Diary PCBuds mini-grow

[PCBuds]

I watered my plant again with the RO water solution and tested the reservoir and got this...

It's even higher than yesterday, so I siphoned the solution out, PH'ed it down to this and poured it back down at the stalk.

I tested the reservoir again and got this.

So I siphoned it off again and PH'ed it down again.

I ended up with this as my PH in the reservoir...

I figure that's good enough for now, especially since the plant looks fine to me anyway.
I'm wondering if it's a case of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"?

I make shock the plant or upset my bennies by doing it? I dunno?


I'll check it again tomorrow to see if the PH has risen and maybe feed in some more solution PH'ed low again.

 

[aliceklar]

I reuse all my soil too. I just remove the stalk and roots.
I only have to add about 2 liters of new soil/media to the batch, so I don't have to deal with the perlite too much.

I don't have to deal with disposing of all my soil or buying new stuff either then.

yes, am planning to reuse the coco too. Do you do anything to yours other than adding a bit more medium, or is there some special process? (ie, do you need to rinse it to remove salt buildup, and "recharge" it with a calmag solution?)

Compost gets recycled either directly onto my veg beds (if there isnt too much perlite) or via the compost bins or goes post-harvest to fill up big planters outside for tomatoes and outdoor chillies. Danger of this when you're addicted to pollen chucking & there is lots of seed is that there can be volunteers.... summer before last I found a weed seedling germinating with the chillies on my back porch Have to keep a close eye on that!

 

[aliceklar]

I watered my plant again with the RO water solution and tested the reservoir and got this...

...

I figure that's good enough for now, especially since the plant looks fine to me anyway.
I'm wondering if it's a case of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"?

I make shock the plant or upset my bennies by doing it? I dunno?

I'll check it again tomorrow to see if the PH has risen and maybe feed in some more solution PH'ed low again.

Maybe good enough is good enough? Plant seems happy!

 

[PCBuds]

yes, am planning to reuse the coco too. Do you do anything to yours other than adding a bit more medium, or is there some special process? (ie, do you need to rinse it to remove salt buildup, and "recharge" it with a calmag solution?)

All I do is pick through it a bit and pull out the obvious roots but I don't have a problem leaving some in the soil because it's food for my bennies.

I have been adding a few tablespoons of garden lime to my mix when I reuse it, but I forgot that part this time.
(I've got 35 pounds of the stuff to use up. lol)

You don't really need to recharge the media with anything except maybe lime because it takes forever to break down and become available.

It's good to start with un-nuted media because then you know exactly what's going into the media and into the plant.

Calmag is quickly absorbed by the plant so the media doesn't need to be pretreated.

Someone mentioned earlier that when their coco was reused, the bit of roots that remained attracted root bugs, but that isn't a problem for me because of my soil mites.

I was flushing the soil with plain water at one point mostly to flush the soil of nutrients but I stopped doing that and apply nutrient solution right through to the end now.

I have been digging a hole in the top of the planter and filling it with new media to start a new sprout because it has no nutrients and nutrients can kill a baby plant.
But I think I'm going to stop doing that.
It was you that said you started off your seeds in compost, and compost does have nutrients in it.

The only time I've killed a baby with nutes, was when I put a drop of concentrated nutrients directly on a seed that had just sprouted a tap root.

I also realized that I have been filling the hole in the planter with seedling starting mix which is 70% peat.
That may be why I drowned the seedling that I started before my current plant?
(you're not supposed to be able to drown a plant in coco)

I'm not sure what I'm going to do next time?
Maybe it's best to just do what I know that works?
Just don't water the hell out of a seedling. Lol

I still have a bunch of seedling starting mix.

 

[PCBuds]

Maybe good enough is good enough? Plant seems happy!

Yeah, you're probably right.
My plant does look different with all the purple stems and weird looking leaves but she really is packing on the flowers.

I don't want to create a problem by trying to fix something that may not be a problem.


I'm just guessing, but I don't think that my planter is building up salts.
She gets 2 liters a day and drinks it all, so I think that she is absorbing everything?

I figure that if my PH is off, something might get locked out and stay in the reservoir and turn into a salt?
Like maybe zinc right now with my PH being high?

But zinc is a macro nutrient and shouldn't create much salt, and even if it does, I figure that the salt would be inert and no worse than having a bit of sand in the planter?

But I do tend to over think and make stuff up, so I'm not going to worry about it too much. lol

 

[f2obsession]

I was asking about the water only because in my experience, using a "base" water with a relatively high EC gives a lot more stable PH in the pot (or res).

I mean earlier I was using pure distilled water, and PH was swinging up fast in vegetative, and swinging randomly up or down in flowering. Since I mix my 0,86mS tap water (set to the right PH) with distilled water in a 1:1 ratio (so I get 0,43mS), my PH is a lot more stable. I think there is some "ballast" in tap water wich somehow compensates the effect on PH by plant taking up the needed elements from molecules in the fertilizer.

 

[PCBuds]

I was asking about the water only because in my experience, using a "base" water with a relatively high EC gives a lot more stable PH in the pot (or res).

I mean earlier I was using pure distilled water, and PH was swinging up fast in vegetative, and swinging randomly up or down in flowering. Since I mix my 0,86mS tap water (set to the right PH) with distilled water in a 1:1 ratio (so I get 0,43mS), my PH is a lot more stable. I think there is some "ballast" in tap water wich somehow compensates the effect on PH by plant taking up the needed elements from molecules in the fertilizer.

OK, that's all making sense now.

I think that "ballast" is the calcium carbonate in the tap water. It neutralizes both acids and bases and works as a buffer to keep the PH stable.

This is a pack of my PH Buffer Powder. It has a PH of 6.86 and is buffered (with whatever?) to keep it at a stable PH so you can use it as a baseline to calibrate a PH meter.

I assume that you are not using chemical nutes and are just watering your plant.

I'm using chemical nutes and adjust my PH after mixing the nutes in water.
My PH turned out to be about 6 with a 50/50 mix of tap and RO water.

I was mixing my water not to get the proper EC, but to get the proper PH without using up or down.

My new EC meter has a few different scales I can use but I used to the PPM scale because I'm familiar with it.
I get about 800 PPM with my mixed nutrient solution and RO water.
(I don't know what that is in mS, I guess I should figure out how to use that scale. It is the proper scale to use.)

So when I was using a 50/50 mix of tap and RO, my PPM was higher than with straight RO water.

My 800 PPM of nutrient solution may not be buffered too much from the nutrients that are in it?

I wonder what would happen if I used only tap water and PH down instead?
My solution would have a higher PPM (I think it goes up to around 1000?) but it may be better buffered to not fluctuate as much?

Or maybe the PH down would neutralize the buffering effect?

I might mix up some solution with tap water and PH down and check the numbers and learn to read my mS scale.

Apparently I'm supposed to be at around 750-800 PPM according to the feeding charts but I think with the tap water, I may only be adding calcium for the most part, and that might be a good thing?

This is my tap water straight out of the tap.(I didn't degas it.)

I'm going to get stoned and over think the hell out of this now. lol

 

[PCBuds]

More pictures...

 

[PCBuds]

My leaves don't look normal at all...

I removed a dying fan leaf from the bottom of the main cola.

The leaves don't look bad to me.
I think that they are just showing symptoms of light bleaching and necrosis.

I don't think the plant is deficient. I think it is just pulling nutrients out of the leaves because she doesn't need the leaves much anymore.
I think that the leaves are curling under in an effort to transpire at the rate that she needs. She is drinking plenty.


She's just a bleached blonde with curly hair and a drinking problem. Lol

 

[f2obsession]

That PH buffer powder is cool. Its new to me. Your PPM meter has an EC mode, it's printed on it. I guess it will show exactly the double in microSiemens. But you should not bother too much about EC, if you already think in ppm. In my region we think in microSiemens (or miliSiemens), but the point of measuring electroconductivity of water (or a solution) is actually the ppm. My tap water has a 800us EC atm (varies sometimes), and a 400 ppm. So what I mix from distilled water and tap water, you allready have in your tap (actually stil more soft)

I do use chemical nutes, actually I grow mostly in DWC nowadays. So mostly I have to set solution ph to about 5,6. So I use relatively much PH down (phosphoric acid) but stil experience a lot more stability with my 200ppm base water. So I think using only your tap water (without RO) and PH down might be a good idea. But adding a bit less nutes, to keep ppm in the sweet spot i think. (By the way your plant already looks slightly overfertilized to me with the tip burns).

"My 800 PPM of nutrient solution may not be buffered too much from the nutrients that are in it?"

I think technically nutes cause the ph swing. It will be challenging to me, to tell why I think so, because I'm not an expert in chemistry, and speak english not good enough. In an oversimplified approach: you dilute your nutes in RO, have a too acidic ph, and set the ph with tap water. Plant takes up nutes, but not much substance from tap water (so it stays there), so PH rises. The balance moves to the direction of the tap water. But in fact this is not that simple. All the nutrients you give, you give in compound. You don't give Nitrogen atoms, you give complex molecules, like ammonium-nitrate or, calcium-nitrate. Plant takes up N ions, and in case of calcium nitrate Ca too, but leaves ions in the water, which may affect PH, or may react with other ions in the water. I'ts a lot more complex than i understand it, but generally plant feeding up the needed elements from the solution natually causes PH changes. But if there is some "ballast" useless (but not harmful) to the plant, theese PH changes can be less significant. In my experience.

One more thing: There can be huge differency in various strains ppm demand. In last DWC round I growed a Hindu Kush. She always got tip burn, and some deficiency symptoms when I went over 1000uS (500ppm). Fortunatelly in Hydro, numbers tell the promlem in real time (EC was rising, PH was lowering). So I choosed to stick with 800-900uS, and the plant finished well with huge colas. Now I'm trying an own cross of this Hindu Kush with AK 47, and this one demands 1500uS (750ppm). She ate 800uS to 650us in one day.

Excuse me if I was a smartass with that one, You just seemed (to me) to believe in that 800ppm as an ultimate sweet spot.

 

[PCBuds]

That PH buffer powder is cool. Its new to me.

There's 3 different PH powders to calibrate the meters.
You put the meter in the solution and turn the dial (or press a button) to set the three calibration points.

Your PPM meter has an EC mode, it's printed on it. I guess it will show exactly the double in microSiemens.

I finally checked my meter and it has 4 EC scales.
0.5 (in PPM) 0.7 (in PPM) mS and microS

But you should not bother too much about EC, if you already think in ppm.

Yeah, I'll just use the 0.5 PPM

In my region we think in microSiemens (or miliSiemens), but the point of measuring electroconductivity of water (or a solution) is actually the ppm. My tap water has a 800us EC atm (varies sometimes), and a 400 ppm. So what I mix from distilled water and tap water, you allready have in your tap (actually stil more soft)

I do use chemical nutes, actually I grow mostly in DWC nowadays. So mostly I have to set solution ph to about 5,6. So I use relatively much PH down (phosphoric acid) but stil experience a lot more stability with my 200ppm base water. So I think using only your tap water (without RO) and PH down might be a good idea. But adding a bit less nutes, to keep ppm in the sweet spot i think.

OK, I'm going to start doing that.
I'll use tap water next watering.

(By the way your plant already looks slightly overfertilized to me with the tip burns).

I have some nute burn, and I was kinda using that as a gage to know when I'm at the maximum PPM for the plant.

Things do look a little burnt ...

"My 800 PPM of nutrient solution may not be buffered too much from the nutrients that are in it?"

I think technically nutes cause the ph swing. It will be challenging to me, to tell why I think so, because I'm not an expert in chemistry, and speak english not good enough.

I took chemistry in highschool 40 years ago and remember most of the basics but I have to say it in my own words now because I forget the technical language.

In an oversimplified approach: you dilute your nutes in RO, have a too acidic ph, and set the ph with tap water. Plant takes up nutes, but not much substance from tap water (so it stays there), so PH rises. The balance moves to the direction of the tap water. But in fact this is not that simple. All the nutrients you give, you give in compound. You don't give Nitrogen atoms, you give complex molecules, like ammonium-nitrate or, calcium-nitrate. Plant takes up N ions, and in case of calcium nitrate Ca too, but leaves ions in the water, which may affect PH, or may react with other ions in the water. I'ts a lot more complex than i understand it, but generally plant feeding up the needed elements from the solution natually causes PH changes. But if there is some "ballast" useless (but not harmful) to the plant, theese PH changes can be less significant. In my experience.

From what I remember the calcium carbonate in the water is in suspension and doesn't break apart into ions in plain water.

When something like ammonium-nitrate is dissolved in water, it breaks apart into ions. The nitrogen ion is absorbed by the plant and the ammonium ion is set free in the water which would make the water basic or caustic.

That caustic ion then attaches to the calcium carbonate molecule (that didn't ionize) and becomes absorbed and neutralized, giving off CO2 (or something like that?)

The same thing happens when other nutrients are absorbed by the plant leaving behind Anions or Cations that then react with the calcium carbonate instead of raising or lowering the PH.


When I put the Rolaids in my RO water, the water went from 4 PPM to only 26 PPM with the Rolaids.

Then, just for experimental purposes, I poured in some PH down.
It was about 1-3 tsp or so, I just poured it in.
It started bubbling and foaming and churning around. Lol

Then I tested it with my EC meter and it started flashing, so I quickly washed off my meter because I thought that I was dissolving my meter in acid. Lol

I checked my instructions and it said that it only reads up to 5000 PPM then it starts to flash.

So, I neutralized a bunch of acid, releasing CO2 and calcium, as well as released a butt load of acid ions in the water.
(I guess I used a bit too much. Lol)

One more thing: There can be huge differency in various strains ppm demand. In last DWC round I growed a Hindu Kush. She always got tip burn, and some deficiency symptoms when I went over 1000uS (500ppm). Fortunatelly in Hydro, numbers tell the promlem in real time (EC was rising, PH was lowering). So I choosed to stick with 800-900uS, and the plant finished well with huge colas. Now I'm trying an own cross of this Hindu Kush with AK 47, and this one demands 1500uS (750ppm). She ate 800uS to 650us in one day.

Luckily, I grow one plant and one strain, so I can at least try to figure out what works for that strain.

Thanks again ReikoX

Excuse me if I was a smartass with that one, You just seemed (to me) to believe in that 800ppm as an ultimate sweet spot.

That's fine.

The only reason that I used 800 ppm was because that's what my feed charts are saying.

My previous PPM meter was a piece of crap so I couldn't use the ppm from the charts, and had to use the tsp instead.
I figured that if my new meter was correct, then I could correlate the two to get a base line.

But I still don't know if the PPM on the charts are 0.5 or 0.7 ??

Apparently one is for Europe and one is for North America and there is a third one for somewhere else ?

So I still don't know what's going on.
Lol


I guess that I should just read the plant more and the meters less or just crank everything up to maximum and see what happens. Lol.

 

[PCBuds]

This is my PH down...

The guy at the Hydroponics shop just poured some in a bottle for me, but I don't know what kind of acid it is.
I didn't know to ask at the time.

I just kinda learn and relearn stuff as I go.

Maybe I can test it somehow to see what kind of acid it is ?
Maybe there is a taste test I can use?
Maybe if I drink some, I can tell what kind of acid it is by the flavor of my burps.
lol

(I am kidding by the way. I won't taste or drink any. lol)

 

[PCBuds]

I do use chemical nutes, actually I grow mostly in DWC nowadays. So mostly I have to set solution ph to about 5,6.

I did a quick bit of research on DWC and I think I kinda have a DWC setup?

I don't have the bubbler happening and my "reservoir" is full of clay pellets but it's very similar and I do have roots growing down and circling the bottom of the planter.
(at least that big plant had roots right to the bottom. My last plant was much smaller and the roots didn't make it too far past the netting above the reservoir.)


I kinda think that the media I have above the clay pellets might be considered "soil", so a soil PH is probably appropriate, but the bottom of my planter is a reservoir and I think that I should aim for a 5.6 PH for at least that part of my setup.

I figure that salt can build up in my "soil" because it can dry out enough to have the ions recombine into salts in the media, but most salts should wash through to the bottom.

Once it washes through the media and gets to the reservoir the salts should stay ionized.

So I probably have lockouts happening in the reservoir because of a high PH.
The PH in the reservoir was as high as 7.5 at one point, which is locking out both soil and hydro.


I don't think that there is too much I can do to save my leaves at this point, but I think that it would be smart to get my reservoir down to 5.6 so my plant can make use of all the nutrients for filling in the flowers properly.

My leaves are probably showing signs of both lock-out (deficiency) and nute burn.



This is the big plant I grew last year.
It was the exact same age as my current plant is now.

That plant looked a lot bigger and healthier than my current plant does.

I'm pretty sure that I wasn't checking my PH for that plant and was using tap water at the time.

I think I was just lucky, and the PH happened to be at a better range ?

 

[PCBuds]

My planter was about half empty. I drained it and tested the solution.

​


I dumped it and made new solution using tap water and got this...

​


I PHed it down to this with 8 drops of PH down...

​


I poured it in at the stalk, drained it and got this...

​


I PHed it down again and poured it through again.

I did that over about 7-8 times. I PHed it down to 3.6 a couple of times then finally got down to 5.82 and got tired of doing it.
I must have used over 100 drops.

I'll check on it later and do it some more to get it down further.


I think that me forgetting to add the lime to the mix for this plant has something to do with my high PH?

 

[PCBuds]

I finally got my PH down to a better level...

I had to flush the solution through the plant about 15 times and used about 12 ml of PH down.


The plant doesn't look too bad...

It will be interesting to see if she recovers and if her leaves green up again.
I don't know if I did permanent damage to them ?


Thanks f2obsession for helping me realize that my plant wasn't normal and healthy even for the weird way that I grow my plants. Lol

 

[f2obsession]

I hope It wont get worse. I think 5,66 Ph is about ideal for the "res" but extremely low for the soil part. And 1163 ppm? I can only hope it wont burn.

"It will be interesting to see if she recovers and if her leaves green up again."

In my experience, small leaves in the buds can green up well from this point, bigger fan leaves stay pale, or go yellow, or die off.

Anyway, if you can't handle separately the "hydro" part, and soil (I think in this system you can't really), I think you should aim somewhere between 6 and 6,4. That's the range where both (Hydro and soil) can work

 

[PCBuds]

I hope It wont get worse. I think 5,66 Ph is about ideal for the "res" but extremely low for the soil part. And 1163 ppm? I can only hope it wont burn.

"It will be interesting to see if she recovers and if her leaves green up again."

In my experience, small leaves in the buds can green up well from this point, bigger fan leaves stay pale, or go yellow, or die off.

Anyway, if you can't handle separately the "hydro" part, and soil (I think in this system you can't really), I think you should aim somewhere between 6 and 6,4. That's the range where both (Hydro and soil) can work

Thanks for the help F2.


I'll just start PHing my feed water to 6.0 from now on.

I didn't know that you could grow both soil and Hydro with the same PH, so I'll just feed her with 6.0


I don't really know if I have soil or Hydro.
It is a 50/50 mix of coco and perlite, but I have been adding about 1.5 liters of sphagnum peat moss to the mix at the start of every grow to start the new seedling.

I don't know if adding that organic matter means that I am growing in soil now ?

I kinda think that the peat doesn't matter much and I still have a Hydro setup, but I don't know ?


I think I'll drain the planter and start over at 800 PPM and 6.0 PH

What's in the reservoir right now might be out of wack and salty because of the lockouts and it's probably best to discard it.
I'll check the PH and PPM to see if it changed since yesterday.


I can also start to check my PPM and PH of the reservoir just after watering the plant, and if the PH is higher than the input water, I can siphon it off, PH it down and pour it back down the tube directly to the reservoir.

 

[PCBuds]

I siphoned off the reservoir to check the numbers...

The PH and PPM had risen to this...

I dumped it out and made a new batch of solution...

I used only degassed tap water and all my regular nutes with no PH up or down and the numbers appear perfect.

I think that's why my big plant did so well. I was just using tap water with my nutes and didn't check my PPM or PH.



I poured that in at the stalk, siphoned it back out and got this...

The PPM was kinda high, so I dumped out about 500 ml, added 500 ml of tap water, PHed it and got this...
I poured it down the tube.

I siphoned that off one last time to check it and got this...

I figured that was pretty good so I just poured it back down the tube.


I decided to add a bubbler down the tube for good measure while she's hopefully recovering.

 

[f2obsession]

I'm glad, you finally installed a bubbler. Pretty small one (i guess it pumps about 100 liter/hour) but much more than nothing. Underwater roots need oxigen support. I think from this pont, you can read and handle numbers like in hydro, if you take samples from the bottom of the tank. Thoose numbers tell you much faster, and more accurate what to do, than plant does trough its reactions/symptoms.

But I think better make changes carefully, the buffering effect of coco and peat can trick you. For example, your EC will probably rise afrer this flush, but so far, not because it's too high, only because coco and peat are stil releasing buffered salts.

 

[f2obsession]

One more thing: I can't tell, where is water level in your tank, but air pump should be above it. Or maybe that red thing in the tube is a valve? Anyway without protection valve, the tube can siphon back water from tank to the air pump if air pump fails for any reason. And if pump is in "underwater" height.