will the wickedness never end?

[Texagonian]

I think it’s the rain bird or drip brand. It’s not super soft but it can be worked with plus some different angle fittings I can achieve most any shape needed. I’m also making a Dutch bucket system for my outside veggie garden to increase supply of produce and such. Cost’s and the unknown don’t set well with me so I’ll grow my own.

 

[greyfader]

i want to grow my own veggies too. i've got an open acre without shade and a well.

the well is over 100 years old and it's always full. i'm not positive but i think there is a slight current running through it. the water level is only about 10 ft below the surface so it wouldn't take much of a pump to get it to flow. i might be able to start a siphon as the well is maybe 15 ft above the lower area of the acre, which is where the garden will be. the well has a 2ft diameter concrete opening with a metal hatch on it.

i haven't had it tested yet but i will.

this whole area of the country has extensive cave systems, some only partially explored. there are whole rivers underground here.

i know a spot where there is a large crevice in a limestone outcropping and you can hear roaring water down below. you can't see anything and there are no rivers or streams nearby.

be a great place to dispose of something.

 

[greyfader]

today we are at 21 days of flower still maintaining the 8 on 16 off photoperiod.

they appear to be flowering normally. bud development is about right although i have never grown these strains before.

i have not done much training or topping the plants outside the recirculating system. just picked a few leaves and broke some tops over to keep them in the light field. also flattening the back laterals towards the front of the plant and the light.

no spotting, yellowing, or interveinal chlorosis.

i was concerned about using the worm poo in the recirculating system but i'm not seeing any ill effects so far.

i still need one more training session scrogging the ones in the pool.

i have potted up the better clones from 5 oz to 18 oz containers and have been working on them as in removing unwanted growth from the bottoms.

knowing what i know about the donor plants i will top the clones early at about one foot.

these three ethos strains are remarkably similar morphologically.

i am getting some really funky smells but i have trouble pinning them down. my nose isn't that great since i accidentally fell face-first into a pile of white powder for a couple of years.

the last 3 pics are of one of the candy stores. it is not quite as tall as some of the others but has a tighter node structure and is the most narrow leaf of the group. stinks really good!

if you blow up the 1020.jpg you can see the trich coverage way down the plant.

 

[greyfader]

today marks exactly 5 weeks of flower still religiously maintaining the 8 on 16 off photoperiod.

i am maintaining a light flow of 1500-1800 umols during the entire 8 hour period.

this produces between 43 and 50 moles per diurnal period.

in general, all plants look healthy with no spotting or yellowing.

i do have slight tip burn on some as i'm really pushing them with the nutes right now.

during stretch i fed jack's 321 and last week dropped the input to 90% of that, which is 81 gr jacks, 27 gr mag sulfate, and 54 gr calcinit per 30 gal.

still using the kelp and fulvic.

input today reads 870 ppm at .5 and 5.7.

recirculating system reading 1250 ppm and 6.2. running very stable at this level.

i have mentally eliminated only one of the 15 phenos i kept.

it is a wild candy store that has very long internodes and tiny flowers. i'll keep the clones from it until i get a smoke report. just in case.

i have 3 distinct phenos of the candy store so far.

the orange kush cake and the planet of the grapes are growing well. these seedlings are a little stretchy for me but i'll wait until the second set of cuttings to make any decisions about morphology.

very happy with the worm casting, vermiculite, and diatomaceous earth topping. i have very thick root development at the top of the media.

this apparently solved the lack of cec issue and airiness and too rapid evaporation that can occur when using perlite alone.

i am not seeing any deleterious effects using this small amount of the worm castings in a closed-loop recirculating system.

they look like they may be headed for an early finish.

here's a few pics.

later on

 

[Texagonian]

Looking good @delta9nxs , glad to see an update. Looking like quite the jungle. See you around sir✌?

 

[greyfader]

hey! i'm really not too proud of this as far as production goes.

in order to grow out all phenos i saved i had to resort to scrogging unknown plants. never a good idea.

and then they were untopped seedlings. so i had to fight them for compliance.

but i am learning about them.

and i will get something for sure i just don't know how much.

the orange kush cake is going to be really productive in a scrog.

the thing is i'm trying to get away from scrogging. it is labor intensive and i am aging fast now at 71.

bending and stooping hurts and i have a lot of general pain from all of life's injuries.

they do add up in a cumulative fashion so all you young punks that think you're invincible should be advised.

i was one of those idiots that would try to pick up engine blocks and other extremely heavy shit.

now, 2 hernias later and lumbar stenosis at 2,3 ,and 5 and some deteriorating disc i really wish i had been more intelligent about taking care of my body.

alcohol and hep c will for sure and without a doubt, destroy your liver. my new liver and i get along famously. we been going steady for 13 years now.

i refuse to take opioids at this point in life. they would provide pain relief but i don't want to be a vegetable.

i have to be able to think and function.

so i use a lot of concentrates. shatter and pull snap, terp sauce, and i love high grade kief.


so i think i will be going to sea of green with the next batch.

several of the candy store's are shorter with closer nodes. strange thing is that they are also the more narrow leaf phenos.

the first set of clones i took are coming along well and i'm seeing reduced stretching compared to the donor plants. this is for all phenos.

i have found in the past that i don't really see what i am going to get for production from a pheno until i get to the 2nd set of clones.

i am building a ppk recirculating veg system now and i'm about to transplant 31 of the clones into it.


as you can see from the pics the plants are remarkably healthy considering they are getting hit with absolutely brutal light intensity for 8 hours a day. a minimum of 1500 umols up to 1800 umols in places.

running around 1250 ppm or ec 2.5 with 6.2 ph and they are just sucking it up.

no co2 with that light level.

lights on temp around 82f. lights off around 75f.

room humidity stable day and night at around 55% +/- 5 points

not a hint of uptake problems in either the recirculating system or the hand-watered ones.

you see me here running the 4 containers in the recirculating system and with the recirc reservoir included i have only about 12 gals volume.

this is a very low volume. when designing your own go for the largest volume that you can get away with.

this will get you greater long-term stability. any chemical changes will be slower and more observable.

the vegetative system i'm building now will have 40 gals for 31 small plants.

at the hemp flower facility we had 1400 gals in the recirculating part with 480 plants.

in oregon at my thc shop i had about 340 gals. with an average of 40 plants.

your mixing tank should be sized for the length of time you think you want to go between mixing.

people using this system have left it alone operating for up to 2 weeks without supervision to my knowledge.

personally, i have to check everything every 15 minutes. i am obsessive about growing.

later on

 

[greyfader]

today i finally drained the recirculating system as it had crept up to about 1350 ppm or ec 2.7 with a ph of 6.4.

this is a clear demonstration that the volume of solution in the recirculating part is a little too low. not too bad but most times i get all the way through a grow without changing the solution.

seeing a little more tip burn too.

on the reload i went to a 2/3 ratio of the original 321. for my 30 gals that comes out to 60gr jack's, 20gr mag sul, and 40gr calcinit.

still using the 1/2 tsp kelp powder and the 1ml per gal fulvic.

12 ml 85% phosphoric acid and it all came out to 710 ppm at 5.5 ph.

heavily hand-watered the plants both inside and outside the recirculating system to correct the medium.

have a nice fucking day!

 

[Texagonian]

today i finally drained the recirculating system as it had crept up to about 1350 ppm or ec 2.7 with a ph of 6.4.

this is a clear demonstration that the volume of solution in the recirculating part is a little too low. not too bad but most times i get all the way through a grow without changing the solution.

seeing a little more tip burn too.

on the reload i went to a 2/3 ratio of the original 321. for my 30 gals that comes out to 60gr jack's, 20gr mag sul, and 40gr calcinit.

still using the 1/2 tsp kelp powder and the 1ml per gal fulvic.

12 ml 85% phosphoric acid and it all came out to 710 ppm at 5.5 ph.

heavily hand-watered the plants both inside and outside the recirculating system to correct the medium.

have a nice fucking day!

Hell yes! Pics please✌?

 

[greyfader]

today marks 6 wks of flower at 8 on, 16 off.

light measurements this morning shows 1500-1800 umols at the tops. i have not adjusted the light up or down since the end of stretch.

1800 umols produces 51.84 moles of light delivered in an 8 hr period.

1500 umols of flow produces 43.2 moles during the same period.

this is just at the tops but the light is so powerful that i'm getting 1000 umols or more at 10" below the tops.

as you can see from the pics there is no photo-inhibition happening.

as i think about past grows over the years i think that maybe some of the symptoms i attributed to nutrient uptake problems were actually caused by overloading the photosynthetic apparatus.

 

[Texagonian]

Good morning @delta9nxs , looking like things are bulking and frosting right up for you. Looking really good. Thanks for sharing, hope all is well.

 

[MacGydro]

Hey D9, good to have you here, and the garden is looking great! I know I’ve skimmed through your threads through the years, but I haven’t built any PPKs personally, so I’m not even sure I fully understand all the details yet. I do have a feeling our trains of thought may run on similar tracks though.

I have been playing with recirculating hybrid soil / hydro setups for a few years, but not as long as you, of course. Lately, I’m trying to get into more of a live dual root zone system, and letting the biology handle things more naturally.

Anyway, I’m liking your experiments, and I’ve been tossing a couple ideas around.
What do you think aboth the possibility of giving all the photons the plants need in the shortest amount of time, and then minimal flowering as well, to shave weeks off the growth cycle?

I wonder if there’s a formula, or known DLI for cannabis, where you could actually tune / build your lights in a way that they’re supplying the DLI the plants want in 6 hrs, then let em sleep 12 for flower?

I also just skimmed something somewhere about flowering not being initiated as much as the length of night, but the difference between the blue intensity of summer, and the red of autumn. I know, people have been doing this spectrum change for years, it’s just easily finer tuned with this 21st century technology.

But I wonder if, say, you went with a combination of some properly tuned 6500k veg lights and 3000k for bloom, with maximum DLI in minimum time cycles, could you shave even more time off? Maybe rather than 12 hrs, they’ll bloom in less? Maybe 10? I wonder if there’s a way to give the plant everything it needs during "day" and "night", and get a plant "day" down to 12 hrs total?
Sounds way too good to be true, but even if just the photons per "day" theory pans out, that would save 25% of growth time.

Anyway, good to meet ya, and I look forward to learning and bouncing ideas around in the future. ??

 

[greyfader]

howdy, there is an inherent biological limitation to how much light the plant can process.

i am using an 8 hour flowering period here.

dr's elsohly at the university of mississippi and bugbee at the university of utah have demonstrated that the rate of photosynthesis increases linearly with increased light up to 1500 umols.

there it plateaus until 2000 umols.

after 2000 umols it drops straight down on the graph.

so 1500 umols produces the highest metabolic rate in cannabis.

anything above that is not going to drive the rate of growth any faster.

if we were to apply 2000 umols for 12 hours we would have 86.4 moles in a single diurnal period.

the highest daily light integrals recorded on earth per 24 hour period are in the 72 mole range.

what you see me doing here is delivering the maximum amount of light the plant can actually use in an 8 hr period instead of a 12 hour period.

if we delivered 1500 umols for 6 hours as you suggest we would only have 32.6 moles of light per period.

which is ok for cannabis but you will get a heavier plant by using 8 hours at the high rate of flow

which is not too bad and will grow decent flowers but you will grow a heavier plant with 8 hours of the same exposure.

flowering is not triggered by changes in spectrum. it is induced by long nights and short days.

the formula for the daily light integral is 3600 (number of seconds in an hour) x the flow rate in umols x the number of hours of exposure.

3600 x 1500 x 12 = 43.2 moles per period.

 

[greyfader]

i forgot to add that overall flowering time is determined by the genetics of the plant and not spectrum or intensity.

i think we can influence total flowering time by a little but not a large enough margin to make trying economically feasible.

most strategies involving the manipulation of light to speed up time to harvest result in lower yields.

 

[greyfader]

also, the photosynthetic plateau that occurs from 1500 to 2000 umols can be used to your advantage.

while running the tops at say 1800-1900 umols won't get you any more growth at the tops it will get you more growth further down in the canopy.

 

[MO_Grow]

Beautiful garden D9! Very interesting stuff here. I'm thinking I'll have to give this 8 hour flower schedule deal a try here very soon?

 

[MacGydro]

Ok, i *think* I’m following along. Thanks for all the useful info!
So, if we can’t shorten total grow time that way, do you think you could quicken it by removing the "extra" dark hours per 24 hr cycle? If you need 12 hrs lights off to bloom, and at least 8 hrs lights on to grow as much plant as possible, in either stage, at 1500 umols, could you theoretically take those extra 4 hrs per 24 hr day off the timer, and save a week or so over all?

 

[greyfader]

it is during the calvin or so-called dark cycle that most of the plant growth occurs.

but you could be right about the 12 hrs dark with 8 hrs light.

you might shorten the time to harvest with an 8 on 12 off. probably, but will you get the same yield as with the 16 off.

i can say that these plants i'm growing now are really healthy looking with the 16 hrs dark and cool temps that go with it.

maybe the extra darkness allows the plant to process the synthase more efficiently.

a 9 week strain under 12-12 takes 63 days or a grand total of 1512 hrs.

this includes both light and dark periods.

8 on and 16 off takes the same number of hrs.

if we eliminate the 4 hrs every day as you propose we cut off a total of 252 hrs or 10.5 days turning a 9-week plant into a 52.5 day or 7.5-week plant.

this would make the entire flowering period both light and dark hours at 1260 total hours.

1260/1512=83.33 so the inverse is 16.66% total difference in time between the grows.

if this works this way i can see it being a very big deal amongst large-scale commercial growers.

you have x amount of amperage to work with.

with the 8 on 16 off or 8 on 12 off, you would still have the same electric bill per harvest but you would have a greater annual bill with the 8 on 12 off routine because of the increased number of photoperiods.

but there are several force enhancers at work here.

same sq ft area and same power supply as your competitor who is running a straight-up 12-12.

he is flipping his lights back and forth between 2 rooms but delivering only 1000 umols of flow.

you are flipping the power between 3 rooms in a 24 hr cycle. 8 hrs each but delivering 1500 umols.

you also use the 12-hour dark period shortening your time to harvest by maybe 16.66%.

in a complete year he will have 52wks/9wks=5.77 harvests per room per year and with 2 rooms that is 11.55 total harvests a year.

you in a complete year 52wks/7.5wks=6.93 harvest per room per year but you are times 3 instead of times 2 so that makes 20.79 harvests per year.

wow, just fucking wow!

i think I'll try it the next run.

problems could be lower yield or a really messed up schedule for humans trying to work all 3 rooms around the clock.

but if your rooms were totally automated and you were running a minimum veg time sea of green so you didn't have to help shape plants and top or defoliate.

and you timed it so that you worked one room at the end of a cycle and the next room at the beginning of a cycle putting them in the same work period and then the next one in the morning or something like this.

fascinating stuff!

 

[greyfader]

in my little comparison of the 2 grows above i failed to factor in the fact that both have equal total sq ft.

so each grow the 12-12 grower flipping 2 rooms does gets a factor of 1. that's still 11.5 per year.

but the 8 on-12 off grower because his space is broken into three parts gets a yield factor of .666. i love that number!

assuming identical yield per sq ft per harvest that turns the 20.79 harvests into an equivalent of 13.79 harvests if done 12-12.

that still comes out to a 16.61% greater yield per year if it works.

i can see another advantage being that you break up all the labor episodes into smaller, less time-consuming events

 

[MacGydro]

Yeah, about 16% (1/6) of flowering time savings was what I came to with my much less sophisticated math lol
Just glad it doesn't seem completely ridiculous on paper.
Love the brainstorming and experimentation!

 

[greyfader]

nothing sophisticated about the way i do math. i've been told by people who know a lot about it like professors that my approach is upside down and backward.

but i still manage to get there. it's just the long way around.

although i have spent most of my online time at eye see magazine since 2006 i am registered at most of the larger sites and have trolled them extensively.

so it was because i recognized a lot of great growers from other sites that i decided to register here.

the whole ppk thing is really an open-source shared experiment now.

everybody contributes. all of us small growers can achieve relevant breakthroughs in the art of growing by working together and sharing information.

our competition is not each other but rather the large corporate efforts that want to rule the industry. they have money and resources for doing almost unlimited research on a level that small ma and pa operations can't compete with.

but we are the guerilla fighters of cannabis research. thousands of us experimenting individually and comparing results.

it all adds up and progress is made. we get better and better because we cooperate.

there will always be a connoisseurs market for the best.