So we have life in the Grodan Rockwool. These will get slid into the 3by3? Cubes later today. They were left 24 hrs above the lights so got a bit leggy. They are now getting light and should be good. Step one complete.
@LaoWhoo and anyone else interested in my sloppy DWC. I run 8 gallon buckets with Mega crop as my main nutrient. Been running V1 for 2 years and never had an issue.
So here is a starter bucket. It’s been bubbling for almost 2 weeks while I killed some seeds and had other priorities with family from out of town in. To start these I filled them up. Added 1-2 tsp of MC and then a bit of cal mag, maybe 3-4 ml total. And left them alone.
.79 EC
6.1 ph
77 degrees Fahrenheit
And if those seeds in the cubes last a few days they will drop right in to net pots and go to work. I’m not worried about how long it been sitting and I know it’s stable just waiting for some roots to take a nice bath.
I run individual Danner AP 4 air pumps to each bucket. I have two if the massive Vivosun pumps with the 12 valve splitters that just sit in storage. They are loud and inefficient and not necessary. All the charts that say you need X amount of air at X temperature are great. But I’m running 3.5 nice quiet watts of air through two 4” air stones per bucket and never had an issue.
I like the redundancy of each individual pump having to die to kill a grow, as opposed to one big noisy pump going down and every plant attached starved of air. I tried many methods of using the big pump but it just didn’t make sense in the end. I have the pumps right on the plant roller stands so the only thing I have to do is unplug it and move plants around. Before it was a mass if airlines trying to juggle and reconfigure to slide plants around. Not that any way is right or wrong but just sharing what I like to do.
So here are the next youngest girls in my tent age wise. I have two Ripleys that are just starting to flower. Lights are about the go off in all these pictures so you can see they are already resting after their 16 hours of light.
These roots are just starting to get a bit of staining at this point in the grow. At this point I’m adding GH Maxibloom to the mix at 1:1 with the MC.
This is honestly the first time this EC pen has been out in a year. 3.88 I guess that’s OK, plants are super healthy. This is probably 6-8 weeks in and the buckets have never been changed.
5.9 is good for me. I just topped the bucket off and added nutrients. If the PH goes down then next time I’ll add plain water. My tap is 7.5. You will also notice I don’t follow the rule of 1” below the net pot. I fill them right to within 1” of the top.
That’s just going to be the first two stages because of picture limit. And I didn’t want to make a super long post. I’ll add the next two groups in just after breakfast.
Now this is the most important part. I do not suggest any do what I do nor am I saying that any way is right or wrong. We all find our own way to get what we want out of our grows. I only offer my ridiculous methods because I want to try and relieve some of the stress and anxiety that I see some growers go through to get the perfect environment. Hopefully you can see that plants do grow in less than perfect conditions. But you have to be able to read your plants and try to keep them happy as possible.
We did not discuss environmental conditions but I run 50% RH through most stages of growth. And I only run one 10” oscillating fan mounted high in grow space pointing down. Temps fluctuate depending on weather and house temps. Basement grow so I think my CO2 is pretty good. Whole family is full of hot air just like me.
FB
