Sandmans 2023 Journal

[sandman83]

Restarting the hobby, got distracted skiing the past few years and was just away from the house too often to keep anything alive. Made a few good harvests but my drying/curing technique definitely made me sad. Not enough ventilation in the secondary room led to bud rot, mixing silica incorrectly led to lockout in the hydro tank, and drying in way too large of a space with low RH tasted like hay....
5-5 All showing first set of leaves

4 x barneys 8 ball kush on the left
2 x Critical x Northern Lights middle
3 x Autoflowers, iirc 2x green poison xl on the top and the white widow xxl looking weird
2 x Useful Blackened oranges haven't popped up yet, found 2 leftover seeds stored poorly in a desk drawer



Green tags = Critical Lights
White tags = 8 ball kush
Blackened oranges finally showing up, if they dont catch up I'll just pop them in a 5 gallon dwc to chill and take clones for the next run from them



2 auto's looking good, 1 still looking stunted/weird so will give it a bit to pull thru or just cull it.

 

[sandman83]

ebb/flow under a compact fluro panel and the ecogrower under spiderfarmer 2k panel raised near the ceiling. Same GH 3 part salts since I have a gallon to use up, will be using just the base 3 part with calimagic and mono-silicic acid this round, keeping the ppm much lower than previous runs.

 

[GthaEnigma]

I am sending positive vibes to those blackened oranges. Any thoughts of F2 of a pair presents itself? With useful passing those are worthy of preservation if possible.

 

[sandman83]

I am sending positive vibes to those blackened oranges. Any thoughts of F2 of a pair presents itself? With useful passing those are worthy of preservation if possible.

Tbh I've never chucked or bred intentionally, I have the flower room setup to do smaller style plants at the moment with 2 gallon containers so I'm hunting for a keeper mom. My bets are on the blackened oranges being the best out of the bunch but I wasn't sure on the germination rates of 3-4 yr old seeds so I tried a few freebies as well just to verify. The last auto plant I grew was the infamous lowryder #2 and the effects didn't impress me enough to want to try auto's again . Maybe these will be better but at least a chance to test the curing phase before the photos finish.

Also, why are 2x4 tents so much shorter than the 4x4? I'd like the same 6.5' headroom but most seem to be 5' or so. With the hydro buckets etc that doesn't leave a lot of canopy room.

Seeds were all feminized versions I've got some older regular strains in the jar if I want to try and find a male worth crossing. I'd rather just see if the mom is worth keeping then perhaps source some pollen from a known good if possible.

 

[Agreenpassion]

Subbed up. Thanks for sharing!

 

[sandman83]

These are the 2x Useful strains I have left in the vault and 1x BOG. Might make a decent cross if a find a keeper out of the packs? Not sure if the Panama red is a set of regular or feminized

 

[sandman83]

Curious how high a PPFD I really need to hit without co2, I want to say I ran with these leds ~ 12" away last time and had planned to keep them much higher this go around. 18" from the sp250 gives me an avg of 500-600 at the moment. With a small canopy perhaps this will be fine but I'm contemplating either grabbing a 3rd bar light to put down the middle or another inexpensive quantum board.

Any recommendations for auto flower breeders? Looking like fastbuds or mephisto are the easiest available once I'm out of current freebies.

 

[Buck5050]

Curious how high a PPFD I really need to hit without co2

About 800 give or take for flower. Anything higher and you'll want to add co2

 

[sandman83]

About 800 give or take for flower. Anything higher and you'll want to add co2

Thanks! Will give these a try for the first batch back......if the nugs are too airy/loose then will spend some cash on a new fixture. Was still using 2x 1kw HPS previously with the LED just as supplemental, would be nice to not crank the AC though.

 

[sandman83]

Twiddling thumbs and waiting for girls to grow. Culled the stunted auto, when I yanked it the roots had barely left the cube vs the other 2 have penetrated the entire netcup into the dwc tank. Few girls look to be growing faster than others...Been about a week so I'll probably drain the tanks from the 'seedling' blend and move to early vegetation on the light feed schedule.

 

[sandman83]

sigh, grow tents are weird, I like being able to just drill holes in the ceiling to arrange things how I like . Had to take out the 2nd sf2k panel to make space in the tent for the extraction fan. Viparspectre coupon expired so I'll just be waiting for another good sale price I guess for a bar style light to cover the 4x4 tent.
New 6" filter combo installed and another clip on fan. Man these 6" auto fans are much better than the old static ones!

Roots are touching the DWC so swapped in a large air pump as well

 

[Frimpong]

sigh, grow tents are weird, I like being able to just drill holes in the ceiling to arrange things how I like . Had to take out the 2nd sf2k panel to make space in the tent for the extraction fan. Viparspectre coupon expired so I'll just be waiting for another good sale price I guess for a bar style light to cover the 4x4 tent.
New 6" filter combo installed and another clip on fan. Man these 6" auto fans are much better than the old static ones!

Roots are touching the DWC so swapped in a large air pump as well

View attachment 167755

Very cool ! And welcome man

 

[sandman83]

Ugh, I just calibrated both ph pens and neither matches now. One showing over 600 ppm the other 550, ~.15 difference. I think I should just bite the bullet and toss both and buy new bluelab.
I'd get replacement probes for the hanna but tbh its 80 bucks vs 80 bucks for a replacement bluelab ph pen...I'd love the guardian monitor for the tank but only so much cash for the hobby...
Gave up and ordered separate replacements. This time instead of a stupid combo meter I'll have a bluelab ph pen and the truncheon for ppm/ec monitoring.

 

[sandman83]

Twiddling thumbs, one of the auto's looks to have gotten some leaf burn from either nutes or the humidifier being too close. Photo's looking good, blackened oranges catching up.

 

[sandman83]

lmao should've known my old hanna pH pens were off.....new bluelab shows i'm almost a full point higher than where I expected to be. Will calibrate again to be sure but it's dead on in the 4.0 and 7.0 test solutions now. Will adjust the ph and move forward. As much as I want to buy better/new genetics I think a few runs with existing stash to practice good habits is probably a better investment.

 

[sandman83]

Cannatrol 6 weeks + from order date now? looks like I might have to do without the 2k drying machine and give the old hang dry another try. Sure looks fancy! Maybe once I can turn out some quality bud worth putting into said machine .

Girls chuggin' along, using a tek4 compact fluro panel over the flood and drain at the moment, went ahead and ordered some replacement led bulbs for it. Supposed to be brighter and more efficient so hopefully that'll keep the girls nice and squat.

Debating how to train them, I'd like small squat plants with just a handful of main colas each. Thinking I'll let the grow one more node then top em back to the 4th. Will grab a clone from each on the lower side before cleaning em up for flower.

 

[sandman83]

Hrm looks like forum roll back lost the last pics! Oh well still just waiting. Girls starting to bush out and looks like DWC has recovered from my initial mishaps.



replacement bulbs arrived for the tek4 compact panel, supposed to be 60% brighter with the LED conversion vs the old bulbs, ppfd around 450 now on them as well.




Forgot how fast these girls take off! Barely 2 weeks from seed at this point and nice and bushy. Another week or so of veg then off to the 2 gallon containers for the flip. Flowering these on the smaller side once established and taking clones from each.

 

[sandman83]

Some closer shots of the 8 ball kush girls.

 

[BH]

Plants are loving ya, keep it up @sandman83

 

[DopeDaniel]

IMO if you spent a grand on a drying/curing area you'd crush the 2k machine.

Lookin good.