Okay, so now that I'm well rested let me give you a little info..
This is the 2nd model of a custom wooden stealth grow cabinet. I did 1 major overhaul of the design to better utilize a "corner" space. My horrible craftsmanship and use of hand tools shows through much more than it did in my original rectangular model that will be used for vegging after some more modifications..
As soon as the harvest wrapped up, I started on building the new cabinet and started another blue mystic to be a mother plant for an attempt at a sog setup. I experimented with various custom hydroponic setups, had a ton of failed attempts at cloning with mist buckets, in coco, in rockwool.. things were not lookin good for me at all.. My dome tray started growing mildew and then one day my temp monitor slipped and fell into the water and it was 97.8 degrees. A little high, haha. No wonder everything was shriveling up and dying.. I've managed 4 clones in the first shot in the mist bucket and 1 with barely any root growth that looked like it was starting to shrivel up, I planted into a coco seed starter and managed to salvage. The rest I tried that with just died after a couple days in the dome.
I've got a fresh batch of 4 in "properly prepared" coco following cloning guides found at ICMag.com (wish this site had a coco specific forum).. did everything to it's specifications. 2 days in and they look healthy and green. Spraying them and domed them with B.C. Thrive Alive B1 Green, I believe it was, for those two days. Going to take the dome cups off tonight and there is no more misting, except to moisten the top layer of coco (since I am bottom feeding the clones to promote root growth) to prevent it from leeching nutrients and water back from the plant.. The domed cup clones are pictured in the above post.
My mother yesterday morning was showing signs of drooping. I thought at first it was from over watering, but if this thing is drinking at roughly the same rate it was before the transplant then there's no way. Maybe something wrong with the transplant coco (which as I discovered last night during another flush, was ABSURDLY higher PPM than I realized, will detail this a little later.. or she was just thirsty. So I fed her a slightly diluted mix of her normal food in a ring around where her old root zone should be hoping to both flush out some of what was there and feed her as well. Took the bucket out and tipped it into the drip pan to make sure the future 2" "root bed" in my hempy bucket wasn't saturating too much. I think I may lower the drain hole to 1.5, or enlarge the whole itself to 1" from it's center, making it about 1.75" off the bottom. Right now some bottom drainage would be beneficial to me, but I am trying to think of the future when that bottom of the bucket is filled with roots and I regret putting those drainage holes on the bottom because now the water all leaks into the drip pan and I am getting algae growth again. Oi. I switched to hempy buckets because I was sick of the algae growth associated with some of the other hydro methods I tried.. I didn't want to do perlite though because I wanted a buffer zone in case I had to be away for more than 2 days and I don't plant to setup an automated feeding system with a waste reservoir until after I build Cab V3.. which isn't going to be until I figure out all the downfalls left in V2.
So my current count is 5 blue mystics, 1 jock horror seedling/potential mother (though I'm not sure I like the pheno, seemed to stretch initially and is still growing slowly. Giving her a chance though. Once she fills the bottom of the gatorade bottle with roots I will start a diluted feeding of canna a & b. Right now she's been fed with 10ml Sugary Daddy and Root 66 in 1 gallon of ph'd filtered tap water, the same solution I flushed my clone coco with, very gentle but won't promote fast vegetative growth. Keeps her a light green shade with what might be a slight burn (or could have been a slight light burn from being under the 400hps for about a day, but I think not since she was about 30 inches from the light).
I had a failed Super Skunk seedling that I believe were oxygen deprived as well as drowned in very tightly packed coco container.. don't think the roots had a chance. I used a medium with additional drainage on the second jock horror and it was very slow to do much until I started feeding it with the rooting solution and now I see the roots starting to really take off in the bottom finally.
I am hesitant to start another skunk, because I just ordered more seeds from Attitude and I would like to give these Tangerine Dreams a try. Plus, I've been seeing a lot of skunky buds in the area lately. I really want to pick up some Plush Berry seeds but they were sold out at the time. That will be my next purchase though, definitely. In lieu of that (and to get to the next UFO freebie price cap) I purchased some Sub Cool Jilly Bean reg seeds, I liked the sound of her genetics and I may try my hand at collecting some pollen if I get a male and brushing it onto a branch or two of some flowering plants. I like the idea of Jilly Bean x Nirvana Blue Mystic a whole lot.
Okay, I have to stop writing about the grow and go do some work on it.. need to flush this batch of coco again to prep for transplant (the ppm I initially flushed was 2200+ and then second flushed was 1100+.. target zone 800-850 (with 150ppm filtered tap water)). I am keeping the runoff from the flush and going to pour it onto some bare patches along the walkway outside to see if it helps the grass. using drain to waste, I don't want to waste what drains.. so I am going to incorporate it into the outdoor garden on less important plants this summer.. but I don't have that up and running yet.