Hunger Strike & Resiliency - Veg Week 6
2023-11-27T05:00:00Z→2023-12-03T05:00:00Z
Well it was only a matter of time before I slipped up on this grow…
Last week was Thanksgiving and in typical rookie fashion did not plan accordingly for my plants while I was gone spending time with the family. The goal was to perform my first dunk which was on 11/22, and then hope that the plants wouldn’t need anything until I got home about 3-4 days later… Pushing it a bit I know… but the dunks caused the plants to weigh over 21+ lbs so I felt pretty confident that a stuffed belly would suffice
Well as anyone knows, with travel plans on one of the most popular holidays of the year, comes all the traffic that follows. So I ideally did not get home until close to the end of day 4 in the evening when the lights would soon be shutting off on my 18 hour light schedule
As a result… the plants were looking straight up depressed 
The plant pots weighed 9 lbs. That’s right - 9 lbs! Super light compared to what I’ve been working with. Also the humidity is still wonky even after feeds coming in around 45-55% if I were lucky. Fortunately though these plants showed how resilient they were! I dumped probably two top watering’s worth of feed on them, and within a couple days they bounced right back up -
So overall despite deserting them (hardy har har) they are still kicking and growing. Did some defoliation on the lower leaves some more, and continued to feed them accordingly with a dunk later in the week. The feeding/dunking at 6.4 is simply not giving me the results I need, and the PPMs are still a bit high -
For the most part… the plants look better after the feeds. However some of the higher branches are showing some weird colors/striping. The higher PPM on pots is concerning, but it may also be the height of the lights. I may opt to flush out the plants next dunk feed to see if that addresses anything
Been doing some research regarding my setup. First off the humidity being low is still concerning me so I ordered a humidifier (Elechomes SH8830) to counter that. Installed that on 11/30 and the humidity bumped up to around 65-70%. Solid!
For the lighting after doing some research regarding light coverage, I had the suspicion that I perhaps did not have adequate light coverage in my tent with a 300W light. I factored in the square foot calculations of my space which was 5ft x 2.75 ft = 13.75ft. I took that number and multiplied by 30 to get 412.5. This is the wattage I wanted to shoot for to meet the recommended wattage quota, and opted to order a more powerful light. I settled on ordering a new Spider Farmer G4500 450W light.
Lastly I wanted a bigger inline fan, and saw one from Vivosun which would allow me to control everything in my tent including the oscillating fans, inline fan, and all my lights (Both the Mars Hydro and Spider Farmer lights were supported) so I opted into purchasing that as well.
Everything should be in next week - so that’ll be fun!
Grow Environment Specs:
- Plant Height: 17 inches
- Day Temps: 75°F
- Night Temp: 67°F
- Humidity: 65-70%
- Watering Volume: 8-9 cups per plant
- Watering pH: 6.4
- Watering PPM (With nutes added): 565
- Lamp Height: 24 inches
- PPFD: 500
Nutrient Feed:
`NOTE - Nutes are prepped in a 1 gallon container filled with 3/4 gallons of water
Veg Juice (80%) -
- TPS Silica: 22 ml
- GH FloraMicro: 50 ml
- GH FloraGrow: 5 ml
- GH FloraBloom: 20 ml
- H₂O₂ (For sterilization): 2 ml
- Total PPM: 3800-4000
Bloom Juice (20%) -
- TPS Silica: 12 ml
- CaliMagic: 5 ml
- GH FloraMicro: 25 ml
- GH FloraBloom: 60 ml
- H₂O₂ (For sterilization): 2 ml
- Total PPM: 3300-3400
Additional notes outlined below:
- Checked soil weight within pots. They all weighed roughly between 13 - 13.5 lbs
- Water used tested at 6.6 pH after adding nutes. Treated with pH Down until desired pH was met at 6.4 pH
- Mixed in veg juice, bloom juice and epson salt into feed water. Used 80% veg and 20% bloom for PPM count (VJ: 400 + BJ: 100 + W: 65 = 565)
- Slowly watered top of soil as well as lightly over the stem. Misted remaining dry areas on top of soil
- Final weights on all pots after watering were around 16.5 lbs. Will monitor plants and water accordingly
- Performed light stress training (LST) on all plants. All plants required some topping on upper branches. Also did some defoliation of lowest leaves and any that were blocking colas