Blue Star OG pheno hunt, PPK style

[Alpha666]

Hello again Maestro.
I hope the pheno hunt is going well, the girls seem to be coming along beautifully so far. I wish I had the time to do the same but i always seem to be in too much of a rush.

As you know I haven’t a thread of my own so I hope you don’t mind me giving you a little update here.

6 1/2 weeks into flower and things are going well. I’ve had one blocked tailpiece and was unable to change it out so solved the problem by buying a long drill bit and drilling down through the bottom of the container and the top of the bucket, in-situ.

Temps are around 80F and humidity 60-70%. My header tank is 780L and the girls are using approximately 10L a day each. I wish my tank was larger.

During Veg input was approx ec1 and ph6. This remained pretty stable throughout the 4 week veg period in the whole system.

During flower this has changed and I must confess to being rather puzzled. I doubled the input ec to 2 and aimed for a ph of 6. After a couple of weeks the ec in the control totes started to rise and the ph reduced to 5.6. I kept the input the same until the ec became in excess of 3.6. I then halved the input to 1 ec and initially the ec came down to 3.4 but increased daily up to 3.6+ again, where it has stayed for the last 5 or 6 refills of the header tank, despite using only only half strength solution (ec 1.1). The ph in the control totes stays resolutely at 5.63, despite my trying to steer it up by inputting 6.2+ph solution. And I mean 5.63, not even .62 or .64.

These numbers include my tap water which has a reading of 200-300 on the 500 scale

Having said that, the girls seem fine, no nute burn or deficiencies so I’m not worried at all - merely puzzled!

Regards.

 

[greyfader]

howdy, usually, at around the 2.5 week point in flower the nutrient solution changes character.

using the jack's 3-2-1 formula, with my tap water at about 80 ppm at the .5 conversion, the initial solution will read 850-900 ppm.

during the vegetative period and up to the 2.5 weeks in flower point the nutrient solution is pulled down in strength.

at the 2.5-week point, it will start accumulating nutrients. i will start mixing 90% of the 3-2-1 formula.

you will have to refresh my memory. are you using jack's 5-12-26 with calcinit and mag sulphate?

and, are you feeding from a float valve?

i don't let the solution get above 1250 ppm or ec 2.5. it's ok to steer it back down with ph'ed tap water.

but at ec 3.6 i would suggest you pump out about half the solution and top off with ph'ed water.

the float valve is a critical piece of the system. it lets you feed a balanced, stable solution to a balanced, stable solution at a rate that matches uptake.

it functions as a nutrient injector and ph control.

 

[Alpha666]

Thank you for your response.

I followed your blueprint as closely as possible with the build, so yes I have float valves (2) and a drain down hose.

Jack’s isn’t readily available here so I found a two part powder mix called Hydrosol by Hydrofarm, which I am trying for this run, proportions can by adjusted according to requirements.

The system is draining as I write this.

Regards.

 

[gmanwho]

hey greyfader, glad to see the new setups. I love seeing the designs. in regards to the led lights, care to add more about the bulb other then 5k color? spacing in the setup rack etc , ppfd if known at canopy level. etc ...

i too am wanting to learn all i can about led, dialing in, becoming more efficient all around. I feel they do have their place and they are the future. I do not claim to be a scholar, one thing i do know is the more i feel i comprehend, the more questions i have. then some unknown comes to light and partialy throws everything i think i know out the window.

a quick disclaimer, my adhd an dyslexia is tough this morning. so typing out thoughts that are comprehensible is difficult. most people hear adhd and think about being hyper and talking out of turn, or simply cant focus. what they do not understand is what they see on the outside is a direct result of the lack of inner brain communication, at that time. at least my adhd is a fog, or a block, or partial block in a pathway that causes difficulty to access known information or feelings. causing difficulty to sort thru thoughts or experiences to come up with an educated result. even at times causing difficulty in vision focus for a split second. so..

while im still in the infancy stages with my first led room, this new efficiency seems to get me to the point where i feel i can use less energy to run the same room. wanting to make this new tech work. and like you said, how do i get the same hps yield (or more) an a better quality?

monitor or try to follow vpd charts. if you do not, that maybe a good starting point. from what ive experienced so far with leds it helps alot. a higher vpd in mid & late flower, and lower vpd in veg.

learning to grow under the leds has taught me the rooms need to be warmer, like 80-85. today i have my ac set to 84 in veg an early flower. where as before with the hps rooms i had my ac set to 70-72.

been told the leds have little or no infrared. so what ive seen is the plants canopy will run cooler. So our feed understanding, needs to adapt again to how they feed.




and this is where i feel it gets interesting......i know some of what we have learned from in the past about growing ,an hps, needs to be adjusted. an not omitting things like some say, but understood under a new light so to say

Because of a cooler running canopy (compared to hps) the plant will transpire less and will not uptake as much nutrient feed to aid in the cooling process. The reduced rate of transpiration for the sole purpose of extra cooling will now cause less Passive nutrient absorption. So an increase in ec (again, compared to hps) is part of the solution.

build up in your nutrient solution & medium will differ from before.

A reduced passive uptake will cause minerals that are not as actively sought by the plant to become the first to show deficient. as other minerals, but in particular, ca mg s an fe will not be absorbed in the same ratio as before. these will most likely be the first plant deficiencies to appear. But also will likely become the heaviest accumulators in a reused nutrient solution. (even more so then before) Then also creating a possible antagonist situation.

Because of this, i feel my next step will be Foliar feeding these minerals mentioned above. or at the least, before a heavy flower set, loading up the plants via foliar and hope to make it over the finish line.

Also, another important note is DLI. i feel leds can offer to much light. And what each plant takes to get in that high efficiency zone will vary from plant to plant. Slightly change the environment, and gotta change the variables again.

 

[greyfader]

hey buddy! sorry it has taken me so long to respond. i've had some medical issues to deal with.

rather than trying to answer your questions one by one i'll just ramble for a while in buckshot fashion and hope i hit all the targets.

since leaving oregon in late 2018 i have only used leds. but i have never bought a manufactured light. the reasons are that i think they are general-purpose lights designed to get you through both veg and flower and therefore compromises and not ideal. and too expensive. you know me, i'm a cheap bastard!

the general diode arrangement seems to be a combination of 3000k and 5000k phosphor-coated "white" leds. the phosphor coating method of producing "white light" starts with a blue diode and then coats it to achieve the color temperature. this makes all such diodes very strong in the blue range to start with. i think this biases the blue/red ratio too much towards blue overall for an ideal flower extension ratio. which is tied to the red/far-red elongation response. from my own experience, my led flowers are potent and terpene-heavy but don't get as large as my hps flowers did.

this ratio can be corrected by adding more dark red, far-red, and infrared. but you would only want to do this ratio offsetting during flower because in veg it would make the plants stretch too much.

conversely, a heavily blue-weighted spectrum makes for compact, sturdy plants by suppressing the elongation response. this produces tighter node spacing and more shoots.

this is why the ideal color temp for veg is 5000k/6500k.

the usual ratio of most manufactured led lights is 2/1 3000k to 5000k. then they use a few 660nm dark reds, typically less than 10% of total diode count, and maybe throw in a few 750nm range far-red just because dr bugbee mentions them online.

there are a few manufacturers making tunable lights but they are very expensive.

i've been experimenting with cheap household-type screw-in bulbs. 2700k and 5000k in various combinations and ratios. in this grow i'm using only 5000k up the end of week two of flower and then i'll switch them all out to 2700k bulbs supplemented with cheap appliance-type incandescents.

by using the 2700k only i'm reducing the overall blue/red ratio as far as possible with these phosphor-coated diodes.

my lights are being operated at 1008 watts each by using 72 14-watt bulbs.

when i switch them out with the 2700k bulbs i'll use 60 for 840 watts and then 6 25-watt incandescents for another 150 watts making it 990 watts total consumption.

incandescents have more of their output in the red/dark-red range than the sun. and far more than a hps. they have some uva. they have a controllable infrared input by using lower wattage than using leds in conjunction with hps.

i think the infrared is needed in small amounts and leds are devoid of infrared unless you put in 850nm or above diodes to produce it. infrared penetrates leaf tissue and heats the leaves internally which i think drives up the metabolic rate.

infrared radiation does not heat the medium it travels through but rather the target it hits.

on leds and metabolic rate tied to light flow, i think leds, because they are multi-point with very wide beam angles, typically 120 degrees, have a much higher light-to-shade ratio than a single-point source.

this must be driving a higher metabolic rate at the same apparent par spot readings that you get with hps.

this is coupled with the fact that approximately 30% of the electrical energy used to power a hps goes straight to heat not par light so a 1000-watt led is delivering much more energy in the par range.

this is why a 700-watt led delivers the same approx par as the 1000-watt hps.

so all this is tied to feed strength because the equivalent led is driving the metabolic rate much higher.

and tied to ambient heat as well. heat is the second most powerful regulator of metabolism after light. with leds you should run the whole room at 84-86f lights on.

i'm gonna stop for now but i'll be back!

 

[greyfader]

light flow with leds. so because leds are driving the metabolic rate higher than a hps at the same spot readings with a par meter we can use a lower light flow rate when using leds.

one of my test lights has 120 positions for bulbs. when full it used 1680 watts and would produce 1500 umols of flow at 30".

i did a series of grows with it and in flower, i think it overwhelmed the photosynthetic system and caused somewhat stunted flowers. this is supported by the fact that i had larger flowers 6-8" down the stem than at the tops.

1500 umols for 12 hours is 64.8 moles. a huge dli that the plant almost never gets in nature.

the other fixture, at the same time, delivering about 1000 umols for 12 hours got 43.2 moles.

it had larger terminal flowers.

now i'm seeing some very experienced growers getting great yields with 750 umols for 12 hours, which is 32.4 moles per day.

so i think it's moles per day we should be aiming at not umols of flow. which is just an instantaneous reading.

what i'm going to try is 1100 umols of flow for an 8-hour photoperiod. which is 31.68 moles per day.

i have done several 8-hour photoperiod grows before and got very nice flowers covered in trichs and terp heavy.

this absolutely skewers the old gram-per-watt bs.

maybe fewer hours of heat and light are better at preserving terps.

we know that 1500 umols of flow achieves the highest metabolic rate in cannabis but i don't think the plant can handle that much for 12 hours without some type of inhibition setting in.

there are tomato greenhouses in northern climes that produce well at 30 moles per day.

break time!

 

[greyfader]

so now an electrical efficiency comparison.

in the 10k sq ft warehouse cbd flower facility the flower room had 120 5x5 positions. to use hps lights i would have needed 4k btu a/c per 1000-watt light for a total of 480,000 btu of a/c. so you have the initial purchase price of the a/c gear plus long-term electrical consumption to consider.

by contrast, since a 700-watt led is comparable to a 1000-watt hps i produced 70% of the heat from electrical resistance plus the almost total lack of infrared and this causes the btu requirement to drop to 1400 btu per fixture for a total of 168,000 btu

i think 1400 btu per 700-watt fixture is about right so that you have a little redundancy and you are not working the a/c's balls to the wall all the time.

i'm living in a drafty old farmhouse about 5 miles from where i'm building a forever home. i will also build my last grow room and all this experimenting will be put to good use.

i may never buy a manufactured light. these stupid light bulbs work very well, once the globe/diffuser is removed they last indefinitely.

the only drawback of using them is that they are about 100 lumen per watt as compared to 140 lumen per watt for some of the better-manufactured lights.

but if i design a room that is geometrically shaped to focus the lights i might be able to use even less of them.

one of the big advantages of using screw-in leds is that they are fast and cheap to build into a fixture of any shape or size, any power level, and are totally user serviceable unlike manufactured fixtures that must be sent back in warranty leaving you with an empty space while you wait.

later for now, more to come!

 

[greyfader]

so, i guess a little explanation of my absence is called for. i just went through a series of medical issues that pretty much deprived me of sleep for about 4 weeks. i turned into a zombie and was physically unable to do all the little things that had to be done on time to flower at 4 weeks of veg. they were flowered at 40 days and, of course, had overgrown the space.

today is 21 days of flower and about the end of the stretch. i have multi-topped and thinned heavily. i still have to do some larf removal.

i just now switched out the 5000k bulbs for the 2700k plus the incandescents. i had planned to do it at 2 weeks of flower instead of 3.

so all of the growth in these pics occurred with 5000k bulbs.

there are 66 2700k and 6 25-watt incandescents for a total of 1074 watts in each fixture. the incandescents are roughly centered over each plant.

it's been 8 weeks and 5 days since i started this grow and no solution has been removed from the reservoirs. all input only.

i have both lights hard-tied to the top of the frame and do not have any more headspace but i should be good.

under the square fixture, i'm getting pretty uniform par readings between 1150-1250 umols.

and, under the octagonal one, it's between about 1200-1300 umols.

it's a good thing i'm using the 8-16 photoperiod as 8 hours of 1200 umols is 34.56 moles per period.

i've got a little tip burn as i let the feed reservoir run dry a couple of times and the ec crept up to about 2.6 for a day or two.

i will try to update on some kind of schedule from now on.

i'm getting some fairly powerful stem rubs now and some slight differences in smell.

i'v got full sets of clones of 8 of the 12.

 

[greyfader]

it’s time for the weekend update. not much going on. the ppk device has been operating itself.

as far as the pheno hunt is concerned i look for not only potency and terpene profile but plants that are morphologically better suited for production. tight to medium node spacing, interiors that are not real “busy” so that i don’t have to spend a lot of time and effort cleaning them out.

in this particular grow, because of the overgrowth and subsequent butchery, i have given up on the morphological part of the hunt and am just trying to finish choosing for potency and terps.

this is the end of week four of flower and i took 6 copies of each of the 8 i decided to clone. they are now stretched out too but have many nice shoots to choose from so sometime this coming week i will take another set that should be about ready to go for the next phase of the hunt.

i plan to run all 8 of the cloned plants next time not the 12 you see here. unless i find one or two that just don’t have the terps. but, i think this is highly unlikely since they all reek right now.

so the next run with 8 will include the morphological search as well as a more refined potency and terp search. hopefully i will be able to do everything on time. i’m feeling much better now.

just a few canopy shots to show progress. still no solution has been removed from the pool reservoirs under the plants. input only and today it read 1180 ppm at the .5 conversion or close to ec 2.4 and the ph is holding steady at about 6.0. 68 days of input only.

some are showing larger terminal flowers but it doesn’t mean anything because about 2/3 of the shoots have been topped. next time i’ find out which ones throw the most weight.

 

[greyfader]

we are at 5 weeks and one day of flowering. i have eliminated one more from the hunt so we are down to the final 7. i eliminated this one because of the stretch. it was by far the most extreme stretcher maybe 3-3.5x.

long internodes at 5-6" and this was under intense 5000k light.

the rest are much more moderate maybe 2-2.5x. i can live with that indoors and have always gotten my best yields with hybrids showing some stretch. internodal length 3-4" is common but tightens up at the terminals.

some noticeable differences in flower shape but not a whole lot yet. josh@bluestarseedco says that, depending on pheno, this plant finishes between 60-70 days so we still have 4-5 weeks to go.

the nugs are hard and dense on most but some are a little more loose and airy, again not by a huge margin yet.

i'm getting some distinct smells and i am taking notes. i'm not great at pinning down flavors but i can pick out the strongest smells ok.

i'm not real proud of the canopy but considering that the ec was over 3 for several weeks and the ph was around 5.0 and the growth was very uneven with 12 different phenos it's not as bad as it could have been.

the PPK system functioned even when i couldn't.

they are all sticky and stanky!

 

[Cakeboy]

lookin good

 

[Mars Hydro Led]

Very thoughtful growth diary, your plants are also very beautiful with such big buds in the fifth week.

 

[greyfader]

Yesterday was the end of week 7 of flowering. I cut a top flower from each of the 7 phenos I've still got copies of. Mostly just to do a fast dry and get a preliminary idea of taste, terps, and high.

None look close to being done yet 2-3 more weeks maybe a little more on one or two of them.

I took a few pics to have a close-up look at trich development.

Some buds are dense and compact while others are more airy at this point but it's too early to tell how they will finish.

I'm looking for one that is capable of producing some weight and it's looking like numbers 3,6, and 11 are the most promising.

 

[greyfader]

more

 

[greyfader]

today is 8 weeks 2 days of flowering.

just a few pics of the canopy today. it's a mess but i'm getting close to the end and will harvest all 12.

of the 7 i took samples from last week two of them, #6 and #12 are extremely potent and have the best taste and smell so far. the potency of these two is remarkable because they were taken at week 7 of a 9-10 week plant.

it's still to early to judge so i'm keeping copies of all of them for now.

i will take another sample set soon. it's been 9 days since the first samples were taken.

i still have not removed any solution from the system.

i am feeding water only right now.

the third pic is interesting because it shows where i topped the branches.

 

[JKD]

Delta, with your top up only system do you think there’s any microbial nutrient cycling occurring such as in bio-buckets?

 

[greyfader]

Delta, with your top up only system do you think there’s any microbial nutrient cycling occurring such as in bio-buckets?

yes, i think the worm castings are inoculating the entire system. i used one lb of castings in each container and there are 12 containers. i was initially worried that i used too much but the solution remains clear with a light brown color. i'm also using fulvic acid and kelp powder in the liquid feed.

Microbial diversity of vermicompost bacteria that exhibit useful agricultural traits and waste management potential

Vermicomposting is a non-thermophilic, boioxidative process that involves earthworms and associated microbes. This biological organic waste decomposition process yields the biofertilizer namely the vermicompost. Vermicompost is a finely divided, peat ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Alpha666]

Maestro.
some fine looking buds there, brother.

An update on how my first run with the ppk went. I wanted to wait until everything was properly harvested and dispensed before giving the final numbers. I used 4% more light, 20% fewer plants, 7% less time and yielded >30% more than a 5 run average.

Thanks to you.

Regards.

 

[greyfader]

Maestro.
some fine looking buds there, brother.

An update on how my first run with the ppk went. I wanted to wait until everything was properly harvested and dispensed before giving the final numbers. I used 4% more light, 20% fewer plants, 7% less time and yielded >30% more than a 5 run average.

Thanks to you.

Regards.

thank you for the kind words! it always makes me feel warm and fuzzy to know that my system helped someone grow their own medicine.

what method were you using before you tried a PPK?

 

[Alpha666]

120l containers with coco dtw. Nothing complicated, simple fire and forget sort of stuff. Yields always respectable, and easy to manage if I ever had to get anyone else to cover.
With the switch to Led a while ago I started thinking about other methods and mediums and considered dwc but didn’t feel really inspired until I stumbled across your ”something wicked” thread, which spoke to me.
I realise how much time you have spent dispensing your knowledge, often having to repeat the same things for people too lazy to read the whole thread or threads and admit I don’t have such patience. I admire that you do, and am grateful. It’s easy to feast upon other people’s wisdom and doesn’t take a lot to say thanks, it’s appreciated.
regards.