Rookie Aero Flo Grow Together

[aerokrafter]

Thanks for the updates from everyone!

It's very gratifying to see you guys helping each other out. To see the spirit of this thread in action inspires me!


Happy Holidaze Everyone!

-AK

 

[SouthernHaze]

Merry Christmas everyone! Keep on spreading the peace n love!

 

[hempyftw]

Hope everyones holiday is going well!

Hope everyones holiday is going well!

Happy holidays to all yall!

Wasn't able to get the cam yet. Who knows maybe santa will bring me one! I do know the cam on my new phone I'm getting is better. (I remove all the data from the exif/xmp or whatever the ext is)

AK- Can't thank you enough for getting the ball rolling on this, gives people like me a place to learn from others doing very similar methods.

Southernhaze- Things are looking good an healthy! Pay attention to the details here in the home stretch. One pump left off, or accidental nute formulation can turn things sour quick! I don't know if you will see this happen or not, but right around week 2-4 flower, I start getting roots that proliferate so quickly, they push the netpots out of the fence post! Check for that as often as possible, I've seen a rez end up on the floor after not getting it set back. They are looking great though man!

Got this in the mail yesterday!

I mixed up my first new rez with koolbloom in it yesterday. I'm now at the beginning of week 5/8 flower. I added 2-6-12 GMB of GH nutes and 2tsp. of kool bloom to my 40 gal reservoir. Since I have never used kool bloom before I lowered my base gh nutes from 2-7-14 to 2-6-12. Let me know if anyone thinks I may have over done it, it's been 24 hours though with no tip burn or leaf curl.

I would like to tell you the ph/ppm of the solution but my meter stopped working like 2 years ago and I didn't feel like it was worth it to replace it. The meter just never tells me enough information. They are good for water/nutes you have never mixed before to make sure it's in the right ranges. It is also good for determining if you have under/over fed if you use them properly.

However, I don't feel like the meter is as helpful/informative as most think. When you freshly mix a rez it is informative because you know the N-P-K of the nutes you put in, and you can gather the ppm/ph from the meter, and can calculate exactly how much of each nutrient varied the ppm/ph. But, when you walk up to that rez in a week and test the water and it says 400 ppm. You really don't know what is making up that 400 parts of minerals. It could be an almost toxic ratio of N-P-K with one being way to high because the plant fed on the other nutrients. So at this point if you just add back full strength nutes, you could easily over fertilize with PK in veg or N in flower. (just usually how it would happen).

So I much prefer to just change the reservoir completely rather then try and add something back to alter the nute value or ph. Because you have no idea what the plant used up, and what the plant left behind in the system.

Now if your saying, but hempy, I never mess up my ppm/NPK ratio, It is ALWAYS perfect for the growth cycle my plants are in. In this case your NPK ratio would never change in the water, and the water and nutrients would be used by the plants at an even pace never lowering/highering the ppm of the water. So then your meter would be fairly helpful in letting you know how much of each mineral is in the rez. But if this is YOU, why do you need a meter anyway? You are always making your rez perfect!

The other helpful information the meter gives you is somewhat more informative. Most people don't even use their meters this way though.

A. If you set your new rez to 500 ppm and know the npk, come back in a week and the ppm has dropped to 300 ppm. You have under fed, the plants used more nutrients then water, and lowered your ppm. <-- Refill new rez with higher then 500 ppm.

B. If you set your new rez to 500 ppm and know the npk, come back in a week and the ppm has gone up to 600 ppm. You have over fed, the plants used more water then nutrients, and raised your ppm. <-- Refill new rez with lower then 500 ppm. ( in this case I would probably cut back to 300-250 ppm until that is under feeding them)

In either of those scenarios I would still start with a new rez, never know what has happened over the week.

This is the best way to utilize the meter, if you ask me, well and the way AK does it with recording every days ppm/ph! I'm just not organized enough for that lol.

As far as knowing if I'm in the proper levels for the plants or not, I watch the plants and let them tell me. They start yellowing, I make a new rez with a higher N in the NPK. They start burning, I make a new rez with half the nutes. They show deficiencies, I change the rez add more nutes and adjust the NPK as needed. Although having chosen a well documented nute, like GH and using proven levels of nutrients at proper npk, I rarely have any burning/deficiencies/under nuting. An if I saw these issues, it was usually due to being lazy and trying to add back rather then change the rez.

My closing statement about meters- they give you some info, but I don't find them as useful as some people claim. If the thing told me the ppm and the NPK ratio, I would have a couple laying around. As it goes now, I would rather just change out my hole rez then try and tinker with add-backs and stuff. I admit they are useful for testing new water/nutes to find out an initial proper starting rez level. However RO water and starting out with a proven regimen will help avoid any drastically wrong rez levels.

So don't let someone tell you that you NEED a meter. I've been plugging along for 3 years in hydro, without having a single crop failure due to nutrients lock out/ph drift/ over/under nute. Now I could certainly use a meter to tell me when the plants start getting spider mites or powdery mildew! Those two things have killed some plants over the years. More like I killed the plants the second I saw signs/but same thing right?

/meter rant

Plants are looking great! Didn't get to borrow the cam, sorry! I hope to get better quality pics before the finish I promise!

 

[hempyftw]

pics

pics

Couple more snaps!

Feel free to completely disagree with my meter reasoning anyone! I would appreciate that you write a well thought out and comprehensive reason for using them though. Feel free to pick apart my arguments. We won't ever get better unless we debate these types of things!


Nov. 13

Nov. 30

Dec. 24

 

[ganjalfthegreen]

Looking good all!

 

[SouthernHaze]

Hempy-
Do what works man more power to ya if u don't need the meter. No complaints here. N thanks. Ya I've been keeping an eye on all those roots . Not trying to deal with water damage . Your bomb lookin like a winner by the way. Like the evenness of the canopy, good work bro....

10 more posts.....

 

[SouthernHaze]

What's going on everybody... Hope everything is working out from those who haven't been on lately.
Well I just finished week 3 of flower n they finally are getting that familiar og skunk smell. There are quite a few beautiful bud sites starting and trichs are all over everything but the bigger fans. I have several tops already thru my second level screen. I played with my nute levels heavy last week and killed a couple fan leaves towards the bottom. But now I know where this strains limits are so I can live with it. I also added a supplementary fan below to increase my airflow due to. The amount of fan leaves these bitches pump out. But overall super happy with the progress and will continue to update when I can. Till next time... N questions and comments are appreciated as usual!!! Happy new year icmag!

Data



Day22

 

[aerokrafter]

Looking good!

Keep those updates rolling everyone.

Happy New Year to All!

-AK

 

[oldergrower]

SH, nice looking bro. Keep it up.

Happy New Year to all. OG

 

[hempyftw]

Plugging along nicely....

Plugging along nicely....

Southern- Looks like your gonna have your hands full with those ladies. I love it when they just start to pack in the hairs and get more rigid for the weight of the bud to come. I've always liked the high off the space bomb, just never seems to yield what I want. Could very well be the gardener though, ya know? Now that I have a bunch of tips and tricks from AK though I hope to change that.

The first semi issue has arisen in my set of flowering ladies. A couple of the tallest center buds are a bit to close to the light, and you can tell because the buds aren't growing as fat as some of the others further out. They are also starting to fold up their leaves to help stop the transpiration/high heat coming off that close to the bulb. Unfortunately I can't lift the reflector up anymore. I was thinking about just bending the stem to get them further away from the heat. Any suggestions welcome.

This is the end of week 5 shots. I'm looking to harvest the end of week 8 right around Jan. 20.

Happy New year to everyone! Hope ya get to smoke a doobie and smooch a girl at midnight.

 

[hempyftw]

Had one more.

Had one more.

Southern- I forgot to ask in the last post, how much space is in between your two nets?

I guess I snapped 6 pics on accident. Here's the last one.

I'll take this chance to ask if anyone has ever re-vegged a plant? I did this a couple months back because the heat was making it hard for me to aero clone. I have some pics of them now vegging away. Very weird to see healthy leaves just start growing right out of a bud site lol. If I had a better camera I bet I could get some cool shots.

I wouldn't really suggest this unless you are going to loose a strain after if flowers. If you have a mother of the strain, clones will root and grow much faster then a plant can reveg.

Can't stress this enough, revegging is a last ditch effort type of thing. It probably took like 7 weeks+ for them to start growing normally again. By the time they are where they are now, I don't have a clone issue anymore hehe. I now have too many darn plants. Good problem to have I suppose.

 

[SouthernHaze]

Hempy-
I've got around a foot in between. Like 13ish inches. Man wish we could trade some head room for a little horizontal space I've got plenty!!! I've heard to tie it down with ur semi problem. They looking very nice tho! Can't wait to see the nugs. N ya I am already starting to have my hands full with these ladies.

 

[oldergrower]

Hemp, when I had problems with hieght thats what I did. Bend and tie those tops. Lookin good. OG

 

[SouthernHaze]

Ahhhhhh?!?! Nitrogen lockout this week....high ph prob 6.5 6.8 did it I know it. losing some fan leaves again towards the bottom... Good thing I'm changing the res....hopefully I can correct this ph problem today... Hard to use these fucking ph strips, wish I had the digies for real... But still on that beginners budget for a little longer... I got an update after the res change.but the ladies are beautiful otherwise. Man the greens starting to push through the bud sites now n when I'm working in there my mouth waters from the kushy cheesy aroma.

-SouthernHaze

 

[oldergrower]

Cloning problem

Cloning problem

AK, I pose this question and hopefully someone here can give me some suggestions.

I have a problem cloning strains with kush in them. I am using a turbokloner per you instructions. I put in my diesel and some Weedbeat resin candy and they rooted with no problems.
But, my wifi and RP og18 will not root. After 4 weeks these 2 strains show some bumps but no roots. Cloner water temps approx 72 F. Is this too cool for these strains??? Any suggestions???

I took one of each out of the turbocloner and have put them in an old bubble cloner I had sitting around to see if that would help. Temp in it is around 70 F.
May try adding a little heat to this to see if water temps are the problem.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions I may try. OG

 

[aerokrafter]

I have these suggestions for problem rooting plants. There is no one simple solution for this problem - individuals vary along with your mileage on these.

Reduce your nutes to 0.
Some plants have to be starved to make roots. They have to yellow first and then recover once roots are established. Go back to normal cloner nutes once you have real roots.

Raise Temps
This gets dangerous when you get past about 82 degrees. I have used 5w aquarium heaters in cloners to do this. This requires daily checks. I found 78-80 ideal. Having to use Zone or H2O2 in the cloner slows root developement.

Recut the Stem
If the bottom of the stem is getting soft or starting to discolor, recut above the damaged tissue.

Scuff the stem opposite the angle of the cut.
Use your thumbnail to scrape off the outer green layer in a stripe opposite the angle cut. Sometimes the plant needs this extra injury to respond with roots. Some plants will root first at your scuff mark.

Use a Root Stimulator.
Pick any root stim. They all use the same hormones. I have an ancient bottle of Green Fuse I pull out if I see problems. Use just plain RO water with stim at recommended dosage until you see roots, then swap out to normal nutes.

Use older bottom branches for clones.
When I do my seed test runs, I commonly cut the young growing top for my only clone of the plant. This is risky because the hormones of the plant in active growing top tip aren't ideal for root production. For best and fastest rooting, lower growth tips are preferred.


Some plants are tough to crack and take more than one attempt to get rooting. I can say that using the 15/15/15 formula for the Turbo Kloner 48 has given me the best overall results with the extra wide variety of strains that I deal with.

Like I said at the top, there is no easy single step answer. It can get damn frustrating - just hang in there and keep swinging.

There's a reason it's called growing - not gathering!


Best of luck and keep us updated.

-AK

 

[oldergrower]

Thanks

Thanks

AK, your knowledge and sharing is invaluable to this community. This thread definitely needs to be stickied.

That was my plan to experiment thats why I broke out the old cloner.

Thanks a million OG.

 

[SouthernHaze]

Agreed og.
Info is so priceless.

Ok so Tuesday or Wednesday I started seeing my lower leaves droop n start to fall off. Narrowed it down to my ph. Changed the res n added a little more ph down than usual and got it down to myrange I want (I believe) so I guess we will wait and see how things are the next couple days. Other than that bs ,like I said earlier the green in the buds is starting to push out and the trichs keep on packing in. Bout the middle of the road here for me. Now I'm starting to think of end game preparations as well as next round. Ill probably start cloning here sometime in the next 2 weeks or so.

Well here's a taste

Data

 

[SouthernHaze]

Finally 50th....!!!!

 

[hempfield]

Finally 50th....!!!!