1st Medical Grow, 3 Strains in 2x4 Hydrohut

Thanks Sonzor for checking out my grow and for your kind and encouraging words!!! I definitely have had my hands full but every bit of the way has been fun and interesting...definitely a learning experience. Right now I am battling a infestation of evil fungus gnats in my front right chemband pot. When they say a adult fungus gnat can lay 300 to 400 eggs at once they weren't lying!!

Today May 27th....

After my soil drench yesterday of neem oil, azamax and azatrol with mosquito dunks I was sure that my front right chemband should at this time be clear of the fungus gnat larvae....I was wrong...there seems to be less and less of them each application but nothing is killing them right on spot!!! uHHHHHgggg!! Since my bottle of Safer End all was nearly empty, I mixed the remaining pesticide with about 10ml of neem oil, a few good sized droppers of Azatrol (prob 5ml) and about 1ml of azamax. I filled up the spray bottle 3/4 full with distilled water and went to work. I first crushed up 1/4 of a mosquito dunk and instead of soaking it in water I crushed it right on top of the soil of the infected pot covering the top of the soil with a light dusting of the mosquito dunk. I then cultivated with a spoon, the top 1 inch of soil to work the mosquito dunk powder into the soil and began "spot treating" the fungus gnats with the spray that I mixed up. Upon spraying them with the pesticide mixture, it didn't seem to be killing them directly, more a slow death for them, but still wasn't making me happy. I also had some Rasta Bob's death mite that I decided to spray directly on them and the Rasta Bob's almost seemed to kill them right away upon contact. So there I am, sitting next to my infected pot, slowly turning the top of the soil and spraying every inch that is unturned with both the Rasta Bobs and the neem/azamax/azatrol mix I made.... It seems that once wetting the soil, either this itself drove the larvae to the top or maybe it was the pesticide, but it seems that many are coming up to the surface and doing a "death dance" or at least I hope... We will weight until tomm to see if there are any left or if my attack is even doing anything to the fungus gnats. I really don't want to use chemical pesticides, and would like to stick to organic or natural ways to kill them but nothing seems to be working....any suggestions?????


As for all of the plants, even the infected one are still growing rather well, putting on about 1" every night. The smell of the ladies is really getting stronger, even though there are no buds yet, I can tell the plants are starting to change over, just because they never stinked so good!! Today the temps in the tent are much cooler than yesterday, only 82F with both lights running mid-day so I am happy with the temps. I have 2 cheap soil probe type ph meters that I used to check each pot today, and all of my soils are sitting right around ph7 +/- .2 The plants are showing very good looking fans, all healthy green and standing nice and sturdy, no wilting or sagging which is great!!! More pistel's are starting to show on the pre-flowers but I know I shouldn't see too much change for another week or 2.

As for my bloom feeding regiment, I still will continue to use the Earthjuice grow, Bio-weed, and Bio-root for another 2-3 weeks during the pre-flower stretch but then will be lowering the N amounts after that to very little. I will be mixing my nutrients now to the Bloom Recirculation table on the Earthjuice (grow, bloom, micro, meta-k, and catalyst), adding molassass, botanicare cal/mag plus, Advance nutrients carbo load, hygrowzyme, humic acid, and my experimental coconut milk, and Naked "green machine" fruit smoothy. Later in the bloom cycle I will be adding in my Humboldt Snow Storm, gravity and purple max but this will not be until near finish. Every other watering will be full strength followed by either a 1/2 strength watering with compost tea (adjusted for bloom nutrients). Is there anything else that I should be using in flower to help my quality, yield and overall success??
 
Here are today's updated photos, Day 3 of flowering!!!! they are really growing right now!!! at least 1" a day
Full Tent photo
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My Chemband's (on left)
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My Blue Dragon's
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My University Hill's OG's
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At scrog level shot
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Saturday May 28th....

Not much to report today except I finally found a immediate solution to killing fungus gnats. I have tried azamax, azatrol, neem, pyrethium, rasta bob's death mite and also mosquito dunks and with a combination and re-application of these products it seems to have greatly reduced the amount of larvae in my Chemband plant's soil. However, after cultivating the top soil today, still more fungus gnat larvae!!!! DAmn!!!!! I am getting frustrated. I have been reading an awful lot about how to kill these things naturally without use of chemical pesticides and nothing seems to be working. I read though that near boiling water will kill them on contact on a gardening website, but I did not want to try this due to the hot water also I would imagine having a negative effect on the plants roots......so last night...medicating I was thinking about this and then the most genious thought dawned on me....I have a clothes steamer!!!!

I pulled the clothes steamer out....heated it up and blew my electrical fuse!!! LOL...guess a 600w computer, 1000w+ of lights and fans, and then this was too much for my apartment's circut......lol...at least now I know the limitations...lol unfortunatly my magnetic ballast will not fire my 400W MH back up...must really need a long cooling period. However my digital lumatek ballast fired right back up, as soon as I switched the power back on...in the future I most likely will replace the magnetic ballast....I couldn't imagine powe going out when I'm not here and the MH not firing up and screwing up my daylight for my babies....let it be a word to the wise...

So I began to cultivate the top of the soil of the chemband plant...I would overturn about 1 inch of soil...pretty much down to the top layer of the rootball, and then I would see the little worm larvae squirming around. I then took my clothes steamer to them for about 5-10 seconds and the little bastards died instantly!!!!! Oh my freakin Gosh....I actually found something that kills them on contact!!!!! I did this for the top 1" of soil in my Chemband plant and upon re-cultivating and checking...I don't see any of the fungus gnat larvae!!!! I think i found the trick and recommend this to anyone having larvae issues in there soil...Yes, it will not kill the ones I have yet to find deeper, however, just in this one steaming of my soil, I killed a good 200 of them..I most likely will repeat the process the next few days, until I do not see any!!!! I am soo happy this worked!!!!

Otherwise, besides my fungus gnat issue, everything else is looking great!!!
 
Icemud,
That's quite a nice garden you have there:thumb:
For fungus gnats, here is what works for me....
BTI and diatomaceous earth. Both are organic and safe, and pretty effective when used together.
And they won't harm the soil microbes and fungus that help feed the plants roots.
You are right that the mosquito dunks have BTI, but they are made to dissolve Very slowly.... try Gnatrol water disperable granules (WDG). They have BTI also, and mix right into the water no problem.
It doesn't take much, a small bottle will last a long time.
You can find it on epay and other sources.

The DE can be found at any good garden store, the Safer brand is good. Stay away from the pool filter type, it is made differently and can be very bad for you if you breath it.
The Safer type also kills cockroaches, fleas etc.

Mix the gnatrol and apply as a soil drench.
The next day, after the surface dries a little, sprinkle diatomaceous earth on the surface of the soil.
The BTI kills the larvae and the DE kills the adults by scratching them with it's microscopic sharp edges.

Do this every 5 days for a few weeks to break the life cycle and your yellow sticky strips should start staying clean.

good luck and I'll be watching :popcorn:
an old gardener
 
Icemud,
That's quite a nice garden you have there:thumb:
For fungus gnats, here is what works for me....
BTI and diatomaceous earth. Both are organic and safe, and pretty effective when used together.
And they won't harm the soil microbes and fungus that help feed the plants roots.
You are right that the mosquito dunks have BTI, but they are made to dissolve Very slowly.... try Gnatrol water disperable granules (WDG). They have BTI also, and mix right into the water no problem.
It doesn't take much, a small bottle will last a long time.
You can find it on epay and other sources.

The DE can be found at any good garden store, the Safer brand is good. Stay away from the pool filter type, it is made differently and can be very bad for you if you breath it.
The Safer type also kills cockroaches, fleas etc.

Mix the gnatrol and apply as a soil drench.
The next day, after the surface dries a little, sprinkle diatomaceous earth on the surface of the soil.
The BTI kills the larvae and the DE kills the adults by scratching them with it's microscopic sharp edges.

Do this every 5 days for a few weeks to break the life cycle and your yellow sticky strips should start staying clean.

good luck and I'll be watching :popcorn:
an old gardener

Thank you very much Old Gardener for taking the time to check out my garden and for your suggestions with the fungus gnats...I read about gnatol and DE and when I looked around for gnatol I couldnt find it locally and didn't want to order it cause these little buggers were just eating the living ish out of my roots..and I wanted them dead....lol so that's how I came to the purchase of the Azamax and Azatrol which did seem to reduce the soil population of larvae but not eliminate them...For my next grow I will make sure I have a nice bottle of Gnatol next to my nutrients, for just in case...

Question to you: have you ever heard of anyone taking a mosquito dunk and crushing it into there new soil mixture, for a slow release? Do you know if this would harm the roots in any way? I was thinking for my next go-around, I will do this....

Also...Does DE have any ph to it or have any micronutrient type effects?

and when you say "sprinkle a little" is this lightly powdering the entire surface with a light dusting or a full on noticeable layer on the top of the soil? And after the dusting, do you turn the top-soil or just leave it on top? thanks again!!!


I checked the soil this afternoon and wow...I did not see one alive larvae at all, throughout the whole top 1" of my 5 gallon pot....Hot Steam really works, I can't believe it!! And no negative effects to my infected plant, in fact, all of the newer leaves now look healthy again...no more weird disformed and warped looking leaves!!!! :) Once I know they are completely gone, I will be layering my top of the pots with per-lite, a good 1/2 to 1" layer should do the trick to keep any future buggers from laying eggs....
 
May 30th!!! Day 6 of flowering.... Happy Memorial Day to all of those who have made our freedom's of today possible!!

Today, Day 6 of flowering the plant's are showing tremendous amounts of growth per day, at least 1-3" of growth. Yesterday I fed the ladies my first Bloom nutrient mix and they seemed to love it.

I began bubbling/airating the mix on Day 4, May 28th. I mixed 2 1/2 gallons of distilled water with Earthjuice line( Bloom recirculation cycle, Bloom 30ml, grow 60ml, catalyst 20ml, meta-k 10ml and microblast 20ml), 10ml of Bio Root, 10ml of Bio Weed (these 2 general hydroponics/organics nutrients will be used first 4 weeks of flowering at normal dose and then dropped after 4th week) I also added 3TBSP of blackstrap molassass, 5ml of Advance Nutrients Carboload, 20ml of Botanicare Cal/Mag, a few droppers of AzaMax, a 1/4 mosquito dunk, 15ml of Hygrowzyme, and 30ml of Europonic Humic Acid.

Added into the nutrient mix were 20ml of Naked brand "green machine" fruit smoothy and 20ml of Naked Brand blueberry fruit smoothy. (The more I have been reading, fructose is the easiest sugar for plants to intake thru the roots that does not need to be first converted by micro-organisms, so I know my ladies are loving these fruit/green juices. I also read that certain fruits like blueberries, kiwi, apples, and pineapples have a lot of other things that plants benefit from many of the micronutrients, antioxidents, sugars that result from the fermentation process in the soil....AWEsome!!!)

https://dl.gmseenet.org:8080/bitstream/handle/123456789/870/GMSARN08-Bio33.pdf?sequence=1

This mix was bubbled for 24 hours and had a 4.8ph after this 24 hour bubbling period. The ppm of the mixture was around 1250ppm so I added a little baking soda to bring the ph up to around 5.4. At this time the ppm was around 1300 which was still within range of not over ferting the plants at this period in the cycle. I also because of the soil naturally buffering the ph, did not want to bring the nutrient mix up to the normal feeding of 6.2, because I know that within the next 48 hours, it should buffer itself in the soil.

Wow, today after cultivating my soil, it has a very rich soil smell to it so I know my micro herds in my soil are flourishing!!! Its the type of soil smell when you freshly open a bag of organic compost or organic potting soil...sweet and earthy smelling!!! Also since all of my treatments for the fungus gnats....I have not seen any flying around or any larvae alive in the soil!!!! Also my infected chemband plant's leaves are now all returning to looking healthy and not stressed or warped!!! Nice

These ladies are really stretching, I am wondering how much longer they will continue to stretch. I am most likely going to have to put a top trellis/netting up when buds start forming to keep them standing strait, and spaced evenly apart to prevent molds.
 
Sorry for the few day delay, here are the photos from May 28th-May 30th, Day 4-6 of flowering...

May 28th Overview
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May 29th photos....

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May 30th photos
My Chembands left, blue dragons right
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My blue dragon's middle

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My Chemband's right
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overview shot on May 30th...

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Hey Icemud! Love your set up with the screen in place. Which department store did you get that from? I might do that for the 5th grow when they are ready to flower. Also, do you have a hard time watering the plants in the back?

Hey Highdive...thanks for checking out my setup!! Appreciate you stopping in! The screen I built myself for under 20$ worth of building materials, and I show photos and details in my grow journal back a few pages...It was real easy to do, required nails, staples, a saw, hammer, wood and a screen..the rest was just planning it out with what would work with my setup. If you are going to do a scrog screen I would suggest putting it in a few weeks before you plan on flowering...just google or youtube SCROG to find details on this method of growing...

As far as watering the back plants..hell yeah!! lol I hate reaching in there to water them, mostly because of the yellow sticky strips...I always seem to forget to fold them up and they will slime/stick up my arm hair and its not fun getting off....lol... Yeah I wish there was an easier method to water the back but basicly I just use a kichen style measuring cup...fills to 3 cups...and just make a couple rounds to all my plants allowing it to soak in. The first round or 2 I will make sure that I cover the whole top of the soil. The rounds after that I will just dump it in, let it fill up completely, and watch it slowly saturate the entire soil...this is a good way I know I watered evenly...

I think I may try to rig up some kind of simple watering system on my next grow, like a funnel, hoses, and rings with holes that will evenly water the entire tent all at once, but still not really going to think about it until the time comes to set up again...

Thanks again for stopping in to check out my grow....stay tuned because hopefully within the next week or 2 we shall see some buds forming...
 
Today...May 31st...Day 7 of Flower...

Wow...every morning when I open my tent, these things have grown another few inches...I can't believe how much they are stretching!!! Today my blue dragon is the first to show good progress with the pre-flowers and seems to be really stacking the bud sites/nodes on the tops as well as a lot of white pistol development!!!! My chemband's and University OGs are really stretching a lot with more distance between bud sites/nodes but also showing a lot of white pistol development and pre flowering!!!! Today the ladies look pretty dry and I am sure within the next day or 2 they will need some new water so I began to bubble my nutrient feeding today.

I mixed up 2 1/2 gallons of water, may be adding another gallon because last feeding with this amount of water had little to no soil run off... I mixed up my bloom feeding of (per gallon so x2.5 these amounts) (Earthjuice Bloom 15ml, grow 30ML, micro 10ml, catalyst 10ml, metak 7.5ml) General organics Bio-Root 10ml, Bio-Weed 5ml, Europonic Humic acid 15ml, Advance nutrients Liquid Carboload 3ml, Botanicare Cal/Mag 10ml, and added my 2 experimental juices Naked's "green machine" and "Blue Machine" about 30ml of each total. I dropped in 3TBSP of blackstrap molassass as well as a few droppers of Azatrol and a few drops of AzaMax for insect/larvae preventive measures as well as crushed up a 1/4 mosquito dunk. I also added to the bubbling mix...one tablespoon of Indonesian Bat Guano, and crushed up 1/2 of a Alive brand Multivitamin. (made from all natural ingredients including all micro nutrients, chelated nutrients, many of the amino acids that plants like, as well as RNA and chlorophylls) (normal human dose is 3 pills, so i crushed up only one and just added about 1/3 to 1/2 of that to my mix...) I would never add anything just on a whim without researching it quite a bit, and so far, all natural ingredients in this seem to be everything that happy plants like...I thank advanced nutrients detailed descriptions of there products that helped me realize that many beneficials are in these natural pills. Hope my plants agree!!!

Anyways, I am wondering with everything that I am feeding my ladies, Is it already overkill or should I add a blooming booster/stimulator???

I was looking at the Greenfuze Bloom stimulator which is very expensive, but also in many different studies, shows an increase in yield by 15% and another test showed a 6g increase per plant when used... What it the product seems to be is beneficial microbes that break down the blooming nutrients specificly for flowering plants. I would imagine that since I have been using hygrowzyme, organic teas and nutrients, and myco mixes, I already have a living and happy soil...would adding this be overkill or would I benefit???
 
May 31st...Flowering Day 7...photos from today!!
Tent overview
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Tent side view
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My Chembands....right side
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My Blue Dragon's
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My University Hill's OG's
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Here are some close ups of the early stacking and bud development at day 7 of flower....
One of my Blue Dragon top's...notice how tight and stacked the flowering sites are getting!!! I like what I see!!
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Here is the preflowers on my University Hill's OG's....I don't know why some of the tops are showing a "canoeing" of the new growths...soil ph is just under ph7, same feedings as other plants, not heat issue since tent remains at highest 83F usually around 80 or 81F and RH usually sits around 39%...any suggestions???
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Another shot of the UVH OG
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Another shot of the University OG and its weird leaf developments....
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A close up of the pre-flowers on my Blue Dragon's
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A close up of the Chemband's pre flowers
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beautifull plants and set up bro but i have a question why do scrog-ers use the screen what is the reason and how does this help?

and can you use the screen method with a drip system?
 
Looking good Ice:bravo::bravo: Very Uniform and they look super healthy!! Its hard to believe how fast they will grow and stretch, especially when you initiate flowering:yahoo::yahoo: Keep up the good work:bravo::bravo:
 
beautifull plants and set up bro but i have a question why do scrog-ers use the screen what is the reason and how does this help?

and can you use the screen method with a drip system?

Hey kingsativa!!! Thanks for stopping by and checking out my grow.... There is much information available about Scrogging available already by just searching google but I will try to explain it in a short version, and I will include links for you to explore that helped me....

But...... overall you are growing a plant that naturally grows tall, and forcing the same amount of growth in a horizontal plane.... by doing this you force the plants to create more tops by tricking the plants into thinking the secondary nodes and shoots are the main tops which overall will allow you more buds to grow.... overall the screen gives you a solid structure to "weave" your plants in and out of....kind of like a trellis with a vine....the benefit...more tops or cola's (buds) out of a single plant, it improves the yield of a small space to grow in, allows more even light distribution on the plants canopy, for better usage of your lighting needs. .....

Hope this answers your questions....

Check out these sites for more info on SCROG..

Screen Of Green (SCROG) Grow Box. How to grow marijuana using the screen of green method.

Growing Marijuana Cannabis With The Scrog Method

YouTube - ‪Stretching the scrog‬‏

These links should answer most of your needs about SCROG...

As far as doing it with a drip system....I would imagine it is possible, however, I am a organic soil guy so I don't know too much about hydro..... SCROG is just a plant training method, so I believe it can be used for any type of feeding method, whether hydro, soil or aeroponic. The screen really has nothing to do with how the plant is fed, only has to do with how it is trained to grow...So I imagine you could use with any type of setup....hydro growers...any suggestions????
 
Looking good Ice:bravo::bravo: Very Uniform and they look super healthy!! Its hard to believe how fast they will grow and stretch, especially when you initiate flowering:yahoo::yahoo: Keep up the good work:bravo::bravo:

Man, Anomoly...holy crap your right...I initiated flowering about a week ago and it seems like these things just kicked into overdrive....I mean before during veg I was seeing about an inch of growth a day...now I am seeing between 1" to 3" per day!!!! I'm glad that I did not veg for longer than I did....they are getting huge!!! Thanks for your good karma and positive encouragement!!! its nice to know that my 1st grow is going well in the eyes of the experienced!!!
 
Thanks Icemud i deffinatley will check out those links and thanks for your input imma have to go back through this thread and brush up a lil more on my scrog-ness.

whats your take on defoliation before harvest?
 
Thanks Icemud i deffinatley will check out those links and thanks for your input imma have to go back through this thread and brush up a lil more on my scrog-ness.

whats your take on defoliation before harvest?

Great question kingsativa, and I am still debating this myself...

Some say that lollipopping (cutting the lower 1/3) of the plant off does increase the main cola sizes and help focus the growth energy to the tops of the plant for larger tops/buds....some say that most nutrients and growth hormones are stored in the lower leaves and this may negatively effect your plants production...

Some say that cutting anything off your plant will stress the plant, for example I read one source that said if you trim/prune your plant, it takes the entire branch 1-3 days to fully recover and in the mean time will stunt growth...

Some say that cleaning up the foliage will help with airflow and better light penetration to the lower nodes/leaves if you choose to leave the bottom of the plants alone....also I have read that it does help in preventing bud mold..

So with all of this conflicting information out there, I have been rather gentile about pruning trimming my plants. I did do a very mild lollipopping of the plants, maybe removing 10% of the undergrowth, mostly discolored and dead plant material. I also remove any fan leaves that are over 50% discolored or dead and fan leave that may have any damage...I cut off the damaged parts, not exceeding 1/2 of the fan blade...I personally agree that if your lower leaves are not receiving any light, it may be beneficial to trim the lower portions, however, even with my thick canopy, my lower leaves are still receiving a fair amount of light. I am under the assumption that even with little reflected light they are receiving, this should still allowing photosynthisis to take place, therefore, by removing them it would be counter productive...

Now for harvest...I have read over and over again, you do not want to stress your plants during flowering besides mild stresses within the last few weeks before harvest..but want to stay stress free around first few weeks of flower...(UV-B radiation, under watering and starving, dark periods are some of the stressing methods I've read about in later flowering)

I have also read that doing any trimming/thinning/pruning in early flowering weeks is extremely bad an can lead to hermies and stunted yields and bud productions....

Now I do not know enough out of personal experience since this is my 1st grow and I am definitely not a botanist, however, since during flowering, plants pull there stored nutrients from the leaves, I would imagine that removing leaves would be counter productive....I mean if a plant has the nutrients already available in storage versus having to draw them from the roots, I would imagine that it would stress a plant more having to do extra work to get its nutrients by driving them from the roots....or at least educated common sense would lead me to believe this....

Now I may be right, may be completely wrong, but also I am on my first grow so I am basing my desicions off of heavy and involved research, others experiences, and common sense... From the majority of what I have read, there is not much benefit or evidence that trimming your plants will increase yield,(it may make bigger top cola's but whats the difference if you have a 7 gram cola or two 4 gram ones instead??) so as the saying goes,...if its not broke...don't fix it.... this is why I have kept pruning, trimming to a bare minimum, more for plant/growing area health and hygiene than for any growth benefits...


I see both sides of the spectrum and believe that trimming seems to be a grower's preference to make the most of the setup and room they are using...


I would love to hear others takes on this....

Great question though, I have been trying to find a rock solid answer myself..but haven't seem to find the scientific evidence confirming a benefit or not...
 
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