Shade-grown 2020

Week 6, the plants have been topped, transplanted, and are doing well. Once again a bit late on this update, I could actually be well into week 7 if I went back and checked my dates so if dates are a bit off then that is why. I have to admit this last week was a struggle, I entered it still with a decent nitrogen deficiency and subsequently increased my water with nutrients to 3x this week and used a watered down solution of nutrients the other 4 days, this helped quite a bit but I made an important observation that may help explain why I’m not having good results. These damn grow bags leak nutrient solution faster than it can get absorbed, it seems to me that what ever color solution I put in wether clear water, cloudy(fish fert), or brown Terp tea I get near instant run-off of the same color. This has led me to believe that something about the bags, likely it’s how non-rigid they are, allows my nutrient solution to leak out before fully absorbing or filtering through the media. I’m not sure if there is a fix for this but oh well, they are out of those bags anyways! ~Topping~ Yea I know, I said I wasn’t going to, I lied... But I couldn’t stand the thought of not topping them, they just get so much bushier and filled out so I topped them with 6-8 internodes left and today will cut some clones to go into my clone tent. I went with a Secret Jardin something-90, its the 3 compartment tent, but more details on that in an upcoming separate journal. ~De-Foliation~ De-foliation, here I have some specific ways that I work, first is at this stage I never defoliate a leaf that the plant is not already attempting to shed. This means I allow the lower fan leaves to yellow while the plant is re-absorbing any of the Mobile nutrients in the leaf. I help this process along by tucking the fan leaves behind the auxiliary branches, this tells the plant that that fan leaf isn’t getting enough light and it helps terminate them more rapidly while at the same time, growing my auxiliaries in direct light. Once the leaf is very pale green/yellow to yellow and maybe with red petiole I pull it. My belief is that this is the best way to keep that leaf at maximum production and feeding nutrients that would otherwise be lost to the plant while the plant refocuses attention(Growth Hormones) to the auxiliary branches I want for budding/cloning. I used to remove my fan leaves while green to achieve similar results but noticed a slight slow down for a week or two each time. ~Transplanting~ This was probably a week over due by the time I got to them as the plants were definitely in the early stages of being root-bound, I will have to hand it to the grow bags in this case though, although they were rootbound it felt looser than a rootbound pot would have been so a small improvement there. My transplant prep went something like this. I dug a hole, shorter but wider than my grow bags, shorter because I wanted to do something referred to as a “Volcano-Tech” by the Greenshock and Mendo Dope guys on YouTube, by the way if you’ve never heard of them now is a great time to get on YouTube and learn. But the “Volcano-Tech” method is simple you mound up to your plant so that water runs off to the lower areas and roots and does not hang out around the stem and thus avoids stem rot, also more of your roots surface is exposed to higher oxygen levels so that will probably also be a benefit. Now to the hole preparation, to the hole I added my Uprising Foundation and Bloom at 5ml each, 180ml of work castings, and 30ml of Nitro Guano, mixed and watered than put the plant in the ground. Once it was in the ground I used the excess soil from the hole to help shape the mound. Simple, easy, and done. ~Humic Acid Concentrate~ So here is the first “special project” I hinted at earlier in this journal. This was my way of making a stable Humic acid concentrate that can be put through a drip system. Now I know I can just buy this, but I need it in large amounts for my non-cannabis crops, this means it needs to be both high quality and cheap. For this I turned towards two of my favorite companies, BioAg and Ss Brewtech, BioAg having in my option some of the best Humic Acids on the market and also a dry soluble one that can be turned into concentrate; while Ss Brewtech has the perfect solution for a near medical grade cleanable and conical mixing tank that also has a full spout at the bottom for easy bottling. The addition of the Cold Brew Coffee Kit to the BrewBucket allowed me to both filter and mix at the same time. The process went like this, I filled my BrewBucket with 20L of RO water, which took a while. Meanwhile I got my air pump and air stone ready, I added (1) 1kg package of BioAg Ful-Humix to the coffee filters, also from Ss. I dropped the air stone into the bag with the ful-humix and zip tied it shut, then I took the bag and dropped it into the metal hopper in the lid of the cold brew coffee kit and turned the air pump on. It worked great, after 72 hours, although it probably didn’t need to take that long, I had a very concentrated dilution if Humic acid, I bottled it up, labeled it and put it on my racks. I now have 20L of liquid Humix acid for $38.