Diary PCBuds mini-grow

[PCBuds]

I'm thinking that I might change my bet back to 1 pound ??

This is looking really promising...

 

[PCBuds]

The window plant looks good...

 

[PCBuds]

I got my planter ready for the next plant.

I started with putting on my reading glasses and grabbed a flashlight to look for soil mites.

Luckily, I found a couple, so I know they are still there.

They are really tiny and fast and really hard to get a picture of though.

I read that soil mites live in the top couple of inches of soil, and don't normally survive transplanting, so I took the top few inches of soil off the planter and set it aside.

Then I pulled out the root stalk ...

I noticed that there was a lot of muck at the bottom so I emptied the planter and washed the clay pellets...

Apparently my cat wants to go for a ride ??

 

[PCBuds]

I made a bubbler that puts the bubbles in the middle of the planter...

Then I just stuck the whole root stalk back into the bucket. Fuck it. I'm going with no till. Lol

I just removed the stalk and put the top of the soil back on top and called it finished !!

I'm going to use my old roots as an organic, slow release substrate. Lol

It shouldn't rot too fast.
I'll just keep an eye on my PH.


I'm going to start another seed.

 

[PCBuds]

This is sucking...

I redid it...

I think I'm going to remove the dome soon.
I've grown window plants in the winter before with no dome. It was cold and dry, and they did fine...

 

[PCBuds]

My daily weigh in...

So, about 695 grams.

I think that I've still got a chance of getting a pound out of her.. ?

 

[f-e]

The rusty bit isn't a contact. It's the iron core. You have two halfs, each made of E shaped laminations. The coil sits around the middle bar. When switched on, the two E cores slam together. That is the physical movement. The contacts are attached to the moving E core. On the left appears to be the switch that's closed when there is no current in the core winding. Power up the core, and that switch opens. The other 3 are physically up-side-down in comparison. The core moves, closing, not opening them

The red bits, the connections. The green bits, the moving plates. The yellow bits, the actual contact points. Notice how the left one is closed, but when the core moves upwards (in this orientation) that plate moves up with it. Look now to the right one, it's got the plate below it, not above. It will come up, closing the circuit.

 

[PCBuds]

The rusty bit isn't a contact. It's the iron core. You have two halfs, each made of E shaped laminations. The coil sits around the middle bar. When switched on, the two E cores slam together. That is the physical movement. The contacts are attached to the moving E core. On the left appears to be the switch that's closed when there is no current in the core winding. Power up the core, and that switch opens. The other 3 are physically up-side-down in comparison. The core moves, closing, not opening them

The red bits, the connections. The green bits, the moving plates. The yellow bits, the actual contact points. Notice how the left one is closed, but when the core moves upwards (in this orientation) that plate moves up with it. Look now to the right one, it's got the plate below it, not above. It will come up, closing the circuit.

Oh,... OK...

I had it all wrong.

I didn't take the other half apart to expose the contacts.
I'll take a other look at it and see if I can get it all apart without breaking it.

 

[PCBuds]

There we go...
I can see the contacts in there.

The rusty bit isn't a contact. It's the iron core.

Yeah,... I'm feeling kinda stupid right now. Duhhh Lol

 

[Sampas92]

Good luck on the next one buds

Peace

 

[PCBuds]

Good luck on the next one buds

Peace

Thanks Sampas

I think I'll do better with the next one.
I'm going to keep the closet warm and humid for the start and maybe use a dome at the beginning as well ?

And I think if I keep an eye on my PH this time, everything should work out better.

I don't know why my PH got so out of wack with this last plant, because I did everything the same as I've always done, but it doesn't matter why.
I just need to keep it in range which is easy enough to do.



I just put another seed in water and my closet and planter are just about ready for another plant.

Growing in the winter always works better for me

 

[PCBuds]

The numbers look better with my window plant...

The dome is kind of precariously perched.
The dome has a top that isn't square, and it makes it hard to deal with...

 

[Sampas92]

Thanks Sampas

I think I'll do better with the next one.
I'm going to keep the closet warm and humid for the start and maybe use a dome at the beginning as well ?

And I think if I keep an eye on my PH this time, everything should work out better.

I don't know why my PH got so out of wack with this last plant, because I did everything the same as I've always done, but it doesn't matter why.
I just need to keep it in range which is easy enough to do.



I just put another seed in water and my closet and planter are just about ready for another plant.

Growing in the winter always works better for me

Why not flush it and finish with a light dose of nutrients for maybe a cleaner start for the girl? Maybe would help with the ph for the next grow?

well i guess if the dome works for one must works for the other so if all is good with this one why not?

Peace

 

[PCBuds]

Why not flush it and finish with a light dose of nutrients for maybe a cleaner start for the girl? Maybe would help with the ph for the next grow?

The PH is good now.
I wasn't paying attention to the PH earlier on and it went up over 7.0, then the leaves turned yellow from PH lockout.
I thought it was light bleaching so I ignored it. Lol

So she suffered for quite a while before I flushed it a bunch of times to fix the PH.
She did recover, but the damage was done and she didn't get as big as she could have.

well i guess if the dome works for one must works for the other so if all is good with this one why not?

Peace

I was kinda using my entire closet as the dome by keeping it warm and keeping the humidity up.

Using a dome in the closet will be easier because I've got more space and clearance from the lights.
It should work quite well.

 

[f-e]

It's an odd shaped lid isn't it.
With that gap so large, I wonder how a tube might work instead. Stood on the surface with the top open. I guess we don't see it done for good reason, and airflow in the room would be quite a contributing factor. I look at this and wonder about the slight tip roll, that we saw much more without the lid. Could it be the dryer air creeping in. Could it be the plant taking in more feed as it breathes better now. Do we even have a combination where everything flows well through the core of the plant, more than it did, but then reaches the drier outer extremities. Perhaps the dome isn't big enough and so see's quite a gradient between the top and the bottom lips.
I think it has access to a lot of water. We don't normally stand any plant pot in a saucer of water. That looks like it could go days without the water it's stood in. I reckon the heavy look is probably because it's over-watered. It's a much more common occurrence than my musings over the domes placement. Which might be best left to guys in white coats.


Can you wire up a humidity controller? I think most peeps buy an inkbird, but you might like to stay modular. I like this style
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000...rch-mainSearch
17$cd gets you two quite separate controllers in just one box. They just share the mains power. Then the temp half and RH half both have a relay output. I use the RH part in my veg/drying area. Set at 60% I put my 12v PC fan wire through the relay, to switch it on as a tiny extract. You could use such a thing to just blow in the direction of the plant bell from afar, when you want to lower the RH by shifting some air out.
Programming is easy. The RH section wants to know the RH to switch on and the RH to switch off. Two values. Mine comes on at 63 and off at 60.
Consider the Temp side. On at 25 and off at 20 would cool a room with an extractor or aircon. If you instead said on at 20 off at 25, now it controls heating a space.
17$ gets Temperature and RH control, up and down. It has a good response rate, and updates the screen constantly. So you can see yourself blow on it.
The downside is it's very bright. It lights up the room with red and blue LEDs. You might need to tape one over a few times. The other problem, it's for panel mounting. It's got screw terminals, but like your PSU's there is no cable relief. Personally a lay the wires over the top and cable/zip tie them firmly. You don't want a power wire breaking free.
They wouldn't suit many growers, When a pair of inkbirds might cost just 3 times the price. I like them for little jobs though, and carry them like prototyping parts, rather than commercial grow space kit. If you press enough bottons together, an extra menu comes up, where you can tune the sensor. Making the reading match your other gauges. I sometimes go to adjust it, and dread having forgot how. It's easy though. If you want to adjust the on, you hold the top button till it flashes the on value. Then use the top and bottom buttons to change the value, and soon after it stops flashing. If you want to change the off, you hold the bottom button. Lots of youtube support also. In the deep menu are things like pause before switching. I run a fridge with one, and have it pause 4 minutes before switching. So the fridge motor doesn't run the moment I open the door. You need not ever dig so deep though in normal use.

Edit: The models on the shelf change constantly. Screen layout and just model number. They are all about the same, with just deep menu changes. I think my last was a 3000 and these are 3028 or something. My screens are stacked, not side by side. Same thing though.

 

[PCBuds]

It's an odd shaped lid isn't it. With that gap so large, I wonder how a tube might work instead.

I raised it up on purpose.
I'm getting her ready for life without a dome.

I look at this and wonder about the slight tip roll, that we saw much more without the lid. Could it be the dryer air creeping in. Could it be the plant taking in more feed as it breathes better now. Do we even have a combination where everything flows well through the core of the plant, more than it did, but then reaches the drier outer extremities.

It's just my window plant.
I don't really care, as long as she doesn't croak or get too big for the window sill.

I like to do things wrong way on purpose to see what happens.

So instead of me adjusting the environment to get the plant that I want to see, I let her adjust to the environment and show me the plant that she wants to be.

Perhaps the dome isn't big enough and so see's quite a gradient between the top and the bottom lips.

There was a huge difference in the readings from when I had the hygrometer sitting on the soil, then an inch off the surface, then up at the top.

I think it has access to a lot of water.

Yeah, the media is soaked.

We don't normally stand any plant pot in a saucer of water.

Yeah,.. but I'm not normal. Lol

That looks like it could go days without the water it's stood in.

About a week or two, but it needs water every day when it's big.

I reckon the heavy look is probably because it's over-watered.

Yeah, but she'll get used to it.

It's a much more common occurrence than my musings over the domes placement. Which might be best left to guys in white coats.

The guys in white coats scare me.
They might scoop me up with their big butterfly nets and take me away. Lol

Can you wire up a humidity controller?

Yeah, but I'm not going to.

I've found that temperature and humidity don't make a huge heap of difference.

My closet plant just finished growing in 35% RH and turned out fine. (except for my PH issues that stunted her.)

And when I did try to change the RH, everything went to shit.
I ended up with water on the floor of my closet and water droplets in my circulation fan.

I am going to dome my next seedling in the closet and hang a wet rag, as well as add some heat if necessary, but only during her incubation period, then I will just leave her be.



I like to KISS and if making changes and complicating my grow with all kinds of instruments, probes, machinery and fancy bells and whistles just leads to problems, then it's not worth it, even if the problems were my fault.
Especially if I'm fixing something that I didn't see as a problem in the first place.


My PH is a different story. That's really important, as well as nutrition which needs to be properly monitored.
And of course Lighting.
That trumps everything.

You can have everything dialed in perfectly, but if your lighting is crap or inadequate then you're not going to end up with very much to smoke.



This guy is my hero.
He grows weed in outer space. Lol

The chart shows light as the key factor in plant growth.

I've given too much of just about everything to my plant, but I still haven't been able to give her too much light.

I do have another dozen LED strips I can install in my closet though. Lol

 

[PCBuds]

My daily weigh in...

So, it's about 484 grams now.

It looks like I'm not going to get a pound out of my plant.
I'm sure that I've got more than 30 grams of sticks in there.

 

[GanjaLion]

You say you cant give too much light, but go look at the scope pics you took of the trichomes. 75 percent of them are just stalks without heads, cause they are melted off. I wont get into the foxtails and lack of density too, but you seem to have a handle on it better than anybody else around here haha. I better go listen to that space boy you mentioned. Do what you want its your grow, but im sure you misguide alot of people when they wind up on your page, when you make huge claims like you do hehe

 

[PCBuds]

You say you cant give too much light, but go look at the scope pics you took of the trichomes. 75 percent of them are just stalks without heads, cause they are melted off.

I took a bud from the middle of my drying plant and took some more pictures...

I don't really know what I'm looking at but this does look like a lot of headless trichomes ??

I'm thinking that they might be hairs (if the flowers have them too?), or immature trichomes, or evaporated trichomes, or broken trichomes ?

The plant wasn't really ripe and I saw very few amber trichomes, but I wanted to finish the plant so I could fix up my closet and start another plant.

I think that I may have broken the heads off by spinning the plant around in the closet where the branches would bang up against the walls.

The low humidity may have made the trichomes brittle too ??


I broke a bunch of trichomes off the bud when I took the pictures...

I may have the best parts of my plant all over the floor of my closet. Lol

 

[PCBuds]

I wont get into the foxtails and lack of density too, but you seem to have a handle on it better than anybody else around here haha.

The density should come to light once my plant is weighed and jarred.

I grew a plant with my fluorescent fixture and 2 1/2 ounces filled my 1 gallon jar.
Now with my LED strips it takes at least 5 ounces to fill the jar.

I better go listen to that space boy you mentioned.

Dr. Bugbee
He's a scientist funded by NASA.

https://youtu.be/jS9rJSoGQLw

https://youtu.be/ID9rE5JewVg

https://youtu.be/JwtkHxv_3pU

https://youtu.be/UZO8Fb0ryW8

Do what you want its your grow, but im sure you misguide alot of people when they wind up on your page, when you make huge claims like you do hehe

I don't view my thread as a guide for anyone.
I don't claim to know what I'm doing, I only know what I've done and post the results.

I may be misinformed but I'm not lying about anything, although my measuring equipment has been full of crap a lot of the time. Lol