Some tips to help you get off on the right foot if you are waiting for seeds, thinking of growing, or wanting to grow. People are not going to agree with all of them, but i'm sure they'll see why I'm saying what I am. These are tips I wasn't able to find anywhere so here it is (edit: these are only my opinions and observations. If you add 300 ppm to seedlings like GH recommends, then go ahead and see what happens TIP: Don't grow with soil. Start with a bubble bucket or ebb flow which is easy to build. REASON: Soil will introduce bugs and it will not be a fun experience growing with all kinds of bugs all over your plants. The bubble bucket is the easiest to build, just follow the directions and the recommended air pump size and you'll have no problems. With soil your still going to have to check PH and EC anyhow. TIP: Start with North Lights #5 seeds or NL REASON: These plants are short, low odour, very forgiving, easy to grow, and powerful in high. 'Zandor' on the Grow Report webcast said that he still can't get over how good NL#5 still is an all around plant. It's just not the 'in' thing right now as it was back in the last 90's when every home grower was growing it. TIP: Stay away from Hanna products - get BlueLabs Truncheon. REASON: I have one Hanna PH/EC monitor that is being returned under warranty due to swinging readings and another PH pen that I returned to the store becuase it had to be calibrated on each use. I mean, when you shook the tap water off it, it would loose calibration. The guy at the hydroponic store said that a few years ago the quality really went downhill due to manufacturing or whatever and they don't build any of the gardener related products to 'pro' standards anymore. Remember, Hanna et all are lab equipment/monitor device companies - not hydro companies so they don't care about making us quality products. An Incorrect or faulty PH reading WILL BURN YOUR CROP, even if it's off by .2. DON'T LEARN THIS THE HARD WAY LIKE I DID only to find that I have a faulty PH meter only to be replaced by ANOTHER poor quality meter that lost calibration litterly after 30 seconds. TIP: Do NOT feed a seedling nutrients until 2 weeks have passed. REASON: Basically, from the time the seedling sprouts out of it's rockwool cube, wait two weeks before you give it any nutes what-so-ever. I have fallen poor advice saying to feed with nutes when 'the frist saw leaves appear'. Do not follow this advice. Just trust me do not feed them nutes at this stage like I did. Only feed ph adjusted water at 5.5-5.8 TIP: Do NOT listen to the feeding recommendation on the label of your nute bottle. REASON: This one guy on another forum recently posted pic's of a ruined crop in flowering. This happened becuase the nute company used a 700 conversion factor to recommend PPM. The Hanna EC meter he had was 500 built in, and thus, he ruined his crop. My nute solution says to use 300 ppm for seedlings. I can assure you that this is over kill for little seedlings. Let's just say that I have 200ppm right now and my plants are doing fine at 1 month old. I almost ruined my own crop due to the labels. Only stick wtih known, tried, and true feeding schedules posted and recommended by users on the form. Ie: Lucas Formula. TIP: Do NOT use General Hydroponics FloraNova series nutrient solution REASON: It sounds tempting at the hydro store to get this formula because of it's simplicity. I made this mistake and let me go over the bad points of this solution. -It needs 5 min of violent shaking before use. This is very inconvenient. -There is not one agree'd upon feeding schedule on the internet. -Too few people use it so it's hard to get forum support for this product. -The feeding recommendations on the label are incorrect and WILL ruin your plants. -This nutrient is overly 'strong'. No one really knows why. -This nutrient will colour roots dark which might scare you into thinking you have rot. -This nutrient has some organics so adding H202 may kill some trace elements. -A film or sludge will collect at the bottom of your res. A bubbler has less of this. -It is rummored that the sludge may contain some of the N, P or K which is what may cause an imbalance of nutes. -Some people say that it's impossible to get in control of the PH when FloraNova is being used. For all these reasons, I would just go to basic GH Lucas Formula and start with that because honestly if you buy FloraNova you're on your own. TIP: Burned leaves 90% of the time are incorrect PH levels. REASON: If you look at any post of someones sick plants with burned leaves, there will be tons of people saying different things. The natural thing to do is to add 'more' of something like epsom salts and flush. Do NOT do this. If you get burned leaves, test the PH of your res and make sure it's coming in at 5.5 to 5.8. If it is, test your tap water and see how that is reading. Then calibrate your meter and make sure it's reading correctly. We need to see if the meter is faulty or reading incorrectly. The meter being off by .1 or 2 WILL burn your plants. Yes the spots on your plants is a lack of mag. and such, but that's becuase the plant is locking those minerals out due to incorrect PH. Adding epsom salts or more minerals will make your PPM and PH become a nightmare to work with and further agrivate the problem. Just do this: Get a proper PH meter (non Hanna meter), clean out your res, re-fill with tap water (no time to let it sit), and then re-add nute solution, wait 10 min, then add PH down and wait 3-4 days for your plants to get out of shock. In hydro, water at 6.1 PH WILL burn your plants trust me. .3 off on your meter WILL burn your plants. Recommended feeding info on your nute formula labels WILL burn your plants. I can't stress this enough. If you over nute, look for dark green wrinked leaves that are somewhat sagging. But this shouldn't be a problem if your following a trusted and known feeding schedule. TIP: Do not listen to the person at the hydroponics store. REASON: Many of them don't know what they're talking about and will give you fualty advice... I spoke to many around town and found litteraly only 1 person who knows what he's talking about. They usually sell stuff to non technical people who don't use computers and don't post in forums and think that plant burning and bugs are normal. People will bring in picutres asking what's wrong with thier plants and the hydro dude will try to sell them on a proudct to fix it like SuperThrive and Epsom salts. They will always claim up and down that ALL the nute solutions are good and they've never had any probelms with this or that. Listen to the people on the forums with experience and the generally accepted way things should be done (ie: GH and Lucas formula).
Not so sure about all of your tips man. They are almost all based on your opinion, instead of facts. Might want to make that clear in your thread so you don't scare the shit out of an ambitious young grower.......just my thoughts.
sorry but im going to have to call bullshit on this i grow with soil have no bugs i have no ph probs nut burn or any thing . your telling people to mess with more than just soil when every day on this site you see a thread about some one wanting help with a simple light ? that you can google and get the anser to.sure ive asked a few dumb ?s but befor i ever posted hear i had a plant half grown just buy reading the net and books and never asked ?s lastly put this is all based on your opinion at the top in big red letters so every new poster sees that
Bull, I use flora nova it works fine. Yes it is organic based, and the buds I get taste great because of it, #1 shot down. I feed my plants out of the box(from seedling) so to speak and it was in a bubble bucket #2 shot down. Meters and stuff by hanna, while Better is best the hanna is a servicable, less expensive way to go so if its hanna or nothing get the hanna #2 shot down. PH does not cause burn it causes lockout, meaning nutes are present but not available to the plant, burning usually occurs when nutes are added to correct a deficiency before the ph is tested. Then when the ph is adjusted wala note lockout resolved and now you get burn #4 shot down. I like hydro because of the control factor, but bugs are not that big an issue for soil as long as its new and not dug-up. And there is not more natural easy way of growing. Seeds - for newbies, I'd start off with bagseed, Its a bitch to pay for seeds and then lose your plants from inexperience. But if your going to buy seeds pick one that is suited for your environment.
I grow in soil, and I don't even own an EC Meter or a pH meter. Oh boy, I am fucked! And I'd better go build a bubble bucket, I bet it's a lot easier than throwing some dirt in a pot. And now I know, it's "invisible bugs" that I've got. Man! I bet they are gonna be a pain in the ass to get rid of! Also, I made the dreaded error of actually watching my plants instead of the calendar for when to begin feeding. Note to self: ignore the cotyledon leaves, watch the calendar instead, 2 weeks. Okay, I'm being sarcastic, and that's not entirely clever, especially on a forum. But neither is throwing together a "beginner's guide" based on your dubious opinions. It's just asking for trouble. I do agree with some of the things you say, and if you have some patience, you'll get a chance to share your tips and wisdoms with willing newbies from all over the world, maybe even be of some help. But at least for now, I'd wait until someone asks for it. -mu
That's because your nutes most likely bring down your water PH to a level that is friendly wth your soil and soil is very forgiving. I said that if you use hydro, then PH is a major issue. And I personally believe hydro to be superior to dirt which is just a personal opinion. Yes I believe it is considering your don't even have to water your plants with a bucket. Why use dirt and water when you can use a bucket and not need to water the plants like this. http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=13327 Are you suggesting that using dirt does NOT increase the chances of bugs? I think almost everyone here agrees that using dirt will increase the chances of bugs. I agree you can wait till they go amber, wait till fomation of 5th node etc. The point is not to feed nutes when they are new born seedlings. Do you disagree with that? So you are saying to use 6.1 in a hydro setup, you are suggesting giving your plants 300ppm of nutes in seedling, you are suggesting getting just any old PH meter, you are suggesting that growing in soil will give less bugs than hydro? I can't see how anyone would really disagree with these statements. Yes the hanna part is my opinion, so is the soil vs. hydro, but I feel that almost everything I said will keep the new grower out of trouble. And honestly with respect to all that replied and (-reps for me i'm sure just beucase I disagree with people), I really recommend any new grower reading the origional post and reading this here still listen to my opinion in the origional article if you want to get off on the right foot. -If you want Hanna, go ahead and good luck with their products. -If you want to grow questionable Mexican Sativa bagseed for your first grow rather than NL#5, then double good luck to you on that one! lol.. sorry had to laugh at that. -If you add nutes before 2 weeks, good luck. -If you choose FloraNova for hydro, double good luck to ya. -If your leaves are burning and you think it's a lack of a mineral or NPK and your nutes must be the problem and not your PH, then go ahead and play that game. -If you want to use a feeding schedule 'off feeling' or 'off the hip' instead of following tried and true proven feeding schedules, then be my guest. -If you want to grow in dirt and think you won't have to buy a PH meter or EC meter then triple good luck to ya!! -If you think soil won't bring you any more bugs than hydro, then go ahead and use soil. I'm respectfully disagreeing with everyone's responses becuase I was a victim of very bad information and had to lean things the hard way. This post was an attempt to straighten things out, but goodness forbid you don't do something someone elses way. I'm not asking you to do things my way, that's fine if you don't want to, I'm just trying to save that lurking person a lot of time and heartache if I can. Again, you don't have to follow my easy adivce, go ahead and break those rules and grow your sativa's indoor and feed your seedlings nutes and grow without a PH and EC meter and see what happens.
Yeah man, especially the part about about 6.1 frying your plants in hydro. For sure man. Let's just bring that up to 7.0 and those plants will really thrive. (lol... man I learned the hard way because I listened to the people like this guy.. i remember in the hydro store I was like 'well i'm trying to get around 5.8-6.2 ph and he's like 'trust me 6.1 will fry the hell out of your plants'.. that staying kinda stuck with me.)
Hey man that's great! Phew, there's some of us that would really like a feeding schedule because of the problems we're having with this nute. Please provide me with a proper feeding schedule for hydro. After all, you do use it. I'm waiting.
i hate to say it but your giveing all this greate advise and 90% of your posts are about your sick plants you cant even get under controle. im normaly one that just looks and keeps on moveing but i cant this time im not trying to be a asshole rude or any thing like that but save your advise for after you get a grow going in bubble buckets or hydro with out sick plants or even a full grow with big buds to prove your new findings to be true. hydro store people will normaly tell you any thing you will belive and buy to make money if they know they can. kinda like any other store if they see they can do it kinda like a used car sales man if they are good most belive what they say then drive off to find a week later thare puting more money into the car than what they paid. my advice to most is look back threw some ones posts and see if the advise thare giveing is worth two cents or not . have a good one hope your sick plants make it
[QUOTE]i hate to say it but your giveing all this greate advise and 90% of your posts are about your sick plants you cant even get under controle.[/QUOTE] And my plants were sick because I followed people's advice on the forums and the label on the FloraNova bottle sayin to put 300ppm on seedlings. I WISH i had my own post to read so I could save myself some trouble. I'm giving advice/opinions that I am qualified to give at this point in my grow. Im not talking about curing or finishing am I? Out of anything any newbie reads, I feel that this post is almost a 'must' and the most meaningful thing he or she will read if they want to get started. The books and faq's don't cut it. Saying 'you can give nutes as soon as you see the first sawtooth leaves' in a hydro setup will fry your plants. It's that simple. I'm not knocking how you grow, but you are growing in soil which is extremely forgiving and requires higher PH than hydro. Hydro is a whole other animal. Also, you can't disagree with most of what I said. You can't as a grown adult say that on average growing with soil will not introduce more bugs into your grow than hydro or that mexican sativa's are good for first time growers. Just because *you* didn't get bugs, it doesn't mean that there aren't hords of people daily posting about bugs and fungas gnats. Soil actually comes with bugs a lot of the time right out of the bags. The spores are there already. You should know this and help the new growers understand the truth of things. I personally don't use a bubble bucket, but I would recommend it over a bucket full of soil mainly because of bugs and the fact that you don't even have to water your plants. Is there anything so crazy about that? They have made it since I got a third PH meter and am using 1/3rd strengh FloraNova via trial and error. I know my mistakes. And honestly, I don't take even half of the responsibility for some off these mistakes because most were based off bad advice plain and simple. The books don't touch these small things I pointed out in the origional post. I was coming in as a newbie. I didn't know anything and I didn't realize asking the hydro store person didn't know what they were talking about when they said "all the nutes are the same".They are certainly not and their labels can burn your plants. But no one here on the net wants to talk about that very important fact. Now I see why, becuase you get crucified if you dare try to break the norm and give good advice. I will still stick with all my opinions and yes I do believe that there is a far more of a likelyhood of bugs when you have soil than if you have a bubble bucket. You should be the bigger person here an swallow your pride and agree with that DESPITE the fact that it may not happen to you.
i hope your grow does go well . as fare as watering i have it down to once a week. my ? to you is how often do you have to drain your reservoir and wash it down id realy like to know and what other things you do and how often you check your reservoir to see how full it is. im just trying to see how much less work you have over my soil i whip up a batch of nutes for every other watering and dump in and wait a nother 2 weeks to do it agin. if its less work i might go all hydro next time get rid of them big pots that way i can do more than 6 plants at a time
Man this thread pisses me off. Nothing worse than a moron who thinks he knows everything but doesn't know how to use the edit button trying to tell people how to do things. uhg.
Well basically here is the truth on the matter. If you are using a bubbler system (dwc), then it's just basically an aqaurium air pump with an air stone in a pot or a storage container from wal-mart with netted pots. You can put 4 plants in one container etc. In the container, you'd have nutrient solution. There is a guy on www.icmag.com forum (the new overgrow for those that don't know and home of tons of Sour Deisel growers/breeders) who claims he does NOT change his resevoir through the whole cycle from start to finish. He just adjusts the PH every couple of days and adds more water/nutes as needed each week. The recommendation is to do a full res change every week. But basically, you will have to do adjust the PH down each two days. Go for 5.5 if you can and let it creep up to 5.8 after a couple of days. Then, lower it back down to 5.5. It is extremely important you have an accurate PH meter for this. I'm an ebb flow person so I let the pump flood my table each 4 hours and it seem to be enough. The plus with this is I can test my nute solution easily becuae the res floods up to my upper tray and I can move all my pots around the tray so they aren't in a locked in position. Building this setup is a bit difficult though compared to a bubbler. Basically, you'll have a bucket, fill it with water, and air stone, put in some GH nutes and hopefully follow the lucas formula. The PH will drop from the nutes. Then you will add some PH down. You will test with a meter until it reads 5.5, then you will only need to adjust the ph each couple of days with a few drops of PH down and add a bit of water/nute solution each week and that's it. The plants will grow like nuts and you can eliminate all the potential of soil related bugs and gnats. If you go out of bounds on the PH (5.2-6.1) your plants will get burned so it's important to have an accurate meter. I personally do NOT recommend Hanna and am finding my Oaktron works OK. Man.. those guyes love Deisel... NYC Deisel, Sour Deisel, Blue Deisel, you name it. They have tons of sour deisel cuts. http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=39895 Those guys on that forum actually breed and sell seeds independantly. They mail buds to each other to test and smoke. They also mail clones. Those are elite strains that are supposedly better than anything you can order from a seedbank. Look at those dried/cured bud shots. I haven't seen anything like it. They also like OG Kush. Look at this guys $5000 cut. http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=39358 "a few times i was so ripped I couldnt function at all , all i could do is sit or lay down and just feel real good i could feel the effects all over my Body and it felt so damn good..!! The potency is off the charts... This herb really rocks you...For those of you that think the OG Kush is Just HYPE.....You are very Wrong...This herb is definately in my top 5 strains that I have ever grown or smoked in My Lifetime...."
That's because your nutes most likely bring down your water PH to a level that is friendly wth your soil [/quote] No. I don't use "nutes". More ignorant assumptions on your part. Yes. So why recommend hydroponics to newbies? And how can you believe that hydro is superior to soil when it looks like you've successfully grown in neither. I'm suggesting that growing media is not the most imortant factor. My soil is FULL of bugs, and many of them I put there intentionally, they are good bugs, and don't hurt my plants. A local hydro grower I know is always fighting something or other, whereas my bottle of Neem remains completely full. So it's the soil, is it? I'm suggesting that a clean environment, attentive TLC, and healthy plants are your best defense. That, and a bottle of Neem, just in case. Amber? 5th node? Huh? Everyone who's actually studied the subject knows that you don't feed seedlings. Those that read more, or ask around, will know to wait until the cotyledon leaves shrivel, that is; they will learn to watch their plants for the signals. For some strains and setups, two weeks is too soon. For others, maybe too late. Plants don't care about your calender. No dude! YOU are the one making so many suggestions. I know pH is very important in hydro, but I generally don't give advice on hydro growing, because I'm not qualified. What I am suggesting is that people check and double-check every "fact" before they apply it to their plants. I'm suggesting that no one is a "victim of bad advice" if they have enough intelligence to study, or post a question in a forum like this one. I'm suggesting that you are not the best person to pen a "beginner's guide", and I'm suggesting that you are too arrogant to see that. I'm not going to bother with the rest, my bag-seed Sativas need a water; something I enjoy doing. -mu
hydro is NOT easyer than soil, especially for a beginner. no doubt the end result is better but hydro for a beginner is like an f-14 tomcat for a novice pilot. i've grown in soil several times without bugs/fungi or any major problems. you really need to complete a grow (a successful grow) start to finish before giving advice. like someone else said this is all based on your opinions, not fact. after reading your posts, almost ALL of them are about a sick plant that you can't fix-not the kind of person you want advice from. you did put the effort in to make that thread so you have the ambition, you just need more experience to base factual info on.
yeah Listen to I standAlone youre a newb like us get a few grows under your belt then start giving advice, just dont start force feeding your opinions down peoples throats cause its not gonna work. P.S when you gonna germ those sour seeds post a grow log would love to check it out
#1 throw a mexi seed in your niegbors yard next to your fence and water it--watch it grow and die(turn male -whatever) think to yourself wow I grew a pot plant-now go buy a bag of decent weed and compare the two and you will see that growing is not as easy as it looks and the more factors you put into ANY equation will become more and more complex. TRUST me 1.5 years of growing now and still crawlin like a baby-BUT I don't trust what anyone says cause veryone does something different-find what works good for you and THAN order good seeds and continue. I have learned more in the last year than in ten years of reading books and magazines growing.