HYDRO Project Murcott

[UndergroundFarmer]

Project Murcott, replacing the aborted Project Pumpkin, is underway!

This will be another grow for beans. This time, I will be producing seed for two different varieties at once. The grow will consist of six Crockett's Tangies of both sexes in hydro plus an alternate in coco and one Kosher Kush feminized in coco. The six for hydro have sprouted and are in rooter plugs waiting to be big enough to transplant to hydro. The two seeds to grow in coco were started today. The aim here is to produce about a thousand Crockett's Tangie beans and about 200 24K Gold (or Kosher Tangie) beans. The 24K beans will be an F1 cross that will have to be regenerated if I ever run out. I suppose I can try to grow out 24K again and again to try and stabilize it as an inbred line of regular seed if I get super ambitious.

I've been aching to try Tangie and may move the one in coco out of this tent if it's a female so I can have some sinsemilla. If it's a boy, that's great too because it's nice to be able to remove males from the tent easily. The tent has been ready for a little over a week. I replaced the stiff irrigation tubing that was harboring crud with some new flexible tubing that I hope will be too slick to hold dirt like the old stuff. The only holdup has been waiting for sprouts. I was beginning to question my ability to get anything to germinate after the Cindy 99 wouldn't sprout either way I tried. I saved the beans for another try later and I have one unused one still in the package. Perhaps they will like warmer weather better or else they are just d-e-d dead from sitting in a hot warehouse. Time will snitch.

[Farmbuck]

Great !! Good luck with the project

[UndergroundFarmer]

Thanks! I'm disappointed about Cindy but I was pretty eager to get to this grow too. My daughter's favorite from the dispensaries in Oklahoma is 24K Gold and I wanted to have some ready as a Christmas present this year.

[UndergroundFarmer]

Week zero of veg is here! Eight out of eight seeds from DNA/Crockett Farms germinated and even better, all six transplanted to hydro survived the move yesterday. With those six looking good, I've moved the alternate Tangie and the Kosher Kush seedlings to coco in cups so I can clear the seedling tray for Project Deuxberry which will be closer to a start after I jar up all the bud from the Skunk that is drying in its tent right now.

A little research in an old-fashioned book has given me some insight how I managed to get such good male/female ratios in both projects Psychonaut and Sam. It seems that seedlings that get plenty of water and nitrogen around the second and third week of veg tend to turn out female! Blue light is also a factor according to Jorge Cervantes' Cannabis Encyclopedia. So it seems that growing in coco that doesn't get too wet under reddish light and heavier potassium than nitrogen in its food is a recipe for male plants. I feel even better about this setup after reading that!

[UndergroundFarmer]

This ought to be the week one of veg post but they are not past seedling stage enough to start on nutes. The two in coco are looking good and will need to be transplanted by the weekend. The rest in hydro are just now dropping roots into the water, so I can lower the water level and start feeding fairly soon.

[UndergroundFarmer]

OK, now it's week one of veg! They are coming along unequally in hydro with one already having three nodes and another struggling a bit with crumpling new growth but they seem to be coming along. The two in coco are doing nicely, even looking strangely symmetrical from above after working with so many clones lately. I fed them Hydroguard and Soul nutes to about 1.0 EC and 5.8 pH this morning after flushing out the system a few times first. The bigger plant in coco at bottom left is a Seedsman CBDV 1:1 Auto taking up space here until the Purple Hazes next door (or would that be next flap?) are harvested. I can always move her back to my old 30x30 tent I've dubbed "Autozone" if I have to, but the lighting is better here. The one in the cup on the left is Tangie, one on the right is Kosher Kush. They will have to be transplanted sometime this week.

[UndergroundFarmer]

Week one ended with a minor disaster. I rerouted the irrigation lines to three of the buckets to provide top feed for the slower starters. Next morning, I checked the tent before leaving the house (thank Jah) and found all the nute solution nicely contained by the tent floor liner. I used too short of a piece of tape and the lines broke loose overnight. Luckily, there were no fatalities except for their air pump. Because of the holiday, all the grow shops were closed so I wound up buying an aquarium pump that isn't quite up to the job. I should have a new one tomorrow. I will also be very busy flushing everything tomorrow in both hydro tents because of a stupid mistake I made during the interim of Psychonaut/Sam to Murcott/Deuxberry. I put all the hydroton in a bucket to wash it out after teardown. It seems I never got around to giving them more than a quick rinse! I started to wash the remainder of the pellets and the water turned black. Earlier, I started noticing the nute solution going from brown(normal for what I use) to almost clear in a day or so after feeding. I found today that the filter element from the pump was clogged with crap that must have gotten in from dirty hydroton. The rest of those pellets are sitting in bleach after a triple washing. I will need them as soon as the babies are big enough to fill in the net pots all the way.

On more positive notes, the Pink Kush CBD is making pink flowers now and I finally found and destroyed a naughty kitty's pee spot by the basement drain. Oh yes, and the Purple Hazes in the same tent are making a forest of bud so there's that. I swear I'm tempted to go all coco at this moment.


The tent just before the great flood. The bucket closest to the front is where the failure happened.





Above are the reason I'm trying the top feed.



Kosher Kush kan't komplain about its koko krib.

[UndergroundFarmer]

I've been stupidly busy all week trying to turn things around. I finally got off work early enough Thursday to get a proper air pump and I bought a bigger one this time. Now the bubbles are so strong that nothing can settle in the buckets because of the churn! I spent the rest of that evening trying to clear out the crap from the dirty hydroton. It seems dead root bits dried out still clinging to the pellets reconstituted once wet and you can guess the rest. I'll be busy today washing out the net pots over the basement drain to see if I can get the crap clinging to the roots off my plants.

Lesson: Hydro is hard when everything is dirty.

[UndergroundFarmer]

Week 2 of veg began with an almighty fight against the reddish-brown to black fungus that went wild in the RDWC. I started my vacation week on Friday evening and I needed it to handle this almighty mess I helped create. Bits of the fungus had been sticking themselves to the roots of my Tangies and it is tough to remove without breaking off root bits. I worked from Saturday through Monday flushing the netpots out, draining and refilling the whole system on Sunday and touch-up on Monday. No pictures were taken during all of this because my hands were always too wet to handle the phone plus this stuff is super gross.

The genesis of all this was of course, my 50 year-old brain telling itself after the last harvest that I need to bleach out and thoroughly rinse the hydroton, then my brain checking the task off as if it were already done. I also started the Tangie seedlings in hydro too soon. The dirty hydroton was just beginning to cause trouble in here when I inadvertently made it much worse by trying top feeding the more runted seedlings. Besides the related flood, this also washed much more of the dead roots and stuff into the nute solution. So just days after the flood while getting less oxygen in the water until I got a good air pump working again, this fungus took over the system.

I think it was Friday night I discovered the roots were coated and rinsed off what I could and removed what crap I could from the water pump's filter media. Saturday was spent washing out the net pots and cleaning roots again along with all the other underground farm chores.

Sunday morning roots were again coated so I went "nuculur". I drained the whole thing and refilled three or four times and washed out the net pots yet again. I then left the system just full enough to not touch the roots of the smaller plants, removed the big one to a bucket outside and added a half bottle of peroxide to the RDWC and let it circulate for a half hour. I put all back together and added nutes again and left it until Monday morning.

Monday morning, the plants looked good but still had to have their roots washed. It seems the peroxide killed off all the fungus which eventually came loose from where it was anchored and got everywhere in the system. Even the irrigation lines were clogged with the crap! I spent a good long while with a kitchen strainer removing the (hopefully) last bits of it from the setup before retiring for the day.

Today I took pictures of how they are doing. They rewarded my efforts by acting like healthy plants - one even shot up a couple of inches overnight. The two runts are in a seedling tray with some rooting enhancer to try and revive them. If they can't make it, then OK, I can do this with five Tangies if I must.


Murcott as of this morning. The right front one in hydro is the one that shot up overnight.


Damn sideways shot. These are the two runts trying to rebound.


Here's their neighbors in the tent dubbed "Autozone". Tangies are under the humidity dome. Two extra Blueberry seedlings from Deuxberry are in solo cups. At back from left to right are a Seedsman Northern Lights auto, a Seedsman CBDV 1:1 auto, and a Sweet Seeds Dark Devil auto. The Dark Devil is attempt number three which is why it is so far behind the others.


For extra shits and giggles, this is inside the new 4x4 tent I bought to flower out stuff in coco. The stuff in Autozone now should be here in a few weeks. Then I can start seeds in the Autozone tent for Super Lemon Haze or Lavender and other fems that have been waiting their turn. I have four Purple Haze clones a week or so from chop and a Seedsman Pink Kush CBD auto in the center. I like the way she put on the purpling without cold temps. The PHs are the first ones I've grown out in coco with LST via bamboo sticks and soft garden wire plus a local product called Cannabenders which are strapped to the stems when they are very young to flatten out the profile and trigger the branches to make more and bigger buds. PH is always a nice producer but this is going to be massive.

[UndergroundFarmer]

UPDATE: I removed a small plug of dead fungus from the system this morning and hopefully, that's the last of it. The real news is that when checking on everyone this morning I noticed nice new clean white roots growing out from both of the runted Tangies that are parked in a seedling tray in the Autozone tent. The little devils look like they will endure! I expect to move them back into the RDWC setup in a few days.

[UndergroundFarmer]

All six of the hydro Tangies are together again! It seems that these two I'd almost given up for dead rerooted from the base of their stems like cuttings would. I guess mixing that root booster in with the nutes worked! No sign of anything needing attention today so I'll try to pick out about a half dozen seeds to start for the next batch of fems grown out in coco. I'm thinking Super Lemon Haze, Lavender, Purple Panty Dropper, Trainwreck, Strawberry Lemonade and GSC. I've had some of these seeds for over a year. We'll see how well they lasted.

[UndergroundFarmer]

Week 3 began about the same way as week 2. I blasted out the system with water trying to remove every bit of that red-brown algae stuff then fed them and treated with Hydroguard. This afternoon I checked on them and while they still looked about as perky as they do here, their roots were slimed over again.

I just washed it all off again and added more Hydroguard and even more hydroton pellets on top in case light leaks are the issue. I've turned off the white LEDs in my panel off.

I cannot keep doing this. I should be hanging a scrog net by now.

If they can't get healthy in this system, I will be forced to move them to coco and tear down the RDWC system until cooler weather comes and the system has been bleached and dried out.

[UndergroundFarmer]

Murcott remains hydro after two evenings of physically removing slime and treating with peroxide. Grapefruit seed extract will be tried too. If they are stable by the weekend, I will leave them where they are.

[UndergroundFarmer]

Friday update: I didn't have so much crap to scoop out of the system today! I dosed them again with peroxide until I can get some GSE. All six Tangies in hydro are popping fresh roots and reaching for the grow lights. I've topped the Tangie and the Kosher Kush in coco this week as well.

[Ckbrew]

Sounds like RDWC is a lot of work. How do you control humidity in that setup?

[UndergroundFarmer]

It's only this much work when you make dumb mistakes like using dirty hydroton when you think you sanitized it a month before! Normally in the middle of a grow, I only need about five minutes a day to check pH and TDS then up to an hour on Sunday to change the water in two tents. I used a portable A/C unit set to dehumidify mode in previous years until it went kaput. This year I broke down and cut a hole in the grow room and mounted a window unit in the wall to keep temps down and ultimately knock down humidity for the whole basement area. The window unit drips into a funnel then flexible tubing takes it to the floor drain in the basement. Overall relative humidity down there has gone from 80-90% this summer to a steady 65% in the larger basement area and around 50% in the grow room.

[Ckbrew]

Sounds like a dope setup. If I got an AC for the plants before I got one for the wife, well...

[UndergroundFarmer]

It's getting there! I'm going to try an take advantage of it and leave the tent with the Purple Haze I'm harvesting tomorrow open all night just to see if I can get them all to turn purple.

[UndergroundFarmer]

Week 4 of veg and all six Tangies in hydro continue to bounce back. I've still had to scour and strain out crap yesterday at feeding and today I went a bit deeper today, cleaning the airstones and pump filter once again before another peroxide treatment. I've topped the two in coco, and it looks like I accidentally fimmed the Kosher Kush and almost did the same to the Tangie. KK has four tops now and Tangie has three! KK has bamboo stakes to tie the tops to once they grow out enough and Tangie will get the same soon.

The group shot 6/20/21. Beer is Earthbound Blonde.


Triple-top Tangie


Unevenly fimmed Kosher Kush.

The quest for Grapefruit seed extract continues.