DWC 300W DIY LED SCROG Grow: AK47 and Mazar

[vukman]

I think I was to stoned yesterday morning and I totally forgot the reason for powering the LED panel at 100% : the temperatures are dropping ( we expect -20 degrees Celsius in the following days - outdoor, of course) and the girls seems to slower their grow as the air temperature stays around 21 degrees Celsius when the ultrasonic humidifier is set to 50% RH. If I power off the humidifier, the temp stays around 23C, but the RH drops below 30%.

I must hurry up with the DIY LED bars, as I want to have 24-25C with light on. In addition I think I will plug the humidifier in the same electronic timer which control the lights, to avoid dangerous drops of the temp on the dark period.

WOW!!!!!!!

You guys are getting hit with winter very hard already. I know that throughout the Balkans there was a huge storm. My own mother country (Serbia) is totally crippled by the snow and a heard quite a few people have died already because of it.

I just hope that you and your family and loved ones are all okay as I hope that everyone here who is over there in that mess are okay as well.

Please take care of yourself and keep us informed if everything is okay.

All My Best To You My Friend........
Vukman

 

[trem0lo]

Some beautiful and inspirational DIY here hempfield... girls are looking great!

 

[hempfield]

WTF ???

WTF ???

Hi guys,

Today I noticed some tiny preflowers on Mazar, but they seems like ... balls to me

Look for your selves and tell me what you think. This preflowers are very, very small, less then 1mm.

Here are some pictures (and zooms - sorry for bad quality) :

 

[tenthirty]

Maybe balls, just watch them closely.

 

[PetFlora]

massage them and see what happens

Even though it looks like balls I had 3 plants that looked the opposite at the same stage, but all flipped - pre-males became females, ditto pre-females

Very odd, thankfully I wound up with 4 females

Wildly exciting is, the female in the ~80 1 watt led tent is running neck and neck with the 3 females in my ~ 400w HOT5 tent

Pics don't lie. Come take a look

 

[vukman]

dude... you've got some set of eyes on you!!!!!!! LOL I've got a 24" monitor and I had to use the 'zoom' on my keyboard to see that!! hheheh.

As has been mentioned already my friend..it might or might not be..just have to keep an eye on them. I hope that they're not but if they are, looks like you've got it well under control or at least you will..

Good Luck

 

[trem0lo]

I dunno, those kind of look like females to me!

Preflowers have always confused me. For sure, you can never fully tell until you hit the lights. I was so sure my girl was a male that I left her alone over Thanksgiving holiday, and threw the switch to 12/12 for the heck of it. I returned to find a thirsty, fully budding female. So you never know!

 

[hempfield]

8 weeks

8 weeks

Hi folks,

I bet you are waiting for the weekly update so here it is.

This week was a little bit unusual because a lot of snow has fallen and we had very low temperatures (now we are back on track and the snow started to melt ) so I had to try different light combinations to keep the temperature in the grow room above 22-23 degrees Celsius. The maximum temperature (25C) was achieved by setting the DIY LED panel to 100% (all red LEDs ON) together with the firs version of LED bard, and this caused an vegetative explosion (especially on Mazar).

My plan was to introduce the red spectrum just at the beginning of the third week of flower so I decided to speed up the construction of the LED bars. As a result, addtional 100W of LED light (60W warm white and 40W cool white) has been added to the grow room and the temperatures raised to 24~25C.

The girls are very happy, they drink a lot of water ( 1.5L/day for Mazar and ~1L/day for AK47) and no sign of deficiencies of nute burns can be seen on their leaves, even with the increase of the EC to almost 1400uS. The pH was much stable since I started using Liquid Silicon ( potassium silicate ). In addition, since I add K2O3Si into the reservoirs, the leaves are shiny , like they are covered in wax, and their color is mostly dark green.

Last night I spent almost 4 hours in the grow room, installing the LED bars, changing the water and training the girls and as a result I now have incredible pains on my legs, back and shoulders - is extremely hard to work in a such small place - just 1.2 meter high (and I forgot to mention that I had a full weekend, going skating with the kids on two consecutive days - maybe this is the real cause of the pain ? )

This time I only removed 10 liters of the old nutrient solution and I replaced with a fresh one, having and EC of 1400uS and pH ~5.9 (which I know it will drop to 5.7 in the first 24 hours).

In the following two weeks I will not increase the EC anymore because I will away from the girls on the last week of this year and maybe the first days of 2013 and I want to have minimal growth (especially on Mazar, which seems unstoppable).

The preflowers which I spotted on Mazar did not evolved and no other ball shaped formation appeared at the inter nodes. I did some research about this and some folks also complained about 'ball' preflowers on feminized Mazar, which eventually turned into real female plant on flowering, but also read more negative reviews about this strain developing hermaphrodite tendencies and even male plants developed from feminized seeds (but how this can be possible ? ).

Here are some pictures with the girl after training :

 

[hempfield]

As I mentioned in my previous post, the girls are not bathing on the warm light produces by the DIY LED Bars, which are presented here : https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=251622

 

[vukman]

very nice my friend and yes, I am aware that the whole region there got hit very hard with a lot of snow and cold temperatures. I heard there have been some deaths as a result of the weather as well. Former Yugoslavia is where the deaths happened but still, weather and temperatures are not controlled by man-made geographical borders so all I can say is keep warm and please take care.

As for the girls and the LEDs.......when the temperatures get that low, you have to do whatever you can to keep the growing conditions optimal or as close to optimal as you can.

Once again, please take care of yourself and your family in these cold conditions...

ALL MY BEST
Happy Holidays

 

[piramidon]

you are quite a creative technical brother hemp, though, I got one sugestion:
When I use to grow indoor in really cold conditions, I warmed up the intake air flow with resistors from the mosquito repellent gizmo (the one with square pills, cardboard..)
I've just put 6 of those in the modified-for-the-purpose intake tunnel and the air came just as 17-18 celsius. If your space is not so big, should work like a charm.

 

[hempfield]

Indeed, any resistive heat source would perform nicely and help with temps, but I did not want to waste anymore electricity for this as I prefer to add more light sources (which generate heat as a secondary effect) rather than artificially heat the grow space (and this heat is lost when the exhaust fan remove the air from grow room).

If I turn of the humidifier the temps are ok, but when I try to keep the humidity at 50% I see a huge drop of temps (because the water droplets absorb a lot of heat to evaporate).

 

[DrFever]

Things looking real good there Hemp keep the updates coming

 

[Socrates]

It looks like a girl to me, but we will see.

 

[hempfield]

9 weeks

9 weeks

This girls have 9 weeks of veg and they are almost ready to flower, but I have to postpone the flip until January (end of first week) because I will be away for several days and I want to do things properly and to train them every day during the stretch phase. I think in the next to weeks we will see a full filling of the screens.

Both plants are drinking a lot of water (2 liters a day) and consume nutes with the same speed , EC and pH being more stable in the last week.

I am now using a mixture of 50% tap water and 50% RO water, which give me a start EC of ~0.3mS and the Canna Aqua nutes rise the EC upt to 1.3mS (more or less).

I had to partially defoliate Mazar, as to many big leaves grew under the screen and some of them started already to die due the lack of light and ventilation. I left her un-trained for the last week and she grew like a monster, so the last night training session was a kind of PITA.

On the AK47 I did just some basic training as she doesn't grow so fast and the leaves are smaller, being more easy to handle. I think she is a good candidate for a micro-grow, but let see how she act on flowering (I read that she tend to stretch a lot).

It looks like a girl to me, but we will see.

Yep, most of those small preflowers almost disappeared (don't know why/where) and some grew just a little and they don't have ball shape anymore, neither white hairs. We will know for sure on the second week of January. AK47 does not show any sign of sexing yet.

Here are some pics also :

 

[DrFever]

Dam just noticed that your scrog screen is metal you think you had sore back and legs wait when you harvest going to be nothing but a pain in the arse lol i use string so all i do is cut string prior to trimming plants giving me easy access
IMO with metal screens buds will form in them causing you nothing but a headache

 

[repuk]

looking great hempfield!!

Cannot wait for the flip!!!

 

[hempfield]

We have ten days to flip (my guess) and then the show will begin.

Since the outdoor temperature raised to positive values, the temp in my grow room has increased to 24-25 degrees Celsius, which is perfect for the girls in vegetative stage and I am afraid that Mazar will overgrow in my 5-6 absence without appropriate training. If her tops will grow to tall to be impossible to be waved under the screen, I will tie down the branches with some PVC coated metallic wire to distribute the tops evenly.

Tomorrow I will post some pics also.

 

[BeachBass]

follow..

 

[hempfield]

9.5 weeks

9.5 weeks

The girls are growing very fast with temps increased to 25C and they drink a lot of water also - almost 2.5L or even more (Mazar is the most thirsty one.

I had to train Mazar every other day , as she grow to fast compared to AK47. I hope she will not grow to much on the next weeks or it will be a pain in the ass to train back her to a even canopy. We'll see ...

Here are some pictures. The number of tops increased on Mazar while on AK47 they are just more ... visible. AK47 is a runt, but she will perform nicely if I give her enough time. The challenge is how to keep Mazar under control without stressing her to much.

I think I will feed her as o mother - with light vegetation nutrients, and top every predominant branch to form an even canopy and train her until AK47 grow big enough to flip.