My Sweecret laboratory. 5th Sweet Seeds competition grow diary 2018/19

[jadenugs]

@Serpent never thought of that mate, nice one My head has been racing for days with the probs I'm having and all the drink over xmas hasn't helped either

I've just looked at the 3.5's and they have indents right the way down all four sides. Had them for years and never realised but I think the indents may be to stop the roots circling, like some kind of root trainer. So I'm gonna pot into these and not fill them right to the top like you advised. Well, I'll know better when I've been up and checked the depth of the 12's against them tonight

[Serpent]

Don't kick yourself @jadenugs we're all stoners and often can't see what's staring us right in the face

[Exile420]

Just a quick one I recommend air pots, my first time using them and I can see a huge difference

[jadenugs]

@Serpent

@Exile420

Good to have you on board lads

 

I've thought about the air pots before but I always wonder about if I got a fungus gnat infestation. More holes for the fuckers to get in and lay their eggs. I'm sure @Fragg used women's tights over the pots to combat this though, if you ever get that problem Exile. Next thing is watering, how do you find them for watering mate? The fabric pots do prune the roots quite well and they're not too bad for watering once the rootballs have formed.

[Exile420]

4 minutes ago, jadenugs said:

@Serpent

@Exile420

Good to have you on board lads

 

I've thought about the air pots before but I always wonder about if I got a fungus gnat infestation. More holes for the fuckers to get in and lay their eggs. I'm sure @Fragg used women's tights over the pots to combat this though, if you ever get that problem Exile. Next thing is watering, how do you find them for watering mate? The fabric pots do prune the roots quite well and they're not too bad for watering once the rootballs have formed.

There spot on mate can't fault them at all, much better than fabric pots.

 

I've used fabric pots before and im not a big fan of them tbh.

[jadenugs]

Hi 420

 

I would normally top at the 3rd node as early as possible, which is usually around day 21 when they have enough roots down and are growing healthily.
This allows the lower branches to catch up earlier and allows me to decide whether to have 4 or 6 main branches, depending on whether the bottom branches from the 1st node do well or not.

 

As you know this coco/compost mix I've tried has caused me problems, but to be fair the plants are still growing at a decent pace and haven't stunted too much. So I decided to top them last night on day 26 while they are actively growing. Otherwise, if I potted up first and they didn't respond well to the transplant it would put the topping another week behind. If they haven't suffered any shock from the topping when I check tonight I might pot them up into fresh compost as they are desperate for it. (just checked and they are fine so I'll be busy again after this update).

The stats for the last 4 days are:  

Day 23
Temps 21-28 (sitting at 26)
Roots 23-24 (23)
RH    39-58 (48)
Fed them 100ml containing 1ml/L Epsom salts, 1.5ml/L Fishmix and 1.5ml/L Seaweed.

Day 24
Temps 21-28 (25)
Roots 23-24 (23)
RH    39-58 (44)
Fed them 100ml containing 1ml/L Epsom salts, 1.5ml/L Fishmix and 1.5ml/L Seaweed.

Day 25
Temps 21-27 (24)
Roots 23-24 (23)
RH    43-56 (48)
Fed them 120ml containing 2ml/L Epsom salts, 1.5ml/L Fishmix and 0.5ml/L Bio silicon.

Day 26
Temps 23-26 (25)
Roots 22-23 (23)
RH    43-53 (47)
Fed them 150ml containing 2.5ml/L Epsom salts and 2ml/L Fishmix and got on with the topping.

 

Here they are before the topping

Crystal Candy FV
A pic before and after topping.
Branching out nicely from the 3rd node up so I topped her at the 5th to give me 6 decent branches. It pained me to chop off the decent fresh growth but I think they've recovered enough now, with the new branches looking fine. Hopefully this next potting up will sort my problems out and we'll get some nice plants going before they get into their finals.

Cream 47
This one has stayed squat with some strong branching so I haven't bothered topping her. If she takes a stretch later on I'll most likely LST. Looking at the others though, I think they'll still grow taller tan this one after their topping. Having only 4 plants gives me more options for filling the space in the tent.

Green Poison CBD
Looking a lot better now and losing the crinkle in her leaves as they open out and mature. Topped at the 4th node, as the the branching is decent from the 2nd to the 4th and the bottom 2 branches at the 1st node will probably be cut off.

Sweet Pure CBD
Same again, decent branching from the 2nd node up so topped at the 4th for 6 good branches.

And here they are as a group post topping

I've been very busy taking photos of and cropping my current grow so I can't wait until they're all down and I can give these girls my undivided attention. Most important thing is I'll be able to go up there any time to tend to them so things will be better, happy days

 

Happy gardening and thanks for looking

 

 

 

 

 

[tokenroll]

@jadenugs looking a little like my own a while back, but as you know they will bounce back rather quick. Things will certainly be on track soon enough. I would keep an I out for mould caused by the bubble wrap especially with then fabric pots.

Wishing the best of luck and will no doubt be popping in over the next few months. Happy New Year.

Toke...

[jadenugs]

@tokenroll

Thanks for looking in mate. Yeah they should be back on track soon enough.

I've potted them up to plastic pots tonight. Left them an hour and the root temps were a bit low so I've wrapped them in bubble wrap again.

Cheers for the tip about the mold They'll be in the tent before they are potted up to fabric finals so I won't have the need to use bubble wrap again. I'll want the roots to be pruning anyway.

 

All the best for 2019

[jadenugs]

Day 27 Pot up

 

Hi peeps

Hope you're all revved up for some New Year's celebrations. Just a last minute update here before I get absolutely battered
I found out my 3.4L square pots yesterday and scrubbed them up with a mild bleach solution ready to pot the girls up if they hadn't suffered stress from their topping. They looked fine last night when I checked so I got on with potting them up to save them from the torture they'd endured due to the coco mix

 

I was umming and arring all afternoon whether or not to cut the roots and get rid of half the coco mix from the fabric pots. In the end I decided not to but couldn't resist carefully cutting the stitching from the pots to see how the roots were coping with all the stress they've had.
After checking the CCFV first I decided to remove the others from the pots too and pot them on without the fabric. Hopefully they should explode into the 3.5L pots now

 

Crystal Candy FV
I was pleasantly surprised to see a nice rootball of healthy furry roots despite what she's been through with the coco mix and lack of Mg. I will try the coco mix again at some point, making sure I supplement Mg from the start, but not on a big important compo grow like this one
One thing I'm glad of is that I never panicked and fired loads of feed in, thus burning the roots. This would hold the girls back more and affect the final yield more than a hungry start would IMO.

 

One a bit closer as that's the best I have to offer for the December photo comp

Cream 47
Not as advanced as the CCFV but the mass still felt dense and firm

Green Poison CBD
You can see there isn't a lot of medium around the outsides of the original nursery bag and I found this to be drying out really quickly and the water was running straight down the sides when I watered them. Maybe next time I'll start them off straight in the 1L prop pots but as said, I was hoping for 2L prop pots this time and couldn't get hold of them.

Sweet Pure CBD
This one looks to have been root pruning better than the others, with less roots growing down the sides. Hard to tell though because I can't see any brown bits on the ends, which is what I expected to see when root ends come in contact with air and die. Maybe the amount of root ends poking through is down to their original pruning in the white nursery bags? Nice solid root mass either way

One of the pots prepared with some MycorrMax. I've had these pots for years but I've only used them a couple of times as they are tall and don't fit well into a shorter 6 or 7 litre pot. looking at the ridges down the insides I always thought they were some sort of hydro pot or something but then it dawned on me that they might be some kind of root trainers to stop the roots circling and send them down to the drainage holes. Any thoughts?

Here's the girls potted up but without any bubble wrap to keep them warm. The root temps dropped to 20C and after I left them an hour or two in the cab they had only risen to 21 so I've since wrapped them in bubble wrap and the root temps have risen back to 23
I didn't have any saucers or trays that would fit well in the prop base so I've removed the sand from the hollows in the base and put some round wooden dowels in that are the same diameter as the height of the ridges in the base. So the pots now sit level across the ridges and dowels and I can fill the hollows partly with plain water when the humidity drops again and the pots won't wick the water. Sounds like a plan that will work. I'll just have to keep filling with water as the sand won't be there to stop it evaporating quickly. The pots haven't been filled to the top and I only tap the sides a little to settle the compost so they should settle some more in the next two weeks and be about the right size for potting into the finals. This time I remembered to water the original rootballs slowly with 100ml each, containing 2.5ml/L Epsom salts and 1ml/L Fishmix. I left the compost as it was, damp from the bag. They might get some water tonight, maybe not. I'll feel the weight of the pots. The last thing I want now is overwatering before the roots get chance to spread into the compost.

That's all for now folk and the next update should see some healthier looking plants, hopefully.

 

All the best for the new year and may all your gardens be greener than in 2018

 

[Sweet Seeds-tommy]

Cheers mate!

 

What a very well organized and structured diary. Your plants still have plenty of time to recover and correspond to the quality of the diary and photos, so keep it up mate

 

The best is yet to come

 

tommy

[jadenugs]

22 hours ago, Sweet Seeds-tommy said:

The best is yet to come

 

Thanks mate, for the positive words of encouragement

My mission now is to bring these girls around and show off these genetics in the best possible way I can

 

Sweet tokes

[Serpent]

Nice one on potting up @jadenugs and hopefully not filling them up to the top won't cause any problems when going in their finals

[jadenugs]

@Serpent

Cheers mucker, yeah I'm glad you mentioned using those pots without filling them. I was going to use the 3L rounds and I think these are better for the roots. We'll see when I check them in about a week. There were some roots at the drainage holes in 3 days

[jadenugs]

Day 30

 

Evening all

we're not quite there yet but over the last 3 days since pot up their health has improved and the roots were quick to hit the drainage holes. Just a case of waiting for the roots to fill out the compost a bit more. The dowels and prop tray ridges the pots are sat up on should help to prune the roots a bit at the drainage holes and hopefully the ridges down the pots will stop the roots circling. My other plants are nearly down though so they shouldn't be in these pots long enough to get pot bound as I'll be able to get them in the tent soon and potted up to their finals.

 

Here's the dowels, simple but  you can see they are the same height as the prop tray ridges so are doing the job nicely keeping the pot bases level just above the heat and clear of the water if I need to pour some in for extra humidity.

 

After going into bigger pots I turned the prop base up from 7 to 9 and after wrapping the pots in bubble wrap the root temps went up to 25C so I turned the prop back down to 8 and they've settled again at 23C

Here's the stats for the past few days:

 

Day 28

Temps 22-26 (25)

Roots  23-25 (25)

RH      44-58 (46)

No feed

 

Day 29

Temps 22-26 (25)

Roots   23-25 (23)

RH       44-58 (46)

Fed 100ml containing 2.5ml/L slowly to the rootball.

200ml containing 2ml/L seaweed to the outer edges of the pot containing the fresh compost

 

Day 30

Temps 22-26 (25)

Roots   22-24 (23)

RH       39-54 (44)

No feed

 

Group shot day 30

As you can see, they've come along a bit better since the pot up and are filling out nicely.

 

Crystal Candy FV

This is the slowest to recover out of them all. Can't wait for her to be fully recovered so I can get rid of these scabby leaves. Structure is nice and strong though and she's chugging along growthwise.

 

Cream 47

Branching out nicely with fresh growth. She might get topped at a later date, I'm just waiting to see how they all grow as they go through the pots

 

Green Poison CBD

This one looks to have recovered the best so far out of them all, and again is branching out nicely.

 

Sweet Pure CBD

Greening up at last and looks like she'll be a stocky plant

 

I'm happy with how they've progressed in spite of the problems they've had and things can only get better.

Cheers for looking and be lucky

[jadenugs]

Day 32 move to the tent

 

Hello all
I've had a busy few days but the good news is all my flowering plants are down. Yesterday (day 32) was very busy, chopping my last plant and getting the tent ready for these girls
I'll post the stats for the last two days first before a few details about my tent set up.

Day 31
Temps 22-27 (sitting at 26)
Roots 23-24 (24)
RH    35-49 (36)
As expected the change in weather had brought the RH down so I added water to the troughs in the Prop base which brought it up to 56%.
I fed them 400ml containing 2ml/L seaweed and this was enough for a little bit of run off, so basically their first good soaking in these pots.

Day 32
Temps 22-27 (27)
Roots 22-24 (24)
RH    34-57 (35)
No feed.

The tent
As soon as the last plant was harvested I got on with cleaning the plastic drip insert with a mild bleach solution and I also scrubbed up some individual plant saucers with the same solution.
 
Here's the lower half of the tent all ready for the girls.

The lamps
2 x 315W CMH. I'd switched off the 930 bulb a couple of days ago as there were only 2 plants left in there. I Left the 942 vegging bulb running as I chopped the last plant, to keep the tent warm ready for the move

Because my cable sock is high up at the back of the tent and the tent is tight up against the gable end, it is awkward to remove the reflector and cables and put them back in when plants are in there, so I unhooked the one with the 930 bulb from the ratchets and used the reflector brackets to hook it straight to the tent frame out of the way. Then I could slide the remaining reflector to the middle of the tent for vegging them up and when they go into flower the other fixture is there ready to move back in. I tried running both lamps for vegging on my last grow and found the plants to be drooping every day after 12-15 hours of light. I had a feeling it was too much light causing the problem so I had a read up about light saturation. These lamps put out about 600 umols each and I learnt that vegging plants only need 300 to 500 umols and flowering plants 600 to 1200 umols in this 120 x 120 space. So this time I'll only be running one lamp in veg and we're all sorted to just swing the other lamp back into place when the time comes for flowering.

Air circulation
My circulation fan is a Bionaire air purifier with horizontal barrell type blades, 3 speed with a carbon filter and negative ion generator. I've removed the carbon filter and have the ion switch to off. I know negative ions are good for killing mold spores but I leave it off anyway because I'm unsure whether it would affect the growth of the plants? I can always switch it on if I have any mold problems. The fan runs at the same time as the lamps through veg and most of flower, on the lowest setting. Later on in flower, if the buds get fat I switch it up to 2 and leave it on 24/7. It hangs on a ratchet for ease of raising and lowering. I find this to be less noisy than clip on fans vibrating on the tent poles.

Air intake and extraction
When I added a radiator box to my set up recently I set it up in the following way to try and get away with using just the one 4" fan to draw air from both the rad box and my veg cab.

I was still drawing cold air from the attic room into my veg cab and had to run another heater in the veg cab so I had a re-think and changed the set up to this.

It worked fine, in that I didn't have to run another heater in the veg cab but I still didn't have enough air exchange going through my flowering tent so I decided to add another 4" fan to the set up and this is what I came up with. I needed to slow one of the 4" fans so that I wouldn't have positive pressure in the tent when the main 6" extractor was running on low. So I fitted a speed controller to the 4" fan drawing air from the rad box and this allowed me to slow it enough to get just enough negative pressure in the tent but not too much that the tent walls sucked in. So my diy tent braces were made redundant They still come in handy for other stuff though.

 

 

Since the above diagram I swapped the fan speed controller from the rad box fan to the veg cab fan so I could slow that one down and raise humidity in the veg cab. Only problem was, the amount I had to slow it down to achieve negative pressure in the tent was a little too much and air exchange in the veg cab suffered. So I bought another fan speed controller and now I can adjust both in order to control the veg cab environment and negative pressure in the tent. Everything seems to be working ok. I've got much better air exchange in the tent so I'll leave it at that for now.

Tent stats
The girls are in the tent now with the 942 at a height of 36" from the tops. Timer set to 18/6, on at 7pm, off at 1pm.
The Inkbird thermostat for my electric blanket is set to 23C
The rad in the rad box is set to 18C

My little hatch, back in place to stop heat escaping.

TD 500 silent inline extractor wired to the lowest speed.
Circulation fan set to 1 and plugged into a timer, on at 7pm, off at 1pm.
Temps when the girls went in were 21C (the tent door had been open for ages).
Roots 23C
RH    49%

Time now to dial in and bring them round to good health with a bit of training along the way.
Here's the girls in their new home ready to rock n roll

Happy gardening and be lucky