Looking great!
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I have a pH drift but it goes from 6.1x to 5.5 in like eight or ten hours. I usually check my pH 3-4 x day. Adjusting as needed or adding water and silica, Cal mag. Plus hydroguard.
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When I said adjusted as needed -before they were drinking close to gallon each a day - I’d just need to do a pH up after falling overnight. I siphon off a gallon of water if level is good but pH too low; I add 1.2, 1.6, or 2ml pH up to bucket and stir in, you’ll notice pH up is cloudy when added… Hence the thorough stirring needed to mix it. Then I add back that same gallon siphoned off with the pH adjusted enough to make the bucket correct pH
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I’ve been leaning heavily on pH Down and pH Up to make adjustments. Also, you’ve sold me on the silica. Going to take a look for some of that.
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Strange you are having such issues with the pH perfect I find mine doesn’t drift for at least 3 days. Right at the beginning of my grow it was recommended to me that I use as large a quantity of water as possible for hydro to get rid of pH shift headaches which I went with doesn’t look like you have room for a reservoir in the tent but it would be worth converting. I fimmed my plants twice each and ended up with an out of control canopy for the space I had. Looking at the crammed tent I would keep space in mind for hst, I am still seeing through my first time so I’m just sharing some hindsight you don’t need to take any of this as advice
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I appreciate the advice, Takumi!
At this point, I’m going to finish out this grow with the equipment/space that I have and look to upgrade for my next grow. I ended up growing 6 plants, but I’m expecting to keep 2-3 at most (with some likely being males, and the rest likely just not having the space in my tent.) The plant in the DWC and the smallest plant in soil are my feminized Blue Dreams, so as long as I can keep those alive, I’ll be happy.
When you mention the space constraint and advise to keep that in mind for HST, is the guidance to avoid topping/fimming more than once? Or to avoid it altogether and use LST?
Here’s the type of set up I’d like to build for my next grow: Undercurrent system?
All hydroponic, maintainable from an easy access reservoir (that I would likely place outside of the tent rather than in the middle like that.)
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I think if your interested in topping and FIMing, go for it. Worst case your have a nice full tent and more yield. With topping your choosing to grow 2 new tops. With FIMing it’s a bit more of gamble on how many tops your have, typically 4. It will slow growth, but they recover pretty quickly. Your have a flatter canopy, more busy then tall. I’m a big fan of it. You will increase your yield with either method. I’d rather a full tent than seeing unused space. It does make it harder to tend to your plants…but it’s a good problem to have. You have enough plants to try multiple methods, you could top one, FIM another and try some LST on another. Find the method you prefer. Have fun experimenting. Plants look great BTW.
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Thanks for the insight, @HanJolo!
I was thinking about FIMing initially, but after doing a little research, I think I’ll top them instead. And I’ll likely just do it once because I think I may be on a bit of a time crunch if I’m trying to finish this before the end of the year.
And to share the wealth on what I learned: I had always assumed that topping and FIMing was just a means of redirecting growth to other branches in the plant, and in essence that is what is happening. But it’s not just because of the physical removal of the material that would be receiving energy, but rather the removal of “auxins” from the apex of the plant–a hormone that limits lateral growth in other shoots on the plant and encourages root growth, which itself is in balance with “cytokinins” in the plant, a hormone that limits root development in favor of lateral growth. Interesting shit! (I hope I’m not misrepresenting the science here; I encourage you not to take my word for it and listen to someone who knows better!)
The podcast that I had first picked this up on is here: Feb 22, 2020: GrowPass: Plant Training and Support Deep Dive with Rob Smith.
This image was helpful in explaining the reciprocal relationship between auxins and cytokinins:
All of this is a long winded way to say that, it’s my understanding that topping the plant does a better job of removing auxins from the plant and establishing the hormone imbalance that creates more “apical” branches.
Lastly, I would like to try LST, but I feel like it’s going to be a hassle with my current set up. Next grow, I won’t be as lazy or ill-equipped!
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I agree with @HanJolo experiment, that’s what I was doing, if you look at my journal I fimmed mine got four tops from each and did it again. My tent in is 1mx1mx2m I ended up with airflow and light burn issues cus there was just nowhere to lst them to I ran out of space pretty much the two plants are wall to wall in every direction. My issues might not be the same as you could possibly incur, my setup is in a shed and my issues are with high humidity but that’s just cus Scotland is super humid. I think whatever you ideally want to end up with at least a few inches space between your colas when you hit mid flower which I just cannot do for mine. I’m not advising you don’t do it but for me in hindsight I would have flowered a bit earlier to save height and only fimmed once or… Topped then fimmed during veg to reduce the canopy density.
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I’m in the same sized tent as you are, and I’m about 30 days or so in at the moment–would you mind walking me through your timeline? Meaning, you waited X days from germination to FIM, Y more days before starting flowering and would have preferred to wait Z days instead.
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30% haha that would destroy me XD. Right I went back through my journal and I believe how it went was this. They germinated in 4 days in root root cubes, 10 days later I transplanted to hydro (maybe a bit too long wait), 16 days after that I fimmed them and they went wild, 5 days after that I fimmed all the new colas again, 10 days later I switched them to flower, after two week in flower they were about 3 times taller than they were at the begining of flower. Keep in mind I am using hps so lamp heat might not be such an issue for you if your using led, I just went for bang for buck lighting on a budget. I think if I kept on top of pruning it would have been better but seeing the sea of budlets was clouding my judgement. So I did roughly a month of veg phase although the first week arguably was seedling phase. I would cut it by a week on my next go.
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That’s correct. It will redirect the growth. But by creating new tops you create more bud spots. 1 main stem splits into 2. Leading to a higher yield. An indica is a short bushy strain compared to a sativa however I’d always top an indica. Anything to get more bang for my buck.
That is interesting, I’ll have to check out the pod cast.
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It’s an interesting conversation!
I’m growing all sativas at the moment, but weirdly enough, they’ve remained pretty short and bushy compared to some others that I’ve seen. My hunch is that I’m just blasting them with a lot of light using the TSW2000 so they’re not stretching at all.
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Might be worth toning down the light intensity during veg if you have a dimmer and then raising it up during flower or use a lower wattage light. Around the 200-300w spectrum. Too much light during veg isnt great and actually does more harm than good. It’s weird as youd expect more light throughout the life cycle of a plant would be a sure thing.
I had the same experience with my Super silver haze. Thought they were short for a sativa then boom. 2 weeks into flower almost filled the tent height. Luckily the final stretch wasnt too close the light.
Be a nice change listening to a different t pod cast. Be listening to Joe Rogans pods solidly for years now. Haha
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Ah, I really should tone my lights down a bit. Admittedly, I wanted to earlier on, but it’s not immediately apparent to me how to set up the dimmer that came with the light, and I didn’t want to bust out the screwdriver yet. haha
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I ended up picking up this Silica because it’s the same brand as my Hydroguard, and impulse bought this Big Bud and Bud Candy because the reviews were positive. lol
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Tomorrow, I think I’m going to top these on stream at around 12PM PT at Twitch . If you’re not doing anything, feel free to swing by! Going to see if I can snag a few people who know what they’re doing from this forum or one of the discords I’m hanging out in so I can do a bit of a reverse Q&A. lol.
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I just was reading about topping and defoliation. Check it out, maybe some good info for before you get into giving the girls tough love 
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