I used to grow in expanded clay pellets, ebb and flow, flooding 5 times a day.
I decided to see what all this hub-bub about coco is. So I bought some coco, like a couple of the brick sized blocks is enough for 2 plants, each in it's own 8" pot. I planned on ebb and flow but the coco holds moisture much like soil, and watering is required only every 2 or 3 days. So I left them in their tray and just feed them by hand, from the top.
First off let me say the clones were purchased late in the day and they looked a little sad. More than a little sad actually. They were droppy and obviously left overs. I noted other problems. Perhaps more serious ones. I've noticed a problem with leaf curl affecting just the outter edges of the fan leaves. The leaves also appear very leathery. You can see how jagged the leafs looks in the above photo that kind of shows what I mean. Other than that they are growing vigorously. Internode distance is very very tight for a 400 HPS 2 week veg about 12 inches from the bulb.
I've noticed some slight purple veins in the mainstems growing more appearent towards the growing tip. Leaf size is normal, leafs are narrow and the older leafs look wider, at 2 weeks into veg from picking up the clones. Leaf branches show purple on the top and mostly green on the bottom. The root quality of the incoming clones looked okay.
The leaf looking head-on you can see it's curled, and not overly green, the flash got it oddly and greener than it looks here, but the leaf tips and edges could be burning, but I'm feeding ever so slight, and they appeared this way when they came in. Perhaps they were hit with some pesticide agent or something that's causing this deformity. I've heard tales of strawberry mites may affect the Blue Sky Clones, under magnification nothing is revealed.
The mini budget only provided for 2 clones and they are now sent off to flower, yet I took 3 cuttingfrom each clone and will mother out and a surviour and commence vegging, because I want to rotate 2 or 3 plants with a harvest every month. The cuttings are in rookwool plugs, just 12 hours in the dome. I set the rockwool in ph'd water of 5.8 with a slight amount of awesome blossoms, just enough to say I added some. I used root gel and that's that.
