So I'm really frikken frustrated right now. I purchased the FF trio off amazon for $50, thinking it would be a marked improvement over dyna-gro but so far its been a nightmare. First, I fed 2 of my plants the FF trio according to their schedule. Almost immediately, they eagle clawed and I had to flush them. One of them recovered fairly well, while the other is still showing signs of the defect. So I reduced the nutes to 1/2 strength and fed them to 2 other plants. Now one plant has responded amazingly and has bushed up like a beast. But the other one is now showing signs of eagle clawing. I know this has to be due to the nutes since temp and PH are same as before (~6.5). The leaves have turned darker as well...N excess I ALSO added molasses to my nute mix. Could this have caused this? Any advice? I'm clawing my hair out because I fucked up two of my nicest plants Isn't FF supposed to be a legit brand?.... Here's my nute mix: FF trio 1/2 strength Molasses What type of medium; soil or hydro? - Soil What brand and type of soil? - Fox Farm 420 Mix Indoors or outdoors? - Indoor Closet Grow What strain? - Affected strains: blue dreamsx2, ak47 How old are the plants? - 3 mo..in early stages of flowing What type of lights and how many watts? - 1200W LED How far from the lights? - about 1.5 ft. What is your watering frequency and source of water? - Every other day, PH balanced tap water What, how much and when was it fed? NPK? - Fox Farm Trio..first at full strengh then 1/2..neither worked What are the temps and humidity in the room? - ~73 avg and ~35% What size pots? - 2 gal. Any bugs? Look real close. - NOPE!
you will come to find that every plant is in some ways an individual and so their requirements can be a little different from plant to plant. i would say go lighter on the plant that is still showing signs of too high nitrogen, i.e. clawing.
Personally I flush them and don't feed again until I see them recover. Usually you want to monitor the runoff to see how much salt buildup you have in the soil. And remember, each nutrient company derives their elements from different sources, and so one nutrient company maybe hotter than the next even though they have the same npk ratio listed. It's about what the element was derived from and the extraction process used. So again, I'd flush them with 3 times the container size, then let the soil dry out enough so they just start to droop, and feed them again. Usually the heavy flush and letting them recover does the trick.
Maybe the two plants have different tolerances for the nutes, or maybe when you watered and flushed them you ended up with them being uneven thought you thought you treated them the same. Whatever the reason, you will have to accept that you wont be able to just treat all your plants exactly the same, and you'll have to make adjustments based upon what you see in front of you. They are each their own plant. So if one if growing like a demon carry on with a sensible schedule with that one (maybe not quite full strength given the response of the other one), and just flush the one that's got the claw. When it recovers take it easy, you'd rather have a fairly happy plant that's not maxed out rather than go through another cycle of claw-and-flush. On nutes, FF is a "legit brand" but that doesn't mean that it is a magic potion that works every time. Loads of people have problems with it (and loads of people have great success with miracle-gro). It's chemicals that plants need to have access to in order to be able to grow optimally, not special grow-well potions
I was just very surprised..these plants are mature and fairly large for indoor beauties. I've done a bit of research and many people seem to be able to boost their FF nutes to the full feeding schedule after the plants reach a certain maturity. Again, I was using 1/2 the recommended feeding so I figured that even my more sensitive plants would be able to intake the nutrients without any problems. I've flushed the plant (pics below) hopefully it perks up. Is it possible that the plants got this nitogen toxicity because I switched the nutes early in the flowering stage? I honestly did not flush when I switched them so could the old dyna-gro remnants be interacting negatively with the new FF nutes? This baby was one so beautiful
Also, when it is time to feed them again..I'm assuming I should probably start at 1/4 the nute strength???
I looked at the dyna-grow range the other day because someone else on here mentioned using it, and to be honest it does look pretty heavy on the nitrogen, a bit lacking in potassium for the flowering stage, and overall a bit too high ratio of the N vs PK for flowering. Having said that, look at the FF grow big 6-4-4 and tiger bloom 2-8-4, there's plenty of nitrogen in these especially if you're mixing them. SO yeah I think you might be right, the dynagro built up the N and the FF feed sent it over the edge again. Maybe think about laying off the FF grow and just using the bloom nutes as supplement, including the big bloom or even just he big bloom. Fear not though. They are hardy buggers, apart from the claw these look really healthy,
Thanks for the response Howando...it definitely brought me some hope! At this point, do you think it would be viable to use the tiger bloom as well, to help get the plants some additional micronutrients, or would you just play it safe and stick to the big bloom?
I think that you have obviously given your plants plenty of nutrients lately, and the problems you are having are entirely due to have too much, nothing even close to having not enough. Plant "food" is not actually food, it's more like vitamins. If it has enough and in the right sort of proportion, they will grow optimally. If they are lacking a vitamin they will get scurvy or bad skin and weak nails, and sometimes if you overdose on certain vitamins they will severely damage your liver. Sorry I've mixed people and plants up in one metaphor there, but anyway that's the truth of it. My point is that feeding them more food wont make them grow fat and dank, that only happens if you give them PLENTY of light and ENOUGH nutrients. It's perfectly possible that the pots contain enough nutrients to sustain the plant until it dies/ For the sick plant, lay off any food until it looks much much happier. When you start to feed it again, if you do, remember that you really easily overdosed this one with nitrogen and reduce the amount of the bottles you use which contain high proportion of nitrogen. Without actually putting it in to a spreadsheet and working it all out, your guess is as good as mine as to how much of each bottle you use. One plant loves it the other can't take the heat *throws hands in the air*. Just looking at the big bloom, NPK .01:.3:.7, that's the right sort of ratio for a bloom nute with really low N and twice K to P. The schedule says to mainly use that one, and you can probably carry on using that at full strength on it's own. Actually now I look at the FF soil schedule on their site, it includes three "sledgehammer flushes" which tells me that the schedule is designed to over-feed for a few weeks then correct the mistake and carry on overfeeding again. Sounds awful to me.
Gave them all a good flush with some molasses water.. They're still looking pretty ugly but have definitely bounced back quite a bit since the major nute burn. They seem to be fine aside from the major burns to the upper fan leaves. Been feeding them again with a combo of FF and AN nutrients and they have been responding quite well.. This is about 3 weeks into flower. What do you guys think based on the size of the pre-flowers/pistils?
Ill add my two cents. Its a nitrogen toxicity caused by over feeding. Nobody should EVEr follow ANY feeding schedule recommended by ANY company. What do they know of growing anything? Have you ever seen any of their reps grow some dank with that schedule? I have not! But i have helped countless new growers who made this same mistake. THIS is part of the reason i switched to organics, besides the fact that organics gave me double the results at 1/10 the cost. As such my fox farm trio has rotted on a shelf for a decade, well, besides the bottle with worm castings, which became a tea in my early organic days. They look good for 3 weeks. I think you responded well. Never trust the bottle. When all else fails flush and start again 1/4 to 1/2 nutes. ~ poke
I recommend they err on the side of less is better. To me it is easier to recover from underfeeding than over feeding. Nutirents are cheap and efficient if you use them wisely.
The fox farm feeding schedule uses too much grow big during flowering but that's just my opinion. I stop grow big feeding after week 1 flowering. I'm an amateur though and this is only my second grow. So take what I say with caution as I'm no expert and am not claiming to be one.
Thanks for the feedback guys. I come to you with another inquiry. So the pistils on the undamaged/less-damaged plants are growing faster and longer than the pistils on the damaged plants. What are the implications of this? Will the damaged plants have smaller yield, decreased potency, or both?!?!?! Thanks folks