Max's First Grow - Soil - LED - Painkiller XL

[shaun6868]

Hey Max I believe this is the medium your using.

Advantages of CANNA Terra Professional Plus

Exclusive, high grade ingredients such as airy peat moss and different types of tree bark (as a substitute for perlite) are components of CANNA Terra Professional Plus. They have an antiseptic effect and increase aeration qualities. This has a direct result in promoting exceptional root development and formation of thicker stems.
CANNA Terra Professional Plus is enriched with special feeding mixes, containing all the elements plants need during their first week, meaning no additional feeding is needed at that time!
The medium is also pH-adjusted for long-term control with a lime charge large enough to last an entire cycle.
It has a mineral-nutrient starter charge that adjusts the initial level of nutrients up to a good beginning charge, correcting the ratios to work perfectly with CANNA TERRA nutrients.

 

[Curly Beaver]

Once I broke down and bought a BlueLab pH pen and adjusted my well water to 6.5 (in FFOC/Perlite) and cut back on the nutrients my PK-XL did very well.

 

[MaxHeadroom]

Hi Shaun,

Welcome to my little grow and thanks for the info. I ended up with Pro, not Pro Plus. For want of a better description the professional is more soil-like than professional plus. I thought I'd start off with something that requires less nutrient management than something a bit soil-less. That and I'm pretty clueless ;-)

 

[MaxHeadroom]

Hi Beaver,

Great info too. I'll pH down to 6.5 now I know you had great success at that with the PK-XL. Reps to you and Shaun for chiming up with information in my hour of need. 6.5 it is on the next water. Did you use CalMag or Epsom Salts on your XL?

XL#3 went in the same soil that XL#2 struggled with on the basis that I'd killed off #2 by saturating the poor thing. On reflection maybe I should have started afresh because she seems to have a much slower start than XL#1 did. When I compare XL#1 with other plants of the same age she's ahead of a lot of them.. growing like the clappers. I can't wait to see how they all respond to a pH of 6.5 and a drop of magnesium. Son & heir said the brown tips are much smaller than when he looked a couple of days ago.

Oh, temps in the tent dropped very quickly with the fan on. I really need 54m3 an hour to vent my tent every 2 minutes, but it's rated at 187m3. I'm still trying to find a reasonably priced variac to control the fan speed.

 

[Curly Beaver]

Hi Beaver,

Great info too. I'll pH down to 6.5 now I know you had great success at that with the PK-XL. Reps to you and Shaun for chiming up with information in my hour of need. 6.5 it is on the next water. Did you use CalMag or Epsom Salts on your XL?

XL#3 went in the same soil that XL#2 struggled with on the basis that I'd killed off #2 by saturating the poor thing. On reflection maybe I should have started afresh because she seems to have a much slower start than XL#1 did. When I compare XL#1 with other plants of the same age she's ahead of a lot of them.. growing like the clappers. I can't wait to see how they all respond to a pH of 6.5 and a drop of magnesium. Son & heir said the brown tips are much smaller than when he looked a couple of days ago.

Oh, temps in the tent dropped very quickly with the fan on. I really need 54m3 an hour to vent my tent every 2 minutes, but it's rated at 187m3. I'm still trying to find a reasonably priced variac to control the fan speed.

I did use Cal-Mag before I started using straight well water. We have to use two separate water conditioners for tannins and extremely hard water. Between the conditioners and trying to pH the water using visual drops and chart I had them all goofed up and nearly killed them. If you look at my journals pics starting on page two you see when the issue arose. Between my water, the pH, and over feeding them I was pretty lucky but was able to go on and successfully raise a couple of her clones as well. If it wasn't for the help of our experienced forum members, they would have all ended up in the compost pile. My learning curve was a steep one.
:And thank you for the reps.

 

[MaxHeadroom]

Hi Beaver,

I read your journal thanks. Did you discover that you were loving your plants to death? I'm trying hard to avoid over watering, over nuting and not using enough CalMag. Oh and getting pH right.

Going forward I'm doing

1. Let them dry out before watering
2. Add a small amount of seaweed extract & Epsom Salts then check and set pH to 6.5

The plan is to introduce a tiny amount of OT Grow around week 4 (ok, I'll crack and add an 8th dose as soon as it arrives. Maybe). I'm still convinced this soil has all they need for a minimum of 3 weeks growth.

Does this sound ok or have a missed a lesson from your journal?

Thanks again,

 

[Curly Beaver]

Hi Beaver,

I read your journal thanks. Did you discover that you were loving your plants to death? I'm trying hard to avoid over watering, over nuting and not using enough CalMag. Oh and getting pH right.

Going forward I'm doing

1. Let them dry out before watering
2. Add a small amount of seaweed extract & Epsom Salts then check and set pH to 6.5

The plan is to introduce a tiny amount of OT Grow around week 4 (ok, I'll crack and add an 8th dose as soon as it arrives. Maybe). I'm still convinced this soil has all they need for a minimum of 3 weeks growth.

Does this sound ok or have a missed a lesson from your journal?

Thanks again,

I was told they would survive just fine for 3-4 weeks before adding nutrients, and yes, I figured the more I did for them the happier they would be. Come to find out, that's NOT TRUE

 

[shaun6868]

Hi Beaver,

I read your journal thanks. Did you discover that you were loving your plants to death? I'm trying hard to avoid over watering, over nuting and not using enough CalMag. Oh and getting pH right.

Going forward I'm doing

1. Let them dry out before watering
2. Add a small amount of seaweed extract & Epsom Salts then check and set pH to 6.5

The plan is to introduce a tiny amount of OT Grow around week 4 (ok, I'll crack and add an 8th dose as soon as it arrives. Maybe). I'm still convinced this soil has all they need for a minimum of 3 weeks growth.

Does this sound ok or have a missed a lesson from your journal?

Thanks again,

Max as Beaver said you should be good for a few weeks with the medium your using. Just keep an eye on them. you will need some calmag sooner or later especially with LED. when you start giving nutes just give 1/8-1/4 dose & see how they go..Less is more

 

[Spiderman]

Hey Max,

I jumped on for the ride.

I have NOT started a grow but plan to do so when my seeds and light arrives, until then I will watch how things turn out for you.

Peace

 

[420Amard]

 

[MaxHeadroom]

Hi Shaun,

That's very much the plan thanks. Let the soil do the work until at least week 3 -4 then an 8th nute dose. Thanks for the heads up.

That's 1/8th dose.. not dose 1,2,3,4.. 8th dose

 

[MaxHeadroom]

Hey Max,

I jumped on for the ride.

I have NOT started a grow but plan to do so when my seeds and light arrives, until then I will watch how things turn out for you.

Peace

Welcome Spiderman, this is my first go at this and a chance to try to implement some of the knowledge I've osmosed from 420 Mag. It could all go horribly wrong, but even that will be instructive

So far I've overwatered to the point of killing one seed - lesson learned. Less is definitely more. I'll be following along when you pop your seeds and start a journal.

Cheers

 

[MaxHeadroom]

Day 15 - Update and Musing

It's time to put down the actual dates and ages for all three seedlings that went in soil at different times due to untimely demise of XL#2

XL#1 is 15 days old - went into soil on 20th December 2015
BB#1 is 11 days old - went into soil on 24th December 2015
XL#3 is 7 days old - went into soil on 28th December 2015


Here are the girls

XL#1 & BB#1

Roots are starting to poke out of the bottom of the pot of XL#1


XL#3

I think there's a soil issue with XL#3. The pot feels heavy even when the top of the soil is dry and breaking up down to my second knuckle. Lesson learned here is to mix the soil up a bit, not just scoop straight from the bag. I suspect there's no perlite lower down in the pot. The soil still looks wet from a light watering over 36 hours ago. It seems to hold water far too well for my liking.

I'm thinking of re-potting XL#1 straight into a 5 gallon pot. I'm also thinking of moving XL#3 because of the potential soil issue. It's got nothing like the growth the others had at 7 days old. It looks a day or two old based on my limited experience with the others. It's stunted and going nowhere with the soil it has at the moment.

I'm happy to leave BB#1 in the small pot until the roots fill out some more.

Should I water them (apart from XL#3) before up-potting to keep the soil and roots together? It's going to take me 20 mins to wash out the big pots anyway, so I'll pop back later to see if there are any comments.

Thanks as always for the input.

 

[OlderGrower]

Howdy Max,
Been a while since I have had any free time to check out everyones garden, let alone my own. From what I can see you are doing just fine. Granted you lost one, but you learned a valuable lesson, you can actually love your plant to death by doing to much for them.

I would suggest that XL#1 would be better off to be moved into a 1 gallon pot for a few weeks before bumping her up to a 5 gallon pot. A couple of reasons. For one, it will give her time to develop her root system quicker and most importantly of all is if you put her directly into a 5 gallon pot from the pot she is presently in it will be much harder to water her properly. Her root system will need time to develop and even though you may water fully in the 5 gallon pot, the soil down near the bottom and outer ring of the pot may have plenty of moisture but the roots themselves may not extend to these areas. One way around that is to not water the entire pot, but then you get to the next problem, how fast will the roots reach those areas, and if you do not water those areas of the pot, and the roots grow into the areas which did not get watered, they will die back. For best overall plant health, it is best to up pot as opposed to going straight into a much bigger pot.
Emilya has covered this topic on many different threads and is much better at communicating the importance of this step in the plants life.
While some may disagree with Emilya and myself on this point, my personal experience has been that it is much easier and the plant will be healthier if you do not skip this step.

Which ever choice you make, I wish you and your grow the best.

 

[420Amard]

Great start they look awesome man!!!

 

[MaxHeadroom]

Hi OG,

That is very sound advice thank you. This is where I hang my head in shame for putting a shout out for information then blasting ahead with 5 gallon pots anyway. In my defence I'm not thinking straight. Just after posting that I got a call from the police telling my car has been found burnt out. This makes no sense. Why steal a £30,000 car only to burn it out? Needing to do something, anything, I re-potted and now I feel like an idiot. There's so much information that people like you take the time to impart and I blast ahead without checking the words of wisdom.

I don't have any 1 gallon pots (we work in litres so I always have to convert) all I have are the mini pots, 15l and 25l. 25l is just over 5 gallons. I will buy some 1 gallons for the next grow and if they arrive in time I'll use one for BB#1.

I hope people will continue to offer great advice and in future I'll hold off for an hour or so to read the advice before taking action. I'm still wound up about my car and messing with the gals hasn't even sorted out the nervous energy.

Lesson learned. I really do appreciate your input and it makes a lot of sense. I'll roll with the snafu and put it in my journal for all to see.

Humbly,

 

[MaxHeadroom]

Day 15 - Re-Potting XL#1 and XL#3

For those following my sorry tale of how not to grow; I've just jumped straight from the mini pots to huge 25l (about 5 gallon) pots. The reason/excuse for this is in my previous post.

Let's make the best of it because I don't have 1 gallon pots to downsize them. In a stroke of luck I didn't up pot BB#1 because I wanted a better root structure first. I'll go find out how may litres are in an American gallon and buy some more pots.

Here are all three girls lined up before the move. From left to right we have
XL#1 (15 days old), BB#1 (11 days) and the runt of the litter XL#3 (7 days)

XL#1 ready to plant

A close up of the roots filling the pot

Yet another lesson has been learned and future grows will be up potted in stages. Yes, I'm glad I moved XL#1 and XL#3, but not happy that I went straight to huge pots. XL#1's root filled the pot and XL#3's soil was black and sludgy in the pot, with a distinct lack of perlite visible. The waterlogging was stunting growth.

If it is sensible to down pot (but even I question the wisdom of tackling this) then I will do so. It will take me a week to get the pots delivered though so I think the danger of damaging the roots will be too high. We can see how BB#1 copes with going up in steps rather than the huge leap the others have just had.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to sulk about my car and my stupidity.

 

[OlderGrower]

Max I said it would just make it harder on you to get it done right, did not say you could not do it. I have faith in you brother. She would just be easier to develop doing it the other way. I do not recall exactly which plant it was off hand but I did the same thing on my 1st grow and the only thing I recall from that experience was with that plant, I could not rely on the lift method to determine when to water, I had to actually look at the plant and let her tell me when she was thirsty. One other thing to keep in mind is this, now that you have increased the amount of soil in the container you also increased the available nutrients with the new soil to the plant. So you should not need to add any notes for at least 3 to 4 weeks from the time you transplanted.

Your ladies look great especially XL#1 and you are well on your way.
Keep up the great work my friend

 

[MaxHeadroom]

Thanks OG,

I'm just having a bit of a mental wobble. If only I had some therapeutic smoke to help ;-)

You are absolutely correct about nutes. I'll be good and not add any (the OT Grow hasn't arrived yet anyway).

My only question is about CalMag... does the soil have enough in or should I put some in the water? Watering is indeed going to be a tad more difficult now. I could only tell XL#3 had soil issues because the pot was excessively heavy even when the top few inches of soil were dry and crumbling. I'll have to learn to figure out their needs from the level of droop.

 

[MaxHeadroom]

Great start they look awesome man!!!

Thanks Spart. I'll take extra care with watering now. It never occurred to me to think of the implications of small roots in big pots. I'm still having fun learning and that's what it's all about at the end of the day