Main Cabinet Evolution

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Saturday morning brings the beginning of Week8 since the flip, & an early full res-change to change the nute ratio. I also cut PPMs by about 20%.
Roots:

Been trying to run the pH between 6.2 & 6.5 to stay in that higher P band, although the last bucket gave me a couple crashes by the time the lights came back on for the first couple days, & I also had to do a couple uncharacteristic mid-day adjustments to stay above 6.1 . I adjusted the last bucket down a little after mixing which I usually don’t do, but it mixed out a little high like 6.6 or 6.7 maybe, so adjusting it down to 6.4 might have aggravated it into heading down more quickly & more often than normal. The new bucket mixed out at 6.7 so I just went with that, & it was down to 6.5 on its own within a couple hours, & was at 6.3 by the time it was time for lights-out tonight, & that was before adding back a half gallon of mix at 6.7. I forget where it ended up after that, I think 6.4 iirc, & we’ll see where it is tomorrow morning when the lights come back on. Usually I’ll see somewhat of a crash down to the buffers after a full res change, but generally not after the first night, usually more often after the second.

Hottest bud (not leaf) heat-soak has been below 82.5 for the most part, usually around 81 to 82.5, although one scan today came back at 83f.

Wall Thermpro, past week: Ambient outside air has been warm & wet for the past three days, but should get cooler & drier starting tomorrow.

Wall Thermpro, past 24h:

After taking some more PPFD readings, I did decide to take an hour out of the day to follow the DLI chart for week8 of flowering. It calls for one more reduction for week9, & I guess I would keep it there if I want to run the plant longer into week10.

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Today begins Week9 since the flip.
Roots:

Did a 1-gal partial res-change today, will be due for a full res change in three days.
Also reduced PPM by around 15% today.
pH has been mostly predictible & easy to manage with minimal adjustments. I’ve been shooting for between 6.5 & 6.0 to stay in the high-P band, & it’s been hanging around 6.5 to 6.3 mostly. with the recent ratios it wants to run down to the buffers after the first day of a fresh res instead of two, that’s the only important difference that I’ve noticed recently.

Hoping this will wrap up within the next ten days or so, will be starting to check trichomes more regularly over the next few days.

Hottest bud temp heat-soak has been below 82.5f for the most part. I shot it once & it was 83f, but usually below 82.5f. Leaf temps are running cooler, & the leaf temperature offset will move depending on what is going on. Another reason to avoid static VPD charts. I’ll stick with the calculator or the dynamic chart. The leaf temps will react more quickly to influences, but the heat-soak on the buds tends to hang around longer. Gun is set to .98 emissivity which is supposed to be most accurate for living green leafy material.

Thermpro, past week:

Also moved another hour into the dark period to stay along with the dli chart.

[SausageMahoney]

Those look awesome.

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Thank you! I’m hoping that they frost up a little more, & I probably could have lollipopped them another 25 to 50% upwards, but other than the big stretch that I probably caused with a little too much bloom channel early on with the Kind light, overall I’ve been mostly happy with how things have gone so far.

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10 day full-res change today (Tuesday), & PPM was reduced by another 20% or so.
Roots:

She’s still drinking pretty well, 1/2 gallon plus or minus, depending on the ambient RH mostly.

Topside has been fading, & I removed a couple dozen fading fan leaves, & partially pruned a few more:

Some minor foxtailing started a few days ago, but hasn’t developed too badly.

I also spotted a few nanners starting to develop.
There’s a bud hiding in the right rear corner, there are a couple starting to poke out on it, & elsewhere.
I was hoping reg seeds might be less prone to them, but maybe I’m thinking of them being less prone to herm early vs. fems or something, I forget exactly.

Underneath: Hoping for no issues.

Thermpro, past week:

Starting to see some orange-headed trichomes when I check with my scope. She should be coming down by the end of the weekend.

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Week10 started today, & I think she’s going to need a few more days.

The breeders notes do say 9-10 weeks, & the orange trichs haven’t started to pop up much more than the other day yet.

Was hoping to be chopping tomorrow, but she can last a few more days, although she’s starting to get floppy. I added some more floss.

I stuck one leaf to the wall with a pin.

Underneath I chopped out a couple shorter tops along the back which were clogging up the area & eventually flopped down & were too tough to get to stay back in place.

Thermpro, past week: I haven’t been running the a/c after lights-out for maybe a week & a half or a couple weeks now. It’s been warmer & more humid for the past couple days, & it just got cooler & drier today.

Hottest bud got up to 83 or 84 when it got hot a couple days ago, so I rolled the ‘lights-on exhaust fan target’ down another 1/2 a degree, & it’s mostly been chasing it which is fine now. Hottest bud running around 81f now.

I did have a couple weird instances this week, but I don’t think that they caused too many issues because I noticed them quickly. One where my PPM meter started acting up for a couple days until I got around to calibrating it, & then changing the batteries which fixed it, & calibrating again. I might have been running a slightly higher PPM than I had thought for a couple days, but it seems to not be an issue.
Also I had a pH crash down to around 4.5 during a dark period & then me not being able to get to the bucket shortly after lights-on to do my usual pH adjustment, but I fixed that a couple hours later.

Hoping to see a rash of orange trichs ASAP so I can chop chop. I keep seeing more nanners, & she’s getting floppy & should come down asap.

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Started seeing more trichs rolling over to amber over the past couple days, shooting for Thursday for the chop.

Getting lots of floppage due to reduced nutes, & it’s getting harder to keep things organized, so I might chop tomorrow or Wednesday if that gets bad enough. It’s mostly the shorter lower stuff not shown in the pics, flopping down or against other buds or the walls. PPM is down to around 70% below the max & I’ll maintain that until the end.

Thermpro, past week: It got cooler the past couple of days, a/c has been off since last night. Although it’s supposed to get warm tomorrow so I’ll probably turn it back on. It was pretty cool in the cab today; the hottest bud got to maybe 81…

…, & the coolest leaves down lower were at around 71f.

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Chop chop:

Ambient conditions are warm & humid now, but should get better over the next week.

For now at least I have the a/c cooling things down.

I have a box of Damp-Rid hanging bags to try out, but realized that I had scented bags when I went to open the box, so I’ll have to go to the store tomorrow to get unscented ones.

Hanging:

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Made changes needed in order to raise the Photontek higher than it is now, in case I need to in the future. Mounted the light controller at the upper right corner, & added mounting screws 3" higher for the osci fans. I would still have to move the black air-stirrer fan somewhere else but didn’t have any great ideas, so left it alone for now. I might be able to stow it & rely on the oscis at that point to keep the top-most air stirred up. Ideally I don’t want to have to pull the light that far up anyway, but sometimes things happen.

Re-set the bucket & checked the bubble wand & circ pump:

Installed the plant (Princess88):

I might need slightly higher water level but I’ll see how she looks tomorrow.

Conditions are around where they are in the clone cab, maybe a little more humid for ‘infirmary mode’ until she starts growing. I’ll do some minor pruning tomorrow to keep eight main tops going.

I should get a new lid & put the plant hole closer to 12 o clock so it’s not offset as much. If I was doing an untopped scrog to the left, it’s not bad to offset it a little to the right. But these multi-topped ones would probably fare better a little more centered. I’ll try that next time.
Tomorrow I’ll fix the twist in the screen frame, should just have to loosen the one screw by the clamp on the right & adjust, & re-tighten.

Hopefully she doesn’t stall out too much, I’d like to flip to flower asap without much if any scrogging for this one.

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Picked up some unscented Damp-Rid bags today for the drying tent, but not sure if I’ll need them now or not.

It depends on how things continue to run. I like to get down to around 65% RH asap, & the temps are going to be around 70 to 75f for now. If the tent cools down & RH goes back above 65%, I’ll throw one in there for the night to see what it does, because I’m interested to see how effective one is.

Did some pruning & training on the P88:

Also fixed the twisted screen-frame, & moved the Thermpro from the center of the plant to over on the left of the screen to compare readings:

Screen Thermpro: I moved it at around 1pm.

Compared to the Thermpro on the front corner of the screen:

Been shooting some leaf temps with my Klein IR5 temp gun to monitor the offset.

Emissivity set to .98 on the gun, & the leaf temperature offset has been running anywhere from +1 to -1, depending on what the box was doing. This doesn’t surprise me & is what I expected it to look like having just been more or less transplanted, & having the high RH. The offset should widen & move further into the negative once the plant recovers fully from transplanting & as I roll the RH down over the next week.

Also, I picked up some more black 5gal bucket lids so I can make one for a more centrally-located plant for next time. Probably will have the football-hole where it is now at 6-o-clock, & I’ll put the the plant-hole closer to 12-o-clock, & the pump will sit under the football-hole like how I ran the two-plant buckets, & I might not install a circular access hole.

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Already seeing decent root-growth:

Tomorrow will be a 1-gallon partial res-change. The plant isn’t eating or drinking a whole lot yet, so I’ll keep the PPMs mild for now.

Topside not looking terrible:

I cut 1% off of the RH target to start rolling it back.

Over in the drying cab I’m testing a cooling duct from my a/c pushing some air into the drying cab due to a rather warm day today. Once in place it was getting too humid with the a/c in cool mode, but testing dry mode now & that might be ok. I might not keep it & I might try something else, but the only fan in the drying cab is on an RH controller, & when it stops running as much it can get warm in there. Ambient temp in the room is around 70f.

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Time to cut off the fan leaves.

Also reduced the osci fan ‘on’ time from 2mins on/2off, to 30secs on/2mins off.

Thermpro after defoliation & closing up the cab at around 10pm:

Aircon is set to dry mode & 69f. I’m expecting less RH rise when it cycles off due to the defoliation.
Last night it ran around 72f, & 65 to 70% RH, it looks like it might run around 60 to 65% tonight.

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Still tinkering with the Drying cab & piping in air from the a/c:

Last night in ‘dry’ mode even without the extra leaves it still gained back 70+RH when it wasn’t running the compressor. I did turn the setpoint up from 69f to 70f, so it was spending a lot of time either off, or sampling the air with the fan only, & cooling/drying maybe once every half-hour for a few minutes. Throughout the day today I turned it back down to 69f but having a warm day today & it eventually gained enough temp & lost enough RH for me to make a change. I set it to ‘fan’ for a few minutes (big swing after 3pm), & then set it to ‘cool’ where it’s settled into falling temps down to around 69f (where the a/c is set to), & moderate RH bouncing between around 60 & 65%. That seems pretty good for now, & I’ll see what it does from here throughout the night & into tomorrow.

Ambient outdoor conditions have been dry for the past couple days. If that were different, then I still might have higher RH, even with the AC in dry mode.

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Still messing with the drying tent: It was cool & dry last night & the a/c started to pull the r/h way down, so I shut it off & let it bounce off of the anti-r/h exhaust fan. Also, I placed a baking dish with water in it on the floor of the tent, & pointed the osci fan into the dish & locked it, although I’m not sure how much it helped with the rh.
Once the sun comes up the heat starts building in the tent & I turned the a/c back on, messing with it a couple times until I set it to 70f ‘econo mode’, & the tent settled in pretty well. The plant material is drying but still pliable & gassing off chlorophyll. The main thing I’ve noticed with the a/c ducting into the tent is once it finds a groove, don’t mess with it until necessary.

In the Main Cab, I raised the light & turned it up to 50% power on the grow channel, nothing on the bloom channel yet. The tops are getting slightly more light now, & more evenly. Most of them are at 350 ppfd, & the three clustered near the light meter are seeing just under 400. I might try only the grow channel for the first week of flowering, & then probably switch to the Photontek. Not sure if she’ll be ready to go but thinking of maybe trying to flip at the end of the 10 days for this bucket, which is in around 4 days from now.

Checking/adjusting the main exhaust fan controller since I moved the sensor when moving the light, & I installed some new adhesive cable guides to the light for the wire.

Only other changes were that I reduced the osci fans on-time since there’s a lot of dry ambient air right now & the plant looked a little winded.

I also topped them back to one top each a couple days ago. She’s still trying to find a gear, not really eating or drinking much yet, but that is pretty normal for now since she is still small & doesn’t have many leaves yet. I mixed the bucket to 325, & it’s at around 310 now. I’ll probably try to get it back to 325 or a little higher at the next one-gallon swap-out in a day or two. pH has been mostly moving between 6.3 & 6.4 for the past few days.

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Past weeks Thermpro of the drying tent:

No bud rot or mold, & they are still slowly drying & outgassing grassy aromas. It’s been cool & dry the past couple nights & I’ve been turning off the a/c then, but it’s supposed to warm up for the next couple days so I’ll probably have to watch out for getting too warm & drying too fast. One trick I figured out is to unhook the hose from the a/c to the tent if I’m initially turning the a/c back on until the room is cool, then hook it to the tent to cool it down, & this minimized over-drying then.

Main Cab is doing ok, I bumped up the cal mag a little & the overall PPM in the 1-gallon partial res-change for today. Yesterday I ran the pH down in the res to 5.8 in the morning with some pH Down, & it stayed there until todays a.m. partial change, & it ended up at around 350 & 6.2 pH after the refill, & 340 & 6.1 tonight when I checked in on her. Chopped off some lower leaves & a couple lower side nodes, & used some green wire to train them a little. The tops are roughly the same size, a couple are down a lower side-node compared to the others but hopefully they will grow at around the same rate.

Roots:

Leaf temperature offset is opening up into the negatives now, & I think I could probably flip at the next full-res change which is in three days. She’s still not moving a whole lot of water yet as the plant is still small, but I think the tops could do ok just letting them go vertical from where they are now, given the spacing.

Thermpros, past 24h:
Screen:

Wall:

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Tomorrow (Monday) will be 10 days on the bucket, I have a fresh bucket made up with the first flowering ratio plus the first dash of Si, & a little more calmag. PPM will go up about 25%, which might be a little strong, but we will see. I set the pH to 6.4 & we’ll see what it does from there.

Did some minor training to space them out a little more. The top on the right is weird & small, & its lower fan leaves are drooping. I think they might be trying to turn towards the white shade I have on the heater probe underneath it to the right, but not really sure. Hoping it grows out of it.

Looking forwards to cutting a new lid to try for better placement next time, but for now I can work with this.

Screen Thermpro, past 24h: The last few hours were after I adjusted light height, so it’s running a little differently. I might need to tweak the heat exhaust fan or move the sensor, or I might leave it. I’ll see how it runs thru tomorrow to see what it does. I peeled another 1% off of the humidity controller setpoint. Most of the big extended dips in RH today were due to the exhaust fan running for longer periods today.

Dropped the light a couple inches to raise ppfd to around 400 on most of the tops, to as much as 450 to 460. The ones on the left are getting a little more for now, it is what it is. Going to install the timer tomorrow to start the flip, & I’ll try running the first week staying on the veg channel only, then probably switching to the Photontek which has its reds & far reds on all the time. Last time I think I caused some extra stretch by starting off with too much bloom channel right away. These tops only have a couple side nodes each anyway, so I’m not expecting them to get super big. I’d probably rather have three or four side nodes plus the top right before flowering, but these could still do alright. I really don’t feel like doing a fresh bucket of veg ratio to get two more nodes, just to have to switch to flower ratio after only a couple or three days once the extra nodes show up. I think they might show up anyway & maybe I’ll be where I want to be anyway.

[PhotoFinisH]

Lights Out! Everybody :

Last night was the first night of 12/12.

Did the full res-change yesterday morning, here are what the roots look like:

This pic was from last night, close to lights-out:

Lowered the fixture to gain some ppfd. DLI chart wants 600 this week, I’m under that but approaching it on the tops on the left seeing the most light. I’ll drop the lamp a little more tonight, & the plant should grow upwards too.

With this one, I’m not sure what the hell. Pic from last night:

Today:

I did check the curled one with my temp gun, & it’s definitely hotter than the other ones lol.
Today:

I have a list of 'maybe’s as to why it’s doing that, but mostly hoping it grows out of it. It looks like a couple other leaves on the other tops are doing it slightly, mostly the ones on the right. Checked my ph pen against the liquid drops, & it’s ok. pH hasn’t done anything wildy concerning. PPM went up 30% with the res change, but doesn’t look like overfeeding. Maybe too much humidifier mist. Maybe overwatering, but the issue is mostly on the right side, mostly with that one stalk. There were some spots of something on the sensor shroud right next to it, but it’s rust stains or something, not mildew or anything growing there. Hoping the leaf condition goes away &/or the plant grows out of whatever’s going on there.

Thermpro, past 24h: I dropped the RH target another point, & also dialed in a little more daytime heat on the temperature exhaust fan target. Lights are off from 1am thru 1pm. You can see the anti-RH exhaust fan working during lights-out. :

Another pic from last night: (I tried posting yesterday, but the board wasn’t working well.)

Thermpro from the drying cab, past week:

Starting to let them dry down now. The big temp/rh spikes & dips around noon today were unintentional. Right now I have the a/c on econo & unhooked the feed into the tent, & dropped the RH exhaust fan target to where it’s bouncing between around 58% & 63%, & around 71f. I’ve been taking some small samples to quick-dry (mostly because I ran out of weed) & the grassy notes are going away, & some flavor is starting to develop. Waiting for the stems to start snapping to give them a final trim before jarring.

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Wondering if the leaves are reacting to the lower RH from earlier in the week, although the condition has moved to some of the other lower leaves, while the RH has gotten a little more stable over the past couple days.
I cut some more on-time off of the osci fans in case that is an issue, & they’re running 45 seconds on & 2 minutes off now, on low.

I pulled the humidifier, washed it out, & filled with fresh ro water just in case there was something growing in there that infected the plant or something. I have it timed to shut off during lights-out. I did find a dead hornet in the water.

I’ve been moving a minute from lights-on to lights-off on the timer every day to eventually get to 11.55 on, 12.05 off.

Lowered the fixture to get to around 600 ppfd right above the tops seeing the most intensity.

The controller for the heater plates is timed & set, & they will turn on if it gets a couple degrees below 73f at night, iirc, & I have them set to turn on a couple degrees below that during lights on, as a safety. It might get cold enough to trigger them tonight. That reminds me that I need to install my insulation plates on either side of the bucket.

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Tweaked a couple things like a cal-mag boost when doing my 1-gallon swap today, should be about 25% more than before now. Not sure if that’s what it is, but it looks like it could be, although it seems weird to me that it would start all the way on one side & only one top at first. But what do I know. Also added a couple more drops of Si at the start of the mix to balance the ratio due to the additional calmag.

However if the ambient dry weather is an issue, the low RH in the box is mostly due to when the main temperature exhaust fan is pulling down the temps. There’s not much I can do about that specifically. The leaves might be on the edge of over transpiration, at least when the RH gets pulled down, even though the air & leaf temps also drop then, but I decided not to move the temps up like I had wanted to (maybe only a degree anyway), & I also added a point back onto the RH target.

I moved the Thermpro up the wall to stay even with the canopy, & have one hanging in the center temporarily at roughly the same height to compare.

I chopped off those two original bad leaves on the right side, they were not doing any good.

I installed the foam heat deflectors between the heaters & the bucket. The heaters actually did kick on once overnight, but not until 11am once it got down to around 71f. I might move the target up maybe a degree, but I want to see how it runs through some more cycles first.

Hopefully it lives.

[PhotoFinisH]

Seems like she’s doing better:

Not sure if she liked the additional calmag, or if the more humid ambient conditions over the past day have helped, or something else, or a combo.

Thermpro (front right corner), past 24h:

Ambient conditions got more humid today about midway through lights-on, & the temp & RH traces show that.

Wall vs. center Thermpro: Close enough for quick reference.
Wall:

The biggest difference seemed to be between the lights-off high temps.
Center:

Those were both from yesterday. I’ve since moved the ‘center’ Thermpro to down by the rear heater area, just to see what’s doing over there.

Probably going to start running the Photontek at the start of Week2 on Monday.