Alright this is long overdue but at least it's here.....finally! The strain: Barney's farm Liberty Haze x2 Medium: modified waterpack ACS which is basically 4x waterfarms all connected together and to a main res. and a top off res that sits above the main res. This was purchased from GHE. I modified the system by adding many 1/4" holes to the top container allowing the roots to grow into the bottom res (in a DWC fashion). Airstones were added to all the reservoirs and the top water dripper works when the lights are on only! Environment: 4x4xtall grow tent. 72F average temp and the humidity was in the 50s during veg. 2 fans blowing and city culating air. Lighting: 600w MH during veg and stretch period of flowering then HPS. Growing method: SCROG using an elastic scrog net. Not the best. But its OK for now as this is my first scrog and the purpose of this grow is to get a feel for the method first before building my own scrog screen and also to experience the infamous waterfarm! Nutes: RO water with calimagic added to about 200-250ppm (any less and I get cal deficiency) and little B Essential (by GH which is essentially micro and submicro elements that I'm missing by using RO) to a total ppm of no more than 250. My base nute line is Canna Aqua @ their recommended dosage. I use their rhizotonic, boost and pk13/14 additives! I cracked the 2 feminized seeds after 12 hours in a water cup then between wet paper towels. I then placed the rooted seeds straight in the waterfarms between the hydrocorns. 2 weeks for this and the seedlings to establish their root systems! I then veged the 2 plants for 7 weeks with the screen about 12" above the medium. Knowing how much this strain stretches, I flipped the light to 12/12 when the screen was about 60% full. Today is day 1 of the Second week of flowering. As you can see in the pic, the jungle is coming along and the screen is about 80% full already! At this stage, my nutes res soln is at 1250ppm (x700 coversion) and my pH @6.0. The res soln temp is maintained at 70F ..... I use the Heisenberg bennies tea. My roots are pearly white, thick and healthy. I believe this drift is due to the buffering capacity of the soln. I plan on switching back to tap water rather than RO to see how the pH behaves! Today, and after 48h of brewing the H tea, I applied the tea then replaced the airstone in the main res with the airstone that I used to brew the tea (airstone covered with a beneficial biofilm) Feel free to comment, advise or give tips! ;-)
Definate signs of flowering today. Had to take care of some stretchers to even out the canopy as much as possible.
My nutes pH keeps going down over night to 5.0 while the ppm stays pretty stable. Has anyone had similar experience with Canna Aqua Grow A+B?? The roots are pearly white and no slime in the soln! Just a pH that buffers itself overnight after bringing it to 6.0 every morning to about 5.0-5.4 in the next morning.
Stretching seems to have stopped so I switched the light to HPS. I'll change the res to flowering nutes asap! Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Today I finally got time to change the res and switch the nutes to Canna Aqua F. The ppm is 1350 (700x conversion) with 300 being calimagic and B Essentials (micro and submicro elements) since I'm using RO water. Also Rhizotonic and Canna Boost were added at the recommended dose. The final ppm and pH is 1350 and 6.0 respectively. The center of the canopy seems to be stretching a little still and I'll redirect or pull back some branches to even out the canopy again maybe tomorrow when they're tall enough! First pic is of the canopy yesterday, the second is from today for comparison. Also, the last pic is a close up shot to show the developing bud sites..... Thoughts ideas tips comments criticism...... All are welcome!
She's definitely starting to look pretty! Did you happen to trim the bottom branches before switching to flower? I can't really tell with the pics. How exactly did you go about obtain RO water? Every option I have searched is crazy expensive
Thanks brother I actually trimmed the foliage below the scrog net this morning. And I'm hoping this will stress them enough to slow down the last of the stretching. Now for the RO water, I have an RO filter in my kitchen. However, I rarely get water from the RO filter anymore. I collect the water from the dehumidifier (which I always test to make sure its not contaminated. I test the ppm and make sure its 0 before I use that water)
Nicely done man hopefully the stress doesn't effect the flower production much. I've just been splurging on purified or spring water for my girls and it's starting to dent my wallet and was hoping for a cheaper alternative. I was just looking at the top of the thread at your ph issues and just wanted to remind you that we want a ph that actively ranges between 5.5-6.5 to get every nutrient the girls need
I hope so too. I doubt it'll affect flowering this early on. At least I hope it won't hah. So why spend the money on purified or bottled water? What's your tap water like? Hydro? Yeah I know that a drift in the pH is rather desirable to hit all the nutes at their optimum absorption pH. However, I didn't think that it should drift this drastically in such a short period of time (within 24 hours or even less). Now, I did switch my nutes to Canna Aqua Flores today and raised the ppm to 1350. I hope to see a difference in the buffering capacity of my nutes solution this time around!
My tap water (city of Cleveland) is bad for the girls for some reason. I started using my tap water in my last grow and my leaves turned yellow/brown almost as soon as they sprouted. I just made the quick fix to purified or spring water and haven't changed. I only recently started looking into alternatives and every RO system is like 300 bucks. So the search continues... Ph stability is so difficult to get down, my own is usually crazy too. I just started my GH Grow nutes today in full effect so I will start testing and measuring tonight!
Gotcha.....yeah dude I had a problem with my tap water (somewhat hard) when I grew in soil because of too much calcium and mag buildup. I hope things go well with your girls. I did read in multiple places where people talk about cheap RO systems. If I come across any, I'll let ya know. When I used GH FloraNova, I never had pH problems and the girls (last grow was pineapple express, northern lights, purple haze and liberty haze) absolutely loved it. Now I'm trying Canna Aqua just because my hydro shop had canna aqua in a package with other canna additives and it was on sale. I am switching back to FloraNova when I finish the canna
Yeah my past ph problems is probably do to lack of flushing and maybe something with my aero garden throws it off
I changed the res today. Base RO water with calimagic and B essentials was 340ppm. Then I added canna aqua F at rec dose to about 1260 including boost at rec dose. I also added half rec dose of pk13/14 to final ppm of 1320 and pH of 6.0.Top off res at ppm 1040 pH 6.0 (lowering the canna aqua dose) I also lowered the ppm intentionally because a saw little note burn on some leaves. Some crazy stretchers had to be tamed finally yesterday as you can see in the pics below. Here are some bud sites too......
I reduced the ppm of the top off res to 720 because the ppm in the main res kept rising slowly. I reduced the main res ppm to 1300 for now. Everything is going well otherwise. The bud sites are developing very nicely. Still only little smell. I like this strain because it has little to no smell at this stage but the smell develops later to a more citrusy/lime and hazy smell! Even though its day 4 of week 5 since I flipped, the damn branches are still stretching as you can see below. I honestly don't care anymore. Between the top of the highest branch and the top of the lowest branch is about 9 inches. Lower and top buds are developing nicely and the light is penetrating to the lower buds just fine. I did crank up the ballast to 125% so I'm getting close to 750W out of this 600w hps (correct me if I'm wrong about the numbers). Below you'll see 5 pics taken yesterday and 4 today! Yesterday: Today:
Today is day 3 of week 6 since the flip. Here are some pics showing the bud sites fattening up! Notice the canopy! There are stretchers on the outskirts as if they go for a certain light intensity! With the ballast cranked up to 600w +25%, I see light bleaching on some buds. I raised the light 4 more inches by hooking it directly to the center rod! I can't raise the light any higher. I'll lower the ballast to 600w if its still bleaching my girls. I like brunettes, thank you very much The farm says its an 8 week flowering strain. I grew this 2x before and never have I harvested it before 10 weeks. And with the way the buds look now, I think I have another 4 weeks to go easy! Still feeding canna aqua f @ rec. dose, boost and I introduced pk13/14 at quarter rec dose and will slowly increase to rec dose. Comments are welcome
Pictures were taken yesterday (day 1 of week 8 since flip) Everything is going well. The girls are eating and drinking well. The buds are growing up nicely and I'm waiting for them to fatten up in a couple weeks!
Day 3 of week 8 (since flip) With the buds growing in thickness now (vs height), and according to the canna nutes schedule, it is time to apply pk13/14 at full dose for a week, before I have to lower the ppm for a couple weeks then flush! (Suggestions are welcome) I figured I'll follow the canna feed schedule for now since it's my first time using this line and 0 experience with it. BTW I feel the canna Flores has a lot of N .... At least for the Liberty Haze which is very sensitive to excess N (eagle claws). RO water then calimagic and GH B Essentials (micro and submicro nutes to replace those missing from the RO) at 280-300ppm max. Then added Canna Aqua Flores A+B at suggested dose then pk13/14 ..... Total ppm was 1450 and pH 6.4 which I had to reduce to 6.0. I'll keep this heavy dose for a week then I'll change the res!
For the pervs in us, here is some bud porn!!!!! Day 6 of week 8 since flip and 3 days after applying the full dose pk13/14 upping the ppm (with little nutes burn) ..... Noticeable difference in size, thickness and trichome production! Thoughts?!
I lowered the ppm yesterday following canna aqua feeding schedule. The ppm is at 1180 and the pH is at 6.0. I left the girls on autopilot and now I'm in Boston for the week, hoping nothing goes wrong while I'm gone. They should be ready to flush when I'm back!