Trials and Errors

In the process of testing a soil-less hydroponic system I used several plants as guinea pigs and they in turn turned out feeble. Remnants of Hindu Kush Mother was cloned and set in garden soil to grow over the summer.  With sunlight duration of 12-13 hours these plants didn't flower till the beginning of September.   Meanwhile other strains were growing in coco medium to serve as mother plants for the clones that are now in the system.  Originally I took cuttings from an M13 strain and was only able to produce one rooting clone.  This set me back over a month and eventually the mother plant was cut down.  Now two mother Chemdog strains are in coco mix to provide several cuttings but results are mixed with maybe 25% successful clones.

Nutrients levels for clones for 2-3 weeks:

Botanicare Pro Grow: 7ml/gal
Botanicare Liquid Karma:  5ml/gal
Super Bat Super Tea Mix: 5ml/gal
Super Thrive: 5ml/gal
Botanicare Silica Blast: 30ml
Light: 600w high pressure sodium

Nutrient level for mothers:


Botanicare Pro Grow: 10ml/gal
Botanicare Liquid Karma:  10ml/gal
Super Bat Super Tea Mix: 10ml/gal
Super Thrive: 5ml/gal
Lights: 400w metal halide

Outside plants are nearly harvest and recieve weekly a liquid mix of 1 cup fish fertilizer with 1 tbsp/gal unsulphured black strap molasses.

Clones remain in chamber under high humidity and sprayed with club soda.

Three strains outside are automatics - Critical,, Northern Lights & Blueberry with the latter only seedlings that should be ready in December.  The Northern Light was stunted as a seedling but recovered under coco mix and 18 hour metal halide light and resulted in a bush with over  50+            "1-bowl-hit" flower heads.   Harvest time is 2-3 weeks.

The remaining outside strains are three Hindu Kush clones with an expected harvest in 2-3 weeks.

The hydroponic setup was constructed from PVC hollow fence post with drilled holes for tubing that feed straight into the pot of the clone which receive 10 minutes of nutrients every 5 hours from a 2000 gal/hr water pump in a plastic barrel with 10 gallons water.  Currently there are 7 clones in the setup: 1auto critical, 1 auto M13, 5 Chemdog.  Clones are rooting in organic plug surrounded by clay balls in a 3 inch netted pot.  A neoprene disk stabilizes the plants.  Rooting is promoted by dipping cutting in "Clonex" rooting compound.

Almost Home

It’s been about 11 weeks and for the next 6 days I will began flushing the nutrients from the plants’ medium.  I’m saturating the medium with distilled water and black strap molasses once a day.  The molasses are unsulphured with an 800+ mg potassium/tablespoon.  The plants go into 36 hours of darkness prior to harvesting next week. 

One of if not the biggest difference between these hydro grown plants and those in soil is the size of the buds on secondary branches.  On several plants these buds are the same size as the main cola with some even bigger.  All my soil plants had significantly smaller buds than the main cola.  Anecdotally I’d say the trichomes have taller stalks also.  All plants except one will be harvested because their trichomes are starting to turn opaque.  From the literature I found that a majority of the trichomes do not have to be opaque to initiate harvesting. 

In week nine I poured 450 ml of Bio Boost in 15 gallons water in the reservoir for the second round of two of treatments to increase bud size.  During this time and for two days I did not notice that the reservoir pump had disconnected from the feeding line.  The result was drying out of the medium and accumulation of “hot” phosphate around the roots and subsequent burning of bottom leaves on nearly all the plants.  Reattaching the pump allowed water to flush out the pots with the buds showing no ill-effect.  This incident may have been good for the buds in the long run, giving them a big jolt of phosphorous and jack up their size. 

While these buds aren’t “High Times” size they are above average and should have professional grade potency.

60 days

Roughly 8 weeks.  There was a significant increase in flower development followed by a few inches of growth on the main stem.  I added 300 ml of Canna Bio Boost plus 10 more gallons of water to the reservoir and will do so next week for the last time before I quit the nutrients.  Canna A + B nutrients are added every other 5 gallons (75 ml each).  Ten days without nutrients for a final flushing with only black strap molasses in the 25 gallon reservoir ( about 5 tlbs.)  I read this could pose problems with bacterial growth and mucking up the pump but it'll only be a two week experiment and I'll change out the reservoir once again before the harvest which I hope will occur just after the first week in march.  Lights are as high as they can go why necessitated a fair amount of super cropping.  I've had success with super cropping but occasionally the stem snaps rather than bend and two times they were beyond recovery.  Those two stems are now in sealed glass jars in grow plugs with nutrients to keep them fed until they root.  The end result will be two 3 inch dwarfs with two potent buds.  

Week 6.5

The ladies started showing pistils at day 12 which is about right after they were started on a 12 hour light cycle.  At this point I started foliage spraying with Canna Bio Boost to give the flowers an extra jolt of potassium and phosphorous.  I spray every other week until 2 weeks before harvest. 

My aeroponic transplants have recovered and rooting beyond their pots inside the reservoir - as expected.  While the plants in the coco medium require 5-10 gallons of water/nutrients every 4 days the aeroponic plants will excel without out added water for 2 weeks.  Two weeks is my schedule for change out but it could go longer.  Currently the aeroponic reservoir contains 7 gallons of water.  At $31 for nutrients every 3 weeks I can realize a significant cost savings with aeroponics with my next crop.  In addition, aeroponics are purported to have a crop that is superior to hydroponics with a medium. 

Week 4.5

My cut off for shifting the plants to flowering mode was 14 inches or one month.  At one month the plants range from 12-16 inches and are very robust.  From the reading the literature I decided that before switching to 12 hour light cycle I would let the plants undergo 36 hours of darkness to activate the hormones that will engage flowering.  The 12 hour light cycle began this morning with two HPS lights and one MH light for 12 plants.  During the two weeks between changing out water/nutrients I noticed that as the plants grew there was less water returning to the reservoir after every watering.  Possibly because the roots were slowing down the water and using it before it drained out of the medium.  It got to the point that I had to supplement the reservoir with an additional 5 gallons before change out.  Monitoring the reservoir is more important now that I’m switching to watering two times a day every 12 hours for 10 minutes each time.  I anticipate having to use upwards of 35 gallons of reservoir water every two weeks.  It should take about 10 days for the first pistils to appear.  At that time I will use “Canna Bio Boost” at the beginning of the second week of the reservoir prior to change out.  Once in flowering mode I no longer foliar leaf sprayed with Canna “Rhizotonic”.  At this point I realize I may have misinterpreted the guidelines for using the CoCo A/B Nutrients for this particular medium.  It’s said that the nutrients should not be used in a recirculating system but that’s what I have in a hybrid form.  The excess water is returned to the reservoir to recirculate and I refill when the level is low.  Possibly the advice to not use the nutrients apply only to medium-less system because my plants are growing like fiends.  Two more notes: 1) the rule of thumb after switching to a 12 hour cycle is that the plants will only double in height thereafter so I anticipate the plants to only reach 24-32 inches at harvest.  Actually ideal for indoor gardening but the harvest may only yield 300-350 grams/plant.  2)  The company literature states that these nutrients run fine in tap water and the additional minerals may be good for the plants.  Using tap water would cheaper.  I’m willing to experiment with tap water but key is letting the chlorine gas dissipate from the 5-gallon jugs for two days before added to the reservoir. 

It’s probably a type of leaf crinkle virus in the potted plants.  They are in flowering mode (12 hour light cycle) and pistils have emerged.  I will continue to use a mixture of nutrients that include fish extracts, molasses and vitamins.  These are my disposable plants and any buds from them is extra gravy so I can have a little fun experimenting with nutrient mixtures.  It should be noted that my hydro plants show just a trace of the crinkle but it’s really not noticeable unless you knew they were in the contaminated soil for a few days as seedlings.

There was still the matter of those four extra plants in 6” pots of coco medium.  I switched them over to a aeroponic tank.  Normally they were too far along to do this but I was out of options and room for the roots.  I washed  off as much of the medium as possible then placed each bare rooted plant in a netted pot that was secured under the lid of a 20 gallon container.  Ten gallons of nutrients are sprayed on the roots every other 30 minutes.  They went through some transplant shock but appear to be on the mend.        

Why this blog?

I'm writing this blog as both an update to anonymous friends and to document my first and future attempts at growing cannabis in a hydroponic garden.  "Stumble upon" viewers are welcome to comment on my growing protocols.  It's all a learning process.

Is the MAN watching?

When I use Mozilla Firefox all applications e.g. a blog site are routed through the TOR network and makes it impossible for the MAN to find the origin of my IP address and therefore my identity. 

I say impossible for the MAN to track me but in reality I must adhere to several common sense protocols to ensure my identity is not known.   Protocol # 1 is no information about me on this blog. 

http://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en#whyweneedtor