wtfn's 4000w legal medical soil food web organic grow show

[whythefnot]

New Compost tea rig:

It puts out a LOT more air this way! I made an octagonal pvc rig that I crammed down in the bottom of the trash bin. I'll get pics of that when I'm done with the brew.


Transplant pics:

They look ready to me!!

I'm halfway through, taking a lunch/smoke/upload break downstairs and then I'll get back on it. A few aren't ready for a transplant. I have a plan for them...

 

[whythefnot]

SOON

 

[whythefnot]

As promised here are some pics of my compost tea rig:

It makes a lot of bubbles this way!


Anyway, I mulched the transplants this morning. Now my room stinks. Hopefully that will go away soon.

I found the right nozzle for my pump sprayer. Now I can strain my compost tea and apply it as a foliar feed quickly and very easily!
In this photo you can see the evidence of heat damage from last week during my a/c crisis. Ever since I installed the new one, temp has been rock solid. And I have a lot more floor space. The jury is still out on the smell -- we'll have to wait until mid-flower to find out.

 

[whythefnot]

As you might have expected, I have fungus gnats. I'm positive they came in with the fox farm, since I noticed them developing before I brought my cooked soil into the room, and my clones were planted in FFOF only. I put out 4 sticky traps and I've been neeming the hell out of the plants, although I'm not entirely sure that's supposed to do anything. There seem to be quite a few less now. I'll just go from here and keep a close eye on things.

 

[FunkBomb]

You've got a great thread going on here. Best of luck to you.

-Funk

 

[whythefnot]

Thanks! I use this thread to keep track of stuff in my room, so I try to keep it fairly detailed. I can't stand writing things down, so this way I can remember things like when I flipped my lights, or when I started that last batch of tea, but I can also show a couple of my grower friends around the country what I have going on. I'll probably keep it up for the first two or three harvests before I run out of steam.


I rounded up a co2 controller as part of a package deal with a burner for $200. It's an autopilot -- so far that's all I know. I doubt it's the fuzzy logic one but that would be sweet -- it's probably the APCECO, which is pretty great too. I just need a good deal on a decent one to get me through this first harvest or two and I'll invest in one of the big dogs. That leaves me with a second burner, which I will probably try to resell for a slight profit since this guy is selling it in a hurry and taking far less than he could get if he could wait. That would get me my co2 controller on the dirt cheap, possibly under $100.

Update: It's the fuzzy logic one! I'm super stoked about it! Can't wait to go pick it up!

 

[whythefnot]

That mulch is completely loaded with fungus. I'll probably keep some to use in my tea recipes. The top dressing I gave it should be adequate for fungal inoculations throughout the grow cycle. Worm castings make mostly bacterial tea, but it also ends up with a significant amount of fungus as well. The plant itself has some limited control over the soil biology as well so I'm not sure how much I'll need to focus on brewing bacterial vs. fungal teas. I may just keep going with the same recipe plus a handful of mulch added to the mix throughout the entire life cycle if I don't see any glaring deficiencies.

 

[whythefnot]

That isn't heat damage! The soil pH is way too low, and the plants are showing it. I got a soil pH meter today just to confirm -- it's at 5.5. I have plenty of lime left but I'm looking for something that works a little quicker than what I have...I'll do some googling.


But check out the deal I got on craigslist!!

300 bucks. That's it. For all 3. That's the real deal fuzzy logic co2 controller, an 8-nozzle co2 burner and a big ass carbon filter. He said it was only used for 2 runs -- I'm inclined to believe him. Seemed like a pretty laid back, straight-forward guy. I'm still floored by the deal he gave me. The MSRP on that stuff put together is around $1500.

And it all seems to work fine.

Anyway, back to fixing my plants.

 

[whythefnot]

What I ended up doing:

I took the remainder of my box of lime (3/4 of the box) and dumped it into a bucket. Then I added about 4 gallons of water and stirred it around a lot until it was very, very cloudy. I took some of the lime out at this point and top-dressed the plants. Then I diluted that cloudy water 1:6 with clean water and fed that to my plants until it was gone. The pH is slowly climbing back up. Hopefully it's just a memory now, but I'll keep a close watch.

 

[whythefnot]

Since then I've gone and gotten another small bag of pelletized lime and top dressed my plants with basically the entire thing. I'm seeing a little bit of dark green coming creeping back, so it's working, but oh-so-slowly.

Today I bit the bullet and went and got a 50-lb sack of hydrated lime (the kind used for mixing concrete was all I could find). I sprinkled half a cup over half my plants, and watered lightly with the pump sprayer to really mix it in. I didn't want to do all of them just in case I was making a huge mistake. I've used hydrated lime before in small quantities with great results, but I'm still a little nervous since my fate in cali is resting on this grow going well.

pH seems to be resting around 7 for now. I'm expecting it to crawl back down a little as the chemistry happens. If that half looks good in the morning, I'll hit the other half the same way tomorrow. Hopefully they look good enough for a group shot by early next week. I'm still shooting to flip the lights by Thursday, but that's not exactly set in stone considering the circumstances...

 

[whythefnot]

I picked up a dehumidifier today -- very much necessary in this type of grow. That should be the last piece of equipment I get for quite a while. The only other thing I'm lacking is a good fan dedicated to the carbon filter. Right now I have a small duct booster, like the little engine that could, wheezing a whopping 150 cfm through a ~1300cfm can filter 125. Lolz.

I'll run it 24hrs/day until the room gets really smelly. Then I'll disassemble my portable a/c and extract one of the very powerful blower fans inside of it. I really can't afford any more equipment at this point. My girlfriend and I are still looking for jobs here and we're down to just barely having rent and bills to finish out the grow, and basically no money for food.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to the temp office. I may yet get a proper inline fan for that carbon filter this grow.


The plants are a mixed bag right now. Some are much more affected by the pH issues than others, but all of them are growing quickly. Some are pretty severely discolored now, but the damage has definitely stopped and recovery has begun within the last few days. They're growing right on schedule though. I'm going to let them green up all the way before I flip the lights. Hopefully that will also be right on schedule for this coming Thursday. Photos later this evening.

 

[whythefnot]

6 days after transplant, with a handful of speedbumps along the way:

All in all, they don't look too bad. They aren't nearly the picture-perfect dark green plants I had hoped to have at this point, but things seem to be back on track now and I don't think they're much worse for the wear. I'll give them a few days to green all the way back up before I start them flowering and I don't think the final quality should be affected one bit.


After doing a lot of thinking and retracing my steps, I'm pretty sure I screwed up that 30gal batch of compost tea I used during transplant. I'm almost positive that's where my issues are coming from. Here's why:

1. The malady affected both the plants that were transferred and the plants that were not transferred, and left in plain ol' fox farm only used for 2 weeks. I've never had this problem with fox farm before.
2. The first 18 - 20 hours of that brew were done with the 5gal rig. I didn't realize going into it that it wasn't going to be nearly enough air. I got my pvc rig hooked up halfway through the brew.
3. I brewed way too long. Those smaller batches like to go 48 hours but after brewing a couple larger batches I realize they go sour after around 36 hours.
4. It smelled a little sour that morning, but had the 'earthy' smell of good tea later that day after adding the extra airflow.
5. [This was the real light bulb that clicked on over my head] The plants that were most affected were the ones directly under the lights. Now, I know you're asking, "why does that point to the compost tea?" and it's a good question. The reason it worked out that way is because the first few plants I transplanted got full strength tea, straight from the brew. After a few gallons, I realized I did not have nearly enough to go full strength on all my plants, and I diluted very heavily (increasingly heavily, which turned out to be a clue). As I transplanted, I placed the plants directly under the light first, then radiating outward from there. That means that the plants directly under the light, especially the one on the left side, were the ones that got the strongest tea brew. The plants directly under the light on the left side also happen to be the plants most afflicted over the last few days. I saved most of the purple platinum kush's for last when transplanting. Not coincidentally, they seem to have suffered the least. They didn't show any symptoms at all until days after I started treating for pH.

Two days later, with some of this just beginning to congeal in my brain, I made another batch and used it after only 24 hours just to be safe. That was also the day I first hit them with crystallized dolomite lime and half a bottle of pH up. In the following few days I put another bag of lime on them and about 3/4 of a cup total of hydrated lime across the whole crop. I feel I am justified in having done this after a soil probe pH test of 5.5. It has since moved to 6.2 - 6.8 for all the pots. They're looking much better, but I'm not entirely sure whether it's the lime or the properly-brewed compost tea or a combination of both. I'm leaning toward the latter.

Anyway, I started another 10gal batch today. Although my plants still have not dried out completely since I've transplanted, I feel like it's more important to ensure a healthy culture of beneficial bacteria are thriving in the soil than promotion of root growth. I installed my dehumidifier today so it shouldn't take long at all for them to dry out in those fabric pots.


I should mention that they're all bunched up under 2000w right now. I'm only using 2 lamps to veg since they're so small still. When I flip into flower I'll give them some room to breathe.

 

[whythefnot]

I think I'll make an imgur account so I can get some bigger pictures in here...

Edit: apparently I already have a photobucket account. Good deal.

 

[whythefnot]

I forgot to mention I scored a 2.5gal jug of earth juice hi brix molasses for plants at the hydro shop when I drove to get that controller and filter. After the guy saved me a mountain of money, I followed him to the shop where he knew for sure that they had what I was looking for, and for $26 after tax, too! That's gonna last me a through 25 20gal brews. I haven't decided whether I'll do one or two per week but I probably won't brew more than 20gal/week from here on out. This is my first big grow with compost tea so I'm still feeling things out...

 

[whythefnot]

The new batch of tea smelled a little suspicious, so I threw it on next year's vegetable garden plot out back and started over. But before I did, I went and got a gallon of bleach and a few more sprayers and cleaned the hell out of everything. The trash can that I had been using as a reservoir sprung a leak on the bottom, so I won't be using it anymore. I rigged up the black one to temporarily suit my needs. I'll have to do a little thinking and poking around before I buy another one.

I noticed the instructions on the earth juice hi brix molasses says to use 4 Tbsp/gal. That would put me at a ratio of .015:1, whereas I need a ratio of .005:1. So knowing that too much sugar can cause problems in a higher-temp compost tea brew, I went with the original recipe: 190ml molasses per 10gal. By tomorrow I'll know if I got a good brew again or not. In the meantime, I'll keep my nose on full alert.

 

[whythefnot]

I just did some calculations that I probably should have done months ago, although I doubt it would have affected anything.

My air pump will only allow me to brew roughly 20gal at a time. It's rated for 600gph, though I doubt I'm getting quite that much out of it. That would be 1.3368cfm. According to microbeorganics.com, minimum air flow required for a good brew is .05cfm/gal, and recommended airflow is .08cfm/gal. This means that in a 10gal brew, I'd get .1337cfm/gal, which is plenty, and in a 20gal brew, I'd get half that, which is .0668cfm/gal. That's as low as I'm willing to take it right now, given my spotted record with brewing these things.

I had no business trying to brew a 30gal batch in the first place, and now a half dozen or more of my plants are paying the price for it.

Anyway, 10gal brew should be ready tomorrow around 4pm. Wish me luck.


Edit: As of 1:15 pm the brew smells really strong and earthy with a pH of 6.8. I threw the last batch out because it was pHing at 5, which told me that some toxic byproduct, alcohol or otherwise, was being produced -- or that it had gone very fungal. It actually smelled ok, but I knew I hadn't properly cleaned my equipment before the brew, which was enough for me to make the call to throw it out. No need to set myself back again right now.

 

[whythefnot]

I also noted that smaller holes in the pvc air spreader rig produced a much more uniform bubble pattern. Smaller and more frequent = better, to a point.

A few hours ago I found my last bud of the best strain I grew last year in the pocket of the pants I wore this morning to go to the temp agency (although I never went -- not because I found the bud, I swear! -- but because they told me to come in tomorrow). I'm running really really low so this is a big score!

 

[whythefnot]

Okay, these pics are from last night. Here's the worse-looking side of the room:

Here are the two worst plants (almost all the rest have fullly recovered):

Here's the side of the room with the nicer plants, before and after LSTing some of the PPKs:

 

[whythefnot]

I've failed to mention so far that the room also has a closet:

I'm going to use it as a mother/clone room. I accidentally killed one of my ladies last week with the hydrated lime (still not sure what happened, but her root system was almost nonexistent -- guess all the lime just slid down into the hole where her roots were concentrated and I didn't dilute it well enough, causing a severe burn) so when I realized there was no saving her I cut her up into clones. 6 total I believe? They're in there. You can see the humidity dome on the right side of the pic. Eventually I'll get a light (~250, maybe 400 cmh) in there but not this grow, no $ left.

 

[whythefnot]

So it's looking like I'm going to push back flipping the lights a few days. Most of them are looking great and are a great size to flower, but there are a few stragglers so I'll have to make up for them by vegging a little longer. Also I'm still waiting on the worst-looking plants to green up. I gave them some good tea yesterday -- hopefully that will help green them up a little. If the one worst plant isn't green again by the time I want to flower, I'll just cut her up for clones. I'm thinking maybe Sunday or Monday tentatively, but only time will tell...