Full Steam Ahead!!
Temps 72- 80°F (22-26°C)
Humidity 50-58%
VPD 1.15 - 1.45kPa
CO2 600-1400ppm
PPFD +/- 1000
DLI 48-52 @12hrs
It is Day 70 for the Tangie. She's definitely looking like she's getting ready to finish. I dropped the light intensity from 100% to 75%. From 1200PPFD (51DLI) to 890PPFD (39DLI). In another week or so, I'll lower it even further. For the ripening stage she doesn't need 1200ppfd. She's already bulked up as much as she's going to. The pistils closest to the light have curled; just waiting for the lower ones to do the same. It's gonna be a tight one... Will she be ready by 4/20? 🪴🤔🤷â€â™‚ï¸. It's very possible. Gonna try out that Cannatrol really really soon!! It you notice on the pictures above, the smallest buds are golf ball sized. Really nice structure, really nice frost levels; just really nice all around and the SMELL omglih ... Like the freshest, juiciest orange peels. It's got that tart sweet smell but with a bitter back. Just awesome all around.
The Pineapple Express
At first I was a bit worried about her. She needed nutrients and quick! I'm glad I still had the GH Cali-Magic since it's got some water soluble nitrogen. I put some in the water and top dressed with organic nutrients and man oh man did she respond! SO many flowers. Flowers stacking on top of flowers. When these things start fattening up..... They're gonna be HUGE! She picked up some green coloring but she's not so focused on repairing yellowing leaves. She's more focused on building flower so she looks a bit yellow but def greener than before. I don't want to feed her too much nitrogen otherwise it will mess up the bud structure. The cover crop is coming in which is good because this kind of keep that topsoil a lot more moist and keep those nutrients flowing. A similar thing was happening to the Blue Dream she was looking all dark and green so I wasn't thinking about nitrogen and then out of nowhere she started getting nitrogen hungry and started pulling all the nitrogen from the bottom leaves. So this time I reacted much quicker.
The Blue Dream
She's growing nice and strong. Although I have noticed that she might be a little hungry for nitrogen. The bottom leaves have been yellowing and falling off. So I did the same thing I did with the pineapple Express. I put some of that general hydroponics and cal mag in there and she started growing again. The leads stopped yellowing and she's drinking water again and growing really nicely. It was weird because the last time I filled the base was March 26th and I didn't water her again until March 6th. Meanwhile all the other plants needed the basis build two or three times in that time period. So I knew something was off It was the lack of calcium and nitrogen... Or at least nitrogen. Thankfully she's back to doing her thing. As you can see above the flowers are fat. Super dense thick giant flowers on her and she's only about to start fattening up now. So I can only imagine how nice those flowers are going to look when she's ready in May.
MAC1
​​​​​​​She's the real surprise of all the plants. She had the roughest start, the slowest growth, the most stunting, the slowest to start flowering and the longest to stretch. The flowers were looking so small for so long and just weren't really developing. But recently she really started growing. The buds are developing really fast and getting fatter and faster daily. I noticed the worms in the pots are taking care of the dead cover crop. The bottom used to be little with dead cover crop that I trimmed too low and it's all gone and decomposed. Could be the worms alone but could also be the bokashi helping along.
COULD WE HAVE BEEN WRONG?
I saw a HUGE improvement in ALL the plants when I stopped using PH down. I have been using vinegar instead.
So it states like this..... Initially I use just plain filtered water at 7.3ish pH..... Then after like a month I'll start getting concerned the pH is rising so I start using pH down (one or 2 drops per gallon) to get the water down to 6.8ph. As soon as I start doing that, things start getting wonky. I'll start getting calcium deficiencies I'll start getting magnesium deficiencies or just other weird nutrient problems.
​​​​​​I went and did some research and found this out. The phosphoric acid inside the pH down May be causing the calcium in the soil to become calcium sulfate which is gypsum or calcium phosphate which is the same material your bones are made out of. Now consider this when you bury a body in the soil everything decomposes except for the bones. The bones stay around for many many more years before nature is finally able to break down that calcium phosphate. Is it possible that when I add the pH down I'm converting a lot of my calcium into calcium phosphate??? I started reading into using vinegar as a pH down. For multiple reasons.... The first reason is the TPS Cal mag If you smell that it smells like straight up vinegar. Then I've also been experimenting with making calcium acetate by taking eggshells grinding them up and soaking them in vinegar. It turns out that calcium acetate is hundreds times more water soluble and available for the plants to use readily compared to any other type of calcium source including calcium carbonate. So I started experimenting. I picked one plant which was the pineapple Express since she was the one showing the most nutrient deficiencies and I switched the pH down with vinegar and ever since I did that she's come to life. Not only that but I've noticed biology forming in the actual bases where I pour the water. Ever since I started adding the vinegar there's just hundreds of springtails in the water. Not even sure how they got into the water unless there's some roots poking holes in the fabric pots and they were able to sneak past there and reproduce in the water. either way I'm always really happy to see them because that's how I know for a fact my soil is just about as happy as it could be.
I know using baking soda as a pH up is really bad because it ends up turning into sodium in your soil but the same can't be said for vinegar. Not sure why people are so against vinegar. It's one of the easiest ingredients to break down by soil biology. It doesn't interact negatively with any kind of organic nutrients if anything it just makes them more available for your plants to use...
I know other people will say well they use vinegar as an herbicide. Which is true but that's 30% vinegar not 5% vinegar diluted down to .0005%. I know that phosphoric acid could build up in the soil over time and cause other problems meanwhile vinegar doesn't build up in the soil and it's broken down really quickly. Not only that but if there is any calcium phosphate that was created by using the phosphoric acid, the vinegar will actually help break that down back into a usable form for the plants.
Granted if you're using bottled nutrients you're okay with using the pH down phosphoric acid. I wouldn't recommend using vinegar for synthetic nutrients because it is not as stable as phosphoric acid in keeping the pH stable. Not only that but the vinegar could react with some of the nutrients in the synthetic bottle stuff so this ONLY* works with organic and living soil grows. (*I can't confidently say if it works or doesn't work for synthetics; we need more science)
I'm telling you there's been a real noticeable difference in the quality and the vigor of growth for all the plants ever since I've switched to using the vinegar as a pH down. I'm still going to keep experimenting although I'm not sure how much pH down I'm going to be using in the future but I will definitely be using vinegar. I'm not sure why vinegar got such a bad rap. For organic applications it seems like the better choice for hydroponics I wouldn't recommend it.
​​​​​​​But anyways before I drag on more with my theories... Week 9 time lapse is posted in the Dropbox. Link will be below. Keep on growing my friends, keep on experimenting and most importantly have fun with it all! 🪴🪱🌱ðŸ„🌼
