Hello all, I’m in the final weeks of flower for my plants and am struggling with temperatures in the tent at 29-32C. Ive noticed that trichomes are very slow to develop on both and the RQS Critical that is supposed to be ready at W7 in good conditions is already heading into W9 and still 50/50 clear / milky and I’m guessing that heat stress will have impacted trichomes development and THC %. Even though Im at final stages, I’m about to switch from daytime lamps to nighttime light periods; tbh I should have done so a few weeks ago.
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else has had similar concerns or problems due to these near constant heatwaves?
We have some people with a lot of good knowledge here in the community, maybe some more will come forward.
Until then, what I can tell you is that in my opinion, it generally makes sense as an indoor grower to let the plant’s daylight cycle run overnight so that you have more pleasant temperatures in the tent during the warm day.
Should you have the possibility to precisely control the humidity, keep it at a maximum of 58% but no higher, as you are already at the end of flowering. This helps the plant to cool itself a bit. And, place a fan below the lamp, pointed upwards, which blows the heat away from the plant instead of towards it.
An air conditioning unit is very expensive, I currently cannot recommend it .
Thank you. Good advice. It’s already better with the daytime period switch. Using the clip fan higher is a good tip too. Another I’ve found is to place my small dehumidifier outside the tent close to the air intake to reduce heat coming from the unit.
@SmartPlants gave you my first tip already with running the lights at night, that is the biggest thing I change for temps getting high and you are absolutely right about the dehumidifier as well. Any equipment that you can move to the outside of the tent should move. Dehumidifier, exhaust fan, stuff like that, they all add small amounts of heat. The other thing I do when its really hot is i start to add extra co2 and a little extra nutrients, the combination of that helps the plant make the temps more usable and less stressful.
It would be best not to have any plants in flower during the warm days. I’ve had problems with bud rot for two years in a row now, caused by heavy sweating of the buds. With airy buds it wouldn’t have been too big of a problem, but they were rock-hard, which meant the condensation inside the flowers couldn’t evaporate, creating breeding grounds. In the future, I will try to put the plants into flower in autumn or harvest before summer. This also helps to ensure a slow drying process during the drying phase in order to better preserve the terpenes.
Thanks Crackadoo. Sorry for the delay. Yes, I agree re running lamp at night and have switched to this albeit rather late in the grow . I also noted Herr Gruen’s recco re better planning to avoid summertime flowering. Another good tip - you learn something new every year in this great community!
Thank you for this great tip herrgruen. I’ll do that too from now on and germinate in July or August. In fact this summer heat would be ideal for seedling stage but the most important, as you say, is to have temperature, the most difficult variable to regulate, better controlled during the critical flower period.
I have the same problem, here in Almería the heat is brutal and I don’t drop below 30 29 degrees in the indoor grow, I opted to leave the tent open, fan and air on, and even so it doesn’t go down. I have the lights on for most hours at night but it doesn’t manage to cool down. Anyway, we’ll see how they turn out. Good luck with the grow
my grow is at 32ºC, it’s been like this for two months, what helped me the most was Plagron’s Silic Rock (silica) and seaweed foliar sprays (you can really tell how it relieves their stress)
ahh and the bluematts, indispensable, without a doubt all my plants would die without them, water consumption is extremely high, because the plants consume a lot of water, and the rest evaporates the same day due to the heat, with the bluematts they always have water, plus since the substrate never dries out completely, EC salts don’t build up, and they keep the soil microorganisms alive and healthy, something that wouldn’t happen if the pot dried out every day.
the most important thing about this grow was, without a doubt, the bluematts even if @BluntForceTrauma420 isn’t aware of it xD they saved the last two grows.
You can’t even imagine the hours of work they’ve saved me, it really is the best, I’m talking about at least 1 hour every day, without fail, with them I only refill the water reservoir every 3 days, fertilize separately when necessary, and I live peacefully knowing they won’t be dead the next day, there are days over 34 or 36ºC, I know I bring this up a lot, but you’ve saved me so many hours of work! so many! and healthier plants and soil, I remember asking you vaguely about it many months ago, I’d give you a 100/10 if I could, thank you so much, I really think it’s something we should all have.
It’s such a simple concept but it works wonders. All gravity fed too so no pump to fail. I have a 55 gallon reservoir that I fill 2-3 times per grow. I just sit back and relax. This combined with living soil means I spend about and hour a month in my tent beside defoliation. They are a cheat cone for sure.
thank you very much, but they’re really not doing well, I wish, but not even close, they look good for having grown at over 32º haha but no, there are actually 2-month-old plants, others 1 month old, I’m a total mess sometimes, as you see them they consume about 2 liters of water every 12 hours, I have an 8-liter jug in the center of the tent, where the blumatts take pure water (from the tap).
actually this would be my 2nd grow of the summer, in the previous one I didn’t install the blumatts, and a heatwave and dehydration.
I just switched them to 12-12 7 days ago, out of everything you see there, there are only 3 good plants in proper condition