Aurora Indica by Nirvana, 100% organic grow with BioBizz nutes

[Cocho]

I have a question.

When is the best time to measure pH value of your soil?
Normally I would just measure the runoff right then and there.
But when I flushed the soil a little while back, I first measured the runoff right away. But as the plant was relaxing in the dark, during the night, some more runoff came out and stayed there until the next morning.
When I measured the pH-level of that runoff the results where +2 in value.
The runoff I sampled right away came out at 4, but the runoff i got from the tray the next morning came out at 6.

The reason I'm asking is because a lot of people think that you'll get a better and more accurate result if you wait up till 24 hours.
So which test do you think was the more accurate when I did my measurements?
The one I did right away that came out at 4, or the one I did the next morning that came out at 6?
Because when I measure the runoff now, it still comes out too low (about 5). But the plant keeps on growing, and I don't want to mess with the soil for no reason.

The soil I'm using is organic and contains almost no peat, since they replaced it with Coco.
So I'm wondering if the runoff is low for a reason at first. Something to do with the nutrients in the soil, or the structure of the soil.
And that's why it came out with a higher level after a while?

I don't know.. I just wanted to ask you guys, and maybe I got a good answer. Because I really don't know what to think here.
She might look fine now, but I don't want her to get sick the minute she goes in to flower. And I definitely don't want her to get sick 1 week from harvest or something like that.
So it's better to deal with stuff like that now. Preferably without all sorts of chemicals (pH-Up & pH-DOWN), and it would be nice to avoid another flush.

So what do you think? Should I just relax, or is this something I should address?

[Cocho]

Time for an update folks!

It has been a few days since I last updated with some pictures.
Mostly because I've been busy with Christmas preparations and stuff like that.
But also because I wanted to see the changes before I posted here.

I'm still kind of worried about the pH-value. She seems to be happy and grow a little more very day. And she looks fine. Maybe a little light green, but hopefully she will turn darker after next feeding.
Planning on giving her 2ml per liter next time. Hopefully that will give her some kick.

I've also bought a bag of Dolomite granules, and I was wondering if I should try and add 1/2 tablespoon to the water next time I water her?
Grind the granules up into a "flour" and mix it with water and BioGrow? That way the runoff might correct it self?
To be honest.. I don't really know how to deal with the runoff. And I don't want to do something that might screw everything up for me.

So what do you guys think?

Here's some pictures of her after I tied her down some more today. I've also removed most of the big fan leaves to make room for new growth. Hopefully she will thank me for that.







The conditions inside the tent are about 27C/80F +- a few degrees, and about 60% RH.

Peace!

[Cocho]

Hey!
It's just that.. the runoff came out a little to acidic last time, and since I want this grow to be 100% ecological and organic, I don't want to add chemicals like pH-Up or pH-Down. That's why I bought a bag of Dolomite. It's cheap and certified organic. But it wont work like that? Not even if I grind it up to powder and mix it good into the water before I pour it onto the soil?

[D.A.A.S.69]

We always threw a couple of hand fulls of pulverized dolomite in our pots -buckets before we even planted, an I'm sure it takes a little while before that even helps.
It might work quicker what your talking about ,but I don't know how you find out unless you know someone, or you try it.

[Cocho]

Yeah, that's the "normal" way. I remember when I was little and we were told by my grandfather to go and throw Dolomite on the field to counter act the effects of the acidic rain (I grew up on a farm). That method is meant to work in the long term. So that's why I thought the grounded up stuff, mixed with water would be a "quick" remedy. The Dolomite has a pH-value of 7, so technically I would not be able to ruin my soil with it. But the fact that my water comes out at 8 worries me quite a bit. Because in my head, the Dolomite together with some "hard water" could be harmful. So I guess I will just let her be for now. Give her double dosage of nutrients in a day or two, and see what the time brings.

[Cocho]

Watered her today.

Gave her 2 liters (8,5 cups) of water mixed with 2ml/L BioGrow (4ml in total) and 1ml/L TopMax (2ml in total). I measured the runoff the first time and it came out at 5 pH. Then I cleaned the tray and gave her another 10-15 mins before I measured again. This time it came out at 6 - 6,5 pH, which is perfect! So now I'm happier than a dung beetle on a horse show!

[Paracelsus]

Nice Grow WOW Polar Bears LOL I just got here but read the whole thread so I wanna drop a couple of ideas. If you want to bring up the temperature consider a second light, just a thought. You did a good job on the flush, most of those problems may have come from transplanting into such a large pot. You couldn't help but over water if you were ph testing runoff. You noticed it could of used some drainage help. Last is don't be afraid to snip snip snip and give those bud sites the light and air they need. If you started a little earlier with a considered trim you might of seen some greater horizontal growth. IF you haven't read this tutorial Nebula wrote give it a look. http://www.growweedeasy.com/defoliation

I'm a newbie but there is a wealth of good science here.

[Cocho]

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad more people are finding this thread.

The temperature has been solved. I just brought in a larger heater, so now my office keeps an even temperature, and never goes lower than 20C/68F at night.

Yes, the large pot did affect the pH, I'm sure of it. But the reason I changed to such a large pot was because it was the only one I had, and I did not have time to drive all the way down to the garden center for a medium one. So I just went for it, and it almost messed stuff up. One lesson "richer" in life. Yes, I've been doing a little more "snip snip snip", and I might even do more over Christmas. Because I want to focus on the big branches, with the big buds.

I'm reading my way through the tutorials/guides on this site. Just been a little preoccupied the last couple of weeks due to all the preparations for Christmas and so on. But I promise I'll read it during the holidays. Most of the stuff on here are golden, and this whole growing thing would be a lot harder if I had to figure it out by myself.

Peace!

[Cocho]

Hello gang!

Today I gave this "defoliation" technique a try. I have no idea if what I did is even correct, or if I cut off something important or what.
But I did as the guide told me (Cannabis Defoliation Tutorial: How to Increase Yields by Removing Leaves), and cut away most of the fan leaves located lower on the plant.
The ones who did not get enough light, or didn't have anything important to do, or wasn't connected to any tops.
The goal was to make the plant a little more "airy" and make room for good growth.

I've never done anything like this before, so I hope I did good.



As you can see in the next photo, there's a lot of new growth "sprouts" growing on the branches. I did not remove these, only the leaves, since the guide told me not to if I didn't know what I was doing.
Does it look okay? You can see what I'm talking about in the next one.



And here..



I'm not going to go overboard with this at this point. This is my first grow in many years, and I will use this opportunity to "grind some rust of the old gears", and rather go all in the next round.
What I mean by that is; that you should give me as much feedback as possible, since then I can come back here later and read everything, put in to use on the next grow, and maybe get some killer yields.

I'm also going away for a few days. We're not celebrating Christmas her at our place, but we're visiting the in-laws, and will be staying there until the 26th of December (4 days without water).
Hopefully this will be fine. I'm planning on leaving the heather on medium, that way it wont get really hot during the day (max 25C/77F during the day and low 20C/68F during the night), that way I'll keep the soil from evaporating too fast. Does that sound like an idea?

Peace!

Edit: Round 2, did some alterations!

[Paracelsus]

Hi Cocho, Happy Holidays The winter solstice has passed, every day come forward there will be just a little more light.
Nice effort on the trim, conservative is best cause you can't put it back. That last picture is a beauty and shows you have a good solid foundation for your tree to grow on and for you to train. Here is another tutorial but this one is on training basics. Defoliation is one kind of training, LST is another Low Stress Training. This Tutorial gives an overview of LST in section five.
http://www.growweedeasy.com/simple-c...training-guide
and also explains other techniques like topping and manifolding/main-lining, FIMing, ScrOG, Sea of Green and Super Topping. Getting to know your plant and its structure, identifying the grow sites, colas, nodes, and learning how to combine these techniques in a way best for your grow is the way to go. The pictures and arrows really help. PS A small soda bottle filled with water with a pin hole in the bottom and in the top would allow a steady drip into plant while your gone.

[Cocho]

Paracelsus Thanks! I've already done some light LST. But it got harder as the plant grew bushier and bushier. So now, since I've cleared out some space, I will continue training her. I will "bookmark" that guide on my phone, and read during the holidays.

I gave her 1 liter (4 cups) of water, mixed with 2ml BioGrow and 1ml TopMax. Hopefully this will be good enough for a couple of days (I did just water her yesterday). It should not be a problem at all actually, because she usually goes 3-4 days without water. And now with the defoliation and stuff, she will need a few extra days before she starts growing again, I guess. So I think I'm good.

Nice picture btw! Those are nomads living in the US I guess? We have a similar people where I'm from (I'm actually 50% Sapmi, which is the name of the natives over here).

[Paracelsus]

I think they were a Lap Land Tribe, not sure if I remember right. I was looking for another picture I have of a medicine woman with the Reindeer inside her yurt. I put your picture on my FB page thanks

[Cocho]

Lapland is a part of Finland. Do you have a place/area called Lap Land over there too? The reason I thought the picture was of a native from the US was because they had the "Asian" look, which the natives over here don't. But they come from the same people. With Shamanism and mother earth as their religion. Merry Christmas anyways!

[Paracelsus]

Hello Cocho I miss spelt Lap Land but further research tells me that they are Mongolian Siberian Nomads from a reclusive tribe.
The photographer Hamid Sardar-Afkami also did a Documentary a few years back.

http://hamidsardarphoto.com

Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men.
P

[Cocho]

Hello everyone, and happy holidays!

I just got home from this years Christmas celebrations, and I noticed that the plant might have had it a little cold the last few days.
Not too cold, just colder than usual. The reason I believe that is because she is still kind of moist. Normally the soil would have dried up by now.
And some of the Perlite have a green color, it looks like algae (10 Perlite pellets tops). No worries, I turned up the heat and the circulation fan, so she'll be dryer by the time the light turns off.
And the algae won't be I problem I guess? She looks healthy and everything, so I guess she just needs to dry up a bit.

But there's another thing I noticed too. Some of the roots are showing in the surface, and i can clearly see the roots sticking out from the soil between the soil and the inner "wall" of the pot.
The roots down the side are normal, but I've never seen roots on the surface before. Should I get some more soil and cover them up, or just leave them?

Other than that the plant have grown some while I was away. I don't have any pictures, and I won't be taking any today either. Been a long drive home, so I'll try to take some pictures tomorrow instead.

But what do you think about the algae and the roots? Should I be concerned?

[Paracelsus]

http://www.growweedeasy.com/cannabis-root-problems

Cocho the roots may be seeking more oxygen because there is still standing water from the last watering you gave before you left for a few days, Algae may be a sign of over watering too. I remembered reading about it in this tutorial. The temperature drop may have slowed down your evaporation and there may not be enough oxygen.

Glad your back safe and sound

[Cocho]

First update in a while!

As many of you know I've been away for a few days, celebrating the holidays with family and friends, and I just got back last night.
Before I left I gave the the little lady 1 liter (4 cups) of water, mixed with 2ml BioGrow and 1ml TopMax, just in case.
When I got home yesterday I noticed that some of the Perlite on top had a green color, and the soil was kind of moist till.
I believe the temperature in the house have been a little on the colder side during the night, and because I turned of the circulation fan, since it gets way to cold if I leave it on during the night, there was not enough evaporation from the soil while I was away.

The little lady looks fine. And I believe we're okay, and that she just needs to dry up a bit.

The other thing I noticed was that some of the roots are showing above ground, which is a little weird. But as Paracelsus says; it might come from lack of oxygen, due to the moist soil.

But again, she looks healthy enough. So I'll just let her dry up.

I've made sure to crank up the heath a little, and I've also made sure to have more circulation around the stem.

This is how she looks at the moment.



She has grown a bit, looks "thick" but not too bushy.

Here you can see how she looks from underneath. There's plenty of space since I cleared out a lot of the bushy branches and leaves before I left.



Here's the green Perlite and some roots.





Hopefully this will not be a porblem. But I've thought about throwing in some more soil mix, just to cover up the roots. But i might want to wait until the soil to dry up a bit more?

What do you guys think?

I hate that issues like these happens because I have to go away for a few days. But it's nothing I can do except wait. But if I've stayed home this would never have happened.

Anyways, looking forward for some feedback!

[alltatup]

Your plant looks great, Cocho! The pictures of the roots are very cool: she's not outgrowing that pot, is she?

[Cocho]

Thanks! And I hope not.. the pot is 15 liters (4 gallons), so it should be enough for a large plant. And considered I only have a little more than 4ft (150cm) in height in this DS60, I can't use a bigger pot. She'll get too tall am I afraid.

[alltatup]

Cocho That happened to me!!!

[Cocho]

Worked out as a improvised "super cropping" I hope?
Had a K-Train a few years back that ended up falling over. But then again the Trainwreck genetics has a tendency to fall over in a pile, like a trainwreck.
Hopefully yours did just fine after that?

[alltatup]

That was my third grow, and it was extremely sativa: Ace Purple Haze x Malawi. I look back now and shake my head: I started with four seeds in my grow box and realized that I had to sacrifice 3 plants to let the leader take off. She turned out ok, but it's not any kind of crazy psychadelic high like it's described to be. It's a nice and fairly mellow high, so I think I let her go way longer than she needed to. I kept looking at the triches, and they didn't behave the same way as hybrid/indica triches behave, so I just didn't know what I was doing as well as I should have. At least I made it to harvest and I did get 7.5 oz decent bud. I learned a lot growing her. 18 weeks flowering.

[Cocho]

That was a long flowering period! But you got a fair amount of bud out of it, so I guess it was worth it.
And yes, the first couple of grows are the "learning period". Good times, good memories.
This is my "reckoning" in some way. Last time I was growing Cannabis was almost 8 years ago.
I've never been totally away from it, I've just don't been doing any of the growing myself since then.
But this year I got tired of buying weed, expecting it to be something and it turns out to be something similar but worse.
And remembering my first grow, and the results I got from it. Even the bud. Two hits and I had to put GTA on pause, because I lost the ability to drive in game.
Hope you'll see some good results this grow too then. I'm starting to see some purple popping up on mine, and I'm hoping this is a purple pheno.
That would be awesome!

[Cocho]

Hello again folks!

Time for another update.

It has been a few days since I last posted about my project here.

One of the last things I did before joining my family in celebrating the Christmas holiday was defoliating the little lady a bit.
When I got back from the holiday I noticed that the temperature inside the office, where I've placed my tent, was a little low. About 23C/73F with a %RH of 60.
So quite "cold" and humid. So I cranked up the heat and made sure the circulation fan was turned on and aimed at the plant in a helping manner.
What I also did was another round of defoliation, and some LST. The goal was to make the area where the plant grows even more airy and roomy, and at the same time made sure that the light reached the soil, and there were proper airflow in between the branches. After I had finished cutting I felt like I overdid the whole thing, and was kind of worried that the growth of the plant was harmed.
So I gave her a few days before I posted here. I wanted to see if she could recover from this "mauling".

Here's a picture of the sad poor thing right after the sudden defoliation:

(this was 35 days into veg.)



And here she is 24 hours later (day 36 into veg.):

(a little more happy, and you can see how the leaves are stretching and "slithering" their way towards the light)



And here she is 72 hours after the first picture (38 days into veg.):

(fattening up quite nicely)



The goal here is to fill out the "empty" space in the top. You can kind of see it on the last picture. It's a open space of air, where you can see through the plant it self.
When she has filled out, and again can start growing upwards, I plan on turning the light to 12/12. Because as you can see I've managed to make her grow wider, in a more flat manner.
And I don't want to lose that again, so putting her into flowering will allow me to use my ScrOG while she has her flowering stretch.

What do you think about that?

The reason I did this sudden defoliation and LST was to force her to grow side ways, instead of the regular way. And make sure to stop the development of smaller flowers lower on the plant, and make way for some good air flow.

You can see my attempt here. It's not perfect, but it is my first time defoliating, so all things considered; I believe I did just fine.



The only thing "standing in my way" of putting her into flower would be the topping I did. Some of the canopy needs some time to develop again, and at the moment they're kind of small.
And I don't want to mess things up by flowering her when multiple of her tops are still developing.

Here's a few pictures to show you what I'm talking about:





As you can see, some of these are quite small, and I want them to thrive and grow big, fat and sticky.
So I don't want to act too hasty.

So what do you think? How long should I wait before turning her over to 12/12? And do you think its time? It has been almost 40 days since she sprouted from seed.
Normally I would be in week 1 of flowering by now. But I wanted to make this one perfect (or at least give it a try) before starting flowering.

I've also made a little clone out of one of her lower branches that wouldn't grow into anything other than maybe some popcorn bud.
So instead of just chopping it, I made a clone. The thing is that I don't have a tent for my clones. Only this one tent, where I grow my plants from seed to bud. So this little sucker will have time to grow for another week or so, and then I will switch over to 12/12. So the little one will just be a tiny thing. But I figured one tiny plant was better than popcorn or nothing.

Anyways.. here's the little one.



Other than that; I'm having a little issue with the circulation fan. The tent is getting kind of crowded, and the fan does not fit anymore. But due to the holidays i can't get a new one, since everything is closed.
So I'd have to wait until next year to buy a new one. So.. does any of you have any experience with the Secret Jardin Monkey Fans? They are tiny, but still powerful enough to support my little project.
But I'm not sure of the quality. They're 30$ without transportation, so about 40$ after delivery. And that is a lot for such a small fan.

Looking forward to read your feedback! Enjoy the rest of the holidays!

Peace!

[alltatup]

She looks great, Cocho. I agree with you plan of letting the growth tips develop a little more. I just switched my 40-day old plants to 12/12, but I topped them 12-14 days ago. The fan I know nothing about...

[Paracelsus]

Some time won't hurt, maybe you can raise the fan on a bucket or hang it from the top. This tutorial is a good review for flowering.
I saw this YT DIY video and I think it may help you with your fan space

http://www.growweedeasy.com/cannabis-flowering-stage#introduction-flowering-stage-cannabis-week-by-week

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMOMyLiGvmI&index=1&list=LLMfpqTKLPUTGpidTptLpe7g

[Locrian99]

She looks good, looking forward to seeing her progress. I have 2 AI’s that just started.