MP's Hydro A Go-Go

Thanks Growmie!

I’m still in awe over how obnoxious looking that root ball has gotten. Really glad I flipped when I did, because I couldn’t see the 5 gal bucket sustaining that for much longer

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Bloom Week 1
2024-11-03T04:00:00Z2024-11-09T05:00:00Z


As of 11/3 we have officially flipped into the bloom phase. Been a pretty interesting week of transition, much like it always is I suppose. But again this is my first hydro grow… so my expectations here are well, to just keep following my feed chart, check my lights, and overall wing it and hope for the best :laughing:

But for reference here’s a week timelapse of just how much they developed since flipping -


So looking at this, my plants were not very tall (or at least I wouldn’t consider them as such) once I decided to flip. Part of that equation was due to vegging for so long and worrying about having root bound issues from pretty much outgrowing their respective buckets - especially the NYC Diesel! I’d also like to argue that had I not experienced that root rot issue on the Strawberry Cough, then the plants would’ve been pretty equal in size

Given though that there was still a bit of a size variance… I opted to lift up the Strawberry Cough plant about 4-5 inches by sticking a couple platforms under the res bucket. I filled in the opening left behind to help keep cool air in the storage bin, but also checking the temps they seem to have been holding the res water pretty steady between 68-70°F, so we’ll see how things pan out. Surprisingly these plants grew like 5-6 inches the past week, and there’s still about 2-3 more weeks of stretching to take place. Just hope my tent is big enough (hence the reference for “winging it”) :laughing:

The feeds have been going up gradually as the weeks go by too. I make a couple pre-mixed solutions for my feeds, and after flipping to bloom I started introducing some additional ingredients (CalMag & TPS Signal). In retrospect I also stopped adding epsom salts to my res & top off feeds every day since it pretty much will no longer be needed here. I setup each res now with a mix of these solutions to achieve a PPM of 300, and it’s pretty common to see the PPMs drop anywhere from 50-100 units per day. Girls are thirsty cannaholics!


Only thing I’m a bit concerned with at the moment is the humidity levels. I have been seeing that it’s still creeping up at times in the higher 60% range, and despite having dehumidifiers both inside and outside the tent, it’s having trouble getting it lower under 60%. I’ll continue to look at some settings on the tent/dehumidifiers and see if I can figure something out… but this is honestly been a hassle for me since my previous grow. A lot of these dehumidifiers are just simply not that good. If anyone has something worth looking into, let me know :roll_eyes:

So as with my previous grow, the first couple days of bloom I usually expect the leaves to adjust and shift a bit while transitioning. But hydro seems to expedite the recovery here which is awesome. Within 24 hours I saw leaves praying for light which was awesome. Towards the end of the week and I now have a lush looking canopy with a lot of potential bud sites forming -



This is always one of my favorite parts of the grow. Seeing the leaves/colas transition for bud growth always fascinates me with these plants. Odd to think how about a month or so ago… I was praying for root development to take off, and now here we are awaiting for these buds to start stacking!


Til next week folks… stay tuned! :sunflower:

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The plants are really stretching up. They’ve easily grown double their size since flipping 11 days go -


Also seeing a nice sea of green covering all the floor space -


Next prune/lollipop cut is going to SUUUUUCK :sweat_smile: :grimacing:

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grow looks good with a nice spread on them…

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Thanks man. They grew out so well… and continuously stretching! :slight_smile:

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Bloom Week 2
2024-11-10T05:00:00Z2024-11-16T05:00:00Z


Another week of bloom is now in the books. Been quite a fun week of watching these plants stretch up and begin to start stacking their buds. Safe to say that these plants have easily doubled in overall height since this started, and in a sense I’m hoping I have enough vertical room up top to complete the stretch period :sweat_smile:

Here’s another timelapse of just how much they developed and stretched the past two weeks -


So yeah I know I helped out the Strawberry Cough plant a little bit by giving it a few inches of height t try and catch up to her canna-comrade on the right… but at this point she is not too far off! I took a measurement of the NYC Diesel and sure enough this plant is roughly around 27 inches tall. She easily grew over a foot tall from stretching. Been a lot of fun to watch I’ll say that!

Gradually adjusted the veg juice/bloom juice ratio this week to 60% veg, and 40% bloom. I have just been calculating the ratios on their top off feeds, as well as pH balancing it and everything. Kept the total PPM I’m aiming for around 300… as we progress further into bloom I’ll slightly bump that up a notch or two. Every day I am noticing that the plants are each consuming a gallon of water a daily easily. I’ll opt to try feeding them once in the morning, and once at night to ensure the water levels stay at a decent level throughout the day/night

Something nice that’s also been helping to keep the temps in range are that after I make the distilled water jugs, I am leaving them in my garage. Since it has gotten considerably cooler out it’s dropping the water jug temps to around the 50-55ish ºF range. When mixing it in with my res water I’m seeing the water drop down to around 65ºF in the morning, and before lights out around 68-69ºF. This has basically prevented me from needing to change the ice water bottles as much as I was previously when the outside temps were considerably hotter. I’ll take any advantage I can get! :slight_smile:

Also with the weather beginning to cool off, I’m finally starting to see the humidity levels drop down between 45-50% RH for our outside weather, which of course translates into the basement where my tents are. Bit more of a relief to see that drop as the buds are beginning to stack on top of these plants. Kind of sucks that I struggled so much to keep them down using two dehumidifiers (one outside the tent, and one inside of it)… but I also realized that my sensor was nowhere near the top of the canopy where the buds were forming. That being said, I moved it higher near the top of the canopy and also see that contributing towards better overall humidity levels around the buds


As i mentioned last week, this is one of my favorite parts of the grow. The top of the canopy is mostly even sans a few rogue buds trying to grow in and catch up. Also been slightly defoliating some leaves that are covering the inner bud sites that were a bit buried in the canopies, to help stretch them up towards the light have have them stack as well. After all… the more buds, the better here right!?


Til next week folks… stay tuned! :sunflower:

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I feel ya on the humidity buddy :face_with_peeking_eye:
I’ve got girls deep in flower and was running 75*70% last week :exploding_head::green_heart::metal:t2:
Looking great and awesome streeeeeetch :muscle:t2:

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On point Grow Bro :love_you_gesture:

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It’s been horrible here lately!

Saw it creep up back into the mid 60s today. I’m so over it :frowning:

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We caught some rain last night and I’m back up too :upside_down_face::face_with_peeking_eye::green_heart::metal:t2:

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In case anyone is interested in a video of where I’m at -

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Nice Planties Sir @MP_Grow :smile: :star_struck:

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Thank you El Kapitaaaan :smile:

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Space grow 1.0 is looking out-of-this-world!! :alien:

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Bloom Week 3
2024-11-17T05:00:00Z2024-11-23T05:00:00Z


Another week of stretching on this one… although there was a point in the middle of it where they finally stopped. Only difference now is that instead of seeing them stretch in size, I’m now observing the bud sites starting to swell up - particularly the NYC Diesel plant on the right

Here’s one last timelapse of just how much they developed and stretched the past three weeks -


Reviewing the total height on both of these plants… they are both roughly pushing past the 30-31" mark. Granted I gave the Strawberry Cough a slight boost to help it stretch more, but It’s pretty cool overall to see that it was able to catch up and at least now be on the same playing field as the NYC Diesel. Although to be fair… where it has matched in height, the bud density is definitely pointing more in favor with the NYC Diesel and honestly it’s not even close


Gradually adjusted the veg juice/bloom juice ratio again this week to 40% veg, and 60% bloom. Also upped the total PPM I’m aiming for around 325… and I’m also topping off each morning with 1 mL of TPS Signal directly into the res after adding the water and top off juices. This should help to further promote bud growth as we go further into bloom

Day 21 of bloom, just like the previous grow, I opted to do my final defoliation/lollipop (defollipop) cut. The goal here was to basically strip the bottom half of each branch, so that all the energy is focused specifically on the bud growth. Granted I know some people might have mixed emotions here pulling off so much foliage, but honestly in my opinion it did more good here and I’ll explain why

In any case… here’s what we are looking like, both before and after the cut -


So I had a user comment how they now look like Menorahs… and I couldn’t help but chuckle at that. But yeah the plus to all this is less humidity. I found it rather tough to keep it at around 60% or less due to all the foliage. I don’t think people quite understand just how much there is sitting in the middle of each plant. Stripping out the bottom 50% of the plant just eliminated a good portion of that and now my humidity is sitting in the low 50% range. Perfect for this phase of the grow


Also what isn’t mentioned is that there were a lot of damp/dead leaves in the middle. Felt like that was an open recipe for WPM or mildew based fungi having a breeding ground to grow in. With the plant cut now there is adequate air flow going everywhere in the tent. Temps def climbed up a few degrees, but I’m not seeing anything higher than 83-84°F with the fans off for a few minutes. This should be fine until we get close to the end

I’ll end my update here with a couple close up shots of each plant before/after. Let me know your thoughts!


Strawberry Cough -

NYC Diesel -


Til next week folks… stay tuned! :sunflower:

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Looking great buddy :muscle:t2::cowboy_hat_face::green_heart::metal:t2:

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amazing! Keep up the good work and the updates, too! Love this thread!

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Looks awesome to me! Keep doing what you’re doing. It’s about to get lit in there. :joy::sunglasses::metal:t2:

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You have no idea - I’m already getting antsy to smoke it :sweat_smile:

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Bloom Week 4
2024-11-24T05:00:00Z2024-11-30T05:00:00Z


Week 4 is in the books. Been interesting watching these plants recover post-lollipop trim. Seems like they had maybe a 1-2 day hiatus of recovering… but since then not only are they starting to blow up, but my goodness my tent smells like a fruity gas chamber

For reference here’s where the plants were at after the haircut -

And here’s where they are a week later -


Last week I mentioned that density-wise… things are favored a bit more with the NYC Diesel buds and that still holds true, however the Strawberry Cough buds have also blown up quite a bit since the update last week and overall I’m pretty pleased so far with the progress both plants are making

Strawberry Cough -

NYC Diesel -


Gradually adjusted the veg juice/bloom juice ratio again this week to 20% veg, and 80% bloom. Also upped the total PPM I’m aiming for around 340… and I’m also topping off each morning with 1 mL of TPS Signal directly into the res after adding the water and top off juices. By next week we will be completely on a 100% bloom juice feed to help with the bud growth

Also to circle back to the Strawberry Cough plant, I thought it was peculiar how as I weaned off the veg juices, I observed a slight calcium deficiency on the leaves. Given the latter although I bumped up the res PPMs a bit, I actually decided to move it up to around 375 in the middle of the week. This seemed to slow down the progression of things there, so I’ll keep an eye on that

The temps outside have gotten drastically cooler in the past week too, which in turn has immensely helped with stabilizing a lower humidity all around. Everything has been around the 50-55% RH range, and the temps are sitting around the 80-81ºF mark to help match the VPD settings I need. Also to meet my PPFD settings I now have the lamp at 100% intensity and will most likely maintain that until the end of the grow. Should I need to increase anything from that perspective, I’ll prob just move the plants like an inch or two closer… but again I’ll keep an eye on that


Otherwise that’s about it. Gonna see how the plants handle this week. Given that it’s been a few weeks running the same res water, I might opt to swap both of them by the end of the week, especially if I see any signs of that calcium deficiency progressing any further


Til next week folks… stay tuned! :sunflower:


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