simpleleaf
Well-Known Member
I'll be blooming 3 Blueberries, the seeds were from Garden of Green via Seedsman. My prior attempt of blooming Blueberry resulted in rubber-like branches at about 7 weeks, so I picked it early.
I recently moved a mature and healthy Blueberry into the bloom tent, which is in a cold garage of 45°F night temps, and cut her back to about half height. She was moved into the tent when Green Crack was harvested, roughly two weeks ago. She is not happy. Blueberry may be more sensitive to cold than Green Crack:
I may have to swap bloom and veg areas. My veg area is a closet in the house, which is warmer. If I do that, I have to swap lights, blooming requires more light.
Here's Blue Dream at about 2 weeks into her attempted reversion.
She's lengthened out her sugar leaves, but they're staying mostly purple color. She needs to be flushed. I'm hoping to get to that tomorrow. Today I finished up my potting mix sanitation and pH adjustment.
I've been using a hot water soak to kill insects in the potting mix. In the next pic, there's a little more than 1.5 cubic feet of potting mix placed first in a plastic drum, then about 3 gallons of boiling water was added, and the rest of the water volume is from my hot water faucet which can be adjusted to give me 150°F water. The mix was 149°F when I was done filling it to about 2 to 3 times the soil volume.
I added some sulfuric acid, stirred with a long iron pipe, took a sample, cooled it, found it was too high, so added more acid. By the fifth reading I got 6.8, and I decided that was good enough.
I left it outside over night, and by morning, the water temp was below 60°F, I warmed a sample to 70°F, the pH was still 6.8. I had expected a little rise.
I put fiberglass windowscreen over a homemade kitty-litter sifter, 1/4" hardware cloth framed with 2x4s. Then I decanted the liquid and floating perlite off, before turning the drum upside down to allow the potting mix to drain. There was a mild sulfur odor in the poured off liquid.
Then I put it in pots (#7) to continue draining, and covered them. I'm not sure I made quite enough.
If I need more, I'll make a little more. Simple enough, the tedious part is getting the pH to a desired value without over acidifying it.
I've had 2 Blueberry clones in the vegetative room, I flushed them a day or two ago with an initial 7.6 pH runoff. They're now getting a different fertilizer mix which won't alkalize the grow mix as much. While this next photo is rather poor, it does show one of the yellowed leaves.
That symptom should be nitrogen, manganese, or iron deficiencies, and my guess is the latter. That's why I flushed, the drain pH rose too high and that probably caused problems with iron lockout. These two Blueberries also developed the beginnings of generalized yellowing, top and bottom, which reversed after the flush. I'm going to be watching the drain pH more closely.
I recently moved a mature and healthy Blueberry into the bloom tent, which is in a cold garage of 45°F night temps, and cut her back to about half height. She was moved into the tent when Green Crack was harvested, roughly two weeks ago. She is not happy. Blueberry may be more sensitive to cold than Green Crack:
I may have to swap bloom and veg areas. My veg area is a closet in the house, which is warmer. If I do that, I have to swap lights, blooming requires more light.
Here's Blue Dream at about 2 weeks into her attempted reversion.
She's lengthened out her sugar leaves, but they're staying mostly purple color. She needs to be flushed. I'm hoping to get to that tomorrow. Today I finished up my potting mix sanitation and pH adjustment.
I've been using a hot water soak to kill insects in the potting mix. In the next pic, there's a little more than 1.5 cubic feet of potting mix placed first in a plastic drum, then about 3 gallons of boiling water was added, and the rest of the water volume is from my hot water faucet which can be adjusted to give me 150°F water. The mix was 149°F when I was done filling it to about 2 to 3 times the soil volume.
I added some sulfuric acid, stirred with a long iron pipe, took a sample, cooled it, found it was too high, so added more acid. By the fifth reading I got 6.8, and I decided that was good enough.
I left it outside over night, and by morning, the water temp was below 60°F, I warmed a sample to 70°F, the pH was still 6.8. I had expected a little rise.
I put fiberglass windowscreen over a homemade kitty-litter sifter, 1/4" hardware cloth framed with 2x4s. Then I decanted the liquid and floating perlite off, before turning the drum upside down to allow the potting mix to drain. There was a mild sulfur odor in the poured off liquid.
Then I put it in pots (#7) to continue draining, and covered them. I'm not sure I made quite enough.
If I need more, I'll make a little more. Simple enough, the tedious part is getting the pH to a desired value without over acidifying it.
I've had 2 Blueberry clones in the vegetative room, I flushed them a day or two ago with an initial 7.6 pH runoff. They're now getting a different fertilizer mix which won't alkalize the grow mix as much. While this next photo is rather poor, it does show one of the yellowed leaves.
That symptom should be nitrogen, manganese, or iron deficiencies, and my guess is the latter. That's why I flushed, the drain pH rose too high and that probably caused problems with iron lockout. These two Blueberries also developed the beginnings of generalized yellowing, top and bottom, which reversed after the flush. I'm going to be watching the drain pH more closely.
