[droid77]

Bowl trimmers are not bad if you set them up correctly. I hand trimmed for a long time .. but I am old enough now to have arthritis that makes my hands just hurt.. long sessions of hand trimming is legit painful. When I got my bowl trimmers it made a huge difference in how much I enjoyed my growing process. As long as you use the serated blade for the wet or flat blade for dry and you take it slow, as it is not a salad spinner, you bud will come out fantastic. Inside the bowl when I am done there is trichomes, but realistically I just take the vegative material over to my dry sift station for keef later, and then put the very little bit that is in the bowl on a spliff or a bowl and call it a day. This saves me more than 12 hours every 4-6 weeks, a bunch of pain in my hands, and guys when you are growing at that level, you are smoking at that level, and you cannot tell a difference in quality. You just bowl trim until you are at about 85% there and stop. Put it up like that and when you roll you take 3 secs to pull off anything it missed. I will put my buds from my bowl trimmers against any bud out there and I am sure that mine would hold their own.

[droid77]

Week 3.5 almost 4. I have been fighting heat and humidity but so far managing to get results on this batch I am happy with with 2 healthy mothers that ready to drop me clones for the next run where I will do a coco vs rdwc grow off just so I can see results when genetics and environmentals are exactly the same.

[droid77]

A lot of people have great luck with cana coco coir, either with it without perlite (even though it doesn’t need it) but if you are looking at soil there are so many different camps that it can get overwhelming. The truth is that most bags of soil are the same. They are really just different levels of sifting out the larger pieces. However if you are growing outdoors you may want those larger pieces to protect your moisture .. I personally stay away from anything that is “enriched” or “pre-certified” and prefer to go with an old growers mix from the sixties… Get the most generic topsoil you can find. No nutrients added. These are usually about 6$ or less for 2 cubic feet. Run that over a simple sifter, you can even use an old section of screen from a window staples to a frame. The goal is to get anything larger than about a 1/4″ out of the mix. Set aside anything that wouldn’t shake out ( I use a fencing with 1/4″ – 1/2 holes I believe it was meant for a rabbit hutch). Now you have some great inert soil you can add in the following recipe:

60% soil

20% perlite (for drainage)

20% vermiculite ( for water retention)

Now follow recommended growdot formula, premix everything in, not just topdress,water in with plain water and put your auto in. Now check your soil daily and if when you put your finger into it up to the second knuckle it is dry, then water with recharge every other watering. Start with 1/4 your pot volume until you are watering every day, then move to half volume, again until you are watering every day. At this point you will be in flower and you can water daily with about .8 of your pot volume safely continuing to alter are recharge and you with end up with some dank stank.

[droid77]

Scotty, you are super entertaining to watch and you do a great job making things come to life. I don’t have the space like you do… But even if I had a warehouse I would still scrog. I only have a 4×2 and a 2×2 and both are in action. One is a cross between nursery and mother room and the 4×2 is veg/flower. Also I watch a lot of your cloning episodes… You should do some research on using garlic as a rooting hormone and then sticking the cutting directly into a banana then inside a solo cup with a clear solo on top. Will blow your mind how easy it is. Here is my response pic my guy. Hit me us some time and I will tell you what’s growing on…lol. love the show bud.

[droid77]

I had something like this set up for a grow .. used 5 gallon bucket inside if a child’s around the belly inner tube I believe they were pigs and unicorns …lol.. the pots fit in such a way that only about the bottom 3 inches sat in the water and it was like a sip bucket but using my back yard pond and all it’s fish water nutrients. It worked amazing……until it didn’t… I had some amazing plants that floated in their tubes and they were anchored to the shore with para line and 18″ lawn nails. They took off and grew super fast. This was in July when it was super hot and these plants thrived in the heat, I am guessing mainly because of unlimited water supply rich with nutes .. did I mention they thrived? ( Any one who has half a brain so about 10% more than me can see where this is going)…. Where was I? Oh ya …thriving .. as in amazing growth… The flowers came in like you wouldn’t believe and because they were afloat they moved around in the breeze so all sides got sun and they really put on weight…. Like a lot of weight…. Some would even say top heavy…. Well actually basic physics would say top heavy as one day they were incredible, and the next morning after a very very mild storm the three very healthy, thriving, top heavy girls decided to go head over bucket and take a drink. It was in week 6 of flower. I didn’t go out and check ( as I didn’t even feed them, they were legit fed by the pond, did I mention thriving?) until about 1 or 2 in the afternoon .. all I saw was 3 neon colored para chord anchors that were going out into the water… The plants had all tipped, and then I would imagine stayed on their sides enough time to gain a lot of water and weight and then go all the way over… They were all in the bottom of my pond. When I first saw it there were 2 inertubes on the grass (never found out about the third) and thought someone stole my plants. I was mad AF for about 15 minutes when I saw something red and white in the pond…. As in my firehouse subs bucket and a white bucket. Looking a little closer toward the further edge the black bucket could be seen as well. All 3 of them rein acted jacks role from the Titanic and went to the bottom of the murky waters. They had been there long enough that they were all dead. I didn’t know anything about extractions or any way to salvage so they were all completely wasted. I had never felt disappointed like that over plants before in my life. I was truly heart broken that day.

A few days later there was a small fish laying on the shore of the pond, a little sun fish, maybe 4-5 inches long. We joked about it being too high and needing to check out what was “above the water man” and then later on whether or not the fish had made a fish version of refer madness to scare all the fish in “school” straight…..lmao 🤣

[droid77]

Best advice is go by vpd. So everyone recommends a 60/60 just about but what they are really saying is to have a vpd of .71. if you keep your vpd above a .6 you should avoid mold. If you keep it below a .9 you will not turn your buds into hay nobody wants to smoke. Within that range you have your relative freedom. So if you are at 72 degrees and that is the best you can get, look at a vod calculator online and you will need to stay withing the range of 65-74% RH to stay in that range with the optimal being 73 at 72 BUT remember that at this temp and RH to get that VPD you are now susceptible to mold so make sure you have better than adequate circulation and you are checking multiple times daily to change the environment if needed. Now is also a good time if you absolutely cannot bring the temp down any lower and want to keep a .7-.75 vpd for optimal curing you will want to be exchanging air CONSTANTLY and I know that before I converted a wine cooler from my dad after he passed into my drying area (65 and 62) that I had similar situation but much worse. I was at 76-80 on a daily swing and all I could do was exhaust, keep the rh correct for vod ( was using vivosun controller to know the vod but you can use any app) and was humidifying the room and exhaust when needed. I was paranoid and would actually use my 100w outdoor led UV light and had it on a timer for 1 minute every hour just to kill any chance if mold and I can say I have a 100 % dry rate without mold or hay in those high temps by monitoring the VPD. The wine cooler set at 65 gives me 62 and is so much easier and cost much less electricity then the other setup but just take it that it can be done and you can get great dried and ready to cure flowers that way… ( I have never made it to end of cure without sampling, but I do wait for end of dry so cure change is always a great day)

[droid77]

For sure good move to black them out. I have seen plants here from the led lights on a portable AC before… Not the whole plant, but right by the led. Better safe than sorry.