Root mass

[Jewels]

I am going to start blabbing away here, in an ever increasingly hyperbolic fashion, somebody stop me where I go completely wrongwise.

I have seen photo's of roots so fine that they looked like dacron fill. I have also seen big roots bigger than Shanghai noodles.
Fishbone roots seem to be popular,,,
I have no concerns with my current roots, with the exception of their over-all (lack of) mass.

What is the purpose of a root?
Gathering water, oxygen and nutrients in order to phlow'em up to the canopy?
I can easily find advice on growing a (big) healthy hydro root. Is it necessary?

If you are really awesome at something, I will need to try harder to achieve the same result.
Read - Efficiency ?

If I had everything I needed delivered to my doorstep would I ever leave the house?
Roots go looking for goods; what if they dont need to go looking?
What if all the goodness is served up, on a silver platter?

Before I show you the photos you must understand, these plants and I were not prepared for the cold last week. I did not update my grow Journal because I did not grow an inch. You can obviously see where the roots warmed up, two or three days ago, and had a burst.
Roots are a healthy bunny/clay brown,,,
Regard the structure, shape and size.
Here is the canopy. It is about six square feet.

Here is the root.
Why?
That plant has been vegging for two months. Buckets are 10 inches across the top. Root is less than 2 Litre.
Here is a larger root, on a smaller plant.
It is very obvious where they warmed up and started growing again.
I am intent on pulling more than a half pound off that plant. How the hell is it planning on navigating that bottleneck?

 

[spyralout]

I am going to start blabbing away here, in an ever increasingly hyperbolic fashion, somebody stop me where I go completely wrongwise.

I have seen photo's of roots so fine that they looked like dacron fill. I have also seen big roots bigger than Shanghai noodles.
Fishbone roots seem to be popular,,,
I have no concerns with my current roots, with the exception of their over-all (lack of) mass.

What is the purpose of a root?
Gathering water, oxygen and nutrients in order to phlow'em up to the canopy?
I can easily find advice on growing a (big) healthy hydro root. Is it necessary?

If you are really awesome at something, I will need to try harder to achieve the same result.
Read - Efficiency ?

If I had everything I needed delivered to my doorstep would I ever leave the house?
Roots go looking for goods; what if they dont need to go looking?
What if all the goodness is served up, on a silver platter?

Before I show you the photos you must understand, these plants and I were not prepared for the cold last week. I did not update my grow Journal because I did not grow an inch. You can obviously see where the roots warmed up, two or three days ago, and had a burst.
Roots are a healthy bunny/clay brown,,,
Regard the structure, shape and size.
Here is the canopy. It is about six square feet.
View attachment 24290
Here is the root.
Why?View attachment 24291
That plant has been vegging for two months. Buckets are 10 inches across the top. Root is less than 2 Litre.
Here is a larger root, on a smaller plant.
It is very obvious where they warmed up and started growing again. View attachment 24293
I am intent on pulling more than a half pound off that plant. How the hell is it planning on navigating that bottleneck?

Very interesting.
I don't think it's necessarily how far the roots need to stretch and search. The more (healthy) roots, the more surface area and sites to uptake nutrients and build plant matter. Of course adequate food (light) intake helps process those nutes like vitamins. I believe your plant would be at least twice as big given 2 month veg in DWC. You would've completely filled that bucket in two months had there been more optimal nute intake (via more root mass). That doesn't necessarily mean it's necessary to your point. I think it also depends on what you're after. 6 sq ft is about 1/4 my 5x5 for reference. If I veg 5 weeks in that it would Start taking over 1/3 of the tent. Then stretch would be insane. I could flip in as little as 2 weeks and get close to that goal of half a p.

At any rate, beautiful canopy. Great job
Are you running any bennies?

 

[Jewels]

Thanks Spy !
My estimating is nearly as sharp as my math. The canopy is 34 inch narrow and well wider than three feet across ( I couldn't quite reach)
So, I guess even bigger than I thought. Still, that only serves to exaggerate the disparity of root ratio.

Yes, I did start this show off with nasty high Ph troubles. But I have been EvenSteven for a few weeks now.
I gotta stay in the middle of the road.

Lot of room for more roots.
Canopy height now @ 13 inches from the stones.

 

[spyralout]

Thanks Spy !
My estimating is nearly as sharp as my math. The canopy is 34 inch narrow and well wider than three feet across ( I couldn't quite reach)
So, I guess even bigger than I thought. Still, that only serves to exaggerate the disparity of root ratio.

Yes, I did start this show off with nasty high Ph troubles. But I have been EvenSteven for a few weeks now.
I gotta stay in the middle of the road.

Lot of room for more roots.
Canopy height now @ 13 inches from the stones.

ahh that's more like it

The analogy of serving on a silver platter etc.
It's a give and take in nature. Like that movie Wall-E. Everything was served to them with a screen in front of them, wheelchair making them "mobile" etc. They lacked muscle tone, were morbidly obese, no motivation, and so on. Sedentary, fat, sick and nearly dead. None of that nutrition was being used for anything of value. Just fat. Maybe we want fat in plants? lol

 

[Jewels]

Dunno,
Pragmaticly-
Is the plant "satisfied" with that root length ?
-- If NOT
What have I "done" to prevent their growth?

Let us examine the usual suspects.
-Low ph - guilty
-high ph - guilty
-low temp - guilty
-high ph foliar spray - guilty

Not unhealthy, no die back, no colour change, no smell, just inadequate ?

So, I am thinking it is my fault.
Or it is Benicio Del Toro ?
Could go either way.

 

[spyralout]

Benicio could definitely be a reason for less growth. However it is also a good way to defend against pathogens like pythium. Cold water also holds dissolved oxygen better. In this type of system it seems that you need to run a modest range of PPM, and if too modest with cold water, may not be enough nutes. I want to try an experiment where I set my water temp to 62F then hit it hard with nutes to see if I get the number movement the way I like to see it.

 

[Jewels]

I am just on the otherside of doing that. Because my ph metre was lying to me, I cannot draw any intelligent conclusions.
I will typically measure three metrics, res temp, ambient air temp and leaf surface temp.
My water circuit adds about 3-4 C degrees to the res.
I spent a week with ambient air nightly lows of 14-15C.
Lights on constant. Leaf under MH adds 2-4C
Res temp never measured below 16C.

Growth was zero
Water consumption zero
Unrooted clones began to yellow bottom up
Ph -unknown. I believe it was within parameter.
Conditions are more stable now. Ambient air never below 20C.
I also only recently noticed my fert. manuf. suggests between 5.8 and 6.1 Ph
I had just trained myself to hit lower.
Planning on playing their 'little game' and trying to obey the rules.
It is always 'aflurry in here, I am just trying to stay in the middle of the road.

 

[spyralout]

You are ahead of the game with leaf VPD stuff. I have yet to fully monitor and understand that enough to reply to that but I know it's important and I need to do so.
5.8 is generally a baseline happy medium. I let it swing 5.5-6.5. 6.4 I start backing down. With the use of silica, which is new to me, I need to use more ph down to work the numbers right instead of letting the nutes bring ph down - they need help with that.
If you have an air pump, maybe try supercharging one bucket with more air if you are running multiple buckets. Would be interesting to see.