Crash Journal

[CrashMagnet]

I gotta look at your auto watering rig. My wife is hell bent on taking a 10 day vacation in April which I think is going to coincide with 2nd or 3rd week of flower for my plants.

It's just going to be a 7 day timer that operates a pump submerged in a reservoir. I setup the pump and hoses, then measure how long it takes to deliver a specific amount of water, so the timer might come on twice or three times a week for a minute or two. For multiple plants I added a manifold to tweak the flow rates so each plant got about the right amount of water for the duration the pump ran. Probably not needed if all the plants are the same size.

I had used it several times in the past with no issues, but last year the timer failed after it turned on, and emptied the entire reservoir into the tent, then burned up the pump. I was lucky it failed the day before I left, so I could make other arrangements. I'm still not 100% sure I didn't program the timer wrong. It started working properly after I reset it to factory settings and reprogrammed it. Then I started wondering if I hadn't previously set the turn off time to the following day so it would run for 24 hours and two minutes.

 

[Bugus_Monkey]

This one can be on for a couple seconds to 1 hour and off for up to 14 hours. Has a built in photocell if you want to only feed in dark or light cycle. First one I purchased was wired up or assembled backwards. Hydro store gave me trouble returning it until I made them plug it in, telling them, I don't want my money back - I just want another one that works like it's suppose to! Sure enough, this time the customer was right.

 

[RosterMan]

This one can be on for a couple seconds to 1 hour and off for up to 14 hours. Has a built in photocell if you want to only feed in dark or light cycle. First one I purchased was wired up or assembled backwards. Hydro store gave me trouble returning it until I made them plug it in, telling them, I don't want my money back - I just want another one that works like it's suppose to! Sure enough, this time the customer was right.

Autopilot

 

[CrashMagnet]

This one can be on for a couple seconds to 1 hour and off for up to 14 hours. Has a built in photocell if you want to only feed in dark or light cycle. First one I purchased was wired up or assembled backwards. Hydro store gave me trouble returning it until I made them plug it in, telling them, I don't want my money back - I just want another one that works like it's suppose to! Sure enough, this time the customer was right.

That's a 24 hour timer? The one I have been using is for seven days, so it doesn't have to come on every day. Wish they had options for every X number of days instead of fixing it to a prime number just because of the length of a week, but it's good enough for short trips.

 

[CrashMagnet]

The Supafreak is finally starting to flower. I've given up defoliating as fast as new leaves keep showing up. They should rename it Shaggy Dog. I've also setup the flower room for the two clones, and will be flipping them tomorrow after I mix up some STS to reverse one of them.

 

[CrashMagnet]

I got ambitious and defoliated the Supafreak mother. I basically removed any leaf cluster I saw with thrip damage. Hopefully I got most of the unhatched eggs. I pinched off half a trash bag full of leaves, and still the thing looks overgrown.

I'm preserving the one lower branch to pollinate with some ruderalis pollen beginning the conversion to auto process. Since both the freak leaves and the auto flower traits are recessive, it will take some time to get a stable line. But it's a start : )

 

[CrashMagnet]

The buds are growing pretty close together similar to the last one. I'm hoping it will be a repeat of the giant bud cluster I got from the much smaller plant from before.

This was the first Supafreak I grew with the bud I got from it overlaid on the plant. I ended up with 2 1/2 jars of bud from that little plant. I'm hoping we can get an auto version to grow that size as well.

 

[CrashMagnet]

It stretched another couple of inches last week. I was hoping it would settle down and get to growing those colas larger. Probably my fault, since I was trying to finish off the premixed veg nutes before switching to bloom nutes.

Also discovered both my PH meters had stopped holding a cal, and the PH was closer to 6.6 than 6.0. Cheap or expensive, these things obviously can't take my abuse. I ordered some test strips as a sanity check.

 

[oldfogey8]

Nice bush!

 

[WeedHopper]

Yes it is

 

[CrashMagnet]

Okay, I ordered 3 PH meters, calibrated them all. Then tested them in the various calibration solutions and they were right on. Put them in nutrient water and the swing was 5.4 to 6.7 with none of the three even close to the 5.8-ish it really was.

I also got a 15 ft roll of test strip paper for $11. Even color blind I get more accurate readings. And even if I'm off, I will be off the same amount every time. No more meters for me.

 

[Jan Borrego]

It stretched another couple of inches last week. I was hoping it would settle down and get to growing those colas larger. Probably my fault, since I was trying to finish off the premixed veg nutes before switching to bloom nutes.

Also discovered both my PH meters had stopped holding a cal, and the PH was closer to 6.6 than 6.0. Cheap or expensive, these things obviously can't take my abuse. I ordered some test strips as a sanity check.

View attachment 352386

Nice tree

 

[CrashMagnet]

Going to Costa Rica on Friday for a week. I decided to try the AC Infinity auto watering pots. I was able to get almost 3 gallons in the pot. Along with soaking the soil before I leave I figure I have almost 10 days. I might add a pump and timer before I leave if it looks like it's drinking too fast, but I doubt it. The other three plants are pretty small, so I'm not worried about them at all.

The buds are starting to fill out, but nothing like the last Supafreak. I switched to bloom nutes this week, so I'm hoping the bud growth will accelerate while I'm gone.

 

[WeedHopper]

Bring some beans back.

 

[KGBSkunky]

Going to Costa Rica on Friday for a week. I decided to try the AC Infinity auto watering pots. I was able to get almost 3 gallons in the pot. Along with soaking the soil before I leave I figure I have almost 10 days. I might add a pump and timer before I leave if it looks like it's drinking too fast, but I doubt it. The other three plants are pretty small, so I'm not worried about them at all.

View attachment 352780

The buds are starting to fill out, but nothing like the last Supafreak. I switched to bloom nutes this week, so I'm hoping the bud growth will accelerate while I'm gone.

View attachment 352781

Enjoy your vacation

 

[Jan Borrego]

Enjoy your vacation

Don't forget to vote for BOTM if you haven’t already.

 

[greenmobster440]

That is the oddest plant I've seen in a while. How's the potency on your last grow with that. Great looking garden. Enjoy your trip. I once spent 5 months in that country back in the 80s. Quepos area on the west coast. Beautiful place.

 

[CrashMagnet]

That is the oddest plant I've seen in a while. How's the potency on your last grow with that. Great looking garden. Enjoy your trip. I once spent 5 months in that country back in the 80s. Quepos area on the west coast. Beautiful place.

The buds are probably around the 15%-20% THC. Not as potent as, say, THC Bomb, but as strong or stronger than the GDPA I grew around the same time.

Wish I could spend 5 months there, or anywhere away from work!

 

[CrashMagnet]

Just returned home from Costa Rica. We got stranded in Miami and after being offered a two day delay getting home we rented a car for the 14 hour drive to Norfolk to pick up our car. I'm just waiting for the caffeine to wear off before I crash the rest of the night.

Anyway, the AC Infinity Auto watering pots worked amazingly well considering the plants were vegged with top watering and that I left them untouched for almost 10 days. The reservoir in the mother plant was almost dry, but the plant still looked perfectly happy. My one complaint is my reversed Supafreak has tons of nanners as expected, but so far not one has shed any pollen. I'm really hoping I get some pollen from it and some seeds on its sister, but if not I will try again this spring.

 

[greenmobster440]

Good to hear ya made it home. That has got to be the wildest cannot plant I've seen.