**Stoke's weekly BAG O' RAPID and RANDOM QUESTIONS**

[Blue61]

You don't need them amber, just mostly cloudy.

[Farmer Geddon]

Soil is hardest for me because I have a blind spot with the reading plants thing.

I've only done one full coco grow. Done as effort free as my previous non coco passive hydro grows. Was room for improvement but imo many first timers would have found the result acceptable.

I'll be trying coco again but I won't be looking for max yield. What I want from a grow is reliability and minimal effort. If it turns out that coco really does need to have a varying nute schedule which involves using meters and pH adjuster, I'll sack it.

If there's a risk of running dry between harvests, I'd go for an extra plant or two over topping. Gets to harvest quicker and maybe the leccy saved covers the cost of the extra seeds.

[V8]

Buy your GF something awesome. Then buy a small 60x80x80 tent and a 100w light and hide it under somekind of workbench and with aAC infiniy s4 on 1/10 she will never find it... OR you can say you won a 100w light here on the talk and the say. We are halfway there...might as well buy a small tent.

I have a 60x80x80 tent with a 100w light and ac fan. I start my grow when my main tent 3x3 is in week 2 flower. By the time the main tent is done and and dryed they have filled the 60x80 very nice and are rdy for the 3x3. 2 weeks of sqrog then flip.

V8

[M_C]

-Do you top your autos? How many times? - Once. I'm not saying you can't do more than one top but it doesn't suit my groom to do so



-Is there a real benefit of coco over soil? Seems like a lot of extra work. - Hell, yeah! Once used to the different regime, it can become quite easy, but, hell, yeah!



-Is dark really necessary when drying out your plants? Would like to just hang them and start the next batch. - Dark isn't a necessity, but lighting can degrade the strength os the trichs (If my memory serves me)

Nothing wrong with random questions... it shows that you are thinking about new ideas

[Mac]

Why do people find coco such hard work?
You don't do anything that you don't do in soil except water more often so it doesn't dry out.

Get ya water.
Measure out ya nutes. (use EC, PPM, ml/L, teaspoons, grams, moth mouthfuls per bucket, thimbles per litre, sloth sized handfuls per gallon etc etc pick your poison)
PH it as required.
feed to your plant.
Get rid of run off.

That's it. It's just done daily.
The nutrient bottles still tell you amounts per litre, you can still cut that down to whatever you think it should be and eyeball the plant just like soil if you prefer. You can still follow their feeding guides if you want.

For the 1st week it took about 5 minutes per mix as I was cautious and making notes on readings. Now, it literally takes me 60 seconds to prep and mix up my nutes using EC, even less using spoons per gallon


You very quickly learn the corresponding amounts. Repetition breeds familiarity. Daily watering is repetitive
I know my base water is 0.5EC and 7.2 PH.
I know 1/2 teaspoon of my nutrient in 1 US gallon = 0.8EC with my tap water and has a PH of 6.9. I also know that 2ml PH down brings that to ~5.7
I know 1 teaspoon of my nutrient in 2 US gallons = 1.2EC with my tap water and has a PH of 6.8. I also know that 3ml of PH down brings that to ~ 5.8

My EC truncheon is used as a mixing stick and for a redundancy check in case my tap water has changed or the nutes have turned bad.

As with all plants, root zone stability is vital. so when you increase or decrease your nutrient you do it by 0.1EC(50ppm) at a time to minimise disruption to the roots. Unlike soil you will see the effects of this change within ~24 hours or so as the nutes are all plant available instantly (chemically chelated for uptake), they don't need to be broken down over time by microbes to be plant available.

[IceCalibur]

Im just kicking the bucket over with this one. Please answer what you can.


-Do you top your autos? How many times?



-Is there a real benefit of coco over soil? Seems like a lot of extra work.



-Is dark really necessary when drying out your plants? Would like to just hang them and start the next batch.


Probably more to come. I had more on my mind but im drawing a blank here

1. I do top my autos once, occasionally I will allow them to grow 'naturally', other times I won't top but just use serious LST, specifically on the main cola so I get an even canopy for balanced light distribution.

2. For me personally coco is a lot more work (in comparison to soil) in that I'm having to shift a decent amount of water on a daily basis, and for certain growers that won't suit them..some have health problems, and depending on how many plants they are growing wouldn't be able to do this manually (obviously an automated system would help), but for many..a lot of water would still needs shifting. Other growers simply can't commit to a daily watering. There is no 'right or wrong' here..and that's why it's fantastic we have so many different ways to grow, we can pick and choose which suits our lifestyles best.

The benefits of coco is that you really do have more control, issues do arise occasionally and in coco, adjustments made give far quicker results than in soil..that's without a doubt in my mind.

Coco generally yields a lot more, so the extra watering is worth it for those after a substantial increase.

3. Darkness is important for me when drying, we know that light degrades THC, I also want photosynthesis to stop and for the plant to shut down as quickly as possible.

[Jingo]

Im just kicking the bucket over with this one. Please answer what you can.


-Do you top your autos? How many times?

always once at node 3-4, twice on XXL autos

-Is there a real benefit of coco over soil? Seems like a lot of extra work.

yield goes up dramatically, relatively easy with a good nute line

-Is dark really necessary when drying out your plants? Would like to just hang them and start the next batch.

i don't worry about darkness, i just stay out of direct light


Probably more to come. I had more on my mind but im drawing a blank here

J

[Shaun]

NEW QUESTION:

Are autos true to the strain? Is anything lost (in terms of flavor/effects/thc content) when breeding with Ruderalis? Im pretty sure thats how autos are made lol

[M_C]

You guys all get hung up with the word Ruderalis.

It's the gene of the ruderalis that is what is important, that's the bit that people are after, the bit that alters flowering

But, to ask if autos are true to the strain pretty much is a nul point as you need to get those autoflower genes from somewhere & that somewhere will be an autoflowering strain... so you have auto x photo as a new strain... then it requires back breeding to keep the genetics that you are after... so. in effect, the auto strain is only as good as the plants used to breed... and the breeders knowledge of back breeding (I think that makes sense?)

[barney_b]

Why do people find coco such hard work?

Not 'hard' per say, but more work certainly.


In flower, I have to water my soil grow once a day as well. The difference is, with coco I have to think about moving water in 2 directions.

That's pretty much the only real difference in the labor.

I guess that's why I'd say twice the work.

That said, with a res, coco takes less effort and time. But then we have to factor in the time and effort that goes into being lazy and by that point I'm exhausted mentally.

Cheers Mac,
B