Coco/Perlite Hempy Buckets and Jacks 15-12-26

Discussion in 'Coco Coir' started by Ravenboy, Apr 9, 2016.

  1. thanks, however, not much of the method i use in coco resulted from my trials and errors, mostly its just knowing how to google and reading voraciously . i am not just on this forum, there is a lot of good coco info out there

    Yes, its best to think hydro. all of the nutrients come from what you are watering with, and that IS the definition of hydro. and like all hydro, whether using a medium or not, oxygen in the root zone is essential. and with coco its the watering that oxygenates the root zone.

    and like all hydro, salts can build up.

    so watering also helps reduce salt build up: that is if the root zone is not allowed to dry out, there is less opportunity for evaporation, and less evaporation means less salt.

    and letting it dry out causes PH swings, who needs that when you can avoid it.

    i see it a lot where people think that just because coco is a soilless medium its something other than hydro. Somehow unique. well coco IS unique but mostly because of its CEC, and the fact that it binds cations, Ca and Mg needs to be managed, and you can get special coco nutrients to aid in that, but its still hydro.

    anytime a medium is used in hydro, its a soilless medium. soil would have nutrients IN it, so not all nutrients would be coming from the water..... so thats not hydro.

    if seen it said that coco is soilless, and the techniques used with soilless medium isn't hydro - but its really simple. if all nutes come from the water, you ARE doing hydro, whether you are using a medium or not.
     
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  2. i am REALLY happy about the cure.

    24 hours in the jar. 3 jars were between 63 and 64% RH, burped those. the rest are climbing from around 57, due to the bored packs (62% packs) ... when I jarred the closet was at 55 RH, i just could not keep it in the high 50's like i usually do, the ambient RH was too low. I don't mind 55, the boveda packs will fix that in a few days.

    i thought i might be jarring a day or two early based on the stem snapping metric, but I think i got it VERY close to the optimal day

    if i had jarred TOO early, all of the jars would be above 62 percent by now

    and I had thought I had chopped a bit early. I had needed the space for some of the other plants from the jam-packed tent so they could finish under better lighting conditions. But MANY of those clear trichomes turned cloudy during the cure. I am sure I had less than 5% clear, but now i have trouble seeing clusters of clear trichomes, and now only see scattered clear. and also I see more amber, though I cant estimate a percentage there are so few.

    So now there are 2 Dinafem Critical, 1 Heavyweight Dream Machine, and 3 Ripper Seeds Zombie Kush left to go.
    It looks like the two Criticals will go into 12-12 in a week. The are at 9 weeks now, and this is a fast strain, but its cool in the tents at night, and i think thats slowing the process of finishing.

    I flipped the first 4 zombie kush at 7 weeks, which turned out to be a week early. I am at 8 weeks on the remaining 3 Zombies, and I think it will be two more before i start the flush on those.

    The Dream Machine is a 10 week strain.... its at 8 weeks, and has a ways to go. It won't be ready to flush in two weeks, i am pretty sure.
     
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  3. AND the smoke is really really good. There are SO many trichomes, it tastes a lot like Hashish. Its only been in the jar 24 hours, and I am happy that it has pretty good taste even now. The taste of trichomes overwhelms anything else ... i certainly cant taste chlorophyll.

    Its a very strong stone, but with almost no amber trichomes, it doesn't make me head for the couch. Just the way I like it.

    This stuff will make you dizzy though. I have low blood pressure, so i always notice this effect.

    The smell in the jar is REALLY nice.
     
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  4. Yo man! For what it's worth, in the cannabis cups there are 3 categories to enter.. Hydroponics, soil, and soilless.


    They categorize soilless as any medium with bottled nutrients.. So if you have ocean forest bagged soil and you start adding bottled nutrients, that would be considered soilless.. Same thing with coco and hydroponic nutrients.. If there's a medium, and you use bottled nutrients, it's considered soilless.


    Only true built soil would be considered for the soil Category.. Mostly all organic if there is no bottles.


    And of course, hydro is without a medium.. Where the roots are exposed.. Can be NFT tables, DWC, or aeroponics.. Etc, As long as there is no medium.


    Not that it really matters.. Coco is treated a lot like hydro.. It's very very similar, but if you were to enter into a competition with coco/bottle grown buds, it would be entered as soilless.


    Plants are lookin great man! You ever heard of a Self Irrigated Planter before? I thought it could be like the PPK bucket you mentioned.. I grew like that a few years ago and it was great.. Not sure how to avoid the buildup there tho.


    Take it easy hombre!
     
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  5. #105 Ravenboy, May 24, 2016
    Last edited: May 24, 2016
    interesting, thanks for the info. For competition, I see the point of having two classes ( in addition to the soil class)
    one with medium, one without.

    Argentinas Cannabis cup only had two classes. indoors and outdoors. I would prefer the classes as you described them.

    PPK:

    salt buildup is WAY less of an issue in a PPK, there isn't much evaporation since its always so wet. and since there is a reservoir you can correct the situation much more quickly than you can by hand flushing

    another nice PPK thing is that reservoir tim isn't an issue as it would be in, say, NFT or DWC.

    and the perched water table is BELOW the root zone, below the bottom of the bucket. Thats what the 3" medium filled wick is for. It extends into the reservoir and also wicks water into the medium... this is nice in case a pump fails, you have time to react.

    With the perched water out of the picture, the roots do a lot better.

    These PPK growers sometimes measure their yield in terms of pounds per 1000w of light. 1 pound (and even more) plants growing in less than 5 gallons of medium aren't unusual. PPKs can be done with either vertical or horizontal lighting... I'll be doing horizontal.

    I am doing a simple setup, pot for medium and plant sits on its own reservoir, that way any overflow just drains into the reservoir. 3" tailpieces, 3 gallons for medium. 80-20 perlite-coco. Needs to drain fast since it will get fed every 90 minutes. I have hand watered my last grow. Done with that.


    a cheap pump, reservoir, aquarium heater, for each res, 3 or 4 PPKs per tent. I found 10 dollar chinese cycle timers on eBay, so I will have one per plant. I use Temp/Humidity controllers from the same company, so I am sure these will be reliable enough. at that price I am getting a few spares.

    i am going to get close to 2 pounds using those two tents for t his current grow, in hempies. with 8 small PPKs, i will exceed that, and it will be a LOT less work

    for hand watering I use a small wagon, and haul plants to the kitchen for feeding. expensive hardwood floors in the grow room, rented apartment - this is why i keep the plants so small.

    no more.
     
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  6. Calcium and Magnesium again

    I've said it before, calcium and magnesium should be managed as separate issues. Calmag and such, where the two are combined, since the two are combined, you cant treat, for example, what is a classic Mg deficiency without raising the PPMs of calcium in your mix. More calcium as a side effect treat an Mg deficiency?

    This calmag stuff is just plain not sensible. raising the Ca while treating a different cation uptake problem could easily make things even more out of balance.

    Here are some notes that i collected here and on other forums:

    so how do you add Ca and Mg separately? . Easy, by using CaO and MgS04

    how do you do that? AND how much do you need?

    First how much calcium are you adding already, in your base nutrients?

    Take the % of Calcium listed on your bottle. Multiply that by the number of ml per gallon you will use of the Calcium containing product. Then, multiply that number by 2.654. If your final number is between 70 and 110 then you're plants should be in okay shape. If not add some Cao

    ok, so my CaO is 12% concentration. In my example, I want to add enough CaO to be at 90 PPM on a .5 scale

    ML/gal = target PPM /(concentration*2.654)

    ML/gal = 90 /(12*2.654)

    90/31.85 = 2.8 ML/gal

    what about Magnesium

    adding magnesium:

    for figuring out the Mg in your base nutes, the equation is the same as for Calcium

    ML/gal = target PPM /(percentage of mg in nutrient *2.654)

    you will be surprised how little Mg your base nutes provide, unless you are using two part nutrients, and even then many commercial nutrients are low in Mg for cannabis.

    1/4 teaspoon of Epsom Salt in 1 gallon of water will provide 30ppm to 35ppm of Magnesium. A "typical" healthy level for Magnesium is somewhere around 20 to 30ppm in veg and somewhere around 40 to 60ppm for flowering. Every 1ml of 1% of your nutrients will add at least 2.654ppm. So, if you're running 10ml of a 0.5% Mg nutrient then that will be adding only 12ppm of Magnesium.

    GO EASY a little goes a long ways: many times an 8 to 10ppm boost is all it takes to balance out this all important cation, and 10ppm is typically a 25% boost to my Mg levels (significant despite being only a few ppm).

    For Epsom Salt we use mg/L (which is actually ppm). 1 teaspoon is about 5 grams, or 5,000mg. Epsom Salt is 9.8% Magnesium. So only 490mg of that teaspoon is Magnesium. Next, if this teaspoon of Epsom Salt is added to 1 gallon of water, or 3.78L, then we simply divide 490mg of Magnesium into 3.78L of water for 129.63mg/L (aka ppm) of Magnesium.

    An extra 30ppm of Epsom salt will increase the Magnesium ppm level by about 12 to 15ppm. This is how I add MGS04 to my base nutes. Dissolve it in water, very concentrated, use that concentrate to raise the base nutes 30PPM, and i have added about 12 PPM of Mg to my base nutrients

    be careful measuring MgS04 by volume. For the measurements in this posting, You want to use the hydrated version of MgS04. This is usually what epsom salt is. The anhydrous MgS04 is more concentrated. IF you use this, you need to reduce the volume. How much? i don't know. I measure by MgS04 by using a meter and measuring PPM, while mixing my nutrients, so it doesn't matter which flavor i use
     
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  7. why did i post about Ca and Mg? Because i am seeing a little Ca deficiency and decided to look at my notes.

    Some strains after just fine in flower, with Just the JAcks, no Calcinit. AND some need a little Ca. The Mg is sufficient in the Jacks, no need to add more, and I never have had a Mg def when using Jacks
     
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  8. Thanks for the info man !
     
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  9. Happy since now i am not burping any jars. all have stabilized with boveda packs in them.

    Boveda packs don't seem be very good at lowering the humidity. For example, drying to ,say, 68 percent then jarring just isn't going to work.

    I try to dry to about 60, then jar and add boveda. they easily get the humidity to 62. This time, some of the jars with larger buds needed burping, they weren't really at 60% internally when i jarred, but slightly higher. I use hygrometers in the jars, some started at almost 65%....


    but all is good now - its been in the jar tend days, and it is really nice smoke.

    I started final flushing the 2 Dinafem Critical + two days ago, and its probably time to start final flushing the 3 remaining zombie kush tonight.

    the Dream machine is a ten weeks train at 8.5 weeks now.... haven't looked at the trichomes much. but swelling seems to be slowing, so depending on trichomes, she will get final flushed soon.

    i am not going to run out of Jacks after all!!! Next grow won't start until mid july, by then I will have traveled to USA and can bring back more jacks for a grow to start then. PPKs. not hempies
     
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  10. #110 Cavia porcellus, Jun 1, 2016
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2016
    Glad to hear your dry n crue went / is going well. those are on one of the lists, dont' have lots yet to deal w yet so brown lunch sacks n jars kinda do it. but soon i will have to get boveda & hygrometers. which hygrometers do you use I was thinking of the ones that i can just put in w things but also cut a hole in tops and stick thru to watch if I wanted to but didnt get far in research yet.
     
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  11. Petsmart has decent hygrometers for terrariums for about $8.
     
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  12. Jack's should hire you as a spokesman!
     
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  13. EBAY: i pay $1.40 each including battery - to a chinese company
     
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  14. i use glass has, so just drop the hygrometer in the jar with the boveda pack and bud.

    look on eBay. 2 bucks each would be too much to pay
     
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  15. A battery? I have the old fashioned kind with the coil.
     
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  16. Think were talking about the same or similar ones.
     
  17. Soilless is hydro, we know that the beloved coco, (soilless), has a tendency to draw and hold calcium and magnesium. I'm good with that because I can trust my daily juice to be proper. Ph is my final check.
     
  18. "Soilless is hydro" I am glad you said that. I have been absolutely FLAMED for saying that. Yes, in a thread right here in the coco sub section of the hydroponics growing section
     
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  19. If someone who grows in soil switches to coco and treats it the same, they will soon find out the difference! You have explained it well, so those who disagree just don't understand the concept. If I used my coco nute formula in soil, it would fry the plants! "Hydroponics is a branch of agriculture where plants are grown without the use of soil. The nutrients that the plants normally derive from the soil are simply dissolved into water instead, and depending on the type of hydroponic system used, the plant's roots are suspended in, flooded with or misted with the nutrient solution so that the plant can derive the elements it needs for growth" How Stuff Works.
    "Hydroponics, also called aquaculture, nutriculture, soilless culture, or tank farming, the cultivation of plants in nutrient-enriched water, with or without the mechanical support of an inert medium such as sand or gravel.
    Plants have long been grown with their roots immersed in solutions of water and fertilizer for scientific studies of their nutrition. Early commercial hydroponics (from Greek hydro, “water,” and ponos, “labour”) adopted this method of culture". Encyclopedia Britannica
     
  20. Go figure guess there didnt even Know what section they were in. May act alil different but it still is.
     

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