Dark Star Diary

09 May 2021 Today starts the 15th week of my grow, and the 6th week of flower. Just over a month till the scheduled harvest, and today the nutrient amounts change according to my feeding chart. So today feeding went like this: CALiMAGic 5ml, FloraMicro 7.5ml, FloraBloom 15ml. Today we aren’t using any of the FloraGro, and won’t be for the rest of the grow. I chilled the water again, but not as long this time and the temperature of the solution was 56.3 degrees F. I thought it odd that the website doesn’t allow for entries lower than 50 degrees in that block, but oh well. The initial pH was 5.89, and I added pH UP 2.5ml which adjusted the pH to 6.53. The runoff pH was 5.63. Lower than I want, but still within range for a healthy plant. Temperature in the tent was 81 degrees F, and humidity was at 53%. The plant looks great, and is maturing quite nicely. 11 May 2021 Today was a busy day! My DarkStar Kush is doing very well! The smell is starting to get stronger and the buds are fattening up as well. I’ve noticed some mild nutrient burn on some of my leaf tips, but nothing terrible. I’ll keep an eye on it to make sure that they don’t get worse. I haven’t really made any adjustments to the nutrients lately with the exception of increasing the FloraBloom by 2.5ml’s, and stopped using the FloraGro in accordance with my feed chart. Feeding today went as follows: CALiMAGic 5ml, FloraMicro 7.5ml, and FloraBloom at 15ml. The initial pH was 5.85, so I added 3ml of pH UP to increase the pH to 6.52. The runoff pH was 5.65. I finally received my TDS meter today, so the TDS reading was 1070 ppm. My feed chart says that the ppm range in looking for is 1050-1400 ppm, so 1070 puts me in that range. I chilled the water again today, and it was 46 degrees F. The temperature in the grow tent was 81 degrees F, and humidity was 40%. So far so good, and I’m starting two new diaries today for some clones I was gifted by Buddabud, so check them out. 13 May 2021 Just when I thought I was on cruise control with my baby here, she throws me a slow curve. The question is; will I hit it, or miss it? The light nutrient burn that I noticed in my last entry on the 11th has gotten just a small tad worse, but nothing terrible. I believe it’s not from the feeding, but the build up of nutrients in the soil. I finally got my TDS monitor as I noted the other day, so I tested the ppm in the runoff and it was over 4000. Then, as I was shaking the excess water off the end, the end cap for the battery came off and the whole monitor plunged back into the water completely submerging for a moment before I could get a hand free to grab it. It’s been sitting in a bowl of rice since yesterday. I just hope it dries out and keeps working. I need to see what the TDS of the soil at this stage is supposed to be and then either keep going and damn the burn, or maybe feed with pH’ed plain water for a feeding or two and then see how it reacts. I’m still deciding, but will research first before making my decision. For today I kept to the feed chart. I gave the following: CALiMAGic 5ml, FloraMicro 7.5ml, and FloraBloom 15ml. The initial pH was 5.92, so I added 2.5ml of pH UP which raised the pH to 6.47. That is what I fed the plant. The TDS reading of the feed solution was 1036 ppm. Runoff pH was 5.63. Tent temperature was 79 degrees F, and humidity was 40%. I have just about 4 weeks left in this grow till the scheduled harvest. 15 May 2021 Today is the last day of the 6th week of flower, and I’m going to try and arrest my mild nutrient burn on my baby. I’ve decided to just give water and CALiMAGic today properly pH’ed to see if it does anything to improve the situation. I wanted to have a significant amount of runoff today so I fed 1.5 gallons of water with 7.5ml of CALiMAGic. The initial pH was 7.60, but adding the pH DOWN is much different than adding pH UP! I initially added just 0.5ml to the gallon of water which lowered the pH from 7.60 to 4.9. I was like, “DAMN!” 😳 so I had to pour it all out and start over again. I learned through research never to mix pH UP and DOWN in the same solution. If it’s wrong, you need to start over;!so I did. After 3 tries and lots of wasted CALiMAGic, I finally got it right by only adding 5 drops (gtts) of pH DOWN to get it to 6.64. The TDS meter dried out and still works, so the TDS going in was only 403ppm. Like I said, I wanted a lot of runoff to try and clear out some of the nutrient buildup in the soil. The runoff pH was 5.58, and runoff TDS was 3803 ppm. Daytime temp was high today at 86 degrees F, and humidity was 31%. She looks good. She smells good. I hope she stays good! A few weeks left till harvest!