Northern Lights LED / HPS Organic DWC & Soil High Res Pics

Discussion in 'Indoor Grow Journals' started by stealthd0c, Sep 14, 2011.

  1. Welcome to my legal medical grow!
    So here's the set up:
    9 N. Lights seeds. These have been stored for almost 7 years! I'm not sure if that will affect the potency or growth.
    Kessil H150 Purple LED for veg.
    400W Sunlight Systems hood with Electrolux HPS bulb.
    My first hydro attempt using DWC (Thanks Budslinger and Rumple!)
    Im also growing 1 plant in a felt pot with Happy Frog soil for comparision.
    Nutrients are Roots Organics Buddha Grow
    I sprouted in paper towels with a few drops of H2O2 and transplanted to rock wool and a homemade seedling bubbler.
    The seedlings were sprouted about a week apart so the two largest have a bit of a head start.
    I've never used LED but am well aware of their limitations in Flowering, hence the HPS.
    I plan on doing some LST and SCROG as well. The tent is 6' tall and 3X3 floor.
    Wish me luck!
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  2. This is the first bubbler I made. I think the water level was too high and over watered the rockwool. I switched to a 10 gallon tub. I'll transplant the best females to my recirculating bubble buckets.
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  3. A pic of my tent with the Kessil going and the new bubbler. The closeup is the soil bag. I'm pretty happy with the LED so far. I'm at 75-79 degrees and I dont even have a fan blowing in there yet! No real stretching, in fact, I had to move the light up about 8" because the cotyledons looked a little burnt.
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  4. These 2 are the latest pics. The roots on the largest bubbler plant are already about 4" into the water! I gave their first feeding at half-strength 2 days ago.
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  5. subbed, of course
    Im definetly a few days behind you. But Im really surpirsed how close together we started.
     
  6. Here's my temporary tent arrangement. Once I start flowering I'll move stuff around a bit more. The soil plant has taken to its transplant very well and growing every day. The recirculating system seems to be working great.
    I picked up some Roots Organics Ancient Amber Humic Acid and will foliar feed weekly until I can add it directly to the reservoir during flower.
    I'm also considering their Oregonism Mycohrrizae as well. I'll ask around GC and see if anyone has experience with the this.
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  7. So I made a rookie mistake and the second hydro plant dried up because the roots werent far enough down the hydroton and I didnt water the rockwool directly. Bottom line is I had to replace it with a new seedling.
    The Soil plant seems to be so much more robust and I'm pretty close to just scrapping the DWC and sticking with Happy Frog buckets. What do you guys think?
     
  8. Hydro Plant #1
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    Soil Plant
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    New hydro plant
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    Soil plant latest growth
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    I've just done a little LST to the soil plant and will rig up some tie down spots for the hydro plant to bend it over.
     
  9. looking good [​IMG]
     
  10. Keep going. It seems you've learned from every mistake you've made. Why scrap it?
     
  11. The soil plant just looks so much healthier. I wont scrap the hydro just yet, but I wonder why theyre lagging behind so much. I'm giving the same nutes, although the soil has its own nutrients. I'm on my second feeding of full strength nutes and am foliar feeding humic acid. The jury is still out on the humic acid but I got a discount on it and I cant add it to the res until the first week of bloom. I'm a bit worried about the pump not getting the nutes to the buckets. There's a lot of nutrient settled at the bottom of the res and I hand stir it up every day or two. Is there anything else I can do to make sure its getting to the plants?
     
  12. Oh, I also made a dumb hydro rookie mistake and didnt rinse the hydroton and theres a bunch of clay at the bottom of my buckets.
    My pH raises from about 5.8 after I feed and pH Down the res to a little over 7.0 when I recheck it the next day. Any theories why the change?
     
  13. Holy crap,my pH just will not stay down. I'm using RO and full strength Roots Organics Grow, which is pretty mild to begin with. I use pH Down and bring it to about 5.5-5.6 and the next day its right back at 7. Anyone else have issues like this with a recirculating DWC?
     
  14. OK, I changed out the water and cleaned the whole system. I'm giving it one last try before I go completely soil. I'm not using roots because apparently you arent supposed to use it with DWC. My plant is certainly telling me its unhappy, with yellowing leaf edges and some spotting on the lower leaves. I picked up Flora Nova Grow which is at least half organic. Still using the roots on the soil plant and it is growing beautifully. I may get a hold of some female teens soon and add another soil pot and drop the other in the other bucket. I'm seeing some good strains available like Ice, Crystal, White Widow, and LA Confidential. Any thoughts on those strains? [​IMG]

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  15. little bit of yellow in there but they look beautiful
     
  16. The one at the top of the first pic looks good, but that bottom one is wierd. I wonder why it look like that. Sorry about the strains, I dont have any experience with the one u asked about
     
  17. That's the nutrient deficiency from the wrong product I used. The new growth is pretty good since changing to FloraNova. I bought some CalMag today to round it out. Fingers crossed.
     
  18. Added the CalMag and my ppms went up about 100. I'm already on the high end so I didnt want to add nutes to drive the pH down at the risk of burning them. My temps have just been too hot (86F today, yikes!) so I went to Home Depot and they had some floor model portable AC units at a great discount. Paid 180 out the door and am going to install and duct it in tonight. Pics to come!
     
  19. Good job was it the clay in the water that was bringing the pH up?Ive no idea no experience with hydro myself you should keep going with it at least you can say you tried then go back to soil.Tempted myself to try it next time but I really dont think I have enough experience to go hydro quite yet or the effort to set it all up.

    Sub'd though no harm in learning a bit about something new
     
  20. Im guessing the clay 'dirt' was wasnt helping. I think the other nutes were breaking down so slowly and not flowing through the reservoir very well and screwing up the whole balance.
     

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