Yeah I should have changed the light sooner but was too stubborn, and of course the investment I did....
It was 3 years ago since I did an indoor grow so I thought I was getting rusty and that it was somehow something I did wrong.
But I learned lots of new stuff trying to solve the issue so it's not a total waste of time the last 3 months...remember the initial plan? 12/12 from seed lol.
Good eye It's from now. The reason for this is that they are very branchy due to the LST. That's one of the reasons for defoliation, they had become too big for the space. There was not enough light in between. Also they started stretching like crazy growing a few cm per day.
Now with better light penetration and the new spectrum it will change. I will also remove branches. I was waiting for my rooting cubes to arrive to I can use those for cuts.
More light and more space with the oscillating fan will take care of it.
Also the stunted branches (due to light bleaching) are thinner. Look on page 13 that was how they went into flowering. They were green but still not 100% many branches were stunted by the light damage. Branches that should hav become main colas arr just thin nothings...This is really a suboptimal grow. But I just couldn't wait longer I lost 3 months with that fluence light!! And I ill take cuts so if I find a keeper she will get a decent second run!
It has been a week but the screen of my cellphone broke so can't take pics atm. Will try to find a camera that is lying here somewhere.
Everthing is going great in the viparspectra tent. I have kept the doos of the room closed all week (except venting once or twice per day.
Temps were nice, 27-29 degrees celsius, except the last days it was too hot so had to open door a bit, CO2 ppm was between 1200 and 1600 all the time (except when I vent). I think I will invest in a co2 system for the next grow or maybe thereafter have to see.
It is difficult of course to keep an exact ppm level with my methods plus the yeast stinks and you have to stir it a few times per day. The batch I currently made is too strong. I put to much yeast in it, ppm's were 1800 the first 2 days now it i less and it already is starting to smell like liquor. Nice to get ppm's real high but I prefer more constant slower fermentation. I am at home now and still 6 more weeks of paid leave woohoo, so I can really monitor and adjust the co2.
WHenever I see that PPm start going towards 1000 or less, I stir the yeast and I use vinegar and baking soda to get it up fast while the yeat wakes up. Found a new use for the capillary mats lol. In one container I put water and vinegar in the other water and baking soda (I bought 25 kg real cheap and acid is 0.5 euros per liter so real cheap). n A bottle of vinegar can last me about a day. The reservoir with the baking soda needs to be twice as big as for the vinegar because/ The capillary mats will suck up the water vinegar mix and bring it to the baking soda mix. This way you don't get a co2 bomb, which is useless but a slow and steady CO 2 development. Only downside is that I would need a pump in the baking soda mix as now I also have to stir it a few times per day as the baking soda deposits at the bottom.
I am impressed that these cheap methods actually work really well for a small room. Everybody said it was a waste of time and that you cant get high co2 ppms but it worked damn well. Of course I don't use the same amounts as acquarium folks. If you follow those recipes you will be dissappointed. I use like 5 times more volume.
I will stop with the high co2 ppm around week 4 or 5 of flowering of the white og. Thats a shame maybe for the other strains but I really like that strain. Also I cant maintain this for much longer.
The reason is that I need to seal my room for these ppms. If I don't seal the room I get maximum 600-800 PPM. So I was thinking to keep supplementing co2 untill a few weeks before harvest but not those high ppms and sealing the room.
Sealing the room is a bit of a problem. I am using 4 viparspectra's 256 watts. These are old generation blurples. They grow fantastic healthy plants, no crtitics there. But they get HOT. One or two is okay but 4 is a bit too much in spring and summer if you need to seal the room.
Like today I need to keep the door a bit open and add extra vinegar baking soda to the room. It got to 33 degrees for a while before I noticed. They can handle it with high co2 but it is a bit too much. I want maximum 29-30 degrees. And of course the last 3-4 weeks of flowering 24-25 degrees.
The biggest issue for e however is the humidity. It gets to 73%.
This is not an issue in the beginning of flowering but will become one. I will remove the capillary mats in one or two weeks for this reason as the temp combined with that mat really increase the RH, but it is great for veg and actually good replacement for a humidifier.
I will put the pots on dishes and on the bottom of the dish, under the put, I will put a double layer of cap. matting. So still small pieces under each pot instead of a 5x5 mat. This way, when I water, the runoff will be absorbed into the mat and released slowly back to the plant without the roots sitting in stagnant water.
I cant use a dehumidifier because temp would rise even more and then I would have to use an airco. Now, where I live electricity is 5 times more expensive than in the USA(70% of price is all taxes) so it would defeat the purpose of using leds if I also used a 2000 watts airco..
Too bad I had such Issues with the fluence as that lamp would give me a real nice climate now. It is perfect for in summer. Too bad it fucks my plants up.
All plants except the a5 are flowering well now. The a5's are the smallest plants yet they are the hungriest of the bunch. They recovered real well. I hope the fact that they are not yet flowering will mean they will double in size.
Another thing I noticed, and this is the first time in my life that this happens, is that I have not yet seen any spider mites or damage on the plants.
They were in a infested greenhouse full of mites for 2 weeks and they had spider mites in the beginning real quickly as I think those fuckers live in my house now lol this is spider mite capital. It can be 3 reasons: I installed tree glue around the pots, around the trunk, and also at every possible entrance in the tent and I put out predators. I saw many mites trying to climb up the sides of the pots in the greenhouse they stopped at the glue but more than half kept trying and they died trying lol. I was really enjoying seeing that while smoking a joint in the greenhouse
SO my guess is the predators finished all the mites off and then they cannibalized themselves. No new mites had access to the plants because of the glue. And I think the matting might also have something to do with it, even if a few found a way around the glue on the sides of the tent, they would not get to the pots because those mats are wet. And even if one did, they would stick to the glue on the pot. And even if then maybe one made it, it would stick to the glue on the sides of the main trunk and all sticks I used for training.
Still not taking chances and putting some out next week. The other plants for the second grow (white og etc) did only have glue around the trunk, I was lazy, and they do have mites. But I never worry about mites.
So sorry for the long post, if you are still awake thx reading and till next time, and please, if you have input on the co2 I am all ears.
Had to stop sealing the room as it was getting way too hot, almost 35 degrees lol, CO2 was 1200-1600 PPM but still that was too much.
So I openend the door again and changed the intake a bit. I now filled 5 x 2 litre bottles with yeast sugar mix and placed it in the tent. And then the intake tube has been positioned above a 5 gallon tub filled halfway with the same mixture. I put a cloth over the tube and the tube and it works like a charm.
CO2 is not where I want it to be, but that is difficult with exhaust on 100/%, still I get 800-900 PPM of co2 this way. I will prepare more liquid as I want to have 1000-1200 PPM with exhaust on. It is a waste of co2 I know, but it is so cheap to make that I don't care.
Now, with the exhaust on max and door open I get to 28-30 Degrees and 50-60% RH , which is okay with these co2 ppms and the stage of flowering. VPD has also dropped as it was too high so they didn't drink much the last 2-3 days. After one day with door open they are thirsty again.
After week 5-6 I am going to bring temps down because the white og has a shorter flowering period.
Just need to find a way to recover the CO2 produced during the day. Anybody got ideas on how to store co2? Maybe big balloons lol?
Yes I know, before, it was sealed, but now it is too hot to seal the room. And using an airco is too expensive here in fucking expensive Belgium.
I still get about 800 ppm with ventilation on maximum though. ANd I am making a few batches of co2 mix to hopefully get to 1200 ppm. It is very counter producive on one hand. But it is also soooo fucking cheap that I don't mind.
Main reason I am adding the co2 is not extra yield but because With those 4 lamps it gets pretty hot and they handle that better with higher co2 levels.
Still no way to take pics but they are coming along real nice.
After testing the mats for 4 weeks with these 5 gallon pots I have come to the conclusion that they are not suited to use for larger volumes.
That is to say, I still use them, but it is not hassle free like I was hoping. I just wanted to fill the reservoir every x days and let the capillary action do the rest.
But the water only travels halfway up the pot, leaving the rest bone dry. ALso the mats themselver are really bad at wicking water upwards. So the reservoir cannot be something to tall.
I solved it by using small bowls and watering with the mats from above (and below when necesarry. It works like a charm.
But of your putting out different small reservoirs in the room between plants is a PTA.
Plus if you water from above, I have a feeling gravity causes the mat to keep wicking water. It won't stop when the soil is saturated. Of course if you use normal amounts it is no problem and the excess flows out.
It remains a real nice way to give perfect uniform watering without compacting the soil.
I am going to experiment with wicking ropes to bring the water to the top layer of the pots since the mats don't wick up very well and I heard ropes do.
Oh yeah before I forget for being this early in flowering they already smell real strong. One or two HPH crosses smell super sweet, like a sweet skunk pheno, and the others smell real spicy, remind me a lil bit of the ag13 (a part of its smell, I know you don't like this smell Karma, the onion thing ). But I do.
Most HPH plants have a very modest stretch with the skunk in there. One pheno is stretchy. They also practically started flowering very soon after the switch.
The a5 wasn't flowering after all, just throwing out pistils and stretching .
I went away for a few days and asked a friend to water. I explained him how to do it.
I came back home and found the plants in 1 cm of water on the bottom of the tent. He had given way too much water and he had also directly watered the mat because it had become too dry.
That is why there was a layer of stagnant stinky brown water on the bottom. There was even white mold growing on the mats due to lack of oxygen.
Also in the pots on the bottom there was white mold. The pots have 8 holes, 4 on the bottom and 4 on the sides. I filled the 4 on the sides with pieces of matting and double foulded it so they served as a wick to more efficiently absorb water.
But because there was a layer of 1 cm in the tent, the bottom holes got no oxygen at all and the ones from the side were filled with matting that was absorbing water.
I also found gnats of course.
SO yeah I came home yesterday at 22 o clock. And then I had to disinfect and clean the whole tent. I removed all the moldy mats.
I soaked the pots in a tray filled with about 2-3 cm of hydrogen peroxide solution. I This was to clean the sides and bottoms of the pots + to remove the white mold from the bottom roots. I soaked them for about a minute. I could really see where the side holes wre that on those spots there was white foam instead f brown foam. A lot of white foam came out so that was a LOT of mold. I was done at 4.50 in the morning...talk about a buzzkill. But it coudln't wait
Some plants show signs of root damage but they are not droopy and seem still quite ok, but I am sure having this problem at this point in the cycle will reduce yields. The symptoms are brown spots and tips one or two are slightyl drooping, rest still seems okay.
Luckily I included trichoderma t22 in my topdressing 3 weeks ago. Plus the conditions now have changed due to me cleaning and removing the water and mats + I installed a fan to dry the top layer of the soil asap an to get air into the side holes. I will also apply trichoderma powder to the bottom roots via the holes. But it takes 3 weeks to colonize.
I have ordered a bottle of hydroguard, which are bacteria to combat root rot. ANd I also orderd a bottle of liquid myco and tricho mix. These are already active so they should help a lot.
Now letting the soil dry out and as soon as they need water (which is quickly I hope if roots arent too fucked) I will include rooting stimulants ,alfalfa tea, and a mix of 82 beneficial organisms that I have laying around here.
How it seems now, I think they will be okay. It all depends on the balance in the soil and the conditions and which organisms will dominate. Hoping to get my liquid myco and tricho and hydroguard soon as they are more focussed on the problem I am having.
The mix of 82 beneficials is something I bought as an alternative to fungicides in the garden(dont wanna treat whole garden with uv) but they simply dont work lol
I also have a gallon of hydrogen peroxide here, but it would be a real shame to destroy all the beneficials I have included.
Phone is still not fixed, will take a crappy pic with laptop cam later.
Smells are already building up nicely an the a5's are still not fully flowering. I love this plant, this is exactly the kind of sativas I like to grow. In flowering she also looks totally different and way more on the sativa side. Cant wait to see what smells I will get (if they dont die from root rot first )
So everything is still going okay despite what happened. The plants have sustained root damage, that is sure. There are no more white thick roots poking out of the pots, or any roots for that matter, they just rotted away (. Some pots have white mold growing inside on the bottom. I killed most of it wth hydrogen peroxide soak but of course it came back. And what my buddy did, also caused fungus gnats to appear.
I will buy nematodes for the gnats. For the fungal infection I already watered them with trichoderma, but it needs 3 weeks to colonize. I also ordered liquid already active trichoderma and other bacteria such as streptomyces to combat the root rot.
Most plants are fine though, and even the damaged ones are not in a life threatening situation, but it will have an impact. They are developping slower at the moment. Nomally I see a big difference every day. But now they are going slower due to the damage..
The root damage s visible by random burnt parts of the plant.
The plants don't get nothing but water untill the end, except the a5 which will be topdressed one more time For the a5 I am not going to add any buffer tabs, as they are 10-3-5 which is too much nitrogen. I will topdress them with fast acting (ony lasts 90 days) bone meal and potassium pellets. This will give me npk 6-17-32 asthe bone meal contains 6% nitrogen, which is more than enough for the a5. I will also add some extras like lime, roc dust, worm castings alfalfa and kelp to the topdressing.
For the rest I am keeping watering to a minimum now untill I get my nematodes, cuz then it will have to stay moist for a few days. I will reinstall mats but in a different way to keep RH down.
The a5 have become beautiful healthy plants, they are barely flowering, just the beginning of small flowers.
So far I am really happy with it. The s1 seeds some way more jungle style than the cut. Which is fine by me!!. One of them reminds me a lot of ag13. I love growing long flowering sativas. Heck it flowers longer than ma,y landraces I tried. Love it!
The skunk cross is flowering fast. They are very frosty already with trichomes on the bigger leaves as well. Most smell real sweet and skunky. I hope they will become more spicy and hazy.
The killer a5 smells gorgeous, a real nice haze smell.
The white og is chugging along. SHe has now become the smallest plant.
As expected though, due to the huge delay(with the fluence problems) it has become too crowded in the tent, even with me removing 1/3 of the branches before the flip.
I am now training them more daily to pull open the canopy, but it is not optimal how it is right now.
A5, this one will become the tallest plant of them all. My forthe moment totally useless fluence light on the right collecting dust...such a shame of the money spent
Intresting to see people growing these in ther differing condiditions....yours seem to be expressing slightly different....I think that blue in your specrum is helping ....these plants love the stuff.....yours look very nice an healthy now...shame about the root issue.....hopefully you got it sorted tho.
ALthough the lamp has a lot of blue, the light you see in these pics is one lamp with only the veg switch turned on, hence the blue color you see.
I did this because I had to be in the tent to remove some plants for training. If all 4 lamps would be on flower mode, it would seem like martians had landed in my house.
To be honest, growing under these lights is just the same as with HPS. Only difference is that I need 4 of these to cover the tent because their designs sucks so much. But I get super healthy plants under these lamps.
If you check the white og headstash pictures, you will see how I am struggling to get them healthy under white led light. Normally when I use a buffertab in the soil, they are good for many weeks. Here is seems like I gave them nothing, it's bizarre. Now supplementing crazy with epsom and lime and extra topdressing. it helps, but compared to the viparspectra plants they look tired and not happy.
It is annoying when nothing you know works, buffertabs are normally a good micro and macro food source. Yet under the white led it seems not sufficient.
This is the light with all switches on, to my eyes it seems like daylight, but on pictures it seems purple, it is 12 band, I hadnt posted this before because it upload upside down for some reason
Dont you just love it when a plan comes together? Me too!! But this is not one of those occasions....
The root rot seems to be getting worse. I applied the trichoderma bout 10 days ago, then 2 days ago I gave the a5 crosses a topdressing with trichoderma (covered whole top layer of soil, about 10 times more then I should) lime, epsom salts, alfalfa meal, kelp meal, worm castings and rock dust to add extra minerals and trace elements, hormones, microlife and a lil bit of nutrients.
The a5, since they just started flowering decently, and still have a long way to were topdressed with the same but with added bonemeal and potassium (6-17-32 in total) for the rest no buffer tabs or extra npk (apart from the shit in the worm shit). They will also get frooting powder from BAC a few times(I stop feeding 3-4 weeks before harvest) I do this just to change the npk ratios towards the end.
Since they dont need much N this will do just fine combined with the extra additives.
The trichoderma need 3 weeks to colonize so still got about 10-15 days to go before they should be working. I hope the trichoderma will take care of the fungae in the soil.
Because I wanst taking any chances and because I wanted something fast acting that doesnt need to colonize first (time is ofthe essence here) I had ordered many different liquid microlife additives to cover the whole spectra of beneficials targeted at pythium and bros.
The one I am most hopeful for is hydroguard, because it contains a fast acting bacteria and does not kill the beneficials.
I mean I could also soak my plants in peroxide every day to solve the issue but it would destroy the microlife and make the plant weak.
Problem is order paid 2 weeks ago, still hant shipped. Tomorrow i will call them for the 4 th time and this time I'll get pissed! Or the shipment mail or I cancel.
I need these products primarily to find a perfect strategy for pytium and damping off in seedlings. It is a drama in my vegetable gardenthis year lost more than 70%, hundreds of plants.
More and more plants are showing random damage in the form of spots, burn , weird deficiencies and weird paler colors , almost grey.
The most healthy plant is one A5.
It looks a bit like heat stress but it appears randon and not only the top leaves. Will take pics this weekend.
If all this doesnt work I will first try trianium G from koppert, and as a last(expensive) resort I will use trichoderma T33 (not sure but it is not the harzanium strain costs more than 150 euros).
I can also confirm that dr Higas Effective microoganism 1 liquid is way overrated. Sure, it gives the plants a boost, they like it. But it absolutely does not do a thing to combat bad fungi. I also checked in an online paper and they also found no benefical effect for soil born pathogens. They dont contain the correct trichoderma's, so don't buy that shit to solve fungal issues (it is sold to spray on the leaves against mildew and such....)
I am sure they will make it cuz the newest growth looks fine, indicating that there are still healthy roots developping but also there there is still damage being done. I just hope the damage wil slow down or stop. Maybe I should stop using <CO2 so that I can lower temp and RH? My temps now are 28-30 C and 58-62 RH with 1200-1500 ppm.
For the gnats I will try the potatoe trick, already got stickycard and I will again cover surface with perlite (i hate doing this). Nematodes are a bit too expensive.
I also released predators again as theborg were returning..
After rearranging the plants, which too long, i really noticed how bad these lights are design wise. The vipar are so unractical. Like in dead center at about 50-60 cm I get 500-600 par(some higher plants get 7-800 par. I have four lamps there, each with core coverage of 3*3. I thought 3 years ago that the wattage combined with 4 lights would give an even coverage.
But now with my par mete I see how bad is. CHeck this: they say core coverage of 3*3 but actually the high values are only in a 2x2 area. So now I get plants in the middle that receive about 2-3-400 par. The one in the core coverage hget to 7-800).
Instead of moving the big plants now, I move the lights several times a day so all get some core coverage light. That 90 degree angle sucks so hard. I think I would need 6 of these in 5x5 to get equal coverage.
Stil they grow beautiful plants, no complaint there. And since I am a white led noob, for me they are still my favorite lamps if I look at the results.
On a positive note, my order that I placed 3 weeks ago has FINALLY been shipped. It contains hydroguard (bacteria against root rot) and then different liquid already active beneficials such as trichoderma and mycorhizzae.
I am hoping this will solve the issue. Last resolve would be a hydrogen peroxide soaking but I am trying to avoid that. FIrst I will try hydroguard and beneficials. As a last resort, I can disinfect everything with pythoff or silver bullet. But that would kill all the microlife which I would then have to reintroduce via the liquid inoculants.
The soil in the pots at the bottom has a mildewy smell. Also lots of thick white mycelium in the pots. Normally I thought these types of fungus are good guys, but it just smells like mushrooms. ALso the soil is a bit slimy and still no roots poking out of the bottom.
There is only one plant unaffected and it is an a5 plant. The plants ar stil developping despite the root rot.
Well I think it is saf to say that up to now, almost anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong lol
Here a few pictures, hoping next update will be a better one!!
Notice the random discoloration and spots
This a5 is the only one unaffected, the branch on the left is from another plant.
The damage looks a bit like heat burn, except that it is random and first appeared on bottom leaves.
Ok all my shit arrived from England 2 days after they shipped it. I waited for almost 3 weeks but at least shipping was fast. And just in time for the next watering.
I am going to use hydroguard bacteria combined with liquid bacterial and fungal inoculants, including trichoderma, they will get rooting stimulators, hormones(in algae) and bacteria that eat dead matter and convert it to food some micronutrients and calmag So they have all the beneficials there are to attack the root rot except trichoderma t34 but that one is too expensive.
Let's hope this will slowly (or fast if possible) put a stop to the root rot, yellowing leaves and burn spots.