Ok first indoor run for a while & first indoor run with blumats
12 plants , 3 lights , 2 mh & 1 fluence
this is the setup , would rather the carpet not be there but oh well there ya go
this is a 50lt tub used as a blumat rez sitting on top of a 1800mm high cheap bunnings shelving , you can see 2 water outlets with 2 taps so each line can be turned off for maintenance/repair if need be , there's another reason for 2
with a single line if there were to be a blockage at a sensor or carrot , it could potentially block all carrots in the chain after the blockage , making a loop solves that by letting water still make it to the next sensor after the blockage , if you get a blockage in both side , oh well ya did ya best but tough titties lol
at the end of the loop another tap to purge any air in the system , blumats do not like air in the lines or in the carrot so handy little tap ( tap is for the lines only , water in the carrots without air bubbles is sorted by you when setting the system up )
transplant water in & blumate setup day = mistake no 1
if using blumats let any hand watering you give the pot settle for a day or 2 , it'll be diff for different soils used but let the pot fully drain , remember you don't want to keep the pot that wet , it will be fine to let the soil dry a bit b4 installing the carrots , i say this cause i didn't do this & have felt i've done a bit of tail chasing the majority of the grow
plants a few days later & they look happier to be able to stretch there legs & be out of the tiny starting pots , the other setup advice would be , when you install the blumats with the brown knob on the sensor completely off = no water going to coming out of this little carrot
let the sensor acclimate to the soil for 2 or 3 hours b4 dialing them in , should make it easier to get them dialed right the first time , you still might have to adjust by increasing or decreasing that brown knob on the top of the sensor for more or less frequent watering
the other thing i would possibly do different would be to run the 8mm larger line on the ground & buy more of the small 3mm line & run that up to each sensor , it would let you move the pot around a little easier otherwise the way i have it is fixed , well there's a little movement there but not much
keep in mind blumats once installed can freak out if they get knocked about so do thing gently
cover crop coming in , i didn't plant it earlier cause i wanted easier access to the sensors
you can see here the plants not to happy , no leaves pointing up & some with a curl at the top that looks like over watering , for the record , it was slight over watering but the light intensity was also messing with the plants happiness
yes top is dry because of no cover / mulch , but just under the surface she's well moist
i had to give the avocado tech ago for cardrona if he's still sound , not sure how long it was in the pot b4 you could see white fur . the stuff on the soil surface about the avo is from adding compost worms
doing ok but there has been a cultivar change not something you want to bloody do but males are males & need to go
4 males were removed & replaced with girls , my mistake , what i thought were fems turned out to be regulars , well that fucks the little bit of canopy management i thought i was doing
i say a little cause they are all mostly different strains , this prob shows the new transplants better
from close to the cam , the second row both replacments , the third row the one on the left is a replacement & same with the fifth row the left one was replaced
another avo added to the new comers top soil , the white hyphae traveling to the stem
i feel like i'm back on track now but notice the leaf edges curling on some leaves
& on this plant as well
this was caused by the cool dry air of the split system that was just above these plants , stuck a bit of card at the bottom of the air outlet , forcing all the air to blow outward & not directly down through gaps at the bottom of the flap that opens when you turn the split system on
this pic was the 4/12 , the first pic of transplant day was 01/11 a month basically , what you can't see is the slight lighter leaf color change
this will let you see the color change & what's that stuff on your leaves man ? that would be vermiculite the media used for predator bugs , this is what you'll see if you ever had to release them in veg , the plant that had spider mite was removed & not replaced , she is now outdoor & seems to be doing well
there was more than one application of predators
looking ok in this pic , color change not as prominent as the others