Blackberry Kush - Platinum Girl Scout Cookies - 400W MH/HPS

From what I can tell it looks like your Coco got too dry and the nutrients where to available the plant. Usually dry soil equals lower pH.
 
I would love to help but I'm kinda unsure what's going on and I don't want to spread misinformation. A lot of those leaves look older so they may be damage from veg. New growth looks good so I think you'll be ok. You won't need those leaves after the stretch anyways. You seem to be keeping a good eye on them so I'm sure you'll be smoking up a storm in no time... Best of luck.
 
From what I can tell it looks like your Coco got too dry and the nutrients where to available the plant. Usually dry soil equals lower pH.

These are in Happy Frog, not sure where coco got brought up lol

Do you think they're just nutrient burn? The way the leaves curled up and there were little rust looking spots on the leaves didn't look like any burn I've ever seen. Plus I haven't fed them with a mix above 500 PPM yet, so I wouldn't have expected the burn to be that severe if it did. Zinc, Calcium and Phosphorous deficient plant pics look very similar.

The flowering plants are looking a lot better than the ones I have in veg. I'll have to go look back through the journal to see what all I did leading up to this point, but some things I think might be cuplrits...

-pH too high ( 7.5)
Use of mykos while transplanting
Damage to roots while transplanting (a couple of them didn't wanna come out of the pots easily)
Just plain deficient (not likely since I see nute burn)
 
Well I don't measure the runoff, I have a soil probe for pH I just stick into the soil. It reads around 7, which is the natural pH of the soil I'm using.

Good news is all of them are showing sex now and the big one is a female. I really want to get some clones off of her... I'll have to get a picture of her to upload later but she's just getting huge leaves, I honestly thought it might end up male because how much bigger it was than the other plants.

I'm not really sure where I would put clones of her right now though. I suppose i could get rid of a couple of the veg'ing plants I have going now and put in a dome. Would have to go get the supplies first though. I've never cloned a plant that's been flipped already, but I'm assuming that since it's only showing pre-flowers it won't have a problem reverting back to veg in the time it will take for these ones to finish up and to cycle the other mature ones.

Still conflicted whether the leaves on these other ones in veg are messed up from nutrient lockout ( from pH ) or nutrient burn. The ones in the flower tent are doing better, and they were given 250 ppm nutrient solution at 6 pH, whereas the ones veg'ing were only given plain water pH'd at 6.5 and seem to be getting worse. So that would seem to suggest deficiency... On the other hand it's not really a deficiency that's easily identifiable and does look a lot more like nutrient burn.

This is my little gallon plant in veg... You can see the burn on the tips of its leaves.
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My solo cup plant also looks a little burned...
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This is how I check my pH. The meter is accurate, I calibrated it using 6.86 pH solution, which landed the needle right in the middle of the red square between 6 and 7. So this means it's right around 7.
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Pictures of the flowering tent, moved the fan over to the other side.
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This platinum girl scout cookies looks very sativa dominant
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My tallest/branchiest Blackberry Kush
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The Blackberry Kush with the massive leaves...
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The rest are the veg'ing plants leaves...

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Oh another weird thing, the plants in veg are showing sex now too! I guess that just means they're mature enough to be flipped?
 
Well I fed the flowering girls today. They've been flipped for about a week now and they've stretched quite a bit. I didn't get a picture of them today, but the taller ones are 35 inches and the shortest are 25. I think this is because the light output is stronger towards the left side of the hood than the right, given that the light is on the left side. Or maybe it's just chance, but in any case I rearranged the plants so that the shortest ones are in the middle receiving the most light, and the second tallest ones are on the outer edge to the right and the tallest are on the left. Hopefully that will even out the tops a little bit. It's actually kind of uncanny that there are two small ones, two medium ones, and two tall ones. It looks like my tent has full bars.

Nutrients fed today... Flora Nova Grow (1/4-1/2 tsp) and Armor Si (2.5 mL) making 350 PPM and pH'd to 6.5.

One thing I have noticed, and I wonder if it is due to the age, is that from teaspoon to teaspoon, the ppm of Flora Nova changes dramatically. The same 1/4 teaspoon mixed into a gallon first read 250 PPM, and then the second gallon I mixed I used the same amount and it metered 350 PPM. How is there a 100 PPM difference within the same 1/4 teaspoon? If that's how much it varies in a 1/4 teaspoon volume, imagine how much it varies in a whole teaspoon. I'm not sure if maybe my FN is just too old ( it's about two years old now ), or that it had been stored in 90F heat, or that I just am not mixing it well enough... But this could explain a lot of the problems I have had in the past with under and over feeding.

There's that, and then how salty Flora Nova is and how quick it locks out the root zone. I almost always have to feed so heavy by early or mid flower that I'm flushing before harvest just to unblock the nutrient uptake. So I have been looking at powdered nutrients and I picked these up...

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I probably won't ditch the the Flora Nova entirely, because I'm not really sure how my results will differ, but I think I will probably try to alternate between feeds so that I'm not building up salt so much with the Flora Nova. The FN also has other mciro nutrients this doesn't, though not many. I considered just getting GH's powder lineup, but I have heard good stuff about these guys and they were much cheaper. Similar to Fox Farm's powder lineup.

I didn't feel right not adding pics of the girls...

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Well I took some cuts today, got them started in the tray. I put a couple of drops of Flora Nova in the water since I didn't have any other starter food, it's only at 100 PPM and pH'd to 5.7. Hoping at least three of these will take off.

Anyone use GH RapidStart? I got a sample along with it and wonder if I should have used that in the water instead?

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I used Clone-X. I think I used tap water last time too, but my tap water is only like 50 PPM, and I have read somewhere that 100-200 is the safe range.

What I do with them is I make sure they're actually stuck into the rockwool, not just the little pre-drilled hole. The stems have to be pretty strong to do this, so can't really be done with floppy cuts. Nice benefit of silica is even my little bottom branches are stiff as wire.

Oh speaking of that, I did some supercropping on my Blackberry Kushes and a tiny bit on the Platinum Girl Scout Cookies. Will see how that plays out.

My biggest concern is trying to veg plants on these two little CFLs for 8 weeks. I am going to have to keep them in solo cups and then 1 gallon pots for a long time to encourage them to stay a little smaller so they don't outgrow their light source. So given that, I could almost be cycling, except I think I will need to veg for a few weeks in the tent before flipping. But that's own the road, no sense counting chickens yet...

I just never expected the Blackberry Kush to be this good. I thought or sure the Platinum Girl Scout Cookies would be the better stuff, and I mean it's really hard to say one is a better strain than the other, but this BBK plant is like a perfect specimen. I am holding on to this Platinum Girl Scout Cookies clone as well because it looks like it's sativa dominant, which would be a nice little treat. If it is I will probably try to reveg it and clone it, but if that doesn't work I still have seeds for it and know where to get more to pheno hunt. I really like the Blackberry Kush the most but it's good to have variety.
 
Well fuck, back to the old problem of the ballast not firing HPS bulbs. Well, in this case it's a Super HPS bulb from Ushio. I tried the usual trick of turning the fan off before powering the ballast on, but it didn't make a difference. The scary thing is that it seems to cause power surges, because I turned off the CFLs for the clones along with the fan to see if that would help, and I noticed that every once in a while they would flicker even with the power bar they were plugged into turned off! So yeah, that's scary...

I put my old Apollo HPS bulb in and it is firing up as long as the fan is off first. I really need to get this figured out before I cycle again, because I'd really like to use that super HPS.

I'm thinking about buying a heavy gauge extension cord to see if running it off a different circuit than the one in my bedroom will help, but I honestly don't think it will because the only things running on the bedroom circuits was a fan and a heating pad and the ballast stil didn't fire up the new super HPS. I think it's just causing a power surge and thus the ballast is sensing this and shutting down as a safety precaution.

I'll keep an eye on that Far East Buds, I've never had problems putting that much water in before but I usually run more clones so they'll probably take a while to drink it up with only those 6. Good looking out
 
Well fuck, back to the old problem of the ballast not firing HPS bulbs. Well, in this case it's a Super HPS bulb from Ushio. I tried the usual trick of turning the fan off before powering the ballast on, but it didn't make a difference. The scary thing is that it seems to cause power surges, because I turned off the CFLs for the clones along with the fan to see if that would help, and I noticed that every once in a while they would flicker even with the power bar they were plugged into turned off! So yeah, that's scary...

I put my old Apollo HPS bulb in and it is firing up as long as the fan is off first. I really need to get this figured out before I cycle again, because I'd really like to use that super HPS.

I'm thinking about buying a heavy gauge extension cord to see if running it off a different circuit than the one in my bedroom will help, but I honestly don't think it will because the only things running on the bedroom circuits was a fan and a heating pad and the ballast stil didn't fire up the new super HPS. I think it's just causing a power surge and thus the ballast is sensing this and shutting down as a safety precaution.

I'll keep an eye on that Far East Buds, I've never had problems putting that much water in before but I usually run more clones so they'll probably take a while to drink it up with only those 6. Good looking out

That's frustrating. Not sure what to say. I would contact apollo... They literally sent me a ballast ahead of time to swap out and return the old. No money up front for it... They had me do some simple things ahead.. testing and then just shipped me a new one... maybe it is an issue with it... If that little was running and it didnt want to fire... yah ... probably something wrong with it...


Just me but I thought i had read somewhere with those rockwool cubes like feed them til soaked.. squeeze them out just a little and then insert clone... No watering for several days... When I did what you are doing and added a dome... all the stems got rot right where it goes into the rockwool. just keep an eye on it is all.... I don't really know shit anyway. Just some things that have taught me the hard ways... lol .. I put clones straight into coco now and have never had better results. But just because it is the medium I use...

:peace:

FE
 
That's frustrating. Not sure what to say. I would contact apollo... They literally sent me a ballast ahead of time to swap out and return the old. No money up front for it... They had me do some simple things ahead.. testing and then just shipped me a new one... maybe it is an issue with it... If that little was running and it didnt want to fire... yah ... probably something wrong with it...


Just me but I thought i had read somewhere with those rockwool cubes like feed them til soaked.. squeeze them out just a little and then insert clone... No watering for several days... When I did what you are doing and added a dome... all the stems got rot right where it goes into the rockwool. just keep an eye on it is all.... I don't really know shit anyway. Just some things that have taught me the hard ways... lol .. I put clones straight into coco now and have never had better results. But just because it is the medium I use...

:peace:

FE

Maybe there's something in the way you spoke to them that made them more willing to help you, because with me they didn't want to do squat. Did you actually speak to them on the phone because I could never find a phone number, just the email address. Long story short their answer was to send the ballast back for warranty exchange, with no offer to send one in the meantime to substitute it, so obviously I didn't stop in the middle of my cycle to send them their crappy ballast back. Seemingly no concern on their part for the cost of shipping that was half the value of the ballast as well.

I'm thinking about just buying a new ballast, and then sending this one off for warranty exchange to have a backup around. I just don't really want to spend that kind of money right now though. I am going to grab a friend's 400 ballast tomorrow and see if it fires the HPS up, but if it doesn't then I'm not really any closer to knowing if it's a bad bulb or my wiring either.

The cones are looking healthy right now anyway, so we'll see in a few more days what happens.

Decided the flowering plants needed a neem drench.
 
Make sure to neem them in the dark. That stuff doesn't do good for the leaves if it dries on there from the lights... Keep it off any bud sites.... Take it all for what it is worth I have just run into stuff a little a long the way....

If I recall actually it was email and i actually dealt with the vendor i purchased it through... so that was probably the reason they sent it right out... They haven't been as nice with a bad fan that I bought three from them. So guess it depends on who responded to the email... lol


:peace:

FE
 
Make sure to neem them in the dark. That stuff doesn't do good for the leaves if it dries on there from the lights... Keep it off any bud sites.... Take it all for what it is worth I have just run into stuff a little a long the way....

If I recall actually it was email and i actually dealt with the vendor i purchased it through... so that was probably the reason they sent it right out... They haven't been as nice with a bad fan that I bought three from them. So guess it depends on who responded to the email... lol


:peace:

FE

Yeah also had a bad fan from them and basically the same thing. I'm not sure there's any other vendor for them than LB. Hate seeing that guy's comments all over Amazon, "We're 100% dedicated to customer service," my ass. I guess I'll try emailing them again later on down the line and see if I have better luck haha

When I enter flower I start using neem as a root drench instead of a foliar spray. Lot of people don't know it still gets taken up by the roots.

I'll probably try to keep less water in there for sure after seeing how long this amount is staying in there.
 
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