (Skywalker, 3BOG, Sour Stomper, and 2 Illuminautos)

[WildBill]

Garage. It's a work in progress. Switching to 20-4 lighting vice 24-0. Also have more frequent exhaust cycles at my disposal. Currently have exhaust every 3 hrs. Considering switching to exhaust every hour for 15 min. However, I'm only making 1 change at a time to determine its impact. Currently not out of parameters, but trying to foresee issues coming.

I have nothing for ya with what to do as far as the A/C goes. Hopefully you'll get to finish this grow before the heat hits. You may have to change your lights to 18/6 and make the off time during the heat of the day. At least you'll need less Rh at that stage. LOL!
If you get a/c and place it in the tent or garage, it needs to be exhausted outside the garage. Best option would be outside, but it could be exhausted to the attic. In your area, I doubt if it would cause any problems. The ease of installing depends on the construction and if you own or rent.

 

[terp182]

Quick update after a semi-stressful day yesterday, which was Day 41.

I had water troubles at three points of failure yesterday. Luckily, I caught all of them early and no damage was done to the floor. But I got extremely lucky. First, valve at the end of the nute line started dripping, and luckily fell into a tray I use to hold the pH up/down and nute pre-mix. About an inch of water there. Second, I found a 1/8" of water in the tent - an autovalve on the 3BOG had gotten stuck and ran over, maybe 10 or 15 minutes max before I found it. Luckily, I had already had all electronics off the floor and it was an easy cleanup/fix. And finally, I forgot to change the dehumidifier water receptacle for a few hours, and the gallon jug I'd been using ran over, maybe a half cup. Nothing tragic, and I was luck to catch everything early, but between that and dialing in the dehumidifier it was a stressful day in the garden.

The lesson learned: with autopots and dehumidifiers, never go more than a few hours with checking shit out. I had an autovalve stick on my first grow as well, resulting in a couple inches of water in the tent.

Other than that, I think the dehumidifier is dialed in. Getting leaf temps 76-79 and humidity around 57% with the tent door 40% closed, meaning I'm getting more light on the front plants. Opening the tent door up more drops the RH to under 50, which I'll save for later in flower, I guess. Running the dehumidifier is more stressful than I'd like, mostly due to the noise and size and really shoddy looking water line connect (pictured). But hopefully after this flowering I can put it away until the late fall. For now, I've got the dehumidifier in the corner, venting into the room, while the vent hole in the window is open to allow a bit of cooler air in by suction. The AC Infinity controller is set to 84 degrees max and 63% RH max (although the dehumidifier is keeping it at 57ish consistently) and this seems to be making the plants happy. I'm already changing the res every third day and nearly filling it each time. One more good part of the dehumidifier is being able to add that distilled water back into the res.

Pics below!

 

[terp182]

Checking back in on Day 46/47. Everything continues to flower and stretch unabated. I hit the top lightly with recharge and bottom fed with the res turned off a couple times, and the plants seem to love it. Keeping the lights-on RH around 50-55% and leaf temps around 77-78 with the dehumidifier on, and the tent is managing to 65% RH with the dehumidifier off at night. I'm defoliating every other night for light and airflow, as little as possible. The new/front MarsHydro SP-3000 is almost up to 100% with the plants loving it, but the back one starts to get white leaf tips at about 60%, so at ~55% it stays for now.

And the solo cup Sweet n' Smelly bonsai is way more entertaining than I'd imagined. I just water off the end of the line a couple times a day and she's loving it.

 

[NorthernLights_420]

Checking back in on Day 46/47. Everything continues to flower and stretch unabated. I hit the top lightly with recharge and bottom fed with the res turned off a couple times, and the plants seem to love it. Keeping the lights-on RH around 50-55% and leaf temps around 77-78 with the dehumidifier on, and the tent is managing to 65% RH with the dehumidifier off at night. I'm defoliating every other night for light and airflow, as little as possible. The new/front MarsHydro SP-3000 is almost up to 100% with the plants loving it, but the back one starts to get white leaf tips at about 60%, so at ~55% it stays for now.

And the solo cup Sweet n' Smelly bonsai is way more entertaining than I'd imagined. I just water off the end of the line a couple times a day and she's loving it.

Nice looking setup ya got going there. Happy growing!

 

[terp182]

Day 55. The girls continue to pack on buds. It was pretty clear the Skywalker and 3BOG were a week or so ahead of the other plants, so I moved them to the front of the tent yesterday. Better airflow and access to defoliate if needed.

I’m still seeing some yellowing on just a few leaves on the 3BOG and Sweet n Smelly, but aside from another Recharge application yesterday, to which they responded well, I’m holding course. Adding about 5g of Bud Explosion to the new res today (~50% strength) to see if I notice a change. Still aiming for 550 ppm max. Other than that, I just have the dehumidifier on almost constantly now while flowering finishes out. Shouldn’t be too long now!

 

[Big Sul]

U bottom feeding the recharge like u did earlier? (Taking notes!)

 

[terp182]

U bottom feeding the recharge like u did earlier? (Taking notes!)

Yessir! I turned off the autopots, and once the pots dried, I bottom fed a gallon of recharge at ~200% (ie 1 tsp in a gallon) over the course of a few hours, so each plant got about 1/4 gallon. Going to alternate between 100% and 200% recharge weekly for the remainder of the grow, per the instructions which say you can do that.

 

[terp182]

Updating this again at Day 57 just so I can keep track in case shit goes south...

I started supplementing Bud Explosion last week, in all honesty it was a bit of a cluster fuck at first. I didn't feel like going into it last post, but in the spirit of full high disclosure, I added a couple teaspoons to my almost full 10 gal res, shooting the PPM from 500 to 750 (i.e. WAY too much BE), and ended up siphoning off half, replacing with water and leveling back up to 550 PPM with just MC. Got a little nute burn on the tips when the res water climbed up to about 640 somehow, then I've been riding it at 560-575 PPM since. All at 6.4. The moral of the story I guess is don't do dabs and then improvise on your nute schedule, and if you do, don't do it when it's full. Ugh. A (stupid) lesson learned.

Since the girls seemed to respond well after I got the PPMs back in to a reasonable territory, I filled the last res with 10 gallons of water, 6 g of BE, and leveled up with MC in pre-solution to 550 PPM, and of course added Drip Clean and pH up (about 10 mL). The plants are chonking on nicely and seemingly a bit less yellow with the higher PPMs. And I'm now at a res fill every other day to third day, tops. The newest fill just got 8.5 g BE (less than the 1g/gallon suggested for early flower, and much less than the 1.5g/gal for late flower), with the plan to slowly tick up every res fill to about 13 g or so, keeping the total PPM at 550-575. I'd love to hear anyone's insight using BE in late flower with MC and autos, if they have it.

As for the plants, the Skywalker and Sour Stomper have fully filled their 2x2 areas with bud sites and are packing on, while the 3BOG is invading into the Sweet n Smelly and 50 Shades of Grape multipot territory, who have been pushed to the back since they've got longer to go to ripen and the closed in corner has a bit more light anyway. The 50 Shades isn't competing with the Sweet n Smelly very well, which is fine since the smells coming from the SnS are much more interesting.

My focus from now on is running the dehumidifier 24/7 (it's staying around 78 leaf temp/48-60 tops RH), keeping airflow up, making sure the BE/nutes changes aren't screwing anything up, and keeping leaves off of budsites, where moisture can collect and light can be blocked. I'm going to add Recharge at least once a week as well.

 

[WildBill]

They sure don't look worse for the wear!

 

[terp182]

Day 60

Thanks, Bill! I agree!

I updated the res again last night with 10g BE into about 11 gallons of water, balancing the PPM to 575ish with MC, Drip Clean, pH up, etc. Seems like the BE is pretty acidic since it took about 20 mL of pH to get it to 6.3, which will drift to 6.4 in a day or so. I've started leaving the res pump on for a few hours to get PPMs stable before turning on the res, so while the new nute solution mixed I let the pots dry out and bottom-fed a gallon of Recharge across the 4 pots and Solo cup. Every plant was yellowing again, and when I woke up this morning there was significantly less yellowing, just like last time I used Recharge. Suffice it to say, I'm sticking with the MC/Recharge combo going forward. What I'm not sure about is dosing - is ~1/4 gallon each bottom-fed sufficient, or should I shoot for a half gallon each? Seems like it would be sufficient since it’s beneficial microbes but I was curious.

I wish I could take better close up pics, but here's some shots. I'm wondering when the Skywalker is going to be done, so I took some trich shots as well.