JerryInDFWs Perpetual Grow - DWC + LED + HPS

10-30-2014
 
Hi! Welcome to my next attempt at dialing in a perpetual grow!  Everyone is welcome, at least until they become a PITA.  <span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span>
 
This is my fourth “Grow.” The last 3 were beginner efforts, but I did get some decent quality on the last harvest. You can check the threads back from here:  http://forum.grasscity.com/indoor-grow-journals/1321186-perpetual-indoor-dwc-leds.html
 
So now that I'm getting into this I'll document from time to time, but probably not daily. Honestly, at the moment I've lost most of my enthusiasm for much detailed journaling, and the only really interesting thing I might be doing now are some different training techniques.
 
To recap the gear:
 
Tents:
Vegging tent: 32”x32”x63” – 300w 10 band LED
Flowering tent 2'x4'x7' – 300w 10 band LED + 400w HID digital fixture in a cool tube.
 
Enough ventilation and filtration to keep them at a max high of about 82 degrees. No problems with root rot at that temp. Both tents have a pair of clamp on fans for air circulation and 45 lpm air pumps. All plants are in 5 gal standalone DWC buckets with 8” baskets. General Hydroponics FloraSeries nutes with a few extras.
 
I also have an armoire I modded for popping beans and running clones. Under a 96w 4x24” T5 with mixed spectrum bulbs loaded up. And that's pretty much it!
 
The stated goals from this grow are to refine plant training and dramatically improve the corresponding yields. Ideally I'd like to be able to hang a plant once a month. I found with the way I trim there's enough light in both tents to tolerate a bit of crowding.
 
So things to watch are the LST and fluxing attempts, and probably some super cropping. The plan is to stay more on top of the vegging and getting a plant in the tents as soon as I can after they pop. I'll get back into using colloidal silver to generate some pollen and make some beans from the single premium fem beans I have. I'm still learning and making mistakes, but I'll try and keep things updated at least once a week. I plan to clone either or both of these two trying to catch a female to make some beans from. The two I started are reg Kaliman Cheese #1's.
 
I started out pretty lackadaisical with this grow, and I think I made a ph or nute error with one of the two regular beans I popped. It was also an error IMO, to not start with a fem bean to have at least one guaranteed female in the cycle. D'oh! I really need to get them in the veg tent immediately with proper ppm levels sooner if I want to cut veg time down to 40 days or less.
 
Here's when they went into the veg tent after moving to the DWC buckets.
 

 
 
One plant is lagging, but I did get one started with LST. I might have over bent one arm of the “Y” because I waited too long to get to it, and I may have to tape it. It's also taller than it needs to be, but I'll make it work. The other one looks bad, and I'll park fresh buckets with appropriate nutes under them tomorrow since I didn't have any standing water ready today.
 
Here's the before and after of the training start of what I'll refer to in this thread as Cheese 1. With 4 weeks on them, they should be much bigger. Blame my post harvest apathy. This plant will undergo a lot more trimming and manipulation before it's finished vegging.
 

 
 
So I'll sort this out tomorrow and get back on track. I feel as if I'm out if that post-harvest slump and good to go again and produce some more killer budz! Stay tuned!
 
Again, welcome!  <span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span>
 

 

 
Just enough experience to coax out some decent budz. I noticed we both have a 63" tent. I squeezed one of those 32" square into a walk-in closet for my vegging.
 
Do stop back again. Sometimes it gets interesting!
 
<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span>
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10-31-2014
 
Happy Halloween!
 
So I'm a month into the latest attempt at a perpetual grow, and I'm here to document the latest in fuckups.
 
I was taking big fan leaves off of Cheese 1, and because my mind was elsewhere, trimmed what I had hoped would evolve onto some nice fat colas. D'oh!  I'm hoping I can just get by anyhow, but deep down<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> I kind of despise asymmetrical plants.</span></span>
 
Cheese 1 Screwup:  
 

 
I also considered lowering them in the baskets, but I do like some space under what will be the “Arms” if you will, of the plant. This is my first try at this particular technique, so mistakes were inevitable. Like the one where I recalled <span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);">too late that another reason I grew them out a bit more than normal was because I had intended to use a couple of the lower trimmed branches to make clones for making fem seeds but forgot at the time. D'oh! At any rate, there was an upside, since I was able to use those two mistrimmed bit for the clones I had forgotten to make for Cheese 1.</span></span>
 
Today I jacked up the ppm's to 850, and will go higher in a week. The Cheese 2 has been trimmed and tied up and is looking MUCH better now that all the deficient leaves have been removed. At least this time I remembered to make clones from the bottom branches. Absolute shit for brains sometimes. Sure hope that if only one is female, it's the #2 plant.
 
 
Cheese 2:
 

 
Awaiting the appearance of the Barney's Farm Pineapple Chunk fem bean I put in the rockwool. As soon as I get a true pair, it's going in a basket and in the veg tent. Not fucking around anymore if I want to cut veg time to 6 weeks. Going to add nutes much earlier than I used to as well.
 
This is the bottle I use to spray colloidal silver:
 

 
Clones in the armoire.
 

 
 
So that's it for a minute, until they recover and grow and I can do some more tying down. I'll then up the nutes to 1250 or so, and may either raise the buckets or lower the lights, either a PITA in its own way.
 

 

11-9-2014
 
Okay, so I've been lackadaisical about keeping this thread updated. TBH, there isn't much going on outside of the girls furiously vegging away, and the new Pineapple Chunk just waiting to get roots in the bucket to really take off. So this is the boring part of growing weed.
 
However, I logged in this morning to see a PM, which pointed me here: http://forum.grasscity.com/grasscity-advertisers/1336765-vaults-exclusive-grasscity-members-only-promo.html/page-9
 
Briefly, this is what I won:
 
The Winner is JerryInDFW and has won a Vault T-Shirt and a voucher for these 32 Great Seeds:
 
10 Seedsman Automatic Pink Diesel x Amnesia Feminised Seeds
6 The Joint Doctor's Diesel Ryder Feminised Seeds
5 Greenhouse Seed Co. Arjan's Strawberry Haze Feminised Seeds
3 Royal Queen Seeds Special Kush #1 Feminised Seeds
3 Seedsman White Widow Feminised Seeds
2 The Joint Doctor's Ogre Feminised Seeds
1 Barney's Farm Pineapple Chunk Feminised Seed
1 Ace Seeds Tikal Feminised Seed
1 Barney's Farm Blue Cheese Feminised Seed
 
Wow! 32 free feminized beans and a t-shirt! Life is good!   
 
I've actually got a Pineapple chunk going, and have a Blue Cheese and White Widows already in my little seedbank, but these ought to hold me like forever, unless there's a strain out there I want to try I don't have available. I didn't have ANY diesel beans, and have no idea yet what some of these strains are like, but I will shortly. I'm even looking forward to the autos. I do wish there were a couple of African strains in there, but I'm not fussed and not gonna turn my nose up at free beans. 
 
Now, if I could just hit the powerball...
 

 

 
 

 

11-12-2014
 
Another update!
 
As I've mentioned, the first couple of plants were going to be subjected to a LST technique called "Fluxing." Well, if you have the right plant and lots of non ham-handed experience you can do it well, I guess. I wound up clipping another future bud site I didn't intend, and I'm absolutely disgusted about it. 
 
Plus besides being a huge PITA, it really does add way too much time to the vegging cycle, So I've decided to just go to LST around the rim of the buckets if the plants' structure & genetics justify that, otherwise I'll stick to judicious FIMing, and fuckabunch of fluxing regardless. FIMing, supercropping and a bit of tying do as well as some of those exotic, time consuming processes.
 
I'll follow through as best I can with the two Kaliman Cheese #1's, but I'm not going to fuck with my Pineapple Chunk much. I've been poking around for strain pics, and it looks to me that the PC comes in with a fucking humongous central cola, and a few nearly as huge satellite colas, so I'm not wasting that expensive bean on experimenting. I have another free one coming, but I'll grab a clone from her and make some fem beans. That company (Barney's Farm) claims 25% THC for their strain, so hell yeah.
 
They did veg a bunch since the last pics, and I did trim them up. Kind of like a shaggy dog that gets a buzz cut. Afterwards they look like crap for a few days.
 
Before and afters:
 

 
The Pineapple Chunk:
 

 
She has roots still in the basket, and as liquid is consumed, I'm assuming the roots will follow the water lever down. It's so easy to tell when the plant started picking up the bucket content, as they explode overnight. But the roots should have actually been poking through the basket by now. Goes to show ya every plant is different, and the water level was likely too high to begin.
 
Here a couple from that last grow. I dry everything on the stems, and even tried curing a lot of the Pure Africa on the branches last grow to see if that helped. It did help slow down the drying and curing, but the aroma is amazing and the buds "Rock Hard" but that's mostly genetics
 

 

 

11-13-2014
 
"You may already be a wiener!"  <span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span>
 
I mentioned somewhere back in either this thread or the last one that I found out I won a gallon of that Terpinator product. They even notified me about the win, since I was clueless, and barely recalled entering.  <span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span>
 
So after a brief email exchange, I'm siting there waiting for this thing to show up. Nada. I had asked for a tracking number so I could be here when it was delivered, and they said yeah, we'll send the number.
 
Then nothing. So about 10 days later, I email them. Nothing. Tried again abut a week ago. Still zip.  <span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span>
 
By now I'm getting annoyed. I'm actually using the stuff, but I figured the pint I already had was more than enough to decide if I wanted to continue using it, but a gallon of Terpinator is salable if nothing else, so WTF, I wanted it at least for that. I fired off a pretty terse letter about it, and decided to give it a few days and then go around bad-mouthing the company.   <span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span>
 
Well, I finally got a reply. Seems the guy who was handling the promotion got in to a car wreck, and was AFK at work for a while. He was very apologetic and understanding about my being disappointed in their performance. He said they actually had shipped the gallon, but it was damaged and returned even before it got to me. So to make it up, the company is now sending me a 10 liter jug, T-shirts and possibly some other swag.  <span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span>
 
So, cool! Still not a lot of info or subjective tests with Terpinator out there, and man, I wish I had the space to properly do a side by side test. If both of the cheese starts/fuckups end up being females, I'll only treat one plant. One of the problems I have is using that S.O.S. product. It would see Terpinator as a "Toxin" and mitigate it before it had much effect. All I could do is either omit the SOS or overdose the Terpinator, so I'd have to go with leaving out the SOS and maybe high-end dosing with ArmorSi for root pprotection.
 
We'll see I suppose. In the meantime, the Pineapple Chunk finally has roots out of the basket and in the soup. VERY excited about this girl, and can't wait to watch her grow up! I'll probably flip the cheeses in about 10 days since I'm already tired of fucking with that fluxing technique, and let 'em rip. They don't need too much more messing with anyhow.
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
..

 

10-15-2014
 
I broke into my jar of remaining Aurora Indica last night. Fuck me, those buds have gone off the chart with complex aroma and taste, as well as being smooth as silk to boot. The buds are almost as rock hard as the Pure Africa's buds, and I seriously regret trading away so much of it since it's so fucking good. Not the strongest strain out there, but it's incredible. Pretty sure that if the next plant I run isn't a cheese clone, it's for sure going to be another Aurora Indica. I really like that strain!
 
The Pure Africa is getting very beautiful too! The jar time really makes a difference in any plant. While I don't have enough of a stash to let my next plant sit 5-6 weeks untouched while curing, I'm working in that direction. One thing is certain, I'm going to get to the point where I don't smoke or use a harvest until it's at least 3 weeks old, and only for testing. As any foodie knows, a herb tends to dry and give a more developed taste in most herbs and aromatics. Same deal with weed.
 
Even the hybrid, which I was never very fussed about has transformed into something pretty unique to me anyway in a pot plant. It's gotten such a very hash-like bite that the first hit is indistinguisable from a hit of Afghan black hashish in taste. Pretty strong strain. Not too shabby for an accident.
 

 

11-17-2014
 
Just got a notice on FB that I hit the Original Sensible Seed Companys Daily Giveaway! Woo Hoo!! 
 
Sure hope they send me some beans this time! I still need a great purple strain or maybe an OG of some sort and I'm GTG. 
 
I'm on a roll! That's the third thing I've won in a month!
 

 

11-18-2014
 
I just wanted to post a couple of pics of the Barney's Farm Pineapple Chunk @ two weeks old. Looks decent with nice structure! Just waiting for some of the satillite bud sites to develop so I can do a couple of FIM's before I flip her.
 

 
As for the cheeses, the first plant is thriving much more than the second with nearly identical setups. I think the problem is a bad airstone, so I'll replace that tomorrow and see if it helps. As for that "Fluxing" technique, I've given up on that. It's time consuming and I'm too ham handed to do it properly. It can be done, but I'm looking for 30-45 days of vegging max, so it's out. Next one I try training will be around the rim of the DWC bucket, which should keep things managable in the space I have. I also realize that with the 85 watts sq ft, I can crowd that flowering tent a bit. I may lose some from the crowding, but the extra plants should compensate nicely. I'd like to get those flipped next week.
 
I mentioned that my freebie of Terpinator from Left Coast Garden Wholesale was landing today, and it did! This thing is worth around $100.00 USD retail, so I'm not complaining! I can't use it with S.O.S. or other bacteriological, but I plan to use the pint I already have to test. If I don't like it, I'll take it to a hydro shop and try and trade it for something else I want.

It was very generous to bump my prize up to the 10 liter jug from a 4 liter, and the T-Shirt is an excellent shade of green!

My thanks to Justice at @Left Coast Garden Wholesale!
 

 
https://www.facebook.com/terpinatorOil
 

 

11-19-2014
 
So 3 of 4 clones have roots out of the rockwool this morning, and I expect to see the last one do it today. So woo hoo for that. I'll get them into solo cups later today, and probably put them in the veg tent after they settle in.
 
Replaced the airstone on the second cheese plant and parked a fresh bucket under it. Hopefully it will improve things. The first cheese is booming nicely. Really want to get those flipped so I know what to do with the clones. If I get a fem, one of the clones will go for making beans, and one I'll run behind the Pineapple Chunk. Can't have too much good cheese/skunk. I need to fabricate a couple more DWC buckets today too.
 

 

11-20-2014
 
Remember me telling y'all about winning that big-ass seed giveaway from @The Vault?
 
View attachment 1614414
 
Well, it landed today! Not going to give any details of their shipment methods, but rest assured when they guarentee delivery, they mean it. Note prize did not include the MFLB.
 
 

 
 
 
Please feel free to covet accordingly.
 
Here are the butter molds I ordered. Nice folks over there at @Cannaware Products and Molds, LLC!
 

 

 

Mmmmmm... pizza!
 

 
 

 

 
Welcome!  <span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span>
 
Not going to be a ton of posts in here. Right now I'm mostly just vegging and cloning. The only even moderately interesting pending event is the flip for a couple of regular Kaliman Cheese #1's in a few days. After I figure out which are female, then a bit of cool stuff happens when I use colloidal silver on one of the clones to make some fem pollen. I'll run the second fem clone behind the PC, and maybe a Pink Diesel x Amnesia fem behind that. Or maybe a Punky Lion. Can't decide. Suddenly my little seedbank has a lot of options. I'm  also thinking of ordering a couple three Acapulco Gold beans or some Hawaiians for nostalgias sake.
 
Planning on also grabbing a couple of clones from the fem Pineapple Chunk to make some feminized beans up from her. I also have a few other decent fem non-auto strains I'll make beans from way down the road.
 
<span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);"> </span></span>

 

8

Theoretically there will be no 5th grow if I can dial in a decent perpetual cycle. As I mentioned on the phone, I'm going to crowd the flower tent a bit more, and really strive to average harvesting a different strain of plant every month, and reprise the great ones every so often. Goodness knows I have the variety now, and some of them are fast autos I can use to plug any gaps quickly.



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Thanks! And Welcome! 
 
Just my little corner of the growverse. Enjoy!