SisterMaryElephant wrote:Yep, 8/16 + RO the whole way except for seedlings and newly rooted clones...
LF is more for hydro, I assume your mother plant is in soil?
I run 5.8 the whole way but I never tried aeroponics.
If the pH is too high or too low you can lock out either Ca or Mg (among other things) so I shoot for 5.8. With LF, using RO water, in hydroponics, the only time you *should* see calmag problems is if the pH gets out of whack. I guess some strains are different but for the most part LF works pretty darn well.
There is no one, single, right answer when it comes to growing...
BTW, SME....I have never had a Mother plant...something I am trying...lol. But what I am trying is in hydro...I don't have much of a clue what I am doing...but I am trying and determined!!!
Right now I am grooming 6 babies from one strain, have clones from a 2nd strain that are almost ready to go to a baby tub, and I am getting ready to take about 10 clippings from a 3rd strain. My thought/goal is to get where I have about 4 Mothers of each of the 3 strains I started. Each strain will be kept in separate hydro tubs, in the same tent, just for cloning material. I am thinking this way, with a little planning, I can harvest, clean the system and have plenty of babies to populate the it after each cleaning.
I read somewhere that organics shouldn't be used in an Aeroflo and didn't know if this included Rockwool....So when I put my first group of future Mother clones into net pots, I put them in with nothing but the Hydroton....and I have beautiful white roots shooting about 6-8 inches out of every one after about a week and a half.....will this work for the long term....as in Mothers?? Dunno, but I am wondering if without the Rockwool, the roots would get more air and be less likely to get any root fungus or rot??? Make any sense?
If I correctly understood what I read, I think my next grow will have no Rockwool.....cuz the Rockwool tends to clog pumps & sprayers when it breaks down?? System failure in the middle of a grow certainly has to suck!!
Will something like this work? If not, how do I go about developing Mother plants of various strains??