First Time Grower Problem

[Goldeneye007]

Howdy experts, was hoping to get some advice on what may be going on with my girls.

I know you guys like as many details as possible so:

First time grower
2 girls (killed the 2 boys shortly after flowering when they sprouted balls)
Indoors
Vegged for roughly 2 months.
Been in flowering for roughly 3 weeks
Not sure of the strain. Used seeds from a bag of bud I bought
Lights = Grow Lights 5 of them
Miracle Grow Soil (yes I know this is bad juju)
1.5 gallon pots.
One plant is roughly 2 feet tall. The other roughly 1.5.


The problem I have been having is as shown in the pictures. Honestly I had the same-ish problem for pretty much the whole grow, with the bottom leaves yellowing like that, but it never seemed too bad. I did add some nutes (dyna-gro foilage), but not too many because I know Miracle Grow is nute heavy. I figured it was a Nitrogen deficiency after googling.

I'm now a few weeks into flowering and it still seems to be happening, which is odd as I've read Nitrogen isn't really needed in flowering. I've added Dyna Gro Bloom now twice during flowering, but it almost seems like that speeds up the issue.

Also, on the taller plant, and you probably can't see in the picture, but right around where the buds are forming, the leaves are really dark green and curling down at the tips a bit. Is that normal?

Anyways, hoping for some feedback and assistance.

Thanks!

 

[OldMedUser]

High Goldeneye007

Would be better if you could take the plants out into natural light for pics as the pink ones are useless to get an overall look at the plants.

Very typical of plants grown in MG, Scotts or fed with Shultz's. Why bother.

Those ugly leaves are typical as well. The rest of the plant in trying to grow in a hostile environment is stealing what nutes it can from the older, lower leaves that aren't getting enough light to stay healthy.

There is no quick fix for this at this late date. Just grow these out and harvest what you can. If you're going to try again then you should read up about growing pot with real nutes. As you are not opposed to hydro type nutes I suggest something like Advanced Nutrients 3-part pH Perfect nutes and a good soilless peat based mix with lots of perlite. For $100 or less you could have the basic bits to have the start of really decent growing.

I don't mean to sound harsh but I see this over and over again. "Help! I'm growing with crap and my plants don't like it. What do I do now?" Simple. Don't grow with crap and expect a ton-o-buds like those that put a few bucks into their grows and study growing like they are trying to pass the bar.

Explore various grow methods and journals to get a feel for what might fit your situation and budget. Start a little grow log with the ideas you have and ask for advice before you even put a seed in the dirt. Decide if you want to grow organic or hydro or a blend of the two. Both methods can be very complicated or very simple. Simple is best for newer growers and if you start with decent stuff for your base you can build on that as you get a few grows under your belt and improve with each one.

We were all nOObs at one time and we all learned to walk before we could run. Strive for greatness and be happy with Not Bad.

Good luck eh.

L8r

 

[PurpleGunRack]

Hi and welcome to 420

If I read correctly the lights you're using are 12x1w and 5 of those is 60 watts at best and the penetration you get with 1w diodes is quite weak, hence the streching.
Also your pots look like they are quite small and your plants are probably rootbound by now.
Do you let the soil dry out between waterings?

 

[Goldeneye007]

High Goldeneye007

Would be better if you could take the plants out into natural light for pics as the pink ones are useless to get an overall look at the plants.

Very typical of plants grown in MG, Scotts or fed with Shultz's. Why bother.

Those ugly leaves are typical as well. The rest of the plant in trying to grow in a hostile environment is stealing what nutes it can from the older, lower leaves that aren't getting enough light to stay healthy.

There is no quick fix for this at this late date. Just grow these out and harvest what you can. If you're going to try again then you should read up about growing pot with real nutes. As you are not opposed to hydro type nutes I suggest something like Advanced Nutrients 3-part pH Perfect nutes and a good soilless peat based mix with lots of perlite. For $100 or less you could have the basic bits to have the start of really decent growing.

I don't mean to sound harsh but I see this over and over again. "Help! I'm growing with crap and my plants don't like it. What do I do now?" Simple. Don't grow with crap and expect a ton-o-buds like those that put a few bucks into their grows and study growing like they are trying to pass the bar.

Explore various grow methods and journals to get a feel for what might fit your situation and budget. Start a little grow log with the ideas you have and ask for advice before you even put a seed in the dirt. Decide if you want to grow organic or hydro or a blend of the two. Both methods can be very complicated or very simple. Simple is best for newer growers and if you start with decent stuff for your base you can build on that as you get a few grows under your belt and improve with each one.

We were all nOObs at one time and we all learned to walk before we could run. Strive for greatness and be happy with Not Bad.

Good luck eh.

L8r

Hi and welcome to 420

If I read correctly the lights you're using are 12x1w and 5 of those is 60 watts at best and the penetration you get with 1w diodes is quite weak, hence the streching.
Also your pots look like they are quite small and your plants are probably rootbound by now.
Do you let the soil dry out between waterings?

Hey guys. Thanks for the prompt responses. I did suspect it was a factor of the Miracle Grow but wanted confirmation. Honestly this grow started out as a simple pet project of mine. As funny as it may sound, I'm not really too worried about whether I get any smoke-able buds, more so wanted to see if I could actually do it. I enjoy growing sunflowers, Pachira's (money trees) Bamboo, and multiple others, so a lot of my growing is more so out of interest for a new and different kind of plant to grow, plus the other slightly more obvious reasons... Still it'd be nice to actually have my first grow not be a total flop. I probably would have had better results with better materials, but I had Miracle Grow, the pots (which I agree are too small) and everything else laying around. I had one of the lights from years ago but ended up getting a few more since they were cheap and easy. Again, probably would have been better off with better lights.

@PurpleGunRack I suspect you are spot on about the stretching. This was a problem early on until I moved the lights literally on top of the plants (had 4 plants going at one point). Once I moved to Flowering they started growing like mad for a couple weeks, so I had to move the lights up to compensate.

When I killed the males (poor bastards went down the garbage disposal, gruesome death ) I did take a look at the roots, and yea, there was basically more root than soil. It was actually quite astonishing to see. I don't have a lot of room in my grow room, but probably would have been better off with 3 gallon pots.

I was having a bit of a problem with overwatering, as over protective n00bs tend to do, heh, hence the massive fungus gnat infestation you see. I have since (for the past 6 weeks or so) been letting the top dry out thoroughly between waterings, maybe even too much at times, but I have yet to see the plants show signs of underwatering.

I thought about flushing, but have read that's actually a bad idea with MG because of the time release nutes that kick into overdrive when you flush. I will likely just have to go with what @OldMedUser said and let these bad boys (uh girls) go out to harvest, just to see what I get. If I get something smoke-able, cool. If not, live and learn.


I had actually put thought into my next grow, and had come up with the following that is definitely within my budget. Please let me know what you guys think of it:

Also, I guess the ultimate goal here would be to have 1 decent size female at a time. I am a pretty light user, so I think the bud from one decent female should be enough for a grow cycle, and would save me the money of buying it. I plan to plant 3 at a time in the future, just to give me a little better than 50/50 odds at getting a female.

For the soil, I have read amazing things about Fox Farms Ocean Forest.
For the pots, I've read great things about Smart Pots and thinking of going with 3, 3 gallon ones of this.
For the nutes the dyna-gro foilage and dyna-gro bloom that I already have seems to be good.
For PH balance I actually already ordered General Hydroponics GH1514 Ph Control Kit.

The lights I guess I would have to find something better. I do have the 5 of those in a circle around the plants, all aimed to try and make sure the entirety of the plants is getting touched. I also had a couple of those windshield reflectors laying around and circled them around the plants, still leaving room for air to escape with a small fan blowing air towards the reflector exit. Even with the reflectors, as @PurpleGunRack mentioned, they may not be powerful enough to penetrate the leaves.

Heats not really a problem because it's a basement, although some high quality lights may change that. If any thing right now it may be a bit too cold, particularly with the lights off, but I still measured roughly 80 degrees directly under the lights.

Again, appreciate the prompt response fellas. I'll get some pictures of them in natural light, but it'll have to be tomorrow after work. The ladies are getting their beauty rest right now. Man what I would give for 12 hours of sleep each night.

 

[OldMedUser]

Good on ya.

You have the makings of a decent plan. I've never used FF dirt and have heard pros and cons about for a long time. Get some coarse perlite to add for drainage. It's supposed to be pretty hot for seedlings so for that it should be diluted with something more inert like peat moss or a peat based soilless media like ProMix or Sunshine.

Have you considered getting some female seeds? Start a new seed each month and after a few months you can be cropping one plant every month and with places that sell single seeds you could do a different strain each time. As your needs are small by this time next year you could have half a dozen different strains to enjoy to fit your mood or medical needs. Or even femmed autos. One grow space on 24 or 18 hours a day. 24 will grow autos faster and bigger. Same thing with a new plant every month.

For lighting, as you don't have to deal with a heat problem, you might consider going HPS for flowering and use those LEDs with a few CFLs to veg regular plants until they are big enough to flower. A small closet or DIY cabinet would suffice for vegging. You seem to like shopping Amazon so I bet you could find a real good deal on a 400W MH/HPS ballast with a batwing hood and a bulb or 2. Even with a carbon filter and fittings. I say batwing hood because the wings on most are adjustable and could be open enough to cover 3 of those pots or swung in to focus the light in a smaller area. A 600W would be even better.

Heard lots of good stuff about those smart pots. You could easily install 4 dowels in a pot when you fill it so you can attach a 2'x2' screen to ScroG with. Veg a month longer but double your yield. I'm using 4gal regular plastic pots and they work too. If you started a couple of auto fems the same time you started the one to do the Scrog with you would be smoking that while the ScroG was starting flowering.

I've heard of those nutes but have no opinion one way or another. Some kind of bloom booster is a good idea. I use Big Bud by AN, Rhino Skin for silica and a bit of CalMag as I use only RO or distilled water for all my plants. To many problems are rooted in tap water.

My room is in the basement/concrete bunker too and even now the heater is on a lot during the dark period. Wasting electricity better used growing plants. Keeping up the heat and RH is the reverse of what most people have to deal with.

L8r

 

[Goldeneye007]

Good on ya.

You have the makings of a decent plan. I've never used FF dirt and have heard pros and cons about for a long time. Get some coarse perlite to add for drainage. It's supposed to be pretty hot for seedlings so for that it should be diluted with something more inert like peat moss or a peat based soilless media like ProMix or Sunshine.

Have you considered getting some female seeds? Start a new seed each month and after a few months you can be cropping one plant every month and with places that sell single seeds you could do a different strain each time. As your needs are small by this time next year you could have half a dozen different strains to enjoy to fit your mood or medical needs. Or even femmed autos. One grow space on 24 or 18 hours a day. 24 will grow autos faster and bigger. Same thing with a new plant every month.

For lighting, as you don't have to deal with a heat problem, you might consider going HPS for flowering and use those LEDs with a few CFLs to veg regular plants until they are big enough to flower. A small closet or DIY cabinet would suffice for vegging. You seem to like shopping Amazon so I bet you could find a real good deal on a 400W MH/HPS ballast with a batwing hood and a bulb or 2. Even with a carbon filter and fittings. I say batwing hood because the wings on most are adjustable and could be open enough to cover 3 of those pots or swung in to focus the light in a smaller area. A 600W would be even better.

Heard lots of good stuff about those smart pots. You could easily install 4 dowels in a pot when you fill it so you can attach a 2'x2' screen to ScroG with. Veg a month longer but double your yield. I'm using 4gal regular plastic pots and they work too. If you started a couple of auto fems the same time you started the one to do the Scrog with you would be smoking that while the ScroG was starting flowering.

I've heard of those nutes but have no opinion one way or another. Some kind of bloom booster is a good idea. I use Big Bud by AN, Rhino Skin for silica and a bit of CalMag as I use only RO or distilled water for all my plants. To many problems are rooted in tap water.

My room is in the basement/concrete bunker too and even now the heater is on a lot during the dark period. Wasting electricity better used growing plants. Keeping up the heat and RH is the reverse of what most people have to deal with.

L8r

More pics uploaded, this time in natural light. The yellowing doesn't seem as bad when I look at it through natural light, although you can definitely tell something is still going on.

I had considered getting female seeds, but there are no places to do that in person anywhere near me, so they'd have to be ordered. Am a bit paranoid about trying to get those through the post. I've tried researching the laws on it, but there doesn't seem to be much about it. I guess seeds would just be categorized under the same laws as actual bud would be?


I have thought of having multiple plants going at once, but the problem is I really only have the one room as an option in my house for doing it. I know that during the flowering stage, they require total and complete darkness, which would be near impossible if I had vegging plants nearby doing 18 or 24 hours. I do however have a significant closet next to the room that I could use as well. The closet would almost be perfect to hang one of those HPS lights in for flowering. There's just a bunch of junk in the closet that never gets used, and I could easily have a plant sitting in there somewhere, with a fan blowing for some circulation. There's no vent in the closet though so not sure how hot it would get with one of those HPS lights in a roughly 4x2 foot area. Something like this is what you are referring to with the batwings right?

Here's the natural light pictures. Thanks again for the prompt replies.

 

[OldMedUser]

Freakin' fungus gnat's all over eh. Should get rid of them as the larvae are chowing down on your plant's roots. The adults just fly around, mate then lay their eggs in the soil.

I'm not sure of your location in the world but if you order seeds from somewhere get the stealth shipping and have it shipped to a buddy's place or somewhere other than your place with a phoney name. What's known as a Safe Addy. You pay extra for the stealth shipping but not that much unless you order a Tshirt or something.

A small space for vegging plants doesn't have to be light secure or need fancy ventilation for a couple of plants and the lighting I mentioned would be fine for them. Use the best space and light for flowering.

L8r