After re-reading the grow journal up to this point I just wanted to come clean and be completely transparent with some of the changes I’ve made since my SSH grow. Also how I think each change has helped. Last grow I ran into Cal Mag issues, big PH swings in the medium, and various over watering problems including fungus gnats and minimal “praying”!
This grow I have:
- Added dolomite lime to my medium mix as well as in the medium mix with each transplant and during the week 3 of flower top dressing. This seems to have helped buffer the PH of the medium and prevented any cal mag issues from popping up to this point.
- I have been watering with dechlorinated tap water with the PH completely UNADJUSTED! (The natural PH of my tap water is around 7.0). The dolomite lime seems to be buffering the medium PH level just fine.
- When watering I’ve been aiming to completely saturate all the medium in the pot, but with minimal to NO RUNOFF! I Have NOT been watering with the 20% runoff some online (and at the local grow store) have suggested despite me telling them I’m using slow release ammendments.
- For the final transplant I transplanted into fabric pots. And as I previously mentioned I added some coco to the topdressing to prevent it from forming a hard claylike layer at the top of the pot. The fabric pots help them dry out faster between waterings and let’s the roots get lots of air. My 1-2 SSH plants I had in fabric pots flourished compared to the ones in plastic. I’m sure if I waited longer between waterings for the plastic pot plants they’d have done fine but fabric pots it is for me moving forward!
- I’ve waited significantly longer between waterings and only watered a plant when its pot felt very light when lifting it! There have been numerous times where the top layer of the medium was dry but the pot was still heavy (and therefore didn’t need watering). This is a prime example of how I ran into overwatering problems prior grow by only using my eyes and feeling the top layer of the medium instead of lifting the pot to see how much water was actually still in it!!
last but not least I’ve had a little less air movement in the grow area compared to prior grows where the fans had the leavesmoving almost constantly. I think this was a little too much stress. I saw a Bruce Bugbee video where he described and I think showed the idea amount of leaf movement from the fans and I’ve copied that. Occasionally I’ve adjusted the fans while in the room and could tell within an hour the plants were reacting negatively that were getting the brunt of the increased wind.
As for updates the plants have been praying like crazy and all look great so far. Humidity has been starting to creep up. Now that the buds are starting to grow I’m going to start decreasing the humidity slowly until the end.