Noob Not Doing Very Well

[DrPokTok]

Hey all,

Great forum with tons of info. I'm green, new and with envy.

I'm a first timer here on a shoestring and things aren't going well. Mary and Jane (sorry) are only 8 inches tall after six weeks from germination. They spent a little time outdoors for the first couple of weeks but are now indoors.

- 2 x Northern Lights auto fem from Crop King

- Miracle Grow potting soil

- In pots 8.5" tall by 8.5" diameter.

- 1 x 200W 2700k CFL and a single spot 23W daylight mostly on Jane

- Maintaining a light breeze with a fan

- No nutes (I haven't been able to get any yet)

- Spider mites. Am taking them off daily by hand and seem to have them under control.

- Yellowing leaves on Mary with a brown patch. From research, I attributed this to Mary being too close to the light (2 to 3 inches) so I've backed her off to 5 to 6 inches.

- In a basement but RH is 45 to 55%

- Haven't been able to get a pH meter or light meter yet.

- 18/6

- There are tons of flowers on Mary and Jane is starting with some now that she's caught up.

I'm curious about whether the 2700k bulb may have caused premature flowering. If so, should I give up on height and switch to 12/12 now?

Or am I being impatient and should expect another 6 weeks before going to 12/12?

I'll take any advice anyone would care to send my way and send thanks in advance!



Mary

Jane and Mary

 

[Weaselcracker]

- 2 x Northern Lights auto fem from Crop King

You say that these are autos, correct?

Autos will flower automatically and are usually grown on 18/6 or 24/0 lighting.

If they are autos then you probably shouldn't expect much more than a (valuable) learning experience from this grow. Autos have a short lifespan and need to have good health and an easy run in order to produce well. They don't have time to recover from setbacks.

If they aren't autos then you've got more time to try and get them on track. Pictures are nice, for whoever comes along here to help.

Photo Gallery Guide - How to Resize, Upload & Post Photos

 

[DrPokTok]

Thanks for the feedback. So there's nothing I can do? I was hoping nutes would help and am working to try and cut through my confusion to find the right product with the right ratios for this stage.

There are tons of flowers and am wondering if I should switch to 12/12 now, even if the plants are only 8 inches tall.

Another question is whether it's too late to LST?

You say that these are autos, correct?

Correct

Pictures are nice, for whoever comes along here to help.

I uploaded two pics to my gallery and inserted them above. I can see them but maybe they don't work for everyone?

Thanks again

 

[Nismo12]

Welcome to !

They look like they are healthy but could have used more nitrogen and some calmag. You can so use calmag and nutes, but once damage like that is done to a leaf it won't recover. Only be growth would show signs of improvement.

She will flower just fine, just up the potash intake.

 

[Weaselcracker]

For autos you don't need to switch to 12/12. That's something you do with photo plants to induce flowering. Autos are autos and will flower automatically, which they've already started to do. You can keep them on 18/6 or 24/0 lighting and they'll produce better.
No you don't need to be doing any lst at this point. It won't help the plants at his stage, only slow them down.
You will get some bud off of them so that's good. I think you can blame most of the issues on the miracle grow soil- it's crappy and almost everyone who uses it to grow cannabis seems to have problems.

You will be able to find some good info in this link.

How to Grow Marijuana Everything You Need to Know

 

[DrPokTok]

Thanks @Weaselcracker and @Nismo12

I'd read about that brand's nutes but not its soil. The version I stole from my wife for my girls is the moisture control version with .18.10.10. I guess I should have read the label.

Since they're in 1 gal pots am thinking of upping to 3s using different soil. I'll check the ref link you kindly provided for guidelines.

Definitely will go for camg addition but not sure if they'd prefer grow or bloom nutes at this stage (flowering nicely but at 8 inches, 6 weeks). Seems like they could do with some growing yet. Does your suggestion to up the potash infer using the grow formula?

I hadn't expected to get bud on my first attempt so a small amount will be precious, said Gollum. lol

Cheers

 

[Nismo12]

Using bloom nutes will take care of it. Autos for future reference, plant them into their final pots. The usually don't veg for very long and don't have the time to recover from transplanting. Also with an plant, you don't want to transplant while in flower. You can....but you really really don't want to.

 

[Weaselcracker]

That's a tough call. I wouldn't expect much more growth from those plants at this stage. I mean- the buds should grow bigger- but it's not a time when the root system or foliage does much expansion. And they're in the right size pot for their height. If you move them to larger pots you are going to have some watering issues possibly and more you may not gain much, probably will lose ground a little- although it would be nice to get them out of that soil. I do transplant in early flowering if I feel the pot is way too small but this isn't the case with these ones. Hmmmmm....

 

[DrPokTok]

Wow, is this ever fun and interesting!

After doing a lot of reading about the symptoms shown by the leaves in the pic attached below, I understood and agreed with the recommendation by @Nismo12 for calmag and K. So I bought some Flora Nova Bloom and some CaMg+ based on this kind input.

I also decided based on recommendations in this thread not to transplant to larger pots. But I didn't like the idea of doing nothing and just letting my baby girls sit in bad soil. So I decided to flush - go big or go home! The plants are in 1 gal pots so I flushed with 2 gal each of plain tap water adjusted to pH around 6.5 and then with another gal of same with nutes (2 ml/l of CaMg+ and 2 ml/l of Bloom).

I've looked for nute mixing instructions but haven't found what I was looking for after noticing precipitation of the Bloom when added after the calmag. I suppose the carbonate in the calmag pushes the pH down.

Question - do I have to adjust the pH to 6.5 after calmag/before adding the bloom or can I allow bloom to precipitate and go back into solution when I adjust the pH of the final mix?

I had also been concerned about over-watering, given that I might have a touch of OCD about my first grow. So I let them go for several days and found the soil stayed damp to the touch for a very long time, maybe four days or more. The girls started to smell very strong and, thanks to this site, I recognized this as a cry for water. I concluded the Miracle Grow soil, that also claims it absorbs more water and releases it as needed by the plant doesn't actually release the last bit. I'd speculate that it clings to the water more strongly than my babies are able to absorb it. Wild speculation, of course, but now I think I have to up the watering without overdoing it.

I'll see what happens in the next couple of days and hope I haven't just sentenced my girls to a slow, premature death. yikes

Any comments welcome. Thanks in advance for any you care to leave!

 

[Weaselcracker]

My only experience with miracle grow is what I have read on this forum, where it is commonly bashed. My understanding is that miracle grow, at least the most common version, has time release fertilizer pellets in it. With this stuff -the more you water -the more nutrients are released. So, flushing MG can be problematic. Obviously at some point the pellets are depleted and it's not an issue anymore.
- I'm just mentioning this in case you notice nutrient burn after you flush the plants.

I'm not so sure about your watering theory. Maybe? In my opinion the best way to water is by checking the weight of the pots. Check in that link I gave you in the watering section there's a little bit about the 'lift the pot method'.

Start a journal... I'll sub.
(Wouldn't hurt to start a few more seeds too )

 

[willymac22]

Get a ph meter. It's very important. It will die if the ph is to high or low.

Sent from my SM-G900I using 420

 

[Weaselcracker]

I forgot to answer the part about ph and precipitation. I don't really know the answer, but I add the calmag first, as a base at 3-5 ml per gallon, then mix other nutrients after. I don't think it matters too much the order, but when you're adding something that is strongly acidic or alkaline, compared to whatever else you have in the mix, some will solidify and precipitate - looking like a milky haze. Silica in particular is fond of precipitating out when it hits anything at all acidic, so the silica in particular I always add and mix well first.
Using an EC meter I don't notice much loss in ppm from the minor precipitation which usually occurs when mixing nutes, and I don't think much is really lost.
Always mix everything then adjust ph last. After that it's good to let it sit a half hour or even, once in awhile, overnight, and then test ph again, just to make sure your ph reading is what you think it is.
Soil growers don't need to worry about ph much, because soil has good buffering qualities, but pretty much everyone else does and it's definitely been my number one source of issues by far.

 

[DrPokTok]

Thanks for the 'helpful advice' WC a term I see you used elsewhere. lol

I'm in a kind of dark zone of uncertainty at the moment, my brain swimming around various abstract problems with only experimentation as the way out. I have too much time on my hands and this is a great outlet. Way too much fun and excellent possible rewards along the way.

Yes, indeed, there did seem to be nutrient burn after the flush, but "seem" is the operative word. I can't yet distinguish between burn and K deficiency. My girls seem to have a touch of both, depending on how I look at them - some leaves with brown patches overall and others with burnt tips - paradox!?

The watering frequency decision was also making me (more) crazy (than I usually am) so I set an arbitrary three day frequency, not knowing what the pot weight feels like dry. I water when the soil is still damp after three days because it seems to stay damp forever. Um, well, up to five days.

All things considered, I decided to feed at my max comfort level (2ml/l) CaMg and Bloom and turned off the puny 6,500k bulb. That was yesterday. Fingers crossed.

Am also still working through noobness on the pH side. I got a kit and will struggle with approximation until I can find and get a good meter. I live out of town so it could take a while. I tested runoff for the first time and got an interesting result - it was around 4.5! So that's another variable messing with my brain. But I attribute the result to having used rainwater without pH adjustment for my flush, which I think was more a brief 'rinse' than a flush in retrospect after looking at some of the volumes people use. I can well imagine the second part of my 'rinse' didn't displace more than half the rainwater remaining in the soil.

Thanks for the reply to my questions/comments about nute preparation. I see today that the nute bottles have quite a bit of precipitation and flakes. Am going to bring the pH to 6.5 after dissolving CaMg and see what happens when I add the Bloom.

About starting a journal, many thanks for the suggestion and for offering to sub. I kinda thought this was a journal but, again, my noobness is showing. I'm reading some journals now to see what I should be doing differently. The thing is that I'm really really naive about all this and just dipping a toe in the water. I have two plants, three seeds, one 200W 2,700k CFL in a flimsy reflector hanging from the ceiling in a back room. Oh, I do have a fan, timer, and one bottle each of nutrient and supplement. Am not complaining; am sure many people start out like this on a shoestring. But this has turned into a hugely interesting subject and I'll have plenty of time to spend on in over the next four to five months while enjoying infusions of extract from the American Yew tree.

 

[DrPokTok]

Jane started off as a poor little runt and I didn't think she had any hope of surviving past the age of one week above ground...

Mary

Jane

 

[Weaselcracker]

Lol. I'm a noob too, when it comes down to it, and that dark zone of uncertainty is where I live, as anyone who has to endure reading my journal knows all too well.
I didn't realize this thread is in the journal section. Turns out it is and so I'm subbed already. Easy. I just found it when wandering through the newly posted threads of the day and thought it was a one off cry for help or something. So yeah- you're right it kind of is a journal. Congrats.
The rainwater won't mess up your ph. Unless you live in some horrendously smoggy place perhaps. I use rainwater only, and pure rainwater, such as it is where I live, has a ph of about 5.6. Pure water is ph 7. Ph 5.6 seems like a big difference from pure distilled water, but in reality the acidity is extremely weak because the ppm of rainwater is very near zero. It contains almost nothing except a tiny bit of carbon picked up from the atmosphere making weak carbonic acid. A tiny drop of ph+ or ph- will drastically affect the ph of the rainwater. The ppm of a solution makes all the difference when it comes to affecting your ph. A strong solution of something acidic or alkaline is going to be harder to ph balance than a weak one, and conversely is going to have a greater effect on the ph of your nutrient mix, growing medium, and your plant. Know what I mean?
It can be hard to tell differences between deficiencies, and nute burn can and will cause brown patches on the leaves. Your plants look good though. Better than I realized. They'll be fine I think.
I work with pacific yew a lot and spend most of my time trying not to ingest more of it than I have to...

 

[DrPokTok]

Wow. Too exciting! But I know I'm not out of the woods yet and all kinds of things can still go wrong. Yet...

Mary has stopped growing vertically and the top flower and small leaves around it (are these called sugar leaves?) are getting frosty-looking, like there's a coating on them. Beauty! The lower flowers aren't at nearly the same stage, so I put a small (26W) 65k CFL up close.

The used-to-be-runt Jane is adding about 2 cm per day and her branches are about that far apart vertically. Healthy-looking flowers at each junction.

I'd like to get a better understanding how people measure duration. It's confusing and inconsistent.

My plants are now about 7 weeks from the date they poked their little heads above ground, or around 8 weeks from seed germination in paper towel. The first flowers started around week four.

So, when seed sellers say (for my autos) "flowering time: 8 weeks", do they mean ready to harvest 8 weeks from the appearance of the flowers or do they mean they start flowering after 8 weeks of veg? The latter doesn't seem right because I've read on this forum that the range of growth durations are "veg: weeks 1 - 3; flower weeks 4 - 10". I assume this means from first green above ground, though it could mean from germination I suppose.

Another question is about whether buds can be harvested individually given I expect a wide variation in maturity on the same plant. Maybe the younger and/or lower flowers will catch up, but am not sure.

Wondering...

Cheers

 

[Gaffle]

Light may be your enemy as well. I finished a grow with 1 300watt led, probably pulling 180watt from wall, and I have realized that my weak light was a partial prob. I had 2 plants in 10gal pots and I pulled 2oz. Great personal smoke for now, but I want better! My HPS will be here tomorrow so popping seeds next weekend. A less intense light could attribute to slow growth. Takes practice for everything to get cool. Follow all the journals around here and success is literally guaranteed.

 

[DrPokTok]

Thanks Gaffle.

Forgive my stupid questions but:

1. are you growing in soil or hydro and

2. what do you mean by 180 from the wall?

Cheers and thanks again.

 

[420Amard]

Hi and welcome to the 420mag world if you have any question please don't hesitate to ask I'm sure some one here will help.
180w from the wall is meaning 180w draw wattage most led companies say there light is 300w meaning that there is 100 diodes at 3watts each. But the actual draw wattage is about half that.
and

 

[Gaffle]

Hi and welcome to the 420mag world if you have any question please don't hesitate to ask I'm sure some one here will help.
180w from the wall is meaning 180w draw wattage most led companies say there light is 300w meaning that there is 100 diodes at 3watts each. But the actual draw wattage is about half that.
and

Yeah, you gotta do reading about your light source. There are led companies that are spot on with specs, but I went with a cheap one and my grow suffered. I still have a very good smoke tho.

Read about "par value". You want enough light to make your plant thrive. If you are lacking on light you get a slow grower. Even though we use some kind of nutes, plants still need a lot of light.

Every good grower here has some set parameters.

1. Environment. You will have 2 temperatures, one at lights on, and one at lights off. Make sure your fairly stable
Temps in the higher 80s aren't good unless your adding CO2 to your room. I ran my room for a month before I did any plants. Also, make sure you have plenty of fresh air coming into your room/tent/cabinet. You need fresh air moving around. Watch your humidity. Some of us (myself included) have to add humidity during winter months. Some have too much humidity and need to use a de-humidifier.

2. Light! You want lots of bud, make sure you have plenty of light. You need enough light to penetrate your canopy. There are growing techniques like scrog that eliminates most under your canopy. Scrog is good for smaller grows like a small tent or cabinet. Check out Masonmans journal. Here is a good example of a 1 plant cabinet that was scroged and he produced 6oz dry.

Your pots, medium (soil or soilless roughly), and nutrients help, but a good environment is most beneficial. Now realize that making a perfect environment is a pain in the ass, and mine is far from perfect, but making it as good as possible helps.

Troll all the journals around here, this collective group is a a damn marijuana power house. This is like a college of sorts. I await the day to be a MJ expert myself!