Indoor Testing the eazyplug pyramid mini.

[The Iconoclast]

@Little-Leopard, I am very much looking forward to seeing your setup in action.

Update in NorthernLights experiment of taking off the top two sets of fan leaves, has caused no harm and appears to have created a nice balance with the branches. I have upped the nitrogen a bit and in stead of soaking the plug to start I am just using a 50ml syringe to apply about 250ml of water all around the outside, it soaks in pretty quickly, then just a bit where the plug is going to go, and I keep it fairly dry by just watering the outside when it dries out. I've now down this on the Northern Lights and the following Gorilla Glue #4 and the newest Jedi Kush in a mini pyramid, and they all see to be better, foliage looks better and darker green with the roots more spread out.
more defoliation on northern lights to see through canopy

Gorilla Glue #4 (expert seeds) looking good so far.

new mini Jedi Kush will be my first Big vs Small pyramid test

A tale of two cheese untopped sparse growth, with normal buds, and a fluffier cheese with everything smaller, smaller leaves, smaller pistils, smaller buds. I have another cheese on the way that I will pay more attention to.

fluffy bud more normal looking bud

And finally the update that no one was waiting for. Jedi Kush... she has well developed buds all through even though she is a bit crowded. I don't think there's any more growth to come but I cannot be sure, I'm going to go for another week I think. Probably. These shots are no flash, she is just covered in a layer of white...

 

[Little-Leopard]

That Jedi Kush is freekin amazing. I'm pretty sure it almost qualifies as a bonsai. How did you keep it so short in height? I understand you topped it but even so I would think it would be taller.

 

[The Iconoclast]

That Jedi Kush is freekin amazing. I'm pretty sure it almost qualifies as a bonsai. How did you keep it so short in height? I understand you topped it but even so I would think it would be taller.

It's just the genetics. I top all my beans it doesn't stop them growing to 32", it just means they'll have two main colas. I had to check the Short Stuff readout on this variety and they refer to it as a short stocky plant, but the other few times I've grown it it grew with leggy spindly branches with tight nuggety buds, which I prefer which is why I grew this one. So I'll need to grow something else now to see what happens. However she is looking very similar in structure to other short stocky plants I've grown like Lemon Pie and Brooklyn Sunrise both in my 20L shallow water culture. The only thing that is consistent is the Jedi is very resinous, so that's still there.

I've got to say that I did enjoy not having to tend to this plant every day, also something that is important to me is bud rot especially as I'm growing in a walk in wardrobe without ventilation other than a fan and an open door, but I have noticed that these pyramids both large and small tend to have much less humidity and promote better airflow than a normal pot which has given me more confidence with these stocky plants. I'm going to let this go for another few days when it will be 13w. It will be interesting to see the final weight. I'd like to get eight but I don't think that is happening off this one, should be 6, maybe a bit more. I should also note that I didn't really pay attention to the pH any more, it comes out at about 5.7 and works it's way up.

I think I'm going to have to try a Jack47XL in the next big pyramid, candidates for the large pyramid have to prove themselves first in the mini! New Rule, keeps out the riff raff while also giving an outsider a chance.

Took her out for some shots in the sun.

Note optical illusion on cat's face and strange leg posture. This is caused by face being cut off, the cat's left 'eye' is in fact a bell and his 'tongue' is a bit of collar!

 

[Little-Leopard]

Sheeeez that is so cool. What an amazing plant! I love your cat. This is so inspiring. I really appreciate your in depth answers.
I certainly hope that my Devils Cream, Pure Red CBD and Bloody Skunk will be as successful.

Seeing as youre interested in my setup... Here is a quick update for you regarding my pyramid auto watering system. : - ) All 9 seeds germinated and are about 3cm tall. All pyramids were flushed this weekend. The slight white foam you see in the water is H202, I use it in every single reservoir change at 30ml per 10 liters. Testing went well. All 9 plugs went into the pyramids on Saturday. I'm watering with a syringe but after a week or so they should be hardy enough for a nice auto-wetting. Each nozzle is positioned exactly as to allow each pyramid to have a diameter of 42cm around it. The two 1800l/h pumps empty my 30 liter rez in 10 seconds. It takes 6 mins for the 30 liters to drain back into the rez. I have a 3rd pump in the rez with a filter sock filtering out bits of coco etc from the tray. The tray is steeply angled for drain flow however the grid is level.

 

[The Iconoclast]

snip

terrific set up thx for posting it, this is going to be very interesting to see how this pans out. I suspect this substrate has more secrets to reveal. I have some 6% H2O2, here that I used to dilute and spray on the outside but I've not bothered. What % h2o2 are you using, I might go back to putting some directly into my nute bucket.

 

[Little-Leopard]

After experimenting with different dilutions etc of H202 I found that 30ml of 3% for every 10 liters once every week and every rez change works best. It did not mater if I toped up the rez or not...every Saturday It got the 90ml maybe 100ml shot of 3% or the 6ml shot of 50%. You never have to worry about fungus, mold, algae, nothing. My rez is 30 liters so I put in 90ml of 3% H202 every weekend. It does not affect the plants and keeps the rez, pipes and nozzles squeaky clean. I managed to get a bottle of 50% H202. It takes 6ml in 94ml of water to make a 100ml bottle of 3%. So then all I do is use a syringe to put 6ml directly into my rez. I must say I love H202. I've never mixed any nutes without it. Just don't get the 50% on your fingers its not fun.
Note: I once spilled a 100ml bottle of 12% H202 into my rez and it did not affect the plants in a negative way at all... I don't do the bleach thing. H202 works like a charm. You can see the roots from my previous high pressure aeroponic grow at how effective it was.

I like a nice clean, sterile growing environment at all times. You could slide your finger on the inside of the rez at anytime and it would always squeak...never the slightest bit of slime.

 

[The Iconoclast]

I like a nice clean, sterile growing environment at all times. You could slide your finger on the inside of the rez at anytime and it would always squeak...never the slightest bit of slime.

View attachment 1502112 View attachment 1502113

That's some pretty clean looking roots. I have been fascinated with roots ever since I jimmied up an 800L tank with three tubs embedded in the lid and 200L of res. In between the bottom of the clay filled baskets and the top of the res were a series of misting sprays, the roots that hung in the air were always white but they also had what looked like flat sheets of root like shards of glaciers with lots of fine fur. I shall start to use the H2O2 in my nutes from now on and see how that works with the eazy substrate with regards to the extra oxygen.

The Jedi hasn't had any water for a few days, going for the chop in a couple of days, the whole plant and pyramid is very light now at 1720g as a result the buds appear to be more crystallised, although the substrate seems to be coping and none of the leaves are wilting. I'm hoping for some bro science to kick in and I would like to believe that this is the type of stress that can help the flowers and by drying out so evenly and slowly that it applies a gentle continuous stress without killing anything off. In soil you could end up with dry patches but the eazy substrate will keep what little moisture there is, spread around. The buds appear to be more white now.

Can't wait to dissect the pyramid and investigate how it utilised the top cube. I am thinking of planting directly into the top of the pyramid by excavating enough space for the standard plug. And I alway want to try taking off the top one inch of the large pyramid and placing a small pyramid on top of that. Could be overkill, I will do the excavation manoeuvre first.

 

[Little-Leopard]

I am thinking of planting directly into the top of the pyramid by excavating enough space for the standard plug. And I've always want to try taking off the top one inch of the large pyramid and placing a small pyramid on top of that. Could be overkill, I will do the excavation maneuver first.

I actually did this with my current Dutch Passion Auto Ultimate in the large pyramid. I sliced a perfectly inverted eazyplug with a blade into the top of the large pyramid and slotted the plug firmly in.

I planted both the mini and large pyramid at the same time. Something that really threw me off in the first 3 weeks was that the mini pyramid did well with correctly PH'd water and with and correct amount of nutes (as it should)... however, the large pyramid ultimate with the exact same mix from the same bucket suffered from nitrogen toxicity and several other problems. At first I though that perhaps the genetics of the seed in the large pyramid was off. It then it dawned on me that the surface area of the roots in the large pyramid was greater than the roots in the mini therefore it must be more efficient... therefore the PPM was too high, but fine for the "less efficient" mini.

I flushed the large pyramid with the garden hose everyday for a week and the ultimate recovered nicely. This is my theory anyway. The next time I grow a large pyramid without the block I will start with a really low PPM. You can see in this pic that the large pyramid has no top block... it never did.



@The Iconoclast I've been meaning to ask you:
Have you been planting Autoflowers or Feminized in your previous pyramid grows? If feminized at how many weeks did you flip it? Did you flip by switching to a 12/12 cycle as per normal?

You're definitely going to gum up the snippers with that Jedi Kush bad boy!!! Awesome!

 

[The Iconoclast]

@Little-Leopard, greetings. Fantastic to get this sort of input, yes the reponse of big and little pyramids and different beans to the conditions definitely gets one thinking about stuff in a fresh way. But one of the best things about these pyramids is the way that they can be totally flushed big time without causing any fine root structure damage. I didn't even notice that their was no top cube!

What I did notice in the large pyramid is that in the early weeks it looked a little stressed and yellowish but by the end although the buds are all ripe, there are no faded leaves at all! Every leaf is still healthy. So the big pyramid definitely has more stable properties. However I am beginning to think that it's possible to really fine tune these pyramids in a way that is not possible with soil, which is sorta the entire premise of this thread, that when more people are growing these then more stuff will be discovered.

30 years ago I just grew photoperiod clones, when I began again a few years ago and I understood what autoflowering meant, it was a no brainer for me, it's always autos for me now. Mainly it's the ability to not have to have a dark period, that really really pisses me off, I like to spend a lot of time looking at my girls whenever I get the inclination.

I am also in the process of developing a new bro science theory, feel free to weigh in. And that is that maybe the healthiest looking plant does not necessarily produce the best buds. Something I have noticed is that while all the leaves can look highly stresses or faded, the tiny leaves around the buds seem to stay green and healthy, and to me because the entire plant structure is already built that all those hundreds of tiny flower leaves, are enough to provide all the energy necessary for the buds. This is just something I'm wondering about and hopefully will begin to have an answer in with a couple more years of experimenting.

 

[Drownomatic]

Fellow Bro here...

I think the leaves do more than supply energy. I think they store nutrients as well.