Well I'm currently having the first major meltdown along the road so far! Woke up this morning to find the electricity off! whole street is down, which is annoying enough for people in general, but for a first time grower with babies under 24/7 lighting it's a nightmare! I think it's been off maybe an hour or so, meaning they spent that amount of time in the dark.....temps and humidity was still reasonable, but naturally I'm still going to panic lol.....will an hour or so in the dark at this early stage affect them?, I know people either opt for 24/7 or 18/6 lights to begin with anyway, but as I have been going with 24/7 so far is it likely to have a neglect impact?. For now I have placed them on the windowsill to try and retain some light for them.....not the best day for that though....but not sure what else to do....praying you guys tell me I'm just being an overprotective parent!.
Hey guys.....not going great! Attached a pic of the babies which I'm hoping some of you more knowledge peeps will be able to use to give me some advice as to how to turn things around before it's too late......(hoping it's not too late) First things first, made the obvious rookie error of having the plants too far from the light, resulting in major stretching. To be fair I had them closer at the beginning, but was having constant shit with temps seeing as the cooltubes I purchased simply don't work at all.....My line of thinking right now is that I need to tie them to sticks to support the stems, and hopefully that, combined with being nearer to the light (about 40-50cm away) and the fan blowing near them will maybe help get them back on track?....Any other words of wisdom would be hugely appreciated! Also until my new ph meter arrives I have no way of knowing the current ph strength, or what they have been receiving so far.....again, blaming cheap Chinese junk products for causing most of the problems so far.....well, it's better than admitting I might just completely suck as a grower huh! Praying you guys tell me it's not too late to pull things around! Peace - Breezey
That strech will be fine mate this is what mine looked like when i had lights too far away and the other way like a week into flower so they will thicken up Sent from my GT-I9505 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Cheers mate!, heart rate is already starting to slow down lol! gonna get on with tying them up now to get that extra support in place......just been reading about using Mcdonalds straws to fix stretching, seems like a sweet method actually, just wish there was one a lot closer to my house lol.
Just when you pot up into that coco, bury a good part of the stem, I left 2 inchs inbetween my soil and the two starter leaves. Also, what currency are you using? Lol, is a quid like 100 lbs? I'm American so I'm in $$ http://forum.grasscity.com/index.php?/topic/1305920-Kushgodrex%27s-First-Grow
use anything thats sturdy enough haha and how you finding coco? Sent from my GT-I9505 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Cheers bud, that's the plan, hoping to get them potted in the next couple of days now that the stems are that far stretched....actually I would prefer to do it now but they look too fragile for a beginner like myself to try handling just yet....might need a little liquid courage before I do it anyway....though not too much of course, that probably wouldn't help lol. And yeah, a quid is a pound mate, works out about 1.6 dollars right now I think. Went for lollipop sticks mate lol, done 3 so far, might just leave the others for a day or two and see how they go now they are closer to the light, 2 of them seem to have stretched quite a bit more than the rest though, wondering if they turn out to be the Ice Breakers now maybe..... Haven't used the coco as yet bro, got them in root it sponges still at the moment.....thing is I ordered that then found they do coco expanding sponges too lol, probably would have been better really.....guess that leads to another question too, reckon it's okay to use these sponges in with the coco when I re-pot them?......don't really have a choice either way now though I suppose lol
Yeah they will be fine and roots will outgrow them within a couple of days anyway this is my first grow with coco and already found that its a lot better than soil! Sent from my GT-I9505 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
And as for not stressing i decided that this time i would germ them in a paper towel and put them straight into final pots because of the scrog moving the pots about once youve set screen high is impossible haha Sent from my GT-I9505 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
When you transplant, keep the root sponge fairly wet. Then very carefully place that into your coco (dry or very lightly moistened for the first day). Over the next day or so, the water from the root sponge with spread into the coco and dry giving the roots a great chance to stretch into their new homes. Once the things have had their chance to take root, start reading up on watering coco. You can literally water the shit 5 times a day or more and get results close to hydro speed. That's not to say they will eat everything you feed them every time, so you will need to do a proper flush once when transitioning to flower and again before harvest like always.
Starting to wish I had done that now actually....the propagation kit I got is proving to be difficult to get anything dialed in....one minute the temps and humidity are stable, check an hour later and humidity is at 99%?. Thought maybe it was just another Chinese junk product giving me wrong info, but I bought another thermometer and that shows the same.....think next time around I will go straight for pots, saves transplanting them, and it's gotta be easier to keep them at a stable temp than having to keep taking the lid of the propagator, putting it back on, moving further away or closer to the light etc etc. Cheers mate, yeah one of the reasons I opted for a coco grow was because I read it is almost impossible to over water them....figure for a newbie grower it's best to have that margin for error.....because if a mistake can be made, it's 99.9% guaranteed I will make it lol. Can't wait to get this first grow under my belt, sure I will feel a lot more confident 2nd time around, once I have learned from all the screw ups I'm no doubt gonna make in the next few months! Quick nutes question if I may guys.....do you think it's best to use nutes in every watering?, or maybe say 2 outta 3?....I suppose it's easy to enough to spot the signs of nute burn, and then alter accordingly, and going off the Ionic feeding schedule they say add them every feed....but then again it makes they would want you to use their products a lot quicker huh lol.
I use half strength what it says on bottle but feed everyday until flower and now i feed feed water on full strength Sent from my GT-I9505 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
They might not suck up all the food every time but yes... Feed every time. You could at some point do a watering with silica and calmag or something extra to spice it up. But yeah feed every time. More air to the roots= not only sexually frustrated bitches but ravenous hungry ones too lol.
Ionic was a good choice btw. Most threads mention you won't have issues with cal/mag def. Lots of people saying its great for undercurrent, DWC, ebb and flow... Cheap too.
Cheers fellas, always nice to be able to ask those with experience their advice along the way! Yeah the Ionic range was recommended to me (cheers Gold Grower). I ordered the hydro package initially lol, but thankfully they got my email just as the van was being loaded, so swapped it for the coco greenfuse pack....an extra 7 quid (31 in total, so about $45) which is a lot cheaper than most of the other nutes I was checking out before, so if the results turn out as good for me as I have been hearing for others, I will most likely be sticking to Ionic for every future grow too. I did the same early this morning Darone, noticed the sponges drying out a little so fed them at half strength......now I just have to work on getting the temps and rh dialed in so that I don't need to keep checking on them every 10 minutes.....sure that won't be helping their stress levels any. One more thing guys....and this is probably straight out of the dumbest ever questions handbook......how vital is it for me to be extracting air right now?. Thing is I don't worry about police helicopters or any of that stuff, but I do have a neighbour that would just love to cause me shit...and until I get the acoustic ducting, which will hopefully solve the noisy fan issue, leaving it running 24/7 simply isn't an option. Right now, on or off, it makes little difference to my temps/rh, I have a window open in the room for fresh air coming in, 2 bottom flaps taped open on the tent, and a little clip on fan blowing air near to the babies.....can I get away with this for maybe another week or so perhaps, seeing as smell isn't an issue as yet?. Thanks in advance guys, just chuckling to myself that a week ago today I was fairly confident I knew everything I needed to take into account to grow successfully......to any new growers reading this in the future.....a few weeks reading through other peoples grow journals is most certainly helpful, but it doesn't make you the next Alan Titchmarsh....trust me!
You never know til you try it. Doesn't mean you should get smashed and let a fat granny tickle your balls but you have to grow something to be able to understand all that reading we do.
Lmao! been smashed plenty over the years mate, but never that smashed I have allowed a fat granny to tickle my balls!....although now I think about it I don't remember any asking.....so either I guess I was wayyyy smashed or they just aren't too interested.....oh well, works for me! Having another nightmare at present however.....I decided to re-pot the babies into 5 litres last night, probably a little early in hindsight, but I got pissed with the temps and humidity fluctuating in the propagator. I then decided to switch from 24/7 to 20/4, and turned the lights off at 11pm.....I asked the wife to turn them back on at 3am if I happened to fall asleep. I didn't, and switched them off at 3am, went to bed, then woke up at 9am to the wife telling me she turned them back off at 5.45am!?!?. Still not sure why she did this, best guess is she pays little attention to me lol, but now I'm worried that this extra 3 hours of dark is going to have a major impact on the plants......poor lil guys are going to start thinking they are being raised in a f*cking nightclub!
Ive just had to cut 2 of my plants down due to them turning hermi because of the temps so id try and get a steady medium to avoid stressing them Sent from my GT-I9505 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Damn bro, that sucks I know one of mine isn't going to make it, 1st leaves didn't form properly, still re-potted it though, waiting for a miracle of some sorts haha But yeah, the temps were getting beyond a joke in the propagator....one minute I thought they were dialed in, come back an hour later and it's 5 degrees higher with 99% humidity.....now that they are potted the humidity is a little low maybe, around 45-50%, but that's got to be better for them than 99 huh! lol Temps seem stable enough at the minute, around 26-27, main worry now is that the extra 3 hour dark period might have screwed me up.....good thing about transplanting them early at least was that I could add a bit of extra support to the stems.....although they don't seem to have grown much in the last 2 days......or maybe I'm just not noticing the growth seeing as I'm checking on them every 20 minutes....I need to stop doing that probably lol.....just gave them some pure water, not ph tested because I'm still waiting for the replacement to my junk Chinese shit, so at the moment I'm just having to wing it all the way and keep praying lol! How many do you have left now mate?, have you got a journal going?.