Ninja Mechanics
Member
Oh man Dave, this thread was epic! No idea how I havent seen it until now! Bravo, lots of awesome stuff in here!
Thanks again, Dave.
I don't think UB is around over there anymore. But, like you, I don't really go over there anymore, especially since I found this place. Not near as "toxic" seeming over here, you know?
Most everyone I really enjoyed reading was also mostly gone by the time I discovered the site a couple of years ago, including you. I'd be reading along in an old thread and think 'I'll ask X if Y would work when I get to the end,' only to get to the end and find out they were no longer there posting.
I'm generally out of the loop when it comes to in-fighting/"politics" on message boards. I was happy to end up running across you over here of all places. (Oh, god, really, I'm not a stalker! You were just a participant in a couple of my fav. threads there so I remembered the name)
Everyone over here, for the most part, seems a bit more 'mature/diplomatic' and I like the vibe here much better.
Our vegetable garden is a little over a quarter acre in size. We also have a small orchard, berry patch, and a grape arbor. It's a lot of work, but I love it. We can/freeze/put up everything we are able to harvest. We have 3 married daughters and we supply all of their families with as much vegetables/fruit (fresh and put up), eggs, meat (venison, fish, turkey, beef, etc.) as we can. Gardening is my 'therapy' And I'd rather hoe a row for 6 hours in the sun than wash a sink full of dishes
Lord, I do babble on, don't I?
Peace
Maven
Oh man Dave, this thread was epic! No idea how I havent seen it until now! Bravo, lots of awesome stuff in here!
Hi Dave!
How are those DP x Shit(Early Durban) girls doing? I see it's been a couple of weeks since the last pictures - how is budding coming along? AND, I JUST noticed, not only do you have the sitting on carpet, but it is WHITE carpet - and it is CLEAN. Damn, your ladies go nothing but first class, huh?
Peace
Maven
Now, using the suction lysimeter, and your ec/tds meter, I get that you know how much overall feed that your plants are using. But how do you know how much of what they are using/hungry for? Do you depend on the leaves alone to tell you - do you have to wait for a deficiency to show, like top of the plant for calcium, bottom for magnesium? Or am I missing something where these meters are concerned and how you know what you have to increase/decrease? Or do you just feed a good all-round WSF and let that be it?
I bought an EC/TDS meter but haven't had the time to make friends with it yet. The SL is, like I said, on my list for the *future*
Looking forward to the new pics...
Peace,
Maven
ETA: heh. when you roll over the "tlc" in your post it says it means 'thin layer chromatography" I'm like what the HELL is THAT, and will I need ANOTHER kind of meter for that? hahahahha. Then it hit me.
While there is tech you could use in your garden to measure the concentration of macro nutrients in the soil solutions I extract, it just isn't necessary, and its much more expensive than a simple Suction Lysimeter, and a good EC/PPM meter.
But I use leaf health to help me gauge whats going on like you said. Nitrogen deficiency is the most common problem we'll experience simply because plants typically use more N than anything else, especially MJ. Every now and then I may see early symptoms of Mag deficiency, but it doesn't occur very often unless Im chronically under-feeding.
Stick with a well rounded WSF, and as long as you provide an optimal feeding routine, you'll rarely have nutrient related issues. Osmocote helps too when the WSF may be lacking in some areas. Last time I checked, I think the Dyna Gro may be lacking on the Mag, Sulfur some, possibly could use a bit more Ca too, but the Osmocote covers that for me.
Ive got a bag of Calcium-Nitrate, and Epsom Salts, and various other salts I never use anymore because Osmocote + Dynagro covers my bases so well.
Once you get that SL, you'll wonder why you didn't get one sooner. Get a 12" model though, as I find they're easier to get solutions from containers that are 3 gallons or less. There are longer lysimeters, but they're more suited for larger/deeper containers. Plus the shorter ones are cheaper if you want to save money. I know I do.
The best way to use it, is to get your plant to a perfect state of healthy and green, then take a measurement. Afterwards just try to keep the ec/ppm of your soil solution near that value. With repeated usage, and experience you'll be able to narrow down an ideal range for each individual plant, as well as an overall range that works across the board pretty well.
Well it looks like the trifoliate Durban that had outgrown that trait has came back with even more of the problem. She started with 3 leaves per node, and slowly returned to normal. Today I discovered she had actually auto-topped herself, and the new top tripled down on the number of leaves per node.
This plant has 8 that you can see in the picture, with another 2 on the backside! Im just gonna let the plant keep doing its weird thing for awhile and see what happens next.
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I dont do any defoliation myself, but I do practice selective pruning mostly from the lowest parts of the plant. I will do this both in veg and flower. If I have lower branches that are never going to reach the canopy, Ill remove them.
Those sucker branches wont produce anything but larf at best in flower, if they can't reach the canopy(If were using overhead lighting). Different animal if vertical/side lighting is in play.
Some may call that lollipopping, but I dont go to the extreme. Ive seen pics that make me cringe too where the lowest 50% part of the plant is removed, which seems like a huge waste to me.
Wow, that is so cool! Glad you are going to let her go - can't wait to see what happens next with her.
I think defoliation is useful if your plant has an established big root system already when its flipped. If you transplant into a big container and then flip it doesn't seem to help much. Its like the plant knows how much plant matter it can sustain according to its root system size and how much space is left in the container for roots to grow into. If there's not a lot of space left for roots when you flip the plant won't put on a lot of bud, but you get more by removing the large fans at week 1-2 flip in that situation. This applies to soil or soiless mix, hydro is different.
Just beautiful, Dave. She's really coming along nicely. Feed that girl
What's your aperture when you are shooting? If you are shooting shallow (f8 or higher (5.6, 4.8, etc...) and your focal point is just a bit off, your depth is so shallow that the whole picture can look a little fuzzy. I do that a lot when I forget to change my aperture. If you shoot f11 or lower (13, 16, etc...) you have a better chance of everything remaining in focus. But then your ISO needs to be set higher for low light situations.
I vary my aperature from as low as 1.8 to 22 depending on the depth of field Im looking to capture. Many photos I take end up shot at varying aperatures as I adjust settings in Manual mode so often.
I tried out a few different dimension settings when exporting photos tonight, and feel like thats where my problems may have been originating from. Going from PC to upload these photos dont lose a significant amount of sharpness whereas several previous photos went from fairly crisp to downright blurry after upload.
Your garden is looking real nice and healthy. Buds are right around the corner now. They've already overgrown their space by the looks of it, and are gonna do that even more as you progress into flowering. Sometimes we can have too many tops. Damn you uncle ben! Your upper canopy and perhaps middle canopy will produce some nice buds in there, but I wouldn't expect much decent nugs from deep in the canopy. Just not enough light making its way down there. I prefer to have enough space between plants so more light can strike lower branches, but sometimes Its not always possible/feasible.
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Nice pics though what you want is to layer the in focus pictures into a single image. I recommend zerene stacker for the job (you can find a crack online that makes it good to 2025) and taking pictures by manually turning the focus wheel and using a remote control or timer to avoid the shakes. If you manually focus through the entire field of vision you wish to capture and then stack the images into a single picture everything will be crystal clear in the field of depth you wish to capture though you'll quickly find that fuzziness to define what you want in focus is equally as important as what you want to focus on too.
If I'm honest it'll feel a little like forgery at the end of the day but you'll create truly amazing pictures if your previous work is anything to go by so thanks for sharing and back to lurking
Seriously, most any other fellow would have read what I wrote and answered 'What, do my photos LOOK like I don't know how to adjust my camera settings?!?!' hahahaha! Yeah, I was a tad bit buzzed. A bit after I wrote that, I started to come back and delete/reword it because you obviously KNOW your settings. But we had a power outage, then when it came back we were without internet until I finally gave up and went to bed for lack of anything better to do. Such is life in the middle of nowhere. Finally got our internet back midmorning today.
Yeah, you might say I have a tendency to buck the trend .
I just now got my internet back too. It was an odd sensation to go a week without any internet. Ive got to get my fix of ICMAG .
Yeah, I never expected this kind of growth - these EBH plants are just monsters. I'll never try more than 1 or maybe two of them in this space again. I think I could have grown just one, spread the branches well, tied her up a little to keep her spread, and the 1 would have produced about as much as these 4 will produce in this space. *sigh* Live and learn. But in the future, I know not to waste these seeds! I cannot wait to try a couple of them outside this summer!
Not to mention how much less work you would have in tending to 1 or 2 plants only.
I cleaned them up/out just a LITTLE bit more - opened up the centers a little and removed the very lowest branches that I know wouldn't have done anything besides suck energy. I think what I left has a decent chance of producing fairly well. If I hold my hand down in them now, I can see light reflecting off of it pretty much all through them - it isn't blindingly bright, but it is better than it was.
I should have mentioned this sooner, but then the internet went bye-bye for a bit, but when I am cleaning up lower branches, I will actually leave the first fan leaf attached to the main stalk. The sucker branch is gone, but the original fan leaf remains. Does that make sense? Those leftover fan leaves serve as a indicator when we experience a mobile nutrient deficiency, without the problem immediately affecting where bud production is occurring. It gives you a bit more time to correct problems before they spread to the canopy essentially.
I'm glad that the PxM will go so much longer than the EBH - after they are done and out of the way it will give her time with all the room/light to herself to bulk up after that.
Beautiful pictures! Glad you figured it out.
Ive snapped some more pics of Early Durban 2 tonight. I think you'll be pleased with them. I look forward to seeing how your ladies flower out, so please share them here.
Peace
Maven