Dialing In MEGA CROP for Auto's

[InkAddict$]

Using auto pots and I add .5 epsom to my 1 part MC per gal in RO......those look a lot like my first grow when I didn't know much about water quality and was using well water from a limestone aquifer and adding cal-mag.....I'd go with cal-mag overdose...and I know the net has a big window on the pH ( seen it from 5.8 to 7 in some postings) but I do best in the 6 to 6.5 range.

Ok thanks I was going 6.4-6.8

 

[InkAddict$]

What kind of soil ?

From the back yard ? Purchased ? What brand ?

Are you measuring PPMs in ?

Cheers

Happy frog and happy frog soil conditioner and added perlite... I've been doing everything in the book.3g mc 0.5 Epsom salt and 0.25 cal-mag ppm of no more than 600..... I bought it from my local nursery..... I'm changing to HP promix I bought 2 3.8cu ft bales..... I quit using cal-mag... Idk what it is... Idk if I'm not feeding enough or over feeding... Or pH is to high I've been watering pH usually around 6.5-6.7ish and instead of cal-mag I started cutting my ro water with tap... Just the water cut ppm is 50...and pH of 10...it takes 2ml of pH down to get to 6.7.... On the mc bag it says use with every watering is that correct.... That seems like alot... I'm only feeding once a week... also using sip buckets so it's partially hydro.... Maybe I need to up the feeding and lower the pH.. idk though that's why I'm asking for help... Thanks

 

[chuckeye]

Happy frog and happy frog soil conditioner and added perlite... I've been doing everything in the book.3g mc 0.5 Epsom salt and 0.25 cal-mag ppm of no more than 600..... I bought it from my local nursery..... I'm changing to HP promix I bought 2 3.8cu ft bales..... I quit using cal-mag... Idk what it is... Idk if I'm not feeding enough or over feeding... Or pH is to high I've been watering pH usually around 6.5-6.7ish and instead of cal-mag I started cutting my ro water with tap... Just the water cut ppm is 50...and pH of 10...it takes 2ml of pH down to get to 6.7.... On the mc bag it says use with every watering is that correct.... That seems like alot... I'm only feeding once a week... also using sip buckets so it's partially hydro.... Maybe I need to up the feeding and lower the pH.. idk though that's why I'm asking for help... Thanks

Okay...

Feed with every watering following Greenleaf's schedule. Now this is where it gets tricky and why I don't use soil.

It's hard to judge how much nutrients are coming from the soil and how much from the MC. You need to be able to "read" the leaves to maintain the proper "green" color. I can only assume watering practices are the same, as is, water to slight run off and wait till the pot is dry/light before watering again ?

I've never used epsom salts OR cal-mag so I can't comment on that. My lights are MH/HPS and my well water is 500ppm and 7.5 ph.

First thing I would do is cut out the epsom salt and the cal-mag to get back to basics. Ph your water to 6. Your soil should slightly buffer the ph but it doesn't hurt to have the right ph in. At this point it may be difficult to see an improvement aside from no further necrosis but you should also be able to limp to the finish line !

Moving forward, Congrats on your ProMix HP purchase

Now you will be able to totally control your feeding ! MC is ph buffered and so is ProMix HP but I would continue to ph down your water to 6.

On my last grow with ProMix HP (with my water) I stopped ph'ing @ day 30 and had no issues.

Towards the end I was using 6.5g of MC/4L of water for a ppm of 1050.

I also made the mistake of adding Bud Explosion when two of my girls had been flowering for a week and two had just started.

Greenleaf's schedule says start BE after the first week of flower AND reduce the amount of MC by how much BE you add. I did not, sigh.

Now this is where it gets weird. I did not get leaf tip burn as you would expect. Instead the new growth was light green and the new leaves were corkscrewed ! I quit the BE and within a week things returned to normal So those two plants were set back by about two weeks, the others just kept chugging along. That experience turned me off of BE and although I did use it another half dozen times later in flower I did not make it a regular thing. Greenleaf says you do not Need anything other than MC so I may go that way on my next grow.

Good luck and let us know how it goes, eh ?

Cheers

 

[chuckeye]

BTW > normally I would recommend a flush but I don't know how your soil would respond ?

Perhaps someone else can address this for You ?

Cheers

 

[InkAddict$]

Okay...

Feed with every watering following Greenleaf's schedule. Now this is where it gets tricky and why I don't use soil.

It's hard to judge how much nutrients are coming from the soil and how much from the MC. You need to be able to "read" the leaves to maintain the proper "green" color. I can only assume watering practices are the same, as is, water to slight run off and wait till the pot is dry/light before watering again ?

I've never used epsom salts OR cal-mag so I can't comment on that. My lights are MH/HPS and my well water is 500ppm and 7.5 ph.

First thing I would do is cut out the epsom salt and the cal-mag to get back to basics. Ph your water to 6. Your soil should slightly buffer the ph but it doesn't hurt to have the right ph in. At this point it may be difficult to see an improvement aside from no further necrosis but you should also be able to limp to the finish line !

Moving forward, Congrats on your ProMix HP purchase

Now you will be able to totally control your feeding ! MC is ph buffered and so is ProMix HP but I would continue to ph down your water to 6.

On my last grow with ProMix HP (with my water) I stopped ph'ing @ day 30 and had no issues.

Towards the end I was using 6.5g of MC/4L of water for a ppm of 1050.

I also made the mistake of adding Bud Explosion when two of my girls had been flowering for a week and two had just started.

Greenleaf's schedule says start BE after the first week of flower AND reduce the amount of MC by how much BE you add. I did not, sigh.

Now this is where it gets weird. I did not get leaf tip burn as you would expect. Instead the new growth was light green and the new leaves were corkscrewed ! I quit the BE and within a week things returned to normal So those two plants were set back by about two weeks, the others just kept chugging along. That experience turned me off of BE and although I did use it another half dozen times later in flower I did not make it a regular thing. Greenleaf says you do not Need anything other than MC so I may go that way on my next grow.

Good luck and let us know how it goes, eh ?

Cheers

Thanks that's what I needed... What is the purpose of be then???

 

[chuckeye]

Thanks that's what I needed... What is the purpose of be then???

Bud Explosion is a PK booster and is said to maximize flowering sites and budding nodes for initial weeks of flowering. More flower sites means bigger harvest and improved overall yields.

Just don't use it until after the first week of flower And reduce the MC by the amount of BE you use.

Cheers

 

[Delps8]

Any consensus on best DLI for auto's ?

Light saturation point for cannabis without CO2 is about 900 µmols and that's assuming that the rest of the grow is dialed in.

If you supplement with CO2, you can go a lot higher. Check out Bugbee's YouTube videos and Google for research paper by "Chandra" et al from U Miss. Once you get past about 1200 µmols in CO2, the law of diminishing returns hits pretty hard. Research has shown that it's still worth it to push plants > 1200 µmols (12/12 schedule) but the mols vs net photosynthesis curve almost levels out > 1500 µmols. In one video, Bugbee says that they've never given cannabis too much light. Again, that's in a controlled environment + CO2.

Re. DLI for autos - I've seen 45 mols as the top number in various sites. That's the number that the programmer who wrote/writes Photone gave me when I asked him about the DLI chart that they publish on their site. His answer was pretty simple - 25 mols for seedlings and 45 mols once you hit veg.

My thinking - I hit some Gelato autos with > 1200 µmols for a short time and it didn't end well. ATM, I've got two Gorilla Glue autos at <= 50 mols and I'm not interested in pushing them any higher. They will produce a lot of usable cannabis at <= 50 mols and I'd rather "leave a tiny amount on the table" than take a chance on getting light burn. To me, the risk/reward ratio just doesn't entice me to push an extra mol or two.

 

[InkAddict$]

Light saturation point for cannabis without CO2 is about 900 µmols and that's assuming that the rest of the grow is dialed in.

If you supplement with CO2, you can go a lot higher. Check out Bugbee's YouTube videos and Google for research paper by "Chandra" et al from U Miss. Once you get past about 1200 µmols in CO2, the law of diminishing returns hits pretty hard. Research has shown that it's still worth it to push plants > 1200 µmols (12/12 schedule) but the mols vs net photosynthesis curve almost levels out > 1500 µmols. In one video, Bugbee says that they've never given cannabis too much light. Again, that's in a controlled environment + CO2.

Re. DLI for autos - I've seen 45 mols as the top number in various sites. That's the number that the programmer who wrote/writes Photone gave me when I asked him about the DLI chart that they publish on their site. His answer was pretty simple - 25 mols for seedlings and 45 mols once you hit veg.

My thinking - I hit some Gelato autos with > 1200 µmols for a short time and it didn't end well. ATM, I've got two Gorilla Glue autos at <= 50 mols and I'm not interested in pushing them any higher. They will produce a lot of usable cannabis at <= 50 mols and I'd rather "leave a tiny amount on the table" than take a chance on getting light burn. To me, the risk/reward ratio just doesn't entice me to push an extra mol or two.

I guess I need to lower mine then I'm pushing in the high 900's about 1000 in the center ... With my hlg 650r... Cause I got most everything dialed in environment wise.. just not my feeding yet... Having some issues..... With quality of my water or just pH issues..... I'll figure it out though.... Thanks for the post it help new growers like me... I here all the time I push mine 1000+ it won't hurt... Well your right I watched some videos I think the ones your talking about on this site and you have to have everything dialed in.... I'll get there one day.... Might have to start buying my water.... Shit that will get expensive..... But it will be so worth not having the hasle of deficiencies.... Only if I can find the perfect water...

 

[Delps8]

I guess I need to lower mine then I'm pushing in the high 900's about 1000 in the center ... With my hlg 650r... Cause I got most everything dialed in environment wise.. just not my feeding yet... Having some issues..... With quality of my water or just pH issues..... I'll figure it out though.... Thanks for the post it help new growers like me... I here all the time I push mine 1000+ it won't hurt... Well your right I watched some videos I think the ones your talking about on this site and you have to have everything dialed in.... I'll get there one day.... Might have to start buying my water.... Shit that will get expensive..... But it will be so worth not having the hasle of deficiencies.... Only if I can find the perfect water...

I didn't see a PPFD map (AKA "PAR map") for the HLG 650R but the 600R is here. It's a board light so it's generates a lot of light in the center and then falls off pretty quickly toward the edges so it's not easy to get even illumination from that light.

The first key indicator if your light levels are too high is light avoidance - leaves not just "praying" but continuing to incline so as to reduce their exposure to light and/ or turning on their horizontal axis, with the edge of the leaf rotating toward the light. That happened to me when my current grow was in veg. I was using a Mars SP 3000 and I shut off the light to take a picture and, when I turned it back on again, I used the wrong switch and it flipped it on to 100% power. A few hours later, I saw the heat rising in the tent and went out to check things out. A leaf on one of the plant had turned about 45°. I set the light to the proper power level and after about 30 minutes, the leaf had turned back to its normal position.

A more serious symptom is interveinal chlorosis and spots in the leaves which is tissue death. That's pretty hard to miss and hopefully you haven't run into that.

" I'm pushing in the high 900's about 1000 in the center" - how are you measuring that?

I think it's HLG that provides a way to convert lux to PPFD so all you need is a lux meter and you can get valid light readings.

"Might have to start buying my water.... Shit that will get expensive..... But it will be so worth not having the hasle of deficiencies.... Only if I can find the perfect water..."
Yeh, buying water hits the wallet pretty hard. What about getting a small RO unit instead of buying water?

Attached is a screenshot from a Bugbee video. It was really helpful for me because it's sort of a map to getting things set up.
Some of them are pretty simple - O2 in the res just means an air pump and some air stones. But some of them can be more than a little bit of a challenge.

 

[InkAddict$]

I didn't see a PPFD map (AKA "PAR map") for the HLG 650R but the 600R is here. It's a board light so it's generates a lot of light in the center and then falls off pretty quickly toward the edges so it's not easy to get even illumination from that light.

The first key indicator if your light levels are too high is light avoidance - leaves not just "praying" but continuing to incline so as to reduce their exposure to light and/ or turning on their horizontal axis, with the edge of the leaf rotating toward the light. That happened to me when my current grow was in veg. I was using a Mars SP 3000 and I shut off the light to take a picture and, when I turned it back on again, I used the wrong switch and it flipped it on to 100% power. A few hours later, I saw the heat rising in the tent and went out to check things out. A leaf on one of the plant had turned about 45°. I set the light to the proper power level and after about 30 minutes, the leaf had turned back to its normal position.

A more serious symptom is interveinal chlorosis and spots in the leaves which is tissue death. That's pretty hard to miss and hopefully you haven't run into that.

" I'm pushing in the high 900's about 1000 in the center" - how are you measuring that?

I think it's HLG that provides a way to convert lux to PPFD so all you need is a lux meter and you can get valid light readings.

"Might have to start buying my water.... Shit that will get expensive..... But it will be so worth not having the hasle of deficiencies.... Only if I can find the perfect water..."
Yeh, buying water hits the wallet pretty hard. What about getting a small RO unit instead of buying water?

Attached is a screenshot from a Bugbee video. It was really helpful for me because it's sort of a map to getting things set up.
Some of them are pretty simple - O2 in the res just means an air pump and some air stones. But some of them can be more than a little bit of a challenge.

View attachment 1466074

I use the proton app... None of my leaves are turning upside down... I got praying but it's got some serious deficiency's going on.... I have 2 ro buddies they clean my water great... But I got a pH of 10 in my tap... So this is what i do now instead of pure ro and cal-mag... I cut it 50/50 ro and tap use air stones for a few hours ... Then I add hydroguard and absoric acid.... Now since I'll use the mega crop every water as suggested I don't have to use pH down... I added the mc and be and got a pH of 6.1 and ppm of 500.. worked out great.... I think I was using to much cal-mag before and not the right kind of soil for sip buckets..... I hope I figure it out..I wonder if I can put air stones down the tube and into the res of my sip buckets??? What do you think??? Thanks for the help....the 650r gets damn good coverage.... 1000 in middle and 600 in corners.....