Main Cabinet Evolution

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No worries, I’m no expert at using these things, & in my most recent grow I probably used them on stems that were too big in diameter for the clips already, also I didn’t pre-train at some spots & ended up crimping the stems because of it, but in general when trying to bend a stem I’ll want to pre-soften the stem first. If it’s hardened off, I might pre-bend it against my fingers or a form. I’ve been using the center out of a roll of scotch tape to work against it until it bends more easily. I might pre-train the area where the clip goes, & above & below it a little. If it’s still green & not hardened off yet, I might squeeze the stem until it crushes a little, & I’ll do that where the clip will go & also above & below it a little. Then I’ll set the clip once the stems are softened up. After that I might have to support things somehow. After a while, like a couple weeks, I can usually remove the clips. Sometimes I have tried not pre-training & just worked the clip onto the stem & bent it into the clip that way, but had more issues with crimping or breaking the stem horizontally when trying that.

One good tip is to train when the plants want water, not after watering. This should reduce the chance of snapping things off. Then water right after you’re done training.

If you snap something off, you can stick it back together & tape over it, add supports if needed, & usually it will recover.

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Week 6 since flipping to 12/12 starts tomorrow, & it’ll be time for a full res-change, & to change to the new nute ratio. Also I guess I’m bad at guessing how even these would be after the stretch. The last couple days of week 3 & the left plant stretched nearly half a foot while the one on the right stayed where it was, so I had to start breaking legs again to try & get things more even. The left plant is still a little taller than the right plant, but not too bad. I lost one stalk from the back left corner due to extreme training methods on that one. The other ones fared much better & didn’t really droop at all, but I think that development might have slowed a little overall on the left plant for a few days after the training. Plus I reduced PPMs & ppfd for a few days after the training. They both stopped stretching during early week 4.

The top in the back right corner is very short.

They’ve been happy at around 425 ppm. I showed them a little bump up from there today to around 430 - 440 after addback, & probably won’t go much above 430 or 440 with the fresh bucket to start with. PH has been running around 6.2 - 6.3 with minor adjustments. I mainly have to watch for big pH movements/ crashes for a couple days after a full or big partial res-change, or when the bucket needs to be changed, usually after around 7 - 10 days.

Highest Thermpro out of the three on the right side, past week:

I’ve been slowly rolling into the throttles for the past week & letting the lights-on temp come up a little more than before, & have been applying more ppfd by lowering the light fixture to get back on track there since the training. The tallest are seeing around 825ppfd on my meter, & the shorter ones are seeing around 700ppfd. Actual is a bit higher maybe 5 to 10% more, since my meter doesn’t see the FR beams. DLI chart wants 900 this week so it should be enough or maybe too much, & I’ve been watching for leaf tacoing. Light is still at 50% power.

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Couple days into Week7 now & things are running fairly smoothly.

Same nute ratio as last week, & it stays balanced at around 460ppm before & after add-back. Plants are moving around 1/2 gallon of water a day total. pH has been running between 5.8 & 6.2 with minor adjustments. I did have one crash about three days ago, & it’s probably going to be due for a full res-change soon. I gave it a little more light at the start of this week, & it should be the last week before I start reducing the light intensity on the dli chart, although I’ve wondered over the past couple grows if I should start this week to help maybe reduce foxtails. Also I mixed my addback for tomorrow with a little too much bloom mix, & I might not use it since I don’t want it to encourage foxtailing either. I don’t like wasting it, but it’s only about two gallons. Some of the tops are getting heavier, so I started to tie them up with line.

Thermpro at top of canopy, from the past week. Leaf temps have been running around 8f to 10f below surrounding air temps:

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Changed the res today, I let it go 12 days & missed a partial change late last week which probably explains an oddly-timed pH drop last week & why I’m seeing some leaf-clamp since then. I’ve been liking doing a partial res change around 4 days & 7 days after a full res-change, & then doing a full change after 10 days. Anyway I bumped up the ppms to around 500 since I noticed a little cal-mag shortage on a couple leaves on the right plant, although I might work that back down to around 475 over the next couple days. We’ll see if they react positively or negatively to fresh nutes with a 10% increase in strength, on top of the leaf curl.

Thermpro from the past 24 hours: Ambient temps were warm today & the main temp exhaust fan was cycling regularly & kept things happy. I made a slight adjustment to the RH controller sensor position (raised it slightly about 1/4") to help keep RH from dropping quite so low as it had been over the past few days. It’s going to cool down & rain tomorrow & for the next couple days probably, so ambient conditions are going to be cool & humid anyway.

I’m posting from a slow craptop until I can fix my usual rig which I accidentally bricked a few days ago, so not posting too many pics right now as it is very painful to use this thing.

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Week9 since the flip starts tomorrow, going to do a res-change then, & move into the final nute ratio. PPMs have been around 470, sometimes down to 450 but I’ve been running it up to 500 after any partial res-changes, &/or I’ll give it a little spicy daily addback to get it up to somewhere around 480 to 500 after daily addback. I’ll probably keep those numbers until a couple days before harvest, which hopefully will be in a couple weeks.

Still have some droopy leaves, & some minor spots of damage. Not really sure on why they did that in the first place, but they are still transpiring & usually have been reading around 10f below surrounding air temps. The buds have been running around 3 or 4f warmer than the leaves. Also starting to see some new calyx growing out. I’ve been raising the light a bit over the week to slow those down, but not sure if they are from too much light, or my nute ratio. Maybe both. Hopefully they don’t get to gnarly & the buds will just get a little fatter.

These plants have been pretty easy to navigate through, & I’m pretty happy with the spacing up top also.

Roots:

Diagonal canopy - I seem to have a knack for those:

Thermpro of the past week. Ambient temps got a little warm for a couple three days, now it’s back to cooler again. I shut off my plate heater controller during lights-on for the warmer days since it still wanted to run a bit during the warmer days & started short-cycling the temperature exhaust fan & humidifier a little. Ambient temps were just cool enough, but still just warm enough, to cause that to happen. No biggie. I turned it back on for lights-on & re-dialed the heater set-point when the days cooled down again. It was basically where it should have been originally, so I’ll just have to remember to cut it back when ambients warm up again.

I’ve been raising the light a click or two every couple days over the past week to end up where the chart suggests by tomorrow, around 32 dli. The tallest stuff is probably getting a little more, & the shortest stuff a little less.

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Middle of week10 now, & going to be chopping tonight.

Left plant is ready, right plant is a little behind but starting to push out nanners, so time to take them down.

Week9 was a little rough for them, as I got busy with other things & never did the full res-change that I had planned to do after my last post, until a few days ago. Didn’t even do a partial change, just topped off until I could get to the full change, & the leaves started to flatten out & taco a little, & the leaf temp offsets started to tighten up but transpiration slowed down. Plus they had already been having the issue of the leaves clawing down, but I think that may have been from too much nute supplements (CalMag & Si & Epsom salts) &/or the air got too hot/too dry too quickly when the weather first started to warm up a few weeks ago. Also may have gotten a little too hot & dry on a few occasions over the past couple weeks, but I think waste build-up in the res had mostly to do with their issues last week.

Thermpro of last week. Had an early warm/hot day yesterday, got up to about the ambient limit for it without A/C in the lung room & the exhaust fan not constantly running.

The light is probably a little too strong for the tallest tops, & not strong enough for the shortest. The tallest top threw out some foxtails, as did the shorter tops. The left plant has four tops, & one foxtailed more than the others. The right plant has five tops, & four of them foxtailed pretty badly, & they seem to be growing towards the light.

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Chop chop :

One from the right-side plant:

One from the left-side plant, with parts of the right-side plant in background:

Just four hands From this run: (Sorry for the bad pic)

I picked out three or four nanner bunches from the right-side plant. Didn’t see any on the left plant, but there might be some buried there too. Hopefully there won’t be too many in the buds overall like last time. But if so, I’ll just make bubble-hash out of it like last time.

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Congrats!

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Thank you!

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Dialing in:

Bucket lid Thermpro:

Hoping to plant something in there tomorrow.

Sweat tent Thermpro past 24h:

Here’s one of those nanner bundles from the plant on the right. This was on the short top all the way in the far right corner. During harvest I twisted it off & actually I ate it. It was ok but not great.

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I twisted it off & actually I ate it. It was ok but not great.

Damn. Here I was hoping that there was more to the “Nanner” nickname than appearance.

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After a few minor adjustments to the controllers, the air temp & RH are running around where I want them to be. The heater plates are off for now. Hard to say if I’ll need them again until the fall, but maybe.

Plant installed:

Pruned the roots before install, & they are hanging down about an inch from the bottom of the net pot. pH 6.0, PPM 330, ‘Week 4’ factory veg nute ratio plus a little cal mag, superthrive, h2o2, & sm-90. The air curtain bubble stick is out of sight, but it is at the bottom of the bucket, situated from the top to the bottom of the pic, & just to the right of the pvc support column.

Screen will go in tomorrow. Probably just going to do a little LST under the screen & just grow through it, not really feeling like scrogging this one:

Light is at 50% power on the veg channel, & the bloom channel is off for the moment. Plant is seeing around 300 ppfd for around 26 dli.

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Screen installed last night, & I increased PPM from from around 330 to around 400 today. pH running at around 6.0.

Also moved the Thermpro from the bucket lid to the screen:

Did a trim on the hanging buds last night. Found one top bud with some mold growing from the center, so I pulled it out & soaked it with H2O2, then chopped it up & soaked that with more h2o2, then rinsed with water & sun-dried, & now it’s bagged up & in the freezer. I’ll have a small total amount of trim from this run, so I’ll just do a small run of bubble hash & reserve it for edibles to avoid smoking any major mold or whatever. The bud with the mold was from the plant on the right, which was the one with the nanners, & it looked like there was a rotten nanner pack right in the middle of the mold. Maybe not, but that’s what it looked like. I checked the other buds today, & didn’t see any other mold (yet).

Sweat Tent Thermpro: First day started off a little warm, & it got a little warm again today. No A/C installed in the window yet, probably not going to yet either. If high R/H becomes an issue, I might try one of those damp-rid bags that I bought for these types of situations. I think rain is on the way, too, so my ambient R/H will almost certianly be going up.

Back in the Main Cab & I left the eyelet-bars on the sides under the screen, so I might pull the stalks out a little using those & some wires, & then just let them grow up through the screen with some more room between them:

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She wants to eat, so I bumped up the PPM to around 400, & it’s been running around 380 to 400, & I’ll keep moving it up bit by bit. pH has been running around 6.0 to 6.2.

Trimmed off some dying tips. Most of the lower stuff will probably get trimmed off later anyway.

It’s not lined up with the center of the screen very well, but it should probably be good enough.

Roots are looking good, feels like it’s time to go.

Lights-out at 1AM, night-night.
At 1:05PM it will be wakey wakey!!!

Addback will be the veg ratio until I run out of the 1/2 gallon of 800 ppm hot mix that I still have. Then I’ll start with the bloom ratio. Will roll in the bloom channel at 25% power after tomorrow.

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Finishing up the first week since flipping to 12/12, & I did a full res-change a couple days ago.

Now on the ‘Week1 & 2 flowering ratio’ for the nutes, running around 480 ppm. pH has been running around 6.2 - 6.3 after the res change & moved up to 6.3 - 6.4 by today, so I knocked it down to around 6.0 with a minor pH adjustment. She’s not drinking that much yet, only about 8 - 12 oz a day for now.

I turned on the bloom channel to 25%. The main channel is still at 50%. I added some pink foam insulation stilts to push the light to the right to get it more over the center of the plant, & the tops are all seeing around the same ppfd. I forget the number right now, I think 400 to 450 on my meter, not accounting for the small amount of IR & FR coming out of the bloom channel. I think my ppfd might still be a little under what the chart says, but the plants looked a little light stressed yesterday, so I pulled it up one click then, & they looked better today. But overall I’ve lowered the fixture to gain more ppfd over the past few days. I’m also hanging a Thermpro in the center temporarily, just to test my own methods & compare to the Thermpro in the front right corner at around the same height. I’ve been raising the air temp target & lowering the RH target a little bit over the past few days. Leaf temps have been running around 8f below surrounding air temps lately.

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Couple of Thermpro charts to digest:

Thermpro hanging in the center:

Thermpro hanging in right front corner:

Temps report back very similarly. RH from the right-front seems to run around 5% lower than in the center, but it’s consistent, so I can work with that. I’ll probably pull the Termpro out from the center for now, but it’s usually easy enough to hang one back in there for a day or whatever to check something.

Leaf temps have been running around 8 to 10f under surrounding air temps lately. Plant has been moving around 12oz of water a day, slowly increasing. I haven’t been pushing the target RH down very quickly though, & ambient RH has been higher than lower lately.

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Two weeks since the flip, & they are slowly starting to flower, probably going to go back to more FR earlier-on during veg & into flower next time.

The light is currently at 50% power on both channels, & I had turned up the bloom channel from 25% to 50% a day after my last post. The tops are seeing around 500 to 650 ppfd, depending on where I measure. I’ve been lowering the lamp about 2 clicks a day for the past few days, & they are probably getting enough or maybe a little too much after yesterdays lowering, so I raised it one click & will watch the stretch, because they are starting to grow upwards more rapidly by now.

Did a full res-change today to move to the ‘Week 3-5’ factory nute ratio, & raised the PPM to 550 from around 475-500. It raised to 560 by the end of the day, so I’ll probably knock it down to 540 when I add back tomorrow, & then let it roll down a little from there. They are probably getting about as much or maybe a little too much PPM right now.

Roots. There’s another swirl of roots on the other side, just hard to see:

Ambient temps have been rising & I’m still not running my A/C, although that might change over the next day or two, depending on how hot it gets. Supposed to cool down a little in a couple days, but probably going to start raining, so there will go the low ambient RH. But I might throw the A/C in the window tomorrow if the temp exhaust fan is cranking & the canopy air temp rises above 83f. Leaf temps have been running around 6 to 8f lower than surrounding air temps. I’ve been able to manage the past few warmer days & rising lung-room temps & RH by running the whole-house fan, ambient conditions permitting. But overall the conditions in the box are typically a little less stable during this type of warming weather, until I put the A/C in the window.

I decided to keep the Thermpro in the middle, at least until the plant stops stretching, & the A/C is in.
Past 24h:

Past week:

Haul from last time, around 6.5 oz, no main-stems, but not perfectly manicured. The taller left-side plant is in the bottom three jars, & one of the jars on top has buds from both plants:

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Had a couple issues in the cab over the past couple days, & she looked like she had taken a little bit of a stun-shot when I opened up the cab today, about a couple hours after lights-on.

Some tacoed leaves in the back-ground, & a tent-leaf in the foreground:

Most of these looked a little worse this morning, so hoping for not too many consequences overall.

Heat rolled in a couple days ago, & they were in hotter air for a few hours then, but didn’t seem to mind that too much. I put the A/C in & turned it on, & balanced out the temps after a while. I have A/C set to medium fan, eco mode, 76f, & that seems to work out well for me, & the cab. Then the ambient RH got pretty high due to the weather for a day or so, & she didn’t transpire a whole lot, & they were running like that for a day or so. Then the weather cleared up & ambient RH had dropped a lot overnight (unexpected), & by the time the lights came on again today, it was pretty low overall. Also some of the tops have been stretching into too-powerful light sometimes over the past couple days, & I’ve been raising the lights, but feel like maybe I’ve still been falling behind the stretch with that. Finally, I somehow turned off my cycle timer for my oscillating fans sometime shortly before lights-out last night, but not sure how much of a deal that would have been, & the anti-RH exhaust fan still would have been running down, & finally by a little after 8am it looks like it hit its target & started cycling. I decided to bump up my target RH 1% later on in the day today, in case the plant didn’t like the sudden drop in RH.
Leaf temp offset was a little tighter when the lights were closer & the plant was more tacoed, but widened by the end of the day, after I had pulled the light up. So on paper the Leaf VPD would have looked better with the tighter offset & not as good with the wider offset, but in reality maybe it was not really as good earlier with the tighter offset, since the leaves were looking more stressed & probably not transpiring much if at all, & holding more heat as a result.
Thermpro, center, past 24 hours:

Thermpro, center, past week:

She still drank about 1/4 gallon by tonight, & PPM fell from 530 to 220 over the day, from 550 after the partial res change yesterday iirc, so she’s been eating & drinking all day today, even though looking like hell. I think she looked a little better by the end of the day. I kept raising the light little by little a few times today lol.

She’s also going to be due for a pruning soon, just want to get through the majority of the stretch before I start chopping.

Probably going to try & push the PPM back up to around 540-550 tomorrow morning, unless she looks worse again.

Here’s the bubble hash from the trim of the last run. It came out mostly as expected - green with not a whole bunch of heads. I only had about 3 sandwich bags of big fan leaves & some smaller fan leaves, & one bag with that one top that had a mold spot on it, so it is what it is. The one in the top center didn’t look too green, so I set it aside, & then put the rest into hash brownies. I figured if it tasted bad from the green stuff, then at least I’ll have the brown one for the next batch. Also I bought some mint chocolate chip ice cream to cover up any cloroform flavors or hashy flavors. I didn’t expect there to be enough for hashy flavors, but hard to judge, so better safe than sorry.

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Heading into Week4 since the flip, & she’s been stretching about an inch daily. Hopefully that should stop soon. I started to do some pruning down low, but will want to do more once the stretch slows down.

She keeps wanting to stretch into too-strong light, & also the ambient RH has been flip-flopping over the past few days which I think still has been causing some issues with some of the leaves…

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…but I think she might be getting a little better overall.

I raised the PPM from previous max of 550 to around 600 with todays partial add-back, & also added a little armorSi for the K number to offset the N number of the calmag. Full res-change will be in three days, still will be on the same nute ratio as this week. Still looking for where PPMs will be about the same after addback & at the end of the day. Shes been drinking around 1/4 gallon a day & leaving that with a lower PPM than at the start of the day, so she’s eating & drinking. But I want to think now about after more pruning, & to not to have PPM too high for whatever’s left. pH has been pretty stable with minor adjustments, trying to keep it anywhere between 5.8 to 6.2.

I’ve been raising the light fixture at least couple times a day. Might be time to switch to the other light, since I have higher fan mounts installed for it, & I’m on the highest fan mounts for this light, & it’s a pain to install more mounting screws with a plant in there.

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Photontek installed three days ago, running at 50% power:

A visitor! Looks like a baby orb-weaver, he’s now outside living in the bushes.

Did a full res-change today, & bumped the PPM up from 600 to 650. Plant has been drinking around 1/2 gallon a day & taking 10-20 ppm after drinking all day, so it still could take some more ppm. But I think it may be getting close to the max of what it can handle for now.

She’s still stretching a little bit, but seems to have slowed down finally. I’ve still been raising the light up daily & checking with my meter to try & keep the tallest top from getting damaged too much. Leaf temps have gone back to running at around 8 to 10f lower than the air temps, which indicates to me that they should be stressing out less than they were a few days ago.

Also I’ve been pruning some of the lower leaves & bud-sites, although more will need to be done.

Been having to go in & dial in my controllers as the plant stretches & I move things upwards, & also as the ambient temps increased over the past few days. I also lowered my a/c temp target to 74f, & took it off of eco mode in order to help keep things cool. I’ve also added some points to my rH controller target along the way, & might add one or two more depending on how everything ends up running once they stop stretching.

Thermpro hanging in center, past 24h:

Thermpro hanging in center, past week: