7th Grow: Hempy Bucket w/auto watering

Last night I decided to start the flower phase, because I'm going out of town for a few days and I didn't want to come home to a plant that was too big to allow enough flowering growth to fit in my little cabinet.

So I changed out the T5 light tubes with ones that are warmer colored and changed the res water with the following Advanced Nutrients products:

50 ml each of Connoisseur pH perfect Bloom A & B
10 ml Cal-Mag

I also tied down about 4 of the longer branches.

Those leaves a friggin INSANE! So pretty.

hbbum said:

Those leaves a friggin INSANE! So pretty.

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Elephant ears... I don't know if it's the strain of pot or the hempy bucket, but I never had such big, healthy leaves before. Fuck DWC, I'm sticking with this system from now on.

Dave, the fatties down low are something impressive aren't they.....I've grown some girls that looked just like that but zoomed on me during weeks 1-3 of 12/12. By week 4 I had little needle thin sativa leaves everywhere. Today's hybrids can really mess with your head. Only one plant that I've grown that looked like that stayed low and fat was Trinity Kush...and it had to live next door to a towering plant that drove my lights up. Still made a nice fat cola however.

jela10 said:

Dave, the fatties down low are something impressive aren't they.....I've grown some girls that looked just like that but zoomed on me during weeks 1-3 of 12/12. By week 4 I had little needle thin sativa leaves everywhere. Today's hybrids can really mess with your head. Only one plant that I've grown that looked like that stayed low and fat was Trinity Kush...and it had to live next door to a towering plant that drove my lights up. Still made a nice fat cola however.

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So far I like the way this one's growing. It's growing more tops on its own faster than I'm used to and the nodes are staying tight together without stretching too much... yet. I'm waiting to see what happens now that it's on a 12/12 schedule. I'm glad that it's not in the cabinet with another type of plant that grows taller like you had. That must have been tricky lighting both of your plants. Yeah, this is definitely Indica dominant with those fat leaves. Should be good for medicine, which is what I want it for.

Delicious leaves absolutely remarkable strain, definitely a winner with that kind of energy distribution! I cant wait to see the flowers on this girl, with the easy white lighting its going to make some sweet photos! Healthy to the max.

SERIOUSLY.... one of those leaves would be a meal, they would make hands look like baby hands. Got any chooks? they will be happy chooks at trim time

Just got back from a weekend trip. Left my plant and system to work on their own for 3 whole days. Still enough water in the res to keep watering automatically. And the pH and TDS were still within healthy limits:

5.77 pH
335 ppm

She's still growing elephant ear leaves, but the 2 main tops stretched a bit while I was away. I tied them down before taking the following photos:









I just noticed one troubling thing... A root was growing out of the drain tube into the res water. I'm a little worried that before the plant finishes growing, roots will clog up the drain. That would be bad. Could result in drowned roots and the remaining res water emptying out on the floor. I pulled out the root, but I'm sure more will follow. The roots penetrated 2 paint strainer bags already. I wonder if I should trim them before any problems occur.

flowamasta said:

Delicious leaves absolutely remarkable strain, definitely a winner with that kind of energy distribution! I cant wait to see the flowers on this girl, with the easy white lighting its going to make some sweet photos! Healthy to the max.

SERIOUSLY.... one of those leaves would be a meal, they would make hands look like baby hands. Got any chooks? they will be happy chooks at trim time

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Thanks, Flowamasta! I'm in awe of this plant, too. I've never had anything this healthy at this point in its life before. She's still growing some big leaves up top.

Ok, pardon my ignorance, but what are chooks?

maybe try taking a basketball pump needle with 1/4" tubing going from an air pump and stabbin it into your drain hose, put a teeny bit of that black silicone made for aquariums to seal it on. or you could put a tee on it with the proper fittings and whatever if you wanna do it that way. I'm thinking this might help air prune your roots back in? the thing is that they are in paint strainer bags but they arent being pruned in because its nice and moist and extra air will prune it back hopefully. I haven't done this cause I hand water but i think it may solve this little problem?

daveroller said:

Ok, pardon my ignorance, but what are chooks?

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I couldn't wait, so I looked up "Chook". It's either a chicken or an older woman. Hmmmm... Did you mean chicken? Do they really eat leaves? I usually just flush the big fan leaves down the toilet, so it would be nice to feed them to something instead.

Nizza said:

maybe try taking a basketball pump needle with 1/4" tubing going from an air pump and stabbin it into your drain hose, put a teeny bit of that black silicone made for aquariums to seal it on. or you could put a tee on it with the proper fittings and whatever if you wanna do it that way. I'm thinking this might help air prune your roots back in? the thing is that they are in paint strainer bags but they arent being pruned in because its nice and moist and extra air will prune it back hopefully. I haven't done this cause I hand water but i think it may solve this little problem?

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THAT'S an interesting idea! There is a space between the bottoms of the nested buckets where I could pump in air (and I don't want roots in there either). Of course I'd have to seal the air hose to it water tight. I might just try that. Do you think it would be ok to trim off the roots that occupy that space between buckets, just before attaching the air hose? Or should I leave them there? If there's a root ball down there where it doesn't belong, that might be hard to dry with air between waterings. Maybe I'll just leave it for now and see what the pumped in dry air does to it. I'll use a bulkhead fitting to hold the hose in place if I can find one the right size for it.

THANKS!

i'd cut the roots out of the hose back to the air pruning liner (i think you said something about this) and also either place the air pumps above the resevoir level with the tubes going down or getting a check valve for the tube so in case water gets in it it cant get into the pump and screw it up. Hopefully the extra air pushing through the hempy hole will prevent any roots from going down it

Looking good. ppm & pH have been pretty stable and plant looks very healthy.

Today:
5.81 pH
382 ppm

Here are some pics from today:





I love the smell of fresh, green leaves and newly forming tops! Mmmmmmmmm...

⤋ In the next photo you can see where I topped the plant. The 2 branches where I topped it are spread wide apart now.
⤋ They stretched quite a bit right after I switched to the 12/12 lighting schedule, so I tied them wide apart like that to keep the plant from getting too tall.



⤋ Water pump & air stone in the res.



⤋ Here you can see more clearly in the res... You can also see the 1/2" diameter drain tube from the bottom bucket that empties into the res.



⤋ One more closeup of the whole plant from above.



⤋ Here you can see the whole setup. The res is underneath the boards that are strapped together.
⤋ I turned on the big CFL on the right and added a fan above it to blow its heat up towards the exhaust vent.
Now all of the lights are turned on and these will stay on 12 hours a day up until I flush the roots.

The light box fell on my poor plant this morning when I was trying to raise the lights up! It broke off one of the main branches that was attached way down low on the plant.

Here's the branch & some other leaves that broke off:



⤋ Here's where it broke off. It's where that string is tied around the trunk that's leading towards the camera. It's there to try to close up the wound.



⤋ Here's the plant with the branch missing. Whew! That's a gaping hole. Shit!



It's not always easy doing this from a wheelchair, especially moving big things like the plant and the light box. I hope it heals ok and the space fills in a little. I turned the plant to make it fit better in my closet with empty space facing the back wall.

Thats a bummer, but not a big deal. I lost a big branch like that on my last grow and still ended up with 186g (just over 6.5oz) from just the single plant including 65g of popcorn on the bottom.

This was the size of the branch I wacked with my unintentional trimming

hbbum said:

Thats a bummer, but not a big deal. I lost a big branch like that on my last grow and still ended up with 186g (just over 6.5oz) from just the single plant including 65g of popcorn on the bottom.

This was the size of the branch I wacked with my unintentional trimming
View attachment 2797912

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Yikes! Thanks, that does make me feel better... I suppose these things happen once in a blue moon. Could be a lot worse.

Dave, that is one gorgeous healthy looking plant. Great friggen job, dont sweat the branch!

daveroller said:

Yikes! Thanks, that does make me feel better... I suppose these things happen once in a blue moon. Could be a lot worse.

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Well, you got people smoking and working in confined areas and often times with physical ailments, happens a lot more often than you might expect. Its a good thing these are such hardy plants

Think of it as providing additional airflow

Some of the leaves are drooping and curled now. They got that way since the accident this morning. I think it's partly because they're pressed against the doors of my cabinet now and partly because I raised the nute concentration a lot yesterday. Here are some photos from tonight:







These upper leaves still look really good at least. The drooping leaves look like too much nute probably. I just now changed the watering schedule from 15 minutes every hour to every 2 hours. That will give the Perlite more time to dry out. I'll check again tomorrow. If they don't improve, I'll water down the nute solution.

pH is 6.1 - 6.2
ppm is in the 600's (measured as 2/3 of number of microSiemens)

Day 10 of Flowering

Looking lots better today. The leaves that are a bit curled are the ones that are pressed against the door. But the rest of the leaves look nice and fresh and the branches continue to grow.

Here are some pics:









⤋ I also spotted these for the first time on this plant: