Island growers 1st DWC condensed

[Nanook]

All credit to IslandGrower.

Hello everyone!

This is my 1st post here so hopefully it's a good one :)

Just making a little journal of my grow with hydroponics DWC. I have grown plants in soil, but never in hydro. Hope you enjoy the ride, not sure how long it will last but here we go!

Setup:
Environment: Indoor
2.5 X 2.5 X 5.5 Grow Tent (not a lot of room)
Mars Hydro Reflector 48 LED light (Will have 1000watt LED for xmas when flowering starts giving me a total of 1240 watts LED power to finish her off)
Nutrients: MyGreenPlanet (Take It And Grow feeding kit) & Advanced nutrients 3 part base solution to assist with PH)
Foliar Feeding: Foliar Essence

1st let me introduce you to my growing area. I have recently moved into a new home and my wife was nice enough to let me keep one room for my "science projects". She doesnt smoke it, just me, its a room locked under key where we have kids.

The room measures 9 feet long by 6 feet wide. I was thinking about just removing the tent or using it as a place to hold a mother plant/grow clones while using the rest of the room for the flowering phase but then I will run into issues with smell and cant seem to find a way to fix that.

I debated on how I wanted to start this grow. I have read about rockwool and I received some with my DWC kit. After reading I decided to go against using this product due to health concerns (love or hate me for it).

Germinated the seed White Widow which is feminized
Placed seed in glass of water for 48 hours, after is was at the bottom and I noticed part of the root sticking out, I transfered to paper towel for 12 hours and had a nice long root ready to go.

I used soil in a solo cup to start her off and left her for about 6 days with water feeding daily and mist spray several times a day



After she sprouted from the soil I let her grow, being under the impression that the root size is almost double whats above the soil in early stages during a seedling (wasn't sure how much truth there was to this but when I removed the soil it was pretty accurate)

At this point I gave the solo cup a nice bang and losed up the soil. I had a spray bottle and a dish with water next to me. After removing the plant from the soil, I gently misted the roots and dipped her in the water next to me to remove any excess soil.

Planted directly into my hydration and let it go!



As the last 2 weeks went by I was worried there was not going to be any action. She was not growing, but she was standing up on her own with no extra support so that was a good sign she was alive and well. She just needed some love, peace and quiet to do her thing.

Every day I was top feeding her with water that was inside the res. I would open it, take some water with a very very light mix of nutes and dump the water through the pebbles hoping to force that root to the bottom.

During this time I have also been foliar feeding her every 2 days with an amazing product that was given to me by a company on Instagram. They are called Foliar Essence and I swear by them since I started using their product 3 plants ago. Very frosty sticky buds at the end of harvest!



This week I have been in love with this plant. The roots have finally started to grow through the basket and are in the water!


(1st sign of roots)

24 hours later...



Was reading about roots needing to stay white, sometimes the internet is no good for anyone looking for info. My roots have a little brown but this is either from the nutes making it that color or from the hydration pebbles. I dont think (at least I hope) we have a issue with root rot this early or any major concerns. No slime, no foul smell, hoping this is normal.

I had NO idea that a plant can grow so frigging quickly overnight, especially roots. Something I never got to see with soil growing.

This is our White Widow as of last night.

Changed the water, cleaned res, added nutes and started week 2 of veg feeding



That's where we stand for now. I have a PPM meter on the way which will be here in about 2 days, and my ph is anywhere between 5.8 - 6.3

RH is 41% as of yesterday (as seen in photo) but since has been increased to 65%. I forgot to add water to my humidifier which is why it was lower than normal for this stage of growth.

Will keep posting as we go. Decided NOT to top this plant, just gonna let her grow for 4 weeks in veg before switching the light cycle!

Hop you all enjoy this ride, hope it turns out great!

-Indy

[Nanook]

Howdy everyone!

Little update on our progress here with White Widow

She has grown quite a bit since our last post. The Hydro DWC really does take off when it gets started!

Here is how she has been growing over the past week..







I have been having a little struggle with my PH and PPM with this. I got my meter and I have been reading my PPM about 600 when my feed schedule says it should be between 800 - 1000. PH has been up quite a bit as well, from 5.8 to 7.0+ in under 24 hours.

I have ordered pH Up/Down and that will be delivered this week to get it under control

So I decided NOT to stop or train, I since change my mind seeing I am only growing one plant right now with the DWC.

Last night I did something I had never done before, I performed a FIM, was it done right...I have no idea...the plant never died overnight so thats some early morning motivation haha



Once the recovery starts I will perform some topping on one or two branches to get some extra colas. SCRoG is gonna be hard for me to do in a DWC setup because of having to take the plant out to fill my res with water, I dont have the fancy setups like most have, just making do with what I have :)

Have a great day everyone!

[Nanook]

It's been a few days since I have done a FIM on the plant. She seems to have kicked into gear I think. I am not sure what I am looking for if it was done right or not, I will post a photo tonight of the results before I go to work.

I just ponytailed the girl for a few hours to get light under those big leaves

[Nanook]

As promised here is the photo of the results from the FIM 2 days ago

There is progress. It seems it never slowed down any at all...





She is alive and well..very healthy.

Now.. Its my 1st white Widow.. And holy shit she is starting to smell already...very sour skunk with some fruit but it's great. Never had my plant give off odor this early before. To know I wasn't losing my mind I felt the leaf and under the leaf and my fingers were a little sticky..sticky already...wtf..i thought they only got sticky from trichome development in flower...and stinked bad. Fingers crossed she keeps the progress up!

[Nanook]

Howdy everyone, geesh seems like I am throwing updates here daily now, i am sure things will slow down once we get into flower mode

Right now we are approaching the start of week 4 of veg which starts tomorrow.

I received my PH UP/DOWN today in the mail. I ran a PH reading and I was sitting at 6.2 which is not bad considering the mix is a week old. I did add a little PH down to bring it down to 5.8.

Here is a question I have about this FIM. They say (referencing internet articles) FEM should give you 4 colas. Seeing this is my 1st time I was not sure where the 4 colas would be coming from, but now I see. So my question is...is it possible to have 5 colas? The reason I am asking is because it looks to me like I have 5 colas growing instead of 4. Maybe I am looking at this wrong but here is a shot of what I am talking about






Again I am not sure what to look for when it comes to the colas after a FIM thats just how I see it...

The plant seems to be doing some crazy shit under the roof because the plant is giving off that crazy radioactive bright green color on the leaves which makes me believe that its rapid growth. Looks beautiful!

Here are a few pics I took today of her










Earlier this morning when I got home from work I decided to do more ponytail action on her. This really seems to be helping as I am giving the plant 4 - 6 hours of direct light under the big fan leaves. I can really see the difference in growth on the lower areas of the plant over the past few days. I will continue to do this as needed to get those bud sites growing as big as possible



and finally we have the shot looking down on everything in the tent, so far things are going good.



Tomorrow is Week 4 of veg and I will be changing the water and dialing the PH correctly now that we have the solution needed. Have a great day everyone...until the next update!

[Nanook]

Good evening folks!

Wife free and kid free for a few days, few draws later and next thing you k ow I become a surgeon.

Changed the res tonight and introduced week 4 of veg nutes. I am not sure how much longer I will let her Veg. Depending on growth this week I will either let her go or flip.

Today's log after Res change

Res. temperature - 22°C
PP.M - 600
PH - 5.85

The girl was growing very bushy and I decided to remove a handful of leaves to get more light. Going to help a lot now that she is opened up more

Before surgery



After surgery



Smoke em if ya got em!

[Nanook]

Good morning everyone!!

So its been about a week now since I posted the last update.

We are now in week 5 of veg for this White Widow

I have done more defoliation on her over the past couple days. I removed large fan leaves on bottom and on the top and it has really opened up a lot of area for light and air.

I am still not sure if I wanna top the plant or switch to flower next week. I was going to do a scrog but I do not have the tools to do it this run. Next run with Gorilla Glue #4 there will be a scrog involved with the DWC, or even perhaps a RDWC.

ph has been a little battle. Mainly because I think my pH meter is not calibrated. I have ordered ph buffer calibration solution which will be here this week.

PPM is in range of 600 - 700
Water temps were 22.5 when checked today

Gave the girl another enzyme capsule from my nutrient program. Calls for 1 capsule of Zyme for every 40 liters. Gave it half and will give it another half in 3-4 days. I expect to see the water foam up here as it breaks down the bacteria and turns it into micro-nutrients for the plant.

I also am continuing the foliar feeding program. I will be foliar feeding EVERY WEEK until the 2nd week of flower. I am using a feeding program from Foliar Essence and it has given great results.

Here are some pictures hot off the press from today





















-Smoke em if ya got em!

[Nanook]

Things look great in the tent, the top was starting to take off over everything else, and I decided to top her this morning. I will continue to let her veg. When I get my 1000w light for xmas this will help a lot.

My next order is going to be a new pump or airstone. Although she is healthy, the roots are not big at all. Unless she will take off later in growth.

Here she is topped off strutting her stuff...

[Nanook]

Starting to consider upgrading my pump for my res. I think the pump is ok, not great. There are bubbles made on the surface but I would love to see more misting of small micro bubbles than large hurricane like movement inside. My pump is not powerful to go crazy. The air stone I have is not a flat one, its round like a cylinder. May look into changing that up to a bigger one to cover more surface area, but that will probably result in less bubbles.

The roots don't look bad, they are just not as large as I was thinking for this stage of growth. I was thinking about double the height of the plant. Again, 1st time on hydro so perhaps I am right on schedule.

Here is a photo taken tonight of the root system. We are almost on week 6 of veg (Monday)





It has been almost a week now since we have topped her. We did a FIM on her about 2 weeks ago and the results look good. Here are the results of the FIM and Topping that have taken place









When I topped her about a week ago, I also trimmed up the bigger fan leaves to allow more light at the growing sites. Here is a photo of the new growth 1 week later (Taken today)







Finally I also trimmed her up again. I remove the huge fan leaves on top, removed some very small sites on the lower end of the main stock, and some leaves in the middle to open her up more







Despite roots being small to me, she is healthy. I was thinking of flipping her to flower next week. The roots do have some brown from nutrients. You can see the whiteness in there, but when I foliar feed with Foliar Essence the runoff hits the roots. No bad smell.

The water in the res may look like soap but this is because of the Enzyme I add to the res. I hear roots love extra air and that good foam like this really helps, again..not sure on the truth but this plant seems to agree.

Temp Lo: 20C
Temp Hi: 27C

RH Lo: 45%
RH Hi: 57%

PPM: 610
PH: 8.4

Res Temp: 22.5C

Got me some nice Gorilla Glue #4 here I am gonna smoke, she looks tasty!

[Nanook]

Each day I do check the ppm/ph of my res and I do notice the temps in there are warm. As soon as I lift the top I can almost feel heat coming out. The res right now was 23.9 when I checked about a hour ago. Sadly, I never had a chance to tend to her today because of my holiday work schedule.

When I check I still notice the brownish on the roots. I was honestly thinking this was from the foliar feeding as it drips onto the pebbles and works its way into the res. But today things look different.

I changed the res water a day or two ago and when I added the water the temps were reading about 15C. I honestly thought this was too low. I thought the room temp water was ideal and I was wrong. I totally missed this and when I posted my temps nobody has pointed it out until you just did.

I ended up bringing the temps up to about 23C in the res

Today I checked the roots and I see what looks like brown slime balls on the bottom of the basket. Again, I never had time to get a great photo outside the LED room, but I will. For now here is the photo I have



This makes me believe that this has to do with the temp of the res. Now I have a slime building up. I added a good dose on enzymes before I left to see if it can help kill the slime that has started.

One thing I am going to do is take a piece of cardboard or other material and cut out the shape of my res and place it on top to make a cover to block off any light that may be getting through the clay stones to the bottom of the res. Just for extra added security for any possible light leaks inside the res. She is sealed off tight outside of that.

At this point where it is so early, should I consider using H2O2 to attempt to stop this before it gets any worse, and get all that brown off the roots and do a new mix of nutes?

As for the temps, I need to figure out a way to bring it down. The air pump is inside the grow room tent which has a temp of about 23C which is good for the plant above the roots, but as I learned today, not so good for the growth in the res.

The room my tent is in has a temp of about 15C so I may take the pump out of the tent and place it in the cooler room. Another thing I wasn't thinking about was how the air temp enters the res, its through the pump as it takes in air. If there is warm air being taken by the pump then that warm air goes in the res. That changes tomorrow!

What is the lowest water temp I can have in the res?

That's all I got for now :)