Kitty's 6000 Watt Ebb & Flo, pictures galore, continually updated never ending oh no!

Hey BC -- I'm afraid I have zero help for you on soil -- that's a grow medium I'm only used to for strawberries and blueberries. In Hydroponics, you want to water during the daytime. Generally you water when the lights turn on and off, and then sometimes inbetween if needed. Right now I'm on 2 or 3 waterings per day. The front plant in the center of B has claws all over it which indicate overwatering, yet no other plants are, so I've been trying to find a happy medium. At night the plants cant really do anything with water or nutrients, so while you could water them, it wont really do anything.

Soil, on the other hand, I have nooooo clue!

Originally Posted by researchkitty

Hey BC -- I'm afraid I have zero help for you on soil -- that's a grow medium I'm only used to for strawberries and blueberries. In Hydroponics, you want to water during the daytime. Generally you water when the lights turn on and off, and then sometimes inbetween if needed. Right now I'm on 2 or 3 waterings per day. The front plant in the center of B has claws all over it which indicate overwatering, yet no other plants are, so I've been trying to find a happy medium. At night the plants cant really do anything with water or nutrients, so while you could water them, it wont really do anything.

Soil, on the other hand, I have nooooo clue!

I do not grow in soil Ms. Kitty But this isn't my thread so no worries. Claws I think are kinda unavoidable in a larger garden, I have a couple plants that exhibit. Two or three woha your busy gardener haha Whats your take on final three weeks of flowering, methods you utilize? do share...

Your girls are lookin great kitty! keep it up.

So many updates so little time. No pictures today, I'll get em tomorrow. Some random thoughts to reflect.

I'm really bummed out that the seed mat fried the Nirvana sprouts. When I bought replacement seeds from Greenthumb instead, I also grabbed the mat replacement to ensure of no troubles from the hydro store. Temps kept at 88(f), paper towels moist but not soaking wet, no light, ph 5.6 water, etc..... 6 days later there's only about 1/4 of the 22 seeds I germinated that even have any signs of a taproot. Talked to the Doc himself, and says I'm doing everything right (of course ) and that if they dont pop in 24-36 hours using my method there's something wrong. So, I put the other seeds from him (11 or so?) in new towels to see what happens too. Also another 15 Nirvana seeds as well to give me some mommy picking freedom.

Granted the Nirvana problem was a hardware malfunction, but I'm sad at the Dr Greenthumb seed germination speed or lack thereof so far. Today is day 8 for them. I know guides say some seeds can take 12 days to show a taproot but that's retarded and not real world I dont think. If the other seeds dont crack from Greenthumb, I'll assume the problem was him, as the setup is confirmed good by him and its twice attempted. Especially so if the Nirvanas crack and his dont. I'm sure I'll figure it out. Doc says he's shipped over 8000 orders of each seed type I purchased, and never hears of issues.

....problem is today is day 22 of flowering, and I really wanted to have new stuff on lights C & D at day 30 that way the harvests were spaced a month apart.

That aint happening now.

So, today we (lovers manual labor helper gotta love em) hung lights C & D and instead of putting new plants on a new system ready to flower, I just took the plants from A & B and spaced them out to A & B & C & D. Now lights A & C are Topped, and B & D are untopped. It'll make a ton more sense with the pictures tomorrow.

Still need to get the Wye from Home Depot/Lowes to split the ventilation, the two new lights are just in the reflectors being force cooled by a floor fan. (Surprisinly efficient I might add -- it does just as well as the Vortex!). There's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY too much light on the plants now, which I like. You can see concrete floors around because there's only 18 plants for 4 lights. I've never oversaturated a garden with this much light, usually its a flat green canopy. Now there's reflections everywhere. It should nug up the plants pretty solid and eliminate any popcorn -- I hope!

Once the first harvest is done from these now-four-lights, then I'll probably keep a 4-light then 2-light harvest schedule (E & F lights for 6kW total).

There's one Northern Lights plant that is really bothering me. Its looked like its been overwatered for weeks -- even though no other plant in the garden shows any symptoms of that. I'm only watering 2x a day now as it is. It was also a lagger when showing good nugs, its way behind other strains. Might just not be a good mix for this strain with the others and others responding better. ppm is only 1200-ish so I cant see it being a nutrient issue and the huge claws on all of the leaves sure indicate overwatering.

Since this was also my first time taking clones, even though I have about 15 or so in 1 gallon pots of Hydroton on a mini-ebb-flow system I built from scratch (pictures coming tomorrow of course!) I'm not putting *any* faith in them until they are solidly vegging along. Any additional plants I have from seeds or clones I will make mommies out of the best and flower the worse at first.

I'm still really happy with the topped plants canopy. Every topped plant is looking better than their untopped partners of the same strain. Except one -- One thing I learned tonight was to never try and move the branches of a 4-top plant much, the stem split right down the center of it about 2 inches long from the top. Easy repair with duct tape oddly enough, and I'll now have to keep fiddling with that to ensure the stem can still increase in diameter and not be choked off by the tape. It isnt as bad as it sounds, but that nub where you 'pinch" the stem off will certainly be more fragile than an untopped plant. Might be a consideration for more careful pot relocations too.

That's about it for tonight. Parents visiting tomorrow for 5 days. Yikes. Sleep time.

Originally Posted by BCBuddy420

I do not grow in soil Ms. Kitty But this isn't my thread so no worries. Claws I think are kinda unavoidable in a larger garden, I have a couple plants that exhibit. Two or three woha your busy gardener haha Whats your take on final three weeks of flowering, methods you utilize? do share...

Aaah woops! I was stoned and mis-read soilless as soil. Most certainly water when lights are on. As for the claw, I just finished bitching about that Northern Lights claw-er in my post above too. Its just one of those anal things I think where you look at all of the plants in the garden and when you see one not-so-hot one for no reason it really bothers you. I did move it from the FIRST plant to be watered on the line to about the middle of it when moving around stuff during todays 2000w upgrade/expansion. Thought that perhaps since its the last pot to drain that the extra minute or two of less water a day might help it. Pots do drain pretty much identical from when I ran my test floods , so I cant see this as really helping, but it made me feel better.

Originally Posted by TheJointProject

Your girls are lookin great kitty! keep it up.

Thanks!

Hey kitty, instead of duct tape for that stem repair, get some of the velcro plant ties they have now. Much gentler and easy to adjust. Endlessly reuseable too.

Thanks shnkrmn, I'll grab those at the store today when I go for a supplies run.






Week 4 flowering began today, day 22.

So far, I'm pleased to say with the ebb & grow system, I've yet to have to dump the reservoir at all, zero water waste unless you count evaoporation and plant drinking as waste... =)