Lighting Monsters in my closet, my ongoing grow thread

[Ozone69]

So the original plan was to start another seed tomorrow on the first of the month. Then that morphed a little and I was going to start two and do a nutrient brand comparison grow. But with where life's at right now I'm finding myself thinking of heading out to the coast and moving to Oregon. So.....going to hold off on starting anything new until I figure out what I'm doing.

But in the meantime, I wanted to get more light going for my little Wappa plant, so put some 6K bulbs in the side T5's and turned them on. Unfortunately, the heat is just a bit much with still being on the tail end of summer. So since I've only going with the one plant for now, I came up with a new idea to lower just the outer ends of both the overhead LED panels, then turn the second one on (only adds an additional 50 watts versus 140ish for the T5's so hopefully less heat) and put the plant in the middle. From just visual observation, tilting the lights in does a semi decent job of swinging the sweet spot for both close to the center.

 

[Ozone69]

Not much happened during week three other than the increase in light and I'm starting to get a little bit of yellow/brown on the tips of the larger leaves. So for the res change to start week 4 I've decrease to roughly 75% of the full strength on the nutes as I suspect it may be nute burn. Lowered the TDS from around 1170 down to 800. Other than that looking like a healthy little plant. Starting to see noticeable increase in height each day.

 

[Ozone69]

P.S. This song goes out to all those folks who back in high school would say "when will I ever need algebra in real life" and now years later find themselves a grower trying to convert ml per 100 liter nutrient levels to what they need for a couple and a little gallons of water.

 

[Ozone69]

Week four started out with good growth, but it slowed way down in the last few days. Starting to see some fading on some of the leaves, particularly the smaller ones as well. Then, when I went to swap out the res, found that there is some sort of brown gunk all over the probes for the PH/TDS meter. Not sure if it's a mold or algae, but believe it's something along those lines. I also noticed that the growth spurt at the beginning of the week seemed to coincide with a colder weather spell that rolled through for a few days. My res temp is getting up around 80F and pretty well holding there. Not sure if the temp would be cause or more of a contributing factor type thing, but I'm for sure going to have to address it at some time. I also wonder if the DIY air injection rings could be an issue. I didn't clean them as well as I probably should have, and thinking back the soaker hose I made them out of had been sitting out in the shed for probably about 2-3 years now, so could have all sorts of gunk in it. I'm soaking the previous res bucket that swapped out today and all the spare air rings in a lite bleach solution to clean things up and might run the rings through the dish washer after to clean 'em up real well. Like the functionality of them, but if this continues I may have to switch back to the air stones.

 

[Ozone69]

Looks like she got hit with some brown slime. Reading around, I think it was a combination of different things amplified by late summer high temps keeping my res temp up too high. Growth seems to have all but stopped, but starting to see some buds fattening and some trichs coming in on the top leaves. So going to not give up on her just yet. After reading around a bit, cleaned up everything really well, and then gave her roots about a 12 hour cleaning in a mild Physan 20 solution today before moving to a fresh batch of nutes. Also have switched back to an air stone. Don't know that the air injection rings were the culprit, but think they may have contributed at the least. Plus...starting to see some nasty looking rust on several of the washers I used to weigh the rig down, and can't imagine rust in the res is a good thing so dumping them for now. Switched to a transition mix of nutes (equal parts grow/micro/bloom) as I think time wise and from what I'm seeing that shes moving to bloom phase (starting week 6 now). Hoping that even though she'll likely remain a small little thing, that maybe she'll get at least one really good bud cluster going on the main cola, but we'll see... :smoking:

 

[Ozone69]

Little plant is still limping along. Had a lot of leaves die off after trying to clean the brown slime with the Physan 20 treatment. Trimmed her up a bit, and keeping her going for now. The main top bud is not looking too bad, maybe she'll fatten up nice. Seeing some new root growth, so she's still trying really hard and I'm not going to give up on her. Swapped out the res last night to start week 7, and moved to full bloom nutes ratio. I've turned on the bloom LED's, but since I'm still fighting heat I'm not going to fire up the side T5's at this time.

 

[StraightKRACK]

I'll be keeping up with you. My platinum led 150 will be here Tuesday.

 

[Ozone69]

Started seeing the larger leaves starting to yellow out over the last couple days. With how she's looking and the age, I'm thinking that she's starting to finish up, so I went ahead and switched out to AN's Flawless Finish with the res change last night. Will run that for a week and then probably will do a week of just PH adjusted water. Little thing, but the main bud is actually decent sized with some nice frosting on it. Some of the smaller buds feel decently thick for their size, but impossible to tell until everything's harvested, dried, etc....

 

[Chester]

Nice work ...

 

[Ozone69]

Went ahead and chopper her today. Leaves got nice and yellow and from checking the trich's with my little magnifier I think she was ready. Not a big plant, but several of the buds on her feel nice and thick. Not a strong smell, but a nice one when you get in close. I guess on the plus side, being a small plant she should dry pretty quick.


Things I took away from this grow:

First off, if I do decide to stay in this house I think it may be worth looking into trying out some soil grows. Particularly for the summer months when the floor temperature gets too warm and the res temps start hovering around the high 70's and low 80's. Moving to soil would hopefully help alleviate some of the issues I was seeing that I believe to be caused by this. I could still go hydro for the winter months, when I anticipate the floor getting nice and chilly and having the reverse cooling affect on the res.

Second, this last plant got me to thinking that I'm not sure if what I thought was root issues slowing growth could have also been a smaller, faster growing strain at work. I've been growing different strains with each grow because I love to sample a variety of different smokes. However, being a new grower I think there could be real benefit to picking a strain and sticking with it until I've "mastered" it. With the different strains, I'm basically using the timing I picked up on the last strain to the current, when they may not follow the exact same time line at all. If I could master one, then I think moving to the next would be quicker from having more experience at knowing the signs of changing stages of life.

That's the main two things that come to mind at the moment. Unfortunately, I'll basically be closing down my growing for now. I'm strongly considering moving to another state. Since Colorado was nice enough to legalize, I've been trying to stay within the legal guidelines. Soooo...can't really take it with me out of state, so don't want to start any new plants until I know where I'm going to land. Hoping to move to another legal state, Oregon, so for sure will be setting up and getting growing again once settled. Thanks to all the help and to everyone that took the time to check out my grows. Hope to be "back on the air" soon. :smoking: