I should also mention that after the recent herm issues, I've adopted a minimal plant stress policy for now. Let them grow straight up... No topping, or supercropping for the time being.
I was actually referring to the almost microscopic abrasions that certainly occurred to the roots that were pulled past the edge of the 2" hole. My curiosity is focused on does that low stress abrasion on a root result in the kind of healing response and resumed stronger growth like we see in the "green side" of the plant. Regarding the low stress herm combat, I can't say as I blame ya one little bit. You gotta get that herm thing under lock and key - it must be a pain of a mental weight having to look in every day to see if one of them decided to flip out in the last 12 hours and knowing you've done everything in your control to do. I've been meaning to ask you, is that plant roster you use just a spread sheet you set up or is it from some software? I have these designs in the back of my mind of writing a grow log app, but until I'm better equipped with knowledge, I wouldn't know what all should go in it.
I heavily shape my plants and have only one hermie in flower. I am not sure if it was due to genetics, stress, or Koolbloom all of which are factors. I am running it again and eliminating the Koolbloom which I am sure was the cause. While I was running DWC I would prune roots when changing res even in flower (this does cause stress but also increases your roots surface area). My res was getting changed about every 3 weeks. Instead of having really long roots in the bottom of the bucket would have a bigger mass of short roots which work better for feeding the plants. Even my potted plants get their roots trimmed a little before transition. From my experience root pruning is a perfectly safe practice in terms of stress.
Inda, this is the second time you've mentioned Koolbloom being a herm catalyst. Please extrapolate on that for me. Are we talking about the liquid or dry Koolbloom? I've viewed it as an integral part of the feeding schedule, but I'd love to hear your validation on your actions to remove it from your lineup entirely. Do you use all GH nutes? If so, I have a few other questions relating to nutrient conservation. I'm burning through bottles too quickly it seems.
It's funny - I went looking for info on this even though I don't use KoolBloom. As you might expect, the jury is hung. During the search, I also noticed for the first time, that every time I search something and get a link from rollitup, I know I'm about to be entertained. For some reason, there is a high percentage of - ok I'll be nice - "interesting" ideas. So obviously while researching KoolBloom and hermies, I found such a thread, and the guy kept talking about Hermes. I'm like "WTF does the greek god of communication have to do with growing plants?" And then it hit me what you need, and I meticulously gathered the pieces and made a prototype for you. You need to print this, have stickers made of it, and put them all over your flower room. That should fix it
It's been sweltering in the grow room the last few days... 82F at the low and 90F at the high. I can't even seem to get it under 80F during 'lights off' time. On another note, It totally sucks being without smoke when I'm looking at the ladies. It makes it tough to not take a bit here or there. I keep telling myself, 'those buds will more than triple in size if you just leave 'em alone...' The fugly Red Cherry Berry has topped itself! At the 3rd node!! This is some wacky shit right here. The lowest nodes are branching out and I'm sure they shall become the new tops within a few days... All in all, the ladies seem pretty happy. Mandy and Kari are really starting to fill out. Bonnie is still stretching and has yet to confirm herself. She is a clone from Kari, so no worries I'm sure. I will admit I've slowly worked my way back into leafpicking and supercropping. Seems to be working out great thus far. I will snap some photos tomorrow evening to share. Unless I get bored tonight. hehe
That's some funny shit right there Ock! I'm starting to think a KoolBloom overdose most definitely played a factor. Genetics as well, but overfeeding did not help. I'm used to backing off my nutes as a whole when I encounter nute burn. Usually, I would take the whole recipe and use only 75% strength. Last week, I starting thinking about only reducing the KoolBloom to 75% and keeping the other nutes at 100%. This seems to be working out better. I still have a few leaves at the base of each flowering plant that is a bit burnt. So, I may back it off even more. Also, my veggers do not have moderate or even severe nute burning, and KoolBloom is not used during veg at all. This supports my theory thus far.
Sorry never got back to you this thread got lost in the mix. I have no scientific proof of Koolbloom being a cause but after reading 100s of journals there is definitely a correlation to Koolbloom and hermies. If I had a plant count to spare I would attempt to isolate that variable and have some better proof. I have run it as high as about 0.6 EC with a lower base EC without a problem, and even gone as high as about 1.0 EC pure in DWC. So sticking with a lower recommended dose you should be safe but from what I have seen when it is applied(specifically in DWC, which you can monitor nutrient uptake) it cause a drop in EC fast. I have had it drop as far as 0.3 EC in less then 12 hours (with stable res, was normally +/- 0.1 a day) which is a pretty heavy uptake which in turn is going to be rough on the plant and additionally can burn it. I will not remove it from my hydro lineup yet because it does produce result, but I have learned to pay attention to how it is effecting my nutrient uptake.
Nice information man. I noticed you are referring to EC... my meter is a PPM only meter, so I have no ability to monitor EC. I kinda understand how it works, but I'm limited to measuring PPM.
Just had a 'doh' moment.... It's simple physics, yet I had overlooked this fact. Displacement. As these plant's root masses grow to take up half so more of the bucket, there will be less room for water. Less water to mix nutes with. Less nutes needing to be used. Less chance of burn by not thinking of the above fact. When I'm dealing with a 2.5 gallon root mass in a 5 gallon bucket, which is what Kari's got going on, I should use less nutes since there is no longer 4 gallons of water to treat. Now, exactly how much volume do the root masses displace? I'd like to know for sure...
Fill bucket to top off level then drain into container and measure. My 10 gallon tubs would normally start with 7 gallons of solution and would finish at a little under 5. I used ppm at first but due to different conversion scales switched to EC because it is universal.
If you measure your nutrients per gallon wouldn't that equation stay the same? If so, your plants are getting the exact same amount of nutrients.
I usually treat for 4 gallons of water. With a really large root mass in the bucket I may no longer have 4 gallons of volume available. That's what I was getting at.
The Seed Starter and Cloner: That Red Cherry Berry is such an odd plant.... Continued in the next post...