nothing235
New Member
Hello!
I've been doing my first grow since May. I was given the seeds from someone who knew nothing about cannabis and called them 'white spider', so I assume he meant white widow. Out of 15 seedlings that survived seeds 12 have showed clear female pre-flowers with two pistils each (nothing yet on the last three) so I assume they are feminized. The seedlings were split up and so I have 6 plants.
I need to keep them not visible to stay legal here in CA so I topped them at about 2.5 feet about a month ago and have been training them to stay below this level since then.
They are in 16" clay pots. I estimate about 1+ cubic food worth of soil. The soil consists of about 75% organic potting soil mixed with about 20% 'organic garden soil amendment' (probably mostly compost), and 5% compost.
I've been trying to stay organic so I've been feeding them with a mixture of Jobe's organic 4/4/4, lots of blood meal, some bat guano, a little bit of bone meal, tiny bit of kelp/kelp meal and lots of Azomite for minerals.
I have them on a drip system and water every other day after dark with about 3/4 liter of tap water each which is just enough to get a little runoff out the bottom of their container. If it is super hot and they start drooping I switch to every day for a few days. When I'm adding fertilizer I use the hose to try and help the fertilizer into the soil and stop the drip for a day as well.
A friend took 6 of the seedlings. His look much healthier than mine. His have almost 0 yellowing leaves, and the leaves are much bigger in size than mine. (I am told the size thing may be due to topping.)
The differences in treatment are:
Mine get about 3/4 of the day full sun; his probably get half the day full sun.
Mine were topped; his are about 5' tall now no topping.
He used miracle grow soil and has been adding miracle grow chemical fertilizer (not sure the type).
He has been watering by hand I think almost every day.
He is using smaller plastic containers, maybe 3 gallon.
From the pics you can kind of see mine appear to be showing signs of nitrogen deficiency. This plant is about average out of the 6, some are worse some slightly better. The second pic shows how many leaves have fallen off. I believe I am giving them plenty of blood meal so I'm not sure why this is occurring.
I checked the soil pH by sticking in some litmus paper when it was moist and testing the runoff and it appears to be between 6.5 and 7. I added a tiny bit of soil acidifier but it did not seem to make much difference.
I flushed them with about 12 gallons of water each a couple days ago thinking maybe i over-fertilized (is this easy to do with organics?) and am still waiting to see if it makes a difference.
Any other suggestions to try for this time? Am I correct in seeing nitro deficiency? The newer growth looks perfect, the old leaves are yellowing and dying and it appears to be *very* slowly moving up the plant...
I am seriously considering ditching the organic food and switching to a liquid nutrient mix as I am more than half way through the veg season here and they do not seem to be doing very well.
Any help or advice would be appreciated.
Also any guesses as to yield?
Thanks!
