Had multiple years of excellent results, now nothing will flourish...

H

Hunokeli

420 Member
ive been growing hempy 2liter style for 2 years now and had great success. i am using lucas method with r/o and calimagic. in the past my clones would stretch to 21in and flower nicely and i was easily pulling 10g a pot. within the last few months my crop has come to a miserable hault. nothing will flourish! i tried starting new seeds as i figured my moms were getting old but even the new seedlings are growing extremely slow. bulbs are all new, nutrient dosing hasnt changed, temps and ph in check...

im going to pull my hair out if i cant find out which way to turn next, any advice from anyone here would be greatly appreciated. these forums are the best resource for me as a grower so i came here in hopes that i could learn from the best. :high-five:
thanks, andy
 

OLDER BONSAI MOMS



NEWER BONSAI HEMPYS FROM CLONE AND NEW SEEDLINGS



CLONES




0-3WEEKS



3-6WEEKS



6-9WEEKS

here you can see my perpetual garden. slow growth is garden-wide and has slowly worked its way down the line. barely any stretching in flowering, 4to5 inch plants are looking pretty sad.
 
i can only say that root health isnt the greatest either, theres less formation of roots. i dont use anything besides gh 3 part and calimag. the older moms have really thick stems because they are 1 year old. all the others look like toothpicks compared to what im used to (bic pen diameter+)
 
Yeah I thought they might be mothers, they look like they've been well chopped. Last year I got pythium in my plants. I'm growing in soil. I think it was because of neglect of my mothers. Sometimes I have to go away for work and I would overwater them regularly- to get them through the week. My understanding, from reading up on it, is that pythium becomes endemic in the plants, so if you take a cutting -you have a cutting that has pythium in it already. It's very hard to get rid of by any other means than using 'bennies'.
In hydroponics, pythium is a real killer. In my case my plants didn't die- they just didn't thrive. Overwatering soil creates good conditions for pythium. I don't know much about hempy pots but I think they could get pythium as well, even though overwatering wouldn't be an issue with them. I knew I was overwatering my mothers but didn't think it would matter, for some reason. But eventually it got to the point where I could not clone anything because the stems of my cuttings would just go rotten before they would root. I'd been cloning for years with no problems before this, and never had to pay much attention to having perfect conditions. I did a lot of fine-tuning and got it so my cloning conditions were perfect in every way but they would not clone in the rockwool as they had easily in the past. I built an aero cloner and that's when the situation became very obvious. The cuttings would sit there for week after week and eventually just turn brown and rot no matter what I did. This led me to reading about bennies. I started brewing up various compost tea concoctions and ordered whatever products I could get in my country. Subculture M and B have worked very well for me and now all my plants are looking way healthier and I have no trouble with cloning anymore. Recharge is another one that gets great reviews but I can't get it in my country. There are plenty of other products available now, which save the work of brewing 'tea'. There's some info in this thread, which will give you the general idea and lead you to more reading if you want. Lots of people on this forum using bennies as well. It may fix your problem and certainly can only help your plants' health (a lot). Anyway- hope this helps. Something to think about as a possibility, anyway.

Live or Sterile? Why I choose Live.
 
awesome response, thanks for pointing me in the right direction! this was what i assumed the problem might be. i can now see how these products are important especially in soil-less media like myself. would you advise me to get both subculture m and b? also would hygrozyme be any different?
 
I am not familiar with hygrozyme personally except I seem to recall people having all sorts of problems with it- maybe it's not suitable for hydro and hydro people had problems with when they tried it, if I remember right. I can definitely reccomend the Subculture if you can get it. Yes I would get both M and B. It was Greenthumb J who told me about subculture and he talks about it a bunch in the first few pages of his journal here.GreenThumb J's Perpetual Multi-Strain Journal! Also, somewhere later in his journal like page 17 give or take a few pages I posted some little bit of info I got from the manufacturer about using it. (EDIT- good guess- I checked and it is page 17 where I posted the recommended application according to General Hydroponics, and a couple other things that vary from the way GT uses it). Greenthumb seems to have left the forum now, maybe. I sure hope not. Come back GT!!
People also use Great White which apparently is good though expensive. There are others, I haven't tried any of them. They basically vary in terms of the types and numbers of different bacteria/fungi they contain.
 
the nutrients i was using was premeasured and none of the amounts have changed. i use ph drops for testing ph and my ppm meter still shows the same readings after mixing up the 5g batch of water. my source water hasnt fluctuated at all (ro filtered well water)
 
Might be a grow kit hygiene thing going on ?

I use to clone quite a bit in my early days but got sloppy with my cleaning of pots/trays etc but one set of clones failed to root & all died that being the end of that strain.


Might be a cleaning issue of pots etc or the perlite if not done regular to prevent bacteria/fungus & other bad stuff !
 
just got back from the farmers market. they didnt carry the subculture line so heres what i picked up... some great white, hygrozyme, and hydroguard. new cloning tray and styrofoam to keep as a spare for cleaning and letting air out. also grabbed some 29percent h202 for cleaning materials.

ive went through and cleaned all trays, watering pump, bucket, and the cloner with h202. added the root supplements throughout the garden and i will try to be very clean with everything from now on. going to let this perpetual setup keep running since i am atleast yielding something (4x less)

once i get a mom free of this awful stuff i will crack open the new cloner tray and i might even replace the 2liters to be extra safe

thanks again for the replies everyone.

am i on the right track?
 
Wow, I wish they had such great shopping opportunities where I live! It took me over six weeks to get my subculture through the mail. You sound pretty set up. And I honestly think you'll have much healthier plans through using the bennies, whether or not this solves your problem. Which I'm hopeful it will. Can you update this -if you don't have a journal somewhere ?
 
since everyone was so helpful i will definitely keep the thread updated! if things get better i might have to start a journal up on this awesome forum. i really wish i had pics of the 21in+ colas from last year but i accidentally cleared my memorycard.
 
I see a general set of rules here that applies no matter what you are growing, or where you are growing (indoors or out). This is more from the soil growers' POV rather than hydroponics.

1) Growing medium of any kind looses its nutrients and porosity over time. Even if you add nutes, the natural microbes in soil, for example, begin to die off and more toxic microbes take over. They not only give off toxins, but they also gum up your growing medium with the plant matter they digested or poisoned. Outside growers don't have as much problem with this because weather washes away toxins and insects and regular raking stirs up the soil and keeps it aerated. But they still have to consider crop rotation to let the soil recover.

Once that balance between helpful and bad microbes tips over into the bad side, plants don't flourish and eventually you can't grow anything you'd want to "enjoy".

2) When planting in containers, containers and equipment over time become contaminated with toxic microbes that don't nourish your plants, but instead feed on your plants in a most non-symbiotic way. Gardeners sterilize their pots and change out their medium yearly.

3) Lights lose intensity over time, and so your indoor plants are not getting the correct wavelengths at the correct intensity for your plants. Just because a bulb is guaranteed for 10 years, does not mean it will put out the same amount of life over that time.

3) City or well water can change chemical composition and pH over time.

4) Sometimes trying to get the perfect grow by adding too many chemicals will actually slow or stop growth, or kill the crop. Cannibus plants are not delicate orchids. They are weeds (loco weeds to us old-timers). They can and will grow just about anywhere in amazingly diverse conditions. We fuss with them to increase the qualities we are looking for, but sometimes you just have to let nature dictate the terms of that growth. (Note I said SOMETIMES, so no flaming, please. ;-) )

This is just my POV as a casual shrub and flower gardener, who is growing her own meds.
 
I think Fuzzy is probably on the right track as well when it comes to the hygiene issue. I am certainly guilty of that due to lack of time at the grow. But, getting the pythium is one thing -getting rid of it seems pretty hard to do no matter how sterile you try to be afterwards
 

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