Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
dont put flowering nutes on veging plants... they will be fine without nutes.
First time grow CFL growth stopped
- Thread starter
- #102
Oh im not haha I had ordered veg and flower nutes. Had to send the veg nuts back, I meant my veg in plants needed fed so I have the veg straight water. And my two girls in flower are the only ones that got the flowering nutes tonight. And I'll have you know since I started following your in pot watering regimen, that I've not had another plant go over watered nor under watered. I figured out an in genius way to keep track of the water line in my bigger pots, and I just simply weigh and document the weights on my smaller pots. I love it, they grow so much faster, bigger, healthier.
- Thread starter
- #103
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
I have a couple of battery powered LED lantern lights that I can throw in the tent if this happens here... it's not a lot of light, but I think it is enough to keep them awake.
- Thread starter
- #105
Care if I pick your brain a little more emilya? Question about how often to give my plants nutes. I'll use the big girl for instance, right now her cycle is every 6 days I feed her 4 cups of water/nutrients. Should I do straight water one cycle then nutes the next alternating like that, or would say, do nutes through 2 cycles and on the 3rd do straight water that way? Im on the fence and don't want to over do it ya see. And some article says water every other, some say every 3rd watering, heck some say give them nutrients every feeding all the way up too 2 weeks before harvest before just giving straight water. From your experience what would you recommend. My next feeding is tomorrow.
I'm gonna try channelling Emilya here, she can let me know how I do.
"4 cups of water every six days seems like a very human time cycle likely not appropriate to most individual plants. You need to get a dry cycle before each wet cycle, and even if you hit 6 days once, you likely won't again. This means you will be usually overwatering, and your favorite girl will have trouble ever reaching a dry cycle, growing vigorously and actually using up all it's 6 days of water"
You'll do more damage with incorrect watering than with not using enough nutrients, so make sure they are completely dry before you water next time and add nutrients at a plant's speed, not a human's."
Am I close Em?
- Thread starter
- #107
As of right now ever 6 days is my guideline to start checking my pots. Im not religiously feeding it every 6 days haha I quite guessing when I lost 7 plants due to over watering. I assure you that they don't get water until the wet/dry line is pushing into the lower 3 inches of the 5 gal bucket. And all the others get weighed, my soil is crap I know that, it's the first and last time I use it this way. Maybe my soil won't hold the typical amount, I add water a quart at a time until I get 15% or so run off. The numbers I posted earlier are just baselines. If there not getting enough water or getting to much, truste they will let me know. They haven't failed to inform me yet of my mistakes lol
- Thread starter
- #108
Im beginning to think my soil is crap, actually I know it is. It doesn't hold near the water I read about soil holding and takes what seems to be to long to dry back out. That could be one of my biggest problems also. It's the last time I use it this way with no perlite (couldn find perlite @ the time)
The soil im using on my new plants consist of 50 %top soil, 30% peat moss/coconut husk mix, and 20-30% perlite, also put earthworm castings in it like 2 cups was what it called for in the amount of soil I mixed. Does that sound alright? No fox farm around here, and the crap soil my big plants got stuck in was topsoil and cow manure soil mixed half and half. So this may or may not have effected the grow some. Im learning as I go, if I could start over I wouldn have jumped into it so fast thinking I had a green thumb because nature grew me some nice plants outdoors in the past lol
The soil im using on my new plants consist of 50 %top soil, 30% peat moss/coconut husk mix, and 20-30% perlite, also put earthworm castings in it like 2 cups was what it called for in the amount of soil I mixed. Does that sound alright? No fox farm around here, and the crap soil my big plants got stuck in was topsoil and cow manure soil mixed half and half. So this may or may not have effected the grow some. Im learning as I go, if I could start over I wouldn have jumped into it so fast thinking I had a green thumb because nature grew me some nice plants outdoors in the past lol
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
I recommend giving nutes every other time. There is good science behind this. If you water with nutes one time, not all of those nutes are used up. If you come along the next time and water correctly, you simply reactivate the nutes that are still sitting there. I would suggest that if you are watering correctly, on the plain water watering you would not want to go for 15% runoff (3/4 gallon) because in doing so, you are essentially flushing that last nute run out of there.
And then as said above, if your wet/dry cycle is not getting shorter with every watering until it stabilizes out around 3-4 days in a 5 gallon container, something is wrong. But what leaps out at us is that you said that you feed her 4 cups. What is that? a mini watering with just a few nutes? Are you actually mixing your nutes into 4 cups of water, and then applying that concentrated mix to your plants, independently of the regular waterings??? Or are you saying that 4 cups is enough to produce runoff when you water? I am confused. Please explain.
And of course, you are already planning the end, so you asked about feeding all the way up to 2 weeks before harvest, and plain water after that. That is one way of doing it I guess. Doesn't seem very wise to me, since the buds almost double in size in the last two weeks if they have everything they need. You also have to consider us organic folks, who don't flush or anything, and who have every single bit of every nutrient they could possibly need, in that soil right up until the end... doesn't seem to hurt them.
Check all of your facts. Don't just give water at the end because some article said it was a good idea. Understand the science behind everything you do.
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
oh, forgot another point about the soil. You are right about your soil probably being the biggest problem right now, and it is most likely due to compaction. Regular top soil was just not made to be put into containers and that is why the growing gods gave us perlite. Perlite as you have learned is the indoor gardener's secret weapon, and 20% gives good protection from compaction, and gives your container little places for water, air and microlife to hang out. I am not sure I am a fan of adding all that inert fiber instead of soil, but if you are going to supply the nutrients from a bottle, I guess it will work fine. Remember that coco retains salt and peat breaks down and becomes acidic, but if you are ready to deal with those issues, that new soil mix will work fine.
- Thread starter
- #111
I didn know that about peat moss and coconut, I'll look into a better base soil before I go into big containers again. My flowering plants are already to far along to use new soil so I'll tough it out with them. Im just trying to save as much as I can from the grow. But I do have some nice little plants coming up for the next round. Has to be to.compact because they hold no were near the water I read about good soil holding. I've made up my mind to alternate water and nutes every other cycle also. My biggest problems are availability on hrow products around me. It's winter so what little I do have access to is just now coming back on the shelves. If im very careful I think I can salvage my two flowering plants for a small yield. I'll be happy to have grown them from seed to harvest regardless. Lol the next grow will be better, I've learned alot this grow. Thanks
- Thread starter
- #112
Hey guys it looks as if that my once not so much of a problem gnats have just beGan to be an issue. They have tripled in numbers the past few days. I went from seeing only 4 or 5 a day to kill to my soil crawling with them in no time. May need a little guidance to get rid of them if they are harmful to my plants? I have sticky fly traps in my space, but there not working, put more, buy poison I don't know... what's an east way to rid them
CBDstrainman
New Member
The best way that I have seen to get rid of gnats is to pack a good layer of damp sand on top of the soil in the pots, they cant get out and subsequently die off.
- Thread starter
- #114
Get some mosquito dunks from a hardware store and break them up and top dress into the soil. The Bacillus thuringensis in the dunks will attack and kill fungus gnat larvae.
- Thread starter
- #116
- Thread starter
- #117
Wonder how many weeks I'll have to flower these girls? Everything seems on track, one was pre flowering a little while it was in veg. The smaller one had more issues but still seems like everything is fine since I went 12/12. If i.don't make any more mistakes. Think I could expect these 2 to be ripe in 10 weeks or less? I've never timed how long it took for one to ripe outside. From what I've read 8 weeks seems like a popular average for alot of strains to mature. I'll be patient and wait till there fully mature since they lack in size and I stunted them so much lol just would like to have a round about due date, so my private stash doesn't run out before these are nice and cured.
CBDstrainman
New Member
Hi John flowering times are usually strain specific, so depending on how long that specific strain needs to complete it's flowering cycle. some strains finish in 8 weeks while others require 9 to 10 weeks. The way many people choose to harvest is when the tri-clomes go from clear to around 75% milky and some of the hairs begin to start turning red, while others wait until some of the tri-clomes begin to turn amber in color. It's really a personal preference to decide which one of these methods you want to harvest at. Myself I prefer to harvest when most of the tri-clomes have turned milky and the hairs begin turning red a little bit
- Thread starter
- #119
Im gonna go with 75% milky trics on one of the girls, and im gonna wait until I get more amber trics in the other. Almost turned into an experimental grow for learning purposes at this point. So I'll know how to treat the girls I have vegging for the next flower. Thanks for the info
- Thread starter
- #120
Think im getting the hang of this watering thing. My latest seedlings have turned out great, there farther along in there 3 weeks than my last set was in 6 weeks. Lol I think my biggest problem was patience, since I've gotten more patient with my plants. I no longer play, fiddle, or feed my plants when I get bored. Now I want to learn how to clone, have a plant here that I would like to try it with. She is healthy, bushing out reall nice. I've done my homework on it, bit can't get a straight or clear answer on about how big/tall the cutting should be when I take it. Oh here are a few photos for interest.
Similar threads
