My First Grow: Aeroponics, LED veg, Super HPS flower, CO2 sealed room

10/25/09 Group 2:


10/27/09 Group 2:

10/25/09 Group 3:


10/27/09 Group 3:

10/27/09 Mother Clones



All mother clones have been transplanted into rockwool. In some cases there were only root bumps - in these cases I was able to swirl that portion of the stem in Olivia's coning gel & place into cubes. In cases where the roots were more developed I gently "painted" the roots with the rooting hormone and placed them carefully inside a split RW cube which I then bound together with twist ties - this has been successful for me in the past when I've had to place large sprouted seeds into RW cubes. I added Clonex in the recommended dosage to the water I'm feeding the mother clones & they look much healthier & are retaining more of their green coloring & in some cases getting it back. I want the plants strong for obvious reasons.



Some of the clones were taken 10/19/09 and have roots popping out the bottoms of the cubes, but not as much as I'd like before I transfer them into the dutch buckets. I've added 2 more cuttings of each original cloned plant plus two cuttings of the favorite Sugar Blossoms and Blueberry plant. Pray for pistils. Luck be a Lady tonight, luck be a Lady tonight, stick with me baby, I'm the fella you came in with, luck be a Lady tonight. I'm willing them into femaleness, with this song running through my head.

10/30/09 Update! - Sugar Blossom 'charlie' - the object of my affection has sprung a white hair or two - it's a girl! Blueberry 'bravo' is still playing hard to get.

Sexed a bunch of plants by pre-flowers today, I only pull plants that I wouldn't want even if it was a female or that have shown ball clusters in the sexing cloner. Pre-flowers are just too tricky, I'm only certain of them when they sprout hairs or show more than one pre-flower in a cluster like I mentioned before.

Since I'm pulling plants that have had large root masses intertwine with those of their neighbors I added 10 ml per gallon of Hygrozyme to each reservoir. I topped off all the reservoirs to 10 gallons, added the Hygrozyme (100ml/reservoir)) & adjusted the PHs to 5.8.

The addition of Hygrozyme alone may not be enough to ward off pathogens associated with the dead organic matter left behind since it is a lot. So, I'm contemplating moving the plants in the veg room into flower units. This way the debris from their root system will be left behind and all they will have is fresh new roots.

congrats on 'charlie's being a girl!


really nice update(s). the grow's looking fantastic, as is your album.



somewhat random thoughts: tying down's great of course in that not only does it resolve height issues but you have the important collateral benefit of exposing/encouraging more nodal growth. the only potential drawback though (which it doesn't even look like will be one that effects you) is that you're trading horizontal room for vertical... if one has limited canopy space this can obviously be a restrictive element. an alternative solution then, if one's so inclined, is to use something like humboldt's bushmaster which will pretty much immediately stop vertical growth and give a not insignificant boost to flowering (though at a reported slight loss of potency).

anyhoo, keep up the great work and cheers!
-g

And Georgi comes through again with a helpful tip & pointing me to a product that can help solve my problems. I tried to + rep you again, but they wouldn't let me! I'm going to bide my time & try again b/c you've asked me tremendously useful questions that pointed me in directions I needed to follow, provided me with helpful product suggestions & solutions & displayed your deep knowledge in a concise manner... and all in 3 posts! Let me just say it really is a joy (and a help!) having you in my first grow thread - I surely hope you stick around.

By the way., I haven't forgotten your request for a picture of the root system - it's just that since the lights have changed to HPSes, I'm having trouble getting the pictures I want without them being whited out or darkened. As you can see, I've made some progress in this area to a certain extent.

I will post pictures of Group 2's roots (the plants I'm currently flowering in the aero 'flower unit') because they are monster!!! It's like a beard. I have chopped it back again & again to the opening where the water drains out, but there is seemingly no stopping them!

Ever see Little Shop of Horrors? Got it on my mind as I've put tremendous 'blood', time & devotion into these plants & sometimes it's kind of exhausting - they always need more! & they grow so fast as to be overwhelming at times.... I'm relying on you to notify the authorities in the event my plants actually eat me - should this transpire you will be welcome to any & all fruits of the grow you can wrest from the man-eating mary janes should you choose to brave the killer cannabis!

hey, that's very kind of you! 'just trying to keep (as the germans say) "good community" [gute gemeinschaft]...

'definitely here for the duration and am looking forward to "raising a toke" at harvest time!

as for photos: can you snap one and then color-correct/adjust it in photoshop (or some other such app)?

in any case, that's great that the root system's going gang-busters... huzzah for happy plants!


LOL to "little shop" and "killer cannabis" indeed!


a note about bushmaster: if you do use it, make sure to go real easy with dosage as it's very hot and can all too readily cause burn. kelp extract(s) work(s) well in compliment to bushmaster also and is recommended by humboldt. (check this out ==> http://www.bghydro.com/mmbgh/Others/Bush Master Instructions.pdf )

cheers
-g

11/1/09 Update - End of second week of flowering, first day of third week

Hi again. A few things to show this week: a lot of moving around was done, plus I put an emergency flush through my dutch bucket system - the pics will explain why. But overall, things seem to be on track as we move forward into the next phases of the grow. Also I got an eyeclops! There will be trichome pics in the future!

I've got my usual weekly update pics of the different groups, but I want to devote most of this week's update to problems I've been having with one plant: my Cinderella 99 'grapefruit'. So here is a quick Update of Group 1.

Group 1 General Update Photos:

11/1/09 Group 1 Update - C99 'grapefruit' woes

I realize this could be over reaction of an over-anxious "parent," the place where the perceived damage is is also the part of the plant that faced away from the vegging light - but it could be something more...


This is C99 'grapefruit' in full, I separated her from the others with a cardboard divider to show a clearer picture of the plant

As to the health of C99 'grapefruit' from Group 1, I couldn't say what is happening for certain and it is curious because whatever is effecting her is only effecting her and not the other plants in the system.

The best way to start to describe it is I noticed she was getting sparser than her sisters and that her leaves, seemingly from the middle were turning yellow - oddly not really dying, but going very, very yellow. New growth is green, but seems small which could indicate something specific or just be a reflection of. There is also a whole side to the plant that is lush and dark green and appears unaffected.


Close up of a leaf typical of the ones making me wory about the health of 'grapefruit'

This will surely effect yield but I wonder what it could possibly be - she's certainly getting enough nutrients, the highest PPM is 1500 and I'm using and if it were a fungus or bacterial problem, I'd imagine I would see something from the others - so I went with what I thought was my best option - I flushed the entire dutch bucket system (Group 1) for 24 hours using FloraKleen at the higher end of the recommended concentration of 2 tsp FloraKleen per gallon of plain water. I was nervous about taking away nutrients for too long while flowering, but figured 36 hours was an acceptable period especially as 24 of those hours were during the night cycle. I even let her bucket "flood" a little so as to clear as much of the hydroton as possible.


A troubling center shot of C99 'grapefruit' where the problem seems to emanate from. I took it under a different light to get a "truer" less yellow picture.

I'm torn between several deficiencies, lockout & overferting! Another thing to note - I've also noticed similar but far less extensive chlorosis on some of the fan leaves of grapefruit's sister plant, pineapple. C99 'grapefruit' could be slowly dying - I'm not too concerned, except as it effects the other healthy plants in the system as I have rooted cuttings of her - the plants from seed were more of a bonus harvest & a practice run before commencing the perpetual grow, so no whining here. But I'm very curious as to what is up with this plant. I'm going with Mg lockout for now - but I diagnose nothing with confidence - I've seen things that could indicate possible iron deficiency, over-nuting, nutrient lockout, potassium deficiency, nitrogen deficiency... so who knows and I am sure part of this is over analyzing the situation. I hesitate to say it is PH issues, as I am very on top of the PH and the fluctuation only goes up a point on average. I also don't think that over-concentration of nutrients are causing nutrient burn as I've been topping off the reservoirs frequently which keeps the PPMs low.


A picture of some of the healthy parts of the troublesome plant.

Hopefully the flush will have removed whatever was causing the trouble. As I've mentioned, I've started to supplement the plants with 5ml/gal of Cal-Mag+ and everyone seems to be loving it except our C99 'grapefruit' who is getting yellow. Perhaps I did not add it fast enough? Curiouser & curiouser... If anyone has any ideas - I'd love to hear them. Also, I should mention that the dutch buckets with the largest plants (grapefruit & pineapple) have occasionally flooded - I didn't know that this was a complication of dutch buckets when I went for the system - I resolved the issue each time, but maybe the flooding has something to do with it.

I took a bunch of pictures from different angles & under different lighting. One thing that occurred to me is it may have looked worse than it is b/c the yellow light of the Super HPS may have looked like more yellow leaves than there actually were.


The plant as it appeared under a brighter flash


The plant as it appeared under the HPS lighting.


This is a picture of C99 'pineapple', C99 'grapefruit's sister - she has some leaves exhibiting chlorosis but appears to not be suffering to the extend that 'grapefruit' is. Hopefully this is normal and not a sign of degeneration to come.


Additional leaves off of 'grapefruit' in various states of chlorosis.

Group 2 & Mother Clones in Rockwool

Group 2:


Group 2 Roots:



My Apollo 11 X C99 has really taken off and surprised me, she burst her neoprene collar (!) and is growing... like a weed. Long arms & lots of blooms, she's a lovely girl. I thought because of some bad luck early on - I'd end up with a lesser mother, but it looks as if with this strain, I've struck the jackpot. As you can see from the pictures, the Cal-Mag+ has turned these guys a deep green. Speaking of mothers - they are doing very well and ready for transplant, check out the new growth.

Mother Clones:



These guys are basically ready to plant into their hydroton buckets and will be very soon. The transition from the aerocloner to the rockwool wasn't as traumatic as I thought it would be & they have a nice survival rate - they're already throwing out new growth.

11/1/09 Update Group 3



The next big event was moving the plants of Group 3 in the veg room into flower units - I pulled quite a few males and put my strongest plants & desired mothers into flower units to give them more space. My 'duds' are in the last remaining veg unit - and they are duds, some of them cannot even stand up on their own. Cuttings for mothers were taken of the Blue Apollo, Sugar Berry & Apollo 11 strains. The cloned strains already transplanted to rockwool are ready and rooted. They will make the transition to the dutch bucket mother system soon as I make room by putting the plants in the veg unit into a flower unit & move it to the flower room - this will likely happen this coming Sunday. We'll see what the duds can produce in terms of bud.


Group 3's 'duds', these plants were not good enouh to preserve as clones for mothers, but moved to a flower unit & placed in the flower room, they may produce some nice extra harvest.

I think I've eradicated the last of the males. Interesting note, the Blueberrys turned out to be the most difficult to sex, producing pre-flowers & even early regular flowers that are quite spherical, usually an indicator of male sex. Making it more difficult is the females only throw out a tiny white hair which is very hard to spot. And they all showed indicators of sex far later than all the other strains - in vegetative growth and even under the 12/12 lighting. I'd incorrectly identified Blueberry 'foxtrot' as a female, but when I checked the cutting I put in the sex cloner - I found out that foxtrot was in fact a male! I don't know if I hermied him/her or just read a stipule as the white hair of a pistil, as they were so tiny on the others - but the clone cutting had balls - two of them in each crevice, so I pulled it from the system.


This is flower unit 1, it holds several mothers & second bests - I've taken clones of more than one of the strains Blue Apollo, Apollo 11, and Sugar Berry as there was no one plant that greatly out-shined all others as was the case with Blueberry & Sugar Blossoms. With Sugar Berry there were two top runners, so close in quality I had to take cuttings from both & determine who will be the mother based on the final results of flowering out the seeded plants.


Flower Unit 2 - this holds the mothers of Bluberry & Sugar Blossoms, as their clones have rooted (plus I have additional cuttings in the aerocloner just in case) I may flower them out along with the runners up in the unit instead of transfering them into flower unit 1 with the rest of the mothers, we shall see.

great updates (as always), despite the 'grapefruit troubles'!
how's the c99 coming along now? is the yellowing continuing or did the flush take care of things?

cheers
-g

11/8/09 Update - End of the third week of flowering & beginning of the fourth. This is the first day of flower for unit 3.


The flowering room after the new flower unit was added

In the flowering room: Buds have really started to turn up at this point. Major changes are I've moved the "duds" of group 3 plus the favorite Sugar Blossoms & Blueberry plant grown from seed into a flowering unit & placed into the flower room. All reservoirs were changed, Groups 1 & 2 were given the Aggressive Bloom General Hydroponics formula with Hygrozyme & Cal-Mag+ added.


Groups 1 & 2 canopy

The newly transplanted Group 3 flower unit was given the Transitional formula plus the Hygrozyme and the Cal-Mag+, the Transitional formula will be changed out in a week and replaced with Aggressive Bloom formula. Bioballs were added to the reservoir and it as given a 1/4 strength root drench of SubCulture M. I'm changing the reservoirs every 2 weeks, I hope that's enough, I wouldn't want to be wasteful changing it every week.


New Flower Unit


The new flowering unit contains Blue Apollos, Sugar Berrys, Sugar blossoms, Blueberrys & Apollo 11s - including the desired Blueberry & sugar Blossom mother plants, but since their cuttings took well and there are back up cuttings, I thought it best to flower them out.


Group 1 before buckets were rearranged & the second half removed


Groups 1 & 2 after both units moved to the wall

Some people have noticed how bushy Group 1 is - they were so big that I took quite a bit off the top - not the usual 1 - 2 node down cut, but further to control height. I anticipate a longer manicure time, but since it'll be my first, it shouldn't bother me too much as it's all so new. But I think they are giving me a very bush like, multiple "main" bud sites plant. Group 2 was topped also, but fimmed, not chopped several nodes down like Group 1 was and you can see all the long branches & multiple cola formations - part of that its down to genes as I hear C99 X A11 is long & branchy by nature. But you can see the difference in effect when you hack well down.


Group 2 before tie down

I've done quite a bit of tying of the plants in Groups 1 & 2 and continue to do so. Just to note - PPMs for flower room reservoirs generally start at 1300-1400 gross total (my tap water is about 90 PPM on it's own) and it decreases as time goes by and it gets topped off. Plants seem happy. The PPM of the Veg units are usually gross 1100. The PPMs in the Transitional formula units are 1250 gross. As always, remember to subtract about 100 PPM to get the net - just thought I'd throw that out there.


Group 2 after tie downs

11/8/09 Update - Veg Room


Before transplant & relocation

In the Vegetation Room: The second major event was the transplanting of mother clones into the dutch bucket system just put into the veg room. There are some other left over mother clone cuttings standing by should anything go wrong with these clones. The Mother Dutch Bucket System was fed with Hygrozyme, Cal-Mag+ and regular Vegetative growth formula - I hope it isn't too strong, but I'm treating the clones as if they are the age of the plants they were taken from, as they are not seedlings. The strongest specimens of each strain/sub-strain were taken and put into the dutch buckets from the seedling trays where they sat in rockwool on perlite. The dutch bucket mothers are: C99 'grapefruit', C99 'pineapple', C99 X BB 'bravo', Sugar Blossoms, Blueberry, and C99 X A11.


The permanent mother system

The flower unit still in the veg room holds all plants that were cloned as possible mothers for Apollo 11, Blue Apollo & Sugar Berry. They were either very alike, equal in quality & I'm waiting to see how they flower before choosing a mother or I haven't decided which qualities I would find more desirable in that strain for a mother ie. a shorter, thinner bushier plant or a taller, stronger one for example. This unit was also changed and given the Hygrozyme, Cal-Mag+ and General Hydroponics Vegetative Growth formula.


Last flower Unit left in the veg room

The only plant not added to the Dutch Bucket Mother System was C99 x BB 'echo' because the cutting had not rooted yet. I recut the cutting, split it down the middle & put it back into the aerocloner. Hopefully I can stimulate it to root again - it does have white root bumps. If it doesn't work out, I'm very happy having only C99 X BB 'bravo' which looks like a true cross between C99 and Blueberry vs 'echo' which is a big, strong plant with lots of bud sites, but looks as if it inherited more C99 than Blueberry as it looks very similar to the C99 X A11 mother. I'll try my best to preserve C99 X BB 'echo's genetics as much as I can, I'd even go so far as to try to re-veg the plant if it came down to it as my focus now is genetics - not this particular harvest. This harvest is a nice bonus & informational. Main goal is the perpetual system.


Veg Room after changes as it is now

11/8/09 Update - Unit 2 Pics: C99 X BB 'bravo', C99 x BB 'echo', C99 x A11

As a first time grower, I'm in awe of the beauty and the thrill of the plants coming into bloom so I'm sure these pictures are quite redundant in some ways - but not totally useless at all. Here you can really get a sense of the different phenotypes & characters of the strains I got going here.

Just a note about what you're looking at with the Group 2 pictures: I took a lot of shots of them as they are the most accessible but if you want a layout - those spinachy stalks in the left hand back are C99 X BB 'bravo' - directly in front of that and leaning over towards Group 1 is C99 X BB 'echo' who looks very much like the plant that really dominates the whole of Group 2 which is my C99 x A11 'alpha' - when you look from left and even across the center into the Blueberry crosses territory - that canopy, those branches are all being flung out largely by that one plant. This is observable in all pictures taken head on of Unit 2, so you can go back to those pictures to see what I mean and where certain plants are.

C99 x BB 'bravo'
This particular plant from this strain, to me, shows the more indica, blueberry, genes of the two (bravo & echo) Notice her dark greenery & the leafy abundance around her buds (hash, ahoy!) ow, he's beautiful (I know this plant's a 'he' despite being technically female - & he's definitely the more macho of the two. 'Bravo's unique looking.

Here is 'bravo':

Bud cluster


Three stalks of 'bravo'


Leaves & Buds


Stalk & flower cluster, notice the abundance of dark leaves

C99 X BB 'echo'
This specimen of the Cinderella Blueberry cross is so similar looking to my C99 Apollo 11 cross, I'd have thought I accidentally mislabeled the strain (I know I didn't, I was very careful) He's big & branchy, though not as large as his brother 'bravo' I don't think. He also has many bud sites, more than his brother I think. He responded well to training via breaking & redirecting growth, so he's strong. He tends towards the more C99/sativa side of the family it seems. He's a fine plant & I am working hard to preserve a clone of him, initially taken on somewhat of a lark, it may prove too similar to C99 X A11or not enough of a yielder compared to 'bravo' to be worth keeping if I can revive it at all, we shall see.


Some echo branches


Looking down a long stalk of echo


Echo bud close-up


Echo view from the top down

C99 X A11 'alpha'
What can I say about this plant that the pictures don't? She's a veritable monster, she takes up 75% of the unit space & has multiple bud sites. Cannot wait to see what happens with this one, she's all arms, it's true what Joey Weed said, she looks like she'd be great for SCROG. I love the prettiness of it all, I have a ton of picture of her.


C99 X A11 Canopy tied


She's a huge plant


Close-up of bud frond


Bud & greenery jungle

11/15/09 Update

Beginning of fifth week of flower for Groups 1 & 2
Beginning of second week of flower for Flower Unit 3
Beginning of the first Week of Flower for Flower Unit 4


Before Unit 4 was added


Flower Room After Unit Four Added

Major changes this week:


Flower Unit 4

The last flower unit has been transferred into the flower room. This is the unit that contains the last three strains to be cut & chosen - Blue Apollo, Apollo 11 & Sugar Berry. Extra cuttings for back up mothers were taken (2 from each plant) before hand.

Another major change - I've decided to add FloraShield as a mainstay in all reservoir - those yellow leaves got me worried. It's like H2O2. In Groups 1 & 2 I drained the reservoir and ran FloraShield & water at the recommended dilution (changed & cleaned all the part of the 2 systems) for the recommended time (1-2 hours, I did a little over 2) Just incase I am dealing with a case of root rot. The plants in the dutch buckets are quite root bound which has caused drainage problems & overflow & I've mentioned the unwashed Hydroton before, I just don't see why I'd take the chance especially as I observed yellowing leaves starting on my second unit - that's what did it for me. I can't have this spread around the whole room. The only thing I sacrifice is the beneficial bacteria/organisms & I guess if they had established themselves, I wouldn't be having this problem, so my choice was clear.


Unit 2

As there isn't much to tell now, I'm mostly looking toward the future. My worries are so far: when to add the Dry KoolBloom (Ripen)? Shall I do it for 3 weeks prior to harvest? 2 or only 1? I hear that stressing w/products like that can cause hermaphrodites, but vastly increase bud size so I'll do a little experimenting. As I'm using the aggressive bloom strength formula, might as well go the whole 9.

Flower Units 1 & 3:


Another worry is circulation, budrot. I'm thinking of adding several fans & really blow those plants around - humidity has been good, 47% last I checked. But, The vegetation is dense & the plant are stacked on top of each other. I've ordered more fans to mount on the walls just to rattle each leaf & stalk. I've also cut the lower third
side stems & leaves off of the plants in units 3 & 4.

Flower Units 2 & 4


I've taken readings with my Lux meter above the canopies of all my flower units - they range at the darkest points 50,000 Lux - to the brightest being 600,000 Lux. I plan on addressing the issue of the plants getting the lesser amount of light by adding perhaps an LED over them as it worked for my Flower Unit 3. It doesn't jump the Lux reading - LEDs give lower readings, but due to their more specific spectrum, give more usable light with the added benefit of using blue light to keep the stretch down.

One observation - the plants in Groups 1 & 2 are low odor strains, but are finally starting to show odor now if you go up to them - they smell sweet. Some smell like candy, I put that up to the Pineapple!Rush FloraNectar sweetener I'm using, just my guess.

'looking mighty lush in there!

cheers
-g

End of fourth week, beginning of fifth week of flower Unit 2 pics, canopy, colas, buds:

Bud Canopy (Unit 2):


Cola (Unit 2):


Canopy & Colas Unit 2 (C99 X BB 'bravo' featured prominently)


C99 X BB 'bravo Colas close-up


C99 X A11 Canopy


Cola C99 X A11


C99 X A11 Canopy:


Bud close-up:


Bud Chain (C99 X A11):


Bud 'arm' (C99 X A11):