ExoticCannabis2021

Week 4 - Day 27(03/06/2021) Have not been at home all week to have a look at the plants, had a friend go in and check on them. I am aware this is not a current update and I will be at home tomorrow and will post a current update then. HORTIMIX-DWC Looking much better. Decent growth. Nothing else checked or added HORTIMIX-COCO Looking okayish. Growth still slow. Nothing else checked or added EHG-COCO Looking very bad. Watered with plain water PH'd to 6.0. Run off was 0.5 EC and 6.7 PH Watered with plain water PH.d to 5.5 until Run off was measured to EC 0.2 and PH 6.2. Pics to be added below

Yeah thanks for the heads up. I did avoid spraying the flowers, and targetted leaves and stems only. There was some overspray, but i assume a little overspray is okay?

The micro harvest setup is a great idea. Almost like SOG but without the drama of having to take care of individual plants. Brilliant innovative idea! Will you be training or just growing one main cola?

Wow, those look great[emoji7]. I wont lie, that's such a better method of growing. Being in this competition and watching everyone share their methods and stories is really making me start to question everything I've been doing and everything I think I know about Cannabis[emoji28] Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

Urg, that must of been pretty frustrating man. All that work for a bunch of insects to destroy your crop. I'm glad to hear you are Thrip free now though[emoji16]. Even happier to know neem oil works Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

Thank you for the advise, I'll definitely use one at a time. My infestation in the flower tent is pretty serious though. So it will be good to try something else if one option either doesn't work for me or doesn't work quick enough. And there's only 5 weeks left before the Tortinis have to go into flower, so tick tok[emoji935] Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

Thanks, think I'll give that a try as well. [emoji16]. Thanks. Atleast now I have a few options Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

Okay awesome, that's good to hear. I've never had thrips before. Spider mites I have tho. And I've lost crop to them too. Think I'll give Ludwigs a try if my mites don't go away, seen as it worked for you Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

Wow, I never knew that. That's pretty awesome [emoji108] Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

Do you not have issues with competing root zones growing in a single tote? Like if one plant is more developed, won't it starve/deprive the others of nutes essentially slowing growth? Just a question Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

Yeah it was man. I hope you got them early too. I wouldn't wish those monsters on anyone. Did you use neem oil aswell? Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

Week 3 - Day 21(28/05/2021) What a F***ed up day. Spent the day in the tent having a closer look at the plants to make sure theres no other issues. On close inspection, i found some pests eating away at the seedlings. After that i took a look at each and every plant in the grow room and found a variety of issues. All listed below. On all 3 of the Tortini seedlings i found Thrips. On multiple other plants in the Veg grow room i found a combination of Thrips, Fungas Knats and Spider Mites. There was a fair amount of bugs, but not too serious. Ive also been aware of the Fungas Knats and i control them with the sticky fly traps which usually works for me In the flower tent, the situation was much more horrific. In two of my plants in flower i found an entire Spider Mite infestation. NB: The flower tent and veg tent are next to each other. Absolutely frustrated i proceeded to purchase a bottle of Bioneem and diluted 10ml per 1L and took out every single plant from both tents and sprayed them with excessive amounts of the mixture. I also sprayed the tent walls and floor with the mixture. In retrospect i should have calmed down before spraying down my plants. Nonetheless, in my haste, i dropped the EHG-COCO, and tore a bunch of roots. I washed off the roots with plain tap water, then repotted with new coco, added in some mycos, watered with EHG nutes at PH of 6.0 and EC of 0.5 with Biodyne added. Run off was PH 6.1 and EC 0.4. I've now dropped both the EHG-COCO and HORTIMIX-COCO plants in a space of two weeks with both plants having damage to roots. They most probably will be out of the comp but Im too much of a sucker to give up hope on them, so i will include them in all updates as apart of the comp. Plus Im still keen on HORTIMIX vs EHG and i hope others are aswell. I will not be at home for a week, so i wont be able to really have a look at how the plants are doing, but ive got a friend whos going to just pop in and take some pics and water them if required, so ill post those updates. Whilst away i will be researching the most efficient way to get rid of my spider mites infestation. If anyone knows someone that sells lady bug colonies in SA please let me know. Here are the pics:

Thanks. Yeah im definitely keen to compare EHG vs HORTIMIX, and then COCO vs DWC. Never done something like this before but it will definitely go along way in answering what nutrients to stick to and what method to use going into the future

Week 3 - Day 19(26/05/2021) Starting to see some new growth but definitely not as fast as i'd like. Also starting to see some signs of stress on the leaves of the plants. Humidy kept between 60 and 70% Temps between 23 and 28 degrees. Seed 1 EHG-COCO: Realised that i did not measure runoff since transplanting and watering. Proceeded to water with plain water PH'd to 6.0. Runoff was measured at 6.5PH and 0.9EC. Way too high. Thinking this is my reason for slow growth. Stupid mistake to make Completely flushed coco in pot with TAP Water. Washed again with PH'd water until runoff was of PH 6.0 Rewatered with EHG Nutrients with PH of 6.0 and EC of 0.5, Biodyne added to nutrients Runoff measured to PH of 6.1 and EC of 0.3 Seed 2 HORTIMIX-COCO: Realised that i did not measure runoff since transplanting and watering. Proceeded to water with plain water PH'd to 6.0. Runoff was measured at 6.6PH and 0.8EC. Way too high. Thinking this is my reason for slow growth. Stupid mistake to make Completely flushed coco in pot with TAP Water. Washed again with PH'd water until runoff was of PH 6.0 Rewatered with HORTIMIX Nutrients with PH of 5.9 and EC of 0.4, Biodyne added to nutrients Runoff measured to PH of 6.0 and EC of 0.3 Seed 3 HORTIMIX-DWC Measured PH to be 6.5 and EC to be 0.4. Thinking PH here was definitely my reason for slow growth and yellowing of leaves. Added 4 drops of PH down. Measured PH to be 6.0 and EC to be 0.4. Also noticed water level dropped abit. So added 2L of HORTIMIX Nutrients with PH of 5.9 and EC of 0.4 Measured PH to be 6.0 and EC to be 0.4. Looking forward to better growth in the coming week. This is their current state.

Week 2 - Day 14(21/05/2021) Since transplanting, no new growth has been noticed. Starting to rearrange the tent abit to make sure the plants are getting all the light. Whilst moving around, my clumsy ass self dropped the HORTIMIX COCO plant. Think I tore a few roots. Didn't want to cause more damage by checking, placed her gently in place and added some new coco. Watered with Hortimix nutes at 0.4 EC and 6.1PH. Started to raise humidity now to 60 - 70%, plants are old enough to not lose them to damping off.

Thanks guys for the reminder, will be updating soon

Week 2 - Day 11(18/05/2021) Transplant day. Ive transplant 2 of the ladies into larger pots. They are too small for the 20L pots yet, so ive used some plastic pots i had lying around. Ive washed the coco with hydrogen peroxide before transplanting. The 3rd lady was placed in a 20L DWC setup. Due to loadshedding concerns i chose not to go the hybrid aero/fog/dwc route for now. Now that the second set of leaves have appeared, i feel comfortable feeding nutes. As suggested by @CreX, I've also added enviroc biodyne to all plants. This is the first time I have used enviroc and im definitely keen to see how the ladies respond. Lastly I've added some diatomaceous earth after watering to help with pest control. For the first lady, Ive watered her with EHG Nutes at 0.4 EC and 6.1PH. The second lady was watered with Hortimix nutes at 0.4 EC and 6.1PH. The DWC contains Hortimix nutes at 0.4 EC and 6.1PH. Ive also pre prepared the 20L Freedom fabric pots with coco and cover crop so that the cover crop will have already been grown, once they Tortinis are ready for transplant. They have been coming along fine so far. The pre prep was started on 10/05/2021 and cover crop used is marigold and dill.

Week 2 - Day 10(17/05/2021) The plants have been growing steadily. The first signs of the second set of leaves are starting to show and the roots are slowly starting to pop out of the netpod. As i dont want the roots to get tangled in the holes of the net pod, transplanting will have to be done soon.

All 3 seeds successfully germinated. [emoji119] Will be keeping them in these net pods until they outgrow them. Currently they are placed just outside the veg tent. They will now be placed in the tent. Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

Ah brilliant. Thats very useful information! Thanks for the help. Ill try both and see which one yields better results

Sorry about the late reply. Yesterday was a messed up day, so after work i just got stoned and passed out Thank you, Thank you - I did put alot of planning into both my setups and im glad you guys agree Wow. Daammmnnn, thats some next level yields! I haven't gotten anywhere near that yet in my flower tent unfortunately. These lights are about 6 months old so they only seen 2 flower cycles - 1 of which i lost all the plants You have a par meter? Okay so heres where i've being losing most of my plants. I have tried hydro. I have tried both DWC and NFT - using white gutter pipes (I tried to go SOG here). But the problem i have been experiencing throughout both my hydro grows that i cant seem to find a way around just yet is root rot. With DWC i can fit just around 20x20L DWC buckets in total. As a first pass i decided to go with 10. 5 that would go in the flower tent and 5 that would go in the veg tent. I went with the ACO 004 Electromagnetic Air Pump as apposed to individual air pumps. 90% of my plants got root rot. When i measured the temps in the reservoir, they were between 23 and 25 degrees C. With the NFT i went with a water pump. The NFT was setup so that there was 8 x 1,3m long gutter pipes, and 1 main reservoir. The water pump would pump from the reservoir into the gutter pipes and each pipe would drain into the reservoir. I had the same problem here. Root root. Reservoir temps were between 23 and 25 degrees C. So after all that i was pretty frustrated and then I switched to coco so i don't have these root rot issues. I gather that if i wanted to go back to hydro, id have to either buy a water chiller and go with a recirculating DWC setup so that all the reservoirs run through the water chiller, or invest in an aircon to keep room temps at below 20 degrees C so that the reservoir temps don't get too high. As i live in an apartment currently - i don't think both of those are an option right now. Plus Id like to see some return on investment from these setups before investing more One thing i haven't tried is living water, and to be honest because i don't know how. But if its as simple as you say i will definitely be interested in giving that a shot. Sorry for the essay

Seeds are now placed in coco for germination Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk

Equipment Ph Meter - Essentials PH Meter EC Meter - Bluelab-truncheon VEG TENT 1.2m x 1.2m Tent (No name brand) Mars Hydro TS-3000 kept at 30cm above tallest plant and 75% strength Oscillating Fan SunBeam humidifier to keep humidity between 50% and 75% FLOWER TENT Mars-grow-tent-1-5m-x-1-5m-x-2m Mars-FC-6500 kept at 30cm above tallest plant and 75% strength IMF 150 Extractor Fan Oscillating Fan

Grow Strategy For this grow I will be using two different methods of growing assuming a 100% germination rate. I will start all 3 plans in a the VEG tent and when I want to switch to FLOWER I will move them into the FLOWER tent. Details on the equipment used will be in a following post Seed 1: Growing in 50-50-coco-perlite mix Adding in worm-castings Nutrients will be EHG Cover-crop of Marigold and dill will be used for pest control Stick fly traps and diatomaceous-earth will also be used for pest control Plant will start in a net pod and once they outgrow the netpod will be transplanted to a 20L Freedom pot for the duration of the grow. Training Techniques used will be topping and FIMing (depending on plant growth rate), LST and Defoliation Seed 2: Growing in 50-50-coco-perlite mix Adding in worm-castings Nutrients will be Hortimix Cover-crop of Marigold and dill will be used for pest control Stick fly traps and diatomaceous-earth will also be used for pest control Plant will start in a net pod and once they outgrow the netpod will be transplanted to a 20L Freedom pot for the duration of the grow. Training Techniques used will be topping and FIMing (depending on plant growth rate), LST and Defoliation Seed 3 Growing in a hybrid hydroponic grow Nutrients will be Hortimix Plant will start in a net pod and once they outgrow the netpod will be placed into hydro system Stick fly traps will be used for pest control Training Techniques used will be topping and FIMing (depending on plant growth rate), LST and Defoliation Hydroponic system will be a 20L bucket that has a combination on DWC, Fogoponics and Low Pressure Aeroponics. (This is the first time I will be using this system and it will be built and tested within the next week – So this method of growing may change) Germination Method The seeds will be started directly in 50-50-coco-perlite mix in their net pods The coco is first wasted with a hydrogen peroxide solution to remove any bacteria The coco is then washed with plain ph’d water (ph = 6.0) The seeds are then placed in coco 1cm deep The net pods are then placed in a tray which is placed on a 25W heating mat.

Seeds Arrived Today! 5 more days till start Goodluck to everyone!