Durban Poison - Three weeks old - Is my girl healthy?

[420growguy]

Hi I Have a three week old "Durban Poison Plant" It's 7in tall, and seem's to be remotely healthy in my opinion.
I Have it under a 400w MH and a 24/0 light cycle for optimum results for veg.
I am not watering her on a schedule but whenever her pot feels very dry.
When I do water her I give her enough water to sustain for a week, then water her again when the pot is dry.
The soil I am currently using is miracle grow,
Everybodys saying that it does not work well with growing marijuana,
which I do not believe, my friend has 6ft tall "Chocolate hash plant" & "blackberry kush" on a 24/0 light cycle\
with miracle grow soil, and fertilizer and feed, and her last crop she had yielded 3 quarters of a pound on each plant with a THC content of %25.43 using nothing but miracle grow soil, fertilizer and feed, so it's sort of hard to believe anything else.


Any advice ?




-Dylan

 

[Emilya Green]

Hi I Have a three week old "Durban Poison Plant" It's 7in tall, and seem's to be remotely healthy in my opinion.
I Have it under a 400w MH and a 24/0 light cycle for optimum results for veg.
I am not watering her on a schedule but whenever her pot feels very dry.
When I do water her I give her enough water to sustain for a week, then water her again when the pot is dry.
The soil I am currently using is miracle grow,
Everybodys saying that it does not work well with growing marijuana,
which I do not believe, my friend has 6ft tall "Chocolate hash plant" & "blackberry kush" on a 24/0 light cycle\
with miracle grow soil, and fertilizer and feed, and her last crop she had yielded 3 quarters of a pound on each plant with a THC content of %25.43 using nothing but miracle grow soil, fertilizer and feed, so it's sort of hard to believe anything else.

I am enjoying seeing your poison plant as I have a few seeds of that myself, but have been waiting for just the right time to plant them. I am going to watch to see how this grows for you, and that knowledge will give me a better idea what I want to do with mine.

I am going to comment on your grow, but keep in mind that many of the things that I am going to say here are simply my personal opinions and I am sure that others will disagree with some of it. Let me say that I am also a fan of Miracle Grow... to a point.

The bad thing about MG is that it usually comes from your local hardware store... and those folks have no idea how to care for that soil, and they just leave it out in the sun and elements 24/7 and before you buy it, if it has been there for a while, you are likely to have bugs and various other problems that come home in the bag with you. Other than that, it is a pretty decent soil, it has low compaction, great water retention and a good amount of nutrients in it for vegetative growth. The one big drawback that I have found is that the soil is a bit light on trace minerals, and I have had MG grows give out in mid flower, running out of molybdenum especially. I ran MG for several years though, and the only thing I would add now would be some mosquito dunks to kill the bugs and a bit of azomite to supplement the minerals, if I was planning on going 9+ weeks in the soil.

Regarding your watering, I commend you on not following a set schedule and for only watering when the container feels light. This is exactly what you should do when growing a weed, and I believe this is why your plant looks as happy as it does. What I take slight issue with is your comment about giving her enough water for a week. As your rootball becomes more complex in that container, your wet/dry cycle will go from the 5-6 or 7 days now, down to as short as 1 day. This will be how you determine when she needs to be in a bigger container. When that need to water approaches a 24 hour cycle and you no longer have a buffer to protect your plant for more than a day or two it is time to up-pot to the next sized container, or if I start seeing any signs of stress in my plants.

In order to be able to see this happen, you have to be consistent in how you water, and to do that, I slowly and carefully water each time trying to totally saturate my soil, and get as much water absorbed by the soil as I can before it starts running out of the bottom. When I start to see runoff, I stop... and if you were to measure this watering amount, you would notice that as the roots get more complex, the plant can actually take more water each time, actually sucking some of it up as you water.

Now I will get really controversial and talk about the 24/0 lighting schedule, which I am going to come right and say that I don't believe is the optimum lighting that you can use in veg. Many of us believe that plants need the dark period. The logic behind this is that the plants absorb energy during the day and then release that energy in different processes overnight. I have seen my plants grow as much as 2 inches during the dark period, and I don't think that they respond nearly as strongly using artificially extended daylight hours as when they have a dark period. I used to run 18/6 all the time in veg, but I have recently found an even better method and have it being documented in my current grow log. I am running only 12 hours of light in veg, plus one more hour in the middle of their night. It is called 12-1, and to my total surprise, the plants love this 13 hours of light each day and my growth has accelerated to such a point that I am shocked. The plants are staying in veg, have shown their sex and are growing incredibly complex already. I have never seen this kind of response before, and I am using less light and less electricity than I ever thought possible. For a comparison, I invite you to my grow log to look at my plants that are only 2 weeks older than yours. Bottom line, I think you can do better than 24/0 in veg.

This all being said, it is up to you to figure out what works best for you and your particular garden specifics and all we can do is advise you what it is that we think we have determined to be true in our gardens. Your mileage may vary and surely most growers do things differently than I do. Good luck and good job so far... I am popping my popcorn and getting out the funny colored glasses.... this is going to be fun to watch!

 

[CARSO]

Heres my Durban Poison. Added Gaia bloom seems to be taking off .

 

[013]

Hey Carso,

It looks like plant is still in veg but you mention using bloom nutes… I zoomed up but it’s true my eyes are not as keen as they once were.…Does she have pistils? Better pics of her top might help!

auto or photo? What light hours are you running? Have you flipped lights?

Great job, your DB plant looks very healthy!!

I do see 2 things that concern me…..

1) wire gauge on that brown cord looks too small
2) the black cord is not fully plugged in which will make both the appliance itself plus the wiring system run much hotter

one of our members had grow room fire about 2 years ago… really bad news but he’s a great dude and put together an entire safety thread… How to prevent disaster by Bill284