New Grower Canna Coco goes to Mephisto’s Wedding

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Hi all, getting my second grow journal on AFN underway! My first AFN journal for my 2022 outdoor grow is still active and going well.

The main event will be 3 x Mephisto’s Wedding and in supporting roles 1 x Double Grape and 1 x freebie(Strawberry Nuggets x LiversBX1). I am pretty excited all around for this grow. I have been waiting to try the MW since I heard it existed, DG is a favorite and this will be my third time growing it, and the SNxLBX1 sounds interesting since I enjoy Strawberry Nuggets and all of the crosses I have grown with it so far have been great.

Seeds will soak overnight and then head into their final pots in the morning. They are soaking in a mixture of 1 gallon RO with 2ml Silica, 2ml CalMag and 5ml Rhizotonic. The rest of the gallon will be used to mist the pots until seedlings are rooted and ready for their first watering.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

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The tent is all ready for the seeds to drop tomorrow morning. I have been growing with Canna Coco and nutrients for a while now but I will be experimenting with smaller pots this grow. My standard has been 3 autos in 3 gallon pots in a 3 x 3 tent, but with a lot of cultivars I run into crowding issues. Going to be trying 3 x 2gal Rain Science bags for the Mephisto’s Wedding and the singles (DG & SN x LBX1) will go into 1/2gal Rain Science bags.
Setup like this:

I’ll be using the whole Canna Coco line with Canna Coco Pro (bagged). I use the coco straight, no added aeration substrate. I have hard well water and use RO for all my growing. I prepare a base water that I later add nutrients to. The base water is 4ml Canna CalMal and 2 ml Dyna-Gro silica per gallon, this comes out to an EC of about 0.45. I mix this from my RO reservoir in 5 gallon batches ahead of time so the PH will stabilize before I add additional nutrients. I mostly follow the Canna coco grow guide, but at 50-60% strength for most parts, especially A, B & PK because they have such a high impact on EC.

Pots were soaked with my base water plus 15ml Rhizo per gallon. I soaked them till they just barely produced runoff. After soaking the coco gets pretty compacted so I always re-loosen the top few inches of coco before planting to make sure the seeds have a nice pocket of airy medium to root in.

Seeds dropping is 10-12 hours!

 

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All the seeds have made it into their new homes. They were planted about 3/8 inch deep then lightly covered over and the medium lightly misted. When they emerge they will be greeted by a Sun System 315 CMH with Philips 4200k bulb at about 30 inches. The light is on 24 hours right now, but I will switch it over to 18/6 sometime during the first week once the seedlings are well established.

Not much to look at, but now it holds potential!

 

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Off to a good start! All sprouts were fully up this morning. All three of the MW had broken surface by last night and the DG and SNxLBX1 were starting to poke through before I went to bed. In the past I have done some of the much fussier germination tricks, mostly with ok results. Since I switched to the overnight soak into final pot my rates have gone up and it’s just so much easier. I think getting fresh seeds directly from the breeder helps too.

I realized I omitted two things from my setup. Before filling pots I mix a small amount of DtE green sand into the coco, (2 tsp per gallon) this is the only amendment that I use in my coco. I always used it in soil, and when I switched to coco many of its properties seemed to make it a natural fit for adding to coco. It has significant amounts of Magnesium, Iron, Silica and Potassium; it also has Calcium, but at lower concentration. It has almost every micro nutrient and over 30 minerals. It’s all stuff that benefits the medium, has a very low impact on EC and is all slow release throughout the grow cycle. It’s an easy way to boost minerals and micros since coco has less of that stuff than soil and peat mixes. The second thing, when I soaked my pots I also added 3ml each of coco A & B to give the medium a light nutrient charge. That brought the EC up to about .85, a good safe range for seedlings.

For at least the next 3-4 days I’ll just be misting the top of the medium with a very mild mixture of: (per gallon)
2ml silica
2ml calmag
5 ml rhizo

They probably won’t get their first proper watering till sometime between day 5-8, I’ll just have to see how quickly they get going. This is one stage of a coco grow that trips up people new to the medium. There is so much talk about how you can’t overwater coco, but with seedlings especially without added drainage, you can definitely drown seedlings by starting fertigation too soon.

Temps are 81-83 and humidity is 47-50%. I moved the 1/2 gal pots up on some little risers so I’ll be able to poke a hole in their drain trays so they will drain into the bigger saucer under the 3 x MW. The DLI is also lower in the corners, so elevating them a few inches above the center pots helps to even out the DLI in the corners. Looking at this picture, moving them onto the risers creates an optical illusion that makes the tiny pots look bigger than the 2 gal pots.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

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All the babies are doing well and working on their second set of leaves. I have been giving them light watering once in the morning and once at night and that seems to be maintaining good moisture levels in the medium. I have also been foliar feeding twice a day with the watering. I did foliar sprays with photo plants during veg, but got away from it and have never tried it on autos. Foliar is per gal/2ml silica, 2ml calmag, 5ml rhizo, 10ml canna start. Not sure how much of an impact it has, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting.

Plants seem well established so I am flipping them to 18/6 tonight. When they start to push their third set of leaves I’ll fertigate for the first time.

This will also be the first phase of operation Brighten the Corners. I ordered 4 led full spectrum strips, heat sinks and a 120 watt Meanwell driver.

https://growdaddyleds.com/products/sun-board-grow-strip-with-samsung-lm561c-leds-plus-660nm-730nmir-uv

The strips seem good, but the 120 watt driver is not quite powerful enough so I ordered a 150watt to replace it. I also first wired them in a series but discovered the first strip gets full power, but each strip after lost 25% PPFD the further it got from the driver. The first strip in the series was about 900 PPFD at a distance of 1ft and the last one was only about 220. When I get the 150 watt driver I am going to wire the strips individually using 5 way wago connectors, I think that should even out the power flow to each strip.


They are not running at the moment. Plants don’t need the extra light now, and I am just going to wait for the 150 watt driver to get here to re-wire everything. I was originally planning on building a frame to mount the heatsinks and driver on, but I kind of like the hilariously simple diy look of it. I also like being able to easily adjust each strip in case I end up with an uneven canopy.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

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Plants are 1 week old this morning, and looking really great! I think this is about as good of a start as I could hope for. They are very healthy and growth is already quite vigorous for such young plants. There is a long ways to go, but I am already really liking the 2 gallon pots. It makes this early stage watering a little easier than with 3+ gallon pots, and if I can get 3+oz off each 2 gal I will be happy.

I have added Cannazyme @ 9ml/gal, increased A&B to 5ml/gal each and reduced Rhizo to 5ml/gal. Still just light watering once a day to keep the medium moist and foliar feed 2-3 times a day. I will probably fertigate for the first time in the next 2-3 days.

I have watched a lot of Dr. Bruce Bugbee’s videos over the last year, particularly the ones about lighting. I previously used much lower light intensity with my seedlings, but according to Dr. Bugbee seedlings can handle almost as much light as older plants. These plants have been getting about 40-45 DLI since they came up. The light is at about 30 inches now and when they get a little bigger I’ll move it down to 24 inches and keep it there for the rest of the grow.

Two of the three Mephisto’s Wedding are just a little out in front of the other three and are already starting their third set of leaves.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

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Really humming along now, growth is good and the 2 .5gal pots seem to be catching up to the 2gal pots a little. Right after my last post on day 8 it seemed like growth was slowing just a bit. I probably should have just fertigated then. They were a little sluggish for the next 2 days, but when I fertigated on day 10 growth picked back up almost immediately.
I’ll keep this in mind for the next cycle and just fertigate at day 7-8.

Plants are all staying nice an short, partially genetic I assume since all these plants are majority indica, but the Philips 4200k bulb does a great job of keeping the plants nice and compact for the first 3-4 weeks. I need to keep them compact due to the spacing requirements and the physical dimensions of the light itself. The hood, hanging brackets and filter take up the top foot and the light needs to be about 2 feet from the canopy, so that only leaves me 3.5 feet of vertical space in my 6.5ft tall tent. Someday I’ll get a nice LED but now that I have learned to manage the height restrictions and the heat output of the CMH the 92 CRI plus UVA&B is hard to beat in all but the very best LED setups.

I upped the A&B to 5ml/gal for the first fertigation for a total EC of just over 1.0. I’ll keep it at the same level for the next fertigation and then start to increase it again. I usually top out between 7-8 ml of A&B/gal by peak flowering. I pretty much follow the Canna grow guide set to: 0.4 EC base water, normal feeding with the outputs displayed in EC. I use A&B at about 60-70%, PK at 30-50% (for about a weak during peak flowering) and and zyme, rhizo and boost as directed.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

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Plants are doing great! I have been fertigating every 48 hours, but I think I’ll need to shorten the watering interval soon as they start to drink more. I have increased the feeding solution to 7ml A&B/gal for a total EC of about 1.3. The runoff tracking exactly the same EC as the inflow, which I take to mean the plants are pretty much using up everything I am giving them.

Plants are starting to put on a little more vertical height and everyone’s side branching is coming in. I am still not entirely settled on my training approach other than I have decided not to top any of the plants this round. This is my first time using 2gal bags and I want to see what they do without being topped. I plan on doing leaf tucking and tying down some of the satellite branches to the LST grommets, but try to limit pruning and leaf removal. I have started a little leaf tucking already and will continue until the I get some branches long enough to tie down.

I got the LED lights running, lighting update forthcoming as soon as I cook (and eat) these pancakes.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

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LED strips are up and running and they are doing about what I hoped for. They raise the DLI and PPFD around the perimeter of the tent to close to the same level as the area right underneath the light. The DLI in the center of the tent isn’t really affected and the temperature in the tent only went up by 1-1.5 degrees F from 78-79 to 79-81.5. As we get into cooler weather I expect it will drop a few more degrees.

The setup is comically DIY, but so far very effective. I have the ballast sitting on top of the CHM hood attached to a chunk of 2 x 4 and secured with zip ties so it can’t fall off the hood. Wires are going everywhere, and it looks pretty ridiculous. The ballast is a 120 watt Meanwell constant voltage driver. It has adjustment screws for both the voltage and the current, and according to a couple of sources online with both adjustments turned all the way up the driver runs at about 150 watts powering each strip to about 37 watts.

 

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Plants have really exploded, one of the MW (front center) has already started to flower. She didn’t really stretch much, seems like it happened overnight. All the others are stretching and starting to grow alternating branching so they shouldn’t be far behind.

I switched to the 3k bulb on day 21, that should help to encourage a bit more stretch as they move fully into flowering. Plants are growing so well, and my runoff has been coming out .3-4 EC lower than the inflow so I have been increasing the dose of A & B a bit higher than I usually go. I usually top out at 8ml of each per gallon and I am already up to 9ml this grow. That puts my feed EC at about 1.5, and my runoff last watering was 1.3, so I think I am getting it dialed in now. I am loving the 2 gallon rain science bags. I wish I had just used 4 of them instead of 3 with the 2 smaller pots. I think 4 - 2gal per tent will be the plan going forward.

The LED strips are working great, they seem to really even out the light coverage at the edges and corners. With the single point CMH light source if I didn’t rotate the plants pretty regularly the side facing the light would always grow a little bigger and make the plants a little lopsided. The strips seem to mostly solve that problem. I guess the real question will be if the increase in watts will generate a comparable increase in yields.