I've had to take a step back with the room upgrades as I simply haven't had the time to invest. Life is far too busy for me atm and doesn't look like it will be slowing down anytime soon. For that reason, I've had to throw my old tent back up and start a quick phenohunt run so I don't run out of meds over the summer hols.
I grabbed these last year when FCP had some event called "The vault opening" where GCG was selling some of his rare stock to the community as a one off sale. I had to grab these as if they are the real deal, there could be some absolute fire phenotypes to be found!
The seeds have been burning a hole in my pocket for nearly a year now so, I thought I'd run them and see what they all about. They cost me a fortune so I'm hoping they don't disappoint. I've read some good things about GCG so I'm expecting these to be nice plants regardless.
I'll be growing out 11 plants as that's how many seeds were in the packet. They will be grown in 100% coco as that's all I have in the cupboard. The coco used is unbuffered so required buffering. I did this using some calcium nitrate tetrahydrate and magnesium sulphate at a ratio of 3:1. I also added some Acti-Vera as it acts as a bio-wetter and a bio-stimulant.
As a side note; if you're not using Acti-Vera, start using the stuff. It's absolutely amazing stuff!
Seeds were germinated using peat pellets as that's all I had hanging around in the cupboard. They were soaked in a solution of Acti-Vera and 50% strength nutrient solution (1.0EC). They were placed under a very small T5 unit that has seen better days :) I tested the output and it was ~100ppfd. I also used a heat mat to warm the media to ~23C. 100% germination was achieved with the first 8 seedlings showing after three days of planting the seed; all were above the ground by the fifth day.
Once germinated, they were transplanted into the pre-buffered coco. I always place some expanded clay pebbles on top to aid with water dispersal. Once transplanted, a solution containing 50% strength nutrients and a mix of bacterial and fungal inoculants. The PH was also adjusted using potassium silicate.
I've retired my old Invisible Sun 100W led as it was getting a little long in the tooth. I've replaced it with a VipaSpectra XS1500 pro unit. The colour spectrum on these units are very different to what I'm used to with LED. They give off a very warm colour. It's very much like a HPS spectrum when you look at it. I'll include some photos where I place a white piece of paper under the T5 and then the VipaSpectra LED to demonstrate this. I've set the power to 50% and adjusted the height so that the plants are receiving around 350ppfd.
The nutrients in use are my own mix. I've designed this with Cannabis in mind and fine tuned the mix over several grows. It's based on several recent studies into nutritional requirements for cannabis and contains only a minimal amount of ammonium. The recipe has been adjusted for growing in coco. The only thing that changes is a slight increase in the magnesium sulphate to give me ~45ppm of Mg when at full strength. I find that any lower than that can cause some interveinal chlorosis when growing in coco. When growing in recirculating hydroponics, I drop that by about 20%.
By using calcium nitrate tetrahydrate, I can reduce the ammonium level to under 3ppm. This should be perfect for Cannabis. The only issue is that by reducing the ammonium that much, a little buffering capacity is lost. This means a closer eye is required when monitoring the PH levels. I've found that moving from potassium hydroxide to potassium silicate almost eradicates the PH swings but, it's early days and I'm still working on this recipe.
Anyway, that's all for now folks. I'll come back and add photos from my phone. Thanks for reading!
Vipaspectra colour comparison:
Seymour's canna vegative recipe (may 24):
. Definitely tagging along for this one.
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