A bit curious

[Stevenn]

Hey!,
New user here
Any Tips,Advice,Stories,Questions welcome

I have some of my first plants growing and i've been having some questions and concerns and was hoping you guys here could help! .

This is has been going about 6-7 weeks under 33w Florescents
It was started in a rock wool cube and transplanted to clay hydro pellets

It recently started dieing on some of the older leaves, is this natural for it to rid itself of these or should i be doing something differently

 

[PotPie]

Re: A bit curious

Welcome Stevenn. How big are your containers? They look to be a quart or less.

First off- Disclaimer- I grow in soil. I've never tried hydro.
That being said, plants are plants.

I think you need more light for starters. I think 33W is equiv. to about 125W incandescent. If your space permits, I would try to get to at least 300W equivalent. I grow a few decent plants inside a cabinet with a 400W HPS. I usually veg under about 200W (actual) CFLs. This is 8-23W CFLs with various color temps.

Your plants are already sexually mature at 7-8 weeks. This means they will show sex as soon as you switch them to 12/12. Usually in 4-7 days.

From an overall health standpoint your plants are healthy but lanky from a lack of light.
So give them at least a gallon pot to grow in. Preferably a 3 gallon pot. Then give them some more light. I would veg them for another week under the bigger light in the bigger container. Then I would flip them to 12/12. Or top them, wait another 2 weeks, then flower them.

Keep an eye on the nutes and make sure they are well fed but not showing signs of overfeeding.

Lots of good info on this site. Do some searching around and you'll find a lot of people here have this growing thing going on.

 

[Stevenn]

Re: A bit curious

Thanks PotPie!

Can you indicate from the pictures provided if the plant is male or female?,
More pictures upon request

 

[PotPie]

Re: A bit curious

If the plants were grown from seed and have been under lights 18-24 (veg) hours a day since they popped, they aren't showing sex yet. You will need to change them to a 12/12 light schedule (flower) and wait 5-7 days.

However, I would put them in bigger pots first and get them a little bigger and stronger before flowering.

Also, How far away are your lights? CFLs can usually be placed just about 2 inches away from the plant without any ill effects. Just make sure the plant doesn't touch the lamp. Remember, the further away the light is the less energy gets to the plants. You plants are under-lit. Give them more light and they won't keep getting leggy. When you switch them to flower, they will roughly triple in size, so keep that in mind.

 

[nibec]

Re: A bit curious

one thing i want to add to potpies response..

i would advise letting her grow a bit more, and see if it preflowers, this will show you the sex, OR, let it grow a bit more, and take a clone off it, and put the clone onto 12/12 to show sex.

this way you dont stress the plant out as much, and loose a bunch of time by flipping to 12/12, and then back to 18/6 to try and reveg... too hard on the plant in my opinion.


lastly, i keep my cfl's anywhere from 1/4" to 2" away from the plant, and it works great. if you are worried about the plant touching the light, put a small fan on it, to keep the glass of the light cool, but remember if its touching the light, its making a big shadow, and you cant really afford that with cfl, unless you have many of them.

 

[Stevenn]

Thanks aton you guys, im taking all this advice and putting it to full effect, i now have more light pictures otw :3

And yes i germinated these myself . i didnt realize how much light schedule affected them., i just turn them on when i wake, and off when i sleep, sometimes i sleep with them on

^New lighting plus my 2nd plant, both on the same time span but the one on the right had a higher watt light for its first 2 months.

And those yellow leaves have gotten drastically worse since first posted. what do?

(some more random pics)

 

[nibec]

you definatly need some more light on those girls. they are stretching like no other.

thats also why your lower growth it dying... you need to get cfl's that are 6500k spectrum , and within 1-2" from the leaves.

 

[Stevenn]

I was thinking about picking up about 2-3 of these. do you think they will be sufficent?

 

[PotPie]

I think you will be OK if you go with 3 of them. Remember, get them as close as you can to the plants without touching them. 1-2" is perfect.

I would still advise putting them in larger pots. I just realized your containers were big gulp cups. I would put them in bigger pots asap. Let the roots develop in the bigger containers, then put them into flower. you can probably get away with a 1 gal pot but I really would shoot for at least 3 gallon pots.

Remember more light = more plant= more bud all other things being equal. However, below a certain amount of light the plant really wont produce much smokable bud. More light always help if you have the room and can manage the added heat.

GL

 

[nibec]

I was thinking about picking up about 2-3 of these. do you think they will be sufficent?
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First, i would say remove that link... i dont thinks thats allowed, and it may get you a warning from a mod... (cant link to external sites, unless they are sponsors)

the 42 watters are great and all, and i have used them with great success, however, in my opinion, 23-26 watt ones are better, in bigger numbers... heres why: (for this comparison, ill use the 26 watt cfl available at walmart)

42 watt light - $8 (typically more in the store... the $8 is normally website price)
26 watt light - $16 for a 6 pack or, about $2.53 per bulb

42 watt light 2800 lumens
26 watt light 1750 lumens

now with this info, we are looking at

42 watt light - 66.7 lumens per watt
26 watt light - 67.3 lumes per watt

thats not a very big gap, however, the 26 watter does throw a little extra light... now.. lets look at the cost.

lets say you want 200 actual watts of cfl (which i would reccomend in your case)

42 watt light - you would need 4.76 bulbs.. and thats not really possible so we will say 5 bulbs.
26 watt light - 7.69 bulbs... or again, we will just say 8 bulbs.

the cost for 8 of those 42 watters, comes out to $40
the cost for the 26 watters comes out to $20.25 ... BUT its best to buy them in 6 packs... so, acutally lets get 12 of them... $32.

so now we have just over 300 watts worth of bulbs, for almost $10 less than buying the bigger ones...

so lets look at the bigger picture.

5 - 42 watt bulbs - Power drawn = 210 watts - Lumens = 14000 cost = $40
12 -26 watt bulbs - power drawn = 312 watts - lumens = 21000 cost = $32

so.. with all that, it shows the smaller bulbs are biggest bang for you buck.. and some might argue that then you have to buy more sockets.. which is true, but these are a one time investment of a few bucks each.

which brings me to my next point...

with more of the smaller lights, you eliminate more shadows.

Say a big fan leaf is blocking the light coming from the bulb directly above it, well, with more lights, you can make it so, while that leaf is shading the ones below it, now you have another light right next to it, which is coming in at a different angle, and hitting the leaves below it, therefore getting rid of lots of the shadow! perfect.

plus when you go to change your bulbs to a flower spectrum, you spend another $32, instead of $40, once again. and when you decide you want to change out your cfls for new ones (i do every 2-3 cycles) it once again doesnt cost as much (you could also go 6 6500k and 6 2700k.. and not have to swap out bulbs from veg to flower.. but that will decrease your yeild more... which kinda sucks when you run cfls.. as they are not high yielders as it is.)

This is all my opinion, and there are arguements of 42 watt lights providing more penetration, which i disagree with, simply due to the fact, the light is a higher wattage, therefor producing more lumens, BUT, the bulb itself is also bigger, which means more lumens spread out over more glass. With that in mind, and the fact the bigger wattage bulbs are less efficent, i think your penetration actually drops with the 42's. or at the very least, is such a minute amount, that it really doesnt change anything.


anyways, if anyone cares to tell me im wrong, do so, and provide reasons why, becasue im not saying im right, but no one has been able to disprove me so far. and if that happens, it means i'v learnt more

 

[PotPie]

Reps to Nibec for the mad math skills!

I use a setup pretty much identical to this for several plants in veg. It works very well and the initial outlay is so much less money than HIDs or LEDs. For a small personal grow, this is ideal. It is also fairly stealthy if need be.

 

[nibec]

not so much math skills... as spending too much time bored, and figuring out seemingly pointless information, that ends up coming in handy one day... lol

i run 14 6500k for veg, and swap out to 14 2700k for flower with great results in a scrog. Its stealthy as can be.

i do really miss my HPS, but, one day when i have the space, ill replace my 2700k bulbs with my HPS.

 

[Stevenn]

Im not going for high yield. this is my first grow im just testing the waters

im gonna grab 2-3 of those 6500k 200 watt cfl's and combine them to the total cfl's i have.

 

[nibec]

sounds good bud. when it comes to cfl, doesnt really matter what wattage you get, as long as you have enough overall. i can normally get roughly 1/4 ounce per 26 watt bulb, so... by picking up 3 of those 42 watters, you could potentially be adding 35-40 grams to your harvest.

i do suggest LST however, or scrog (form of lst) it will increase your yield, and its cool as hell to look at and on the plus side, super easy. ... it also makes it easier to position your lights.

 

[Stevenn]

So i went shopping , i got a 2 gallon pot, 3 46 watt cfl's and a 24" Fluorescent i think they should be good for a bit, today was also there first day on 12/12 gonna keep them on this schedule with the new light for a while

Would it be better to keep those pellets compared to soil when transplanting?

Do you think the plant is old enough to start lst? i could pin the upward leaves in a direction with some string. It would also allow more light to the under area.