If i could, I would. Money is a prohibiting factor, as well as the increased energy bill. Once I move next year i'm going straight to hydro with MH/HPS. This grow is mainly a learning experience, a stealth grow, a cheap grow, and some personal bud. I'm not trying to be the dealer for my corner If the new grower thinks taking care of some soil plants is difficult, wait till they get to clones! I dont even know if my clones are still alive - all i know is that they're still green but likely won't stay that way for long. It would seem like I have a green thumb huh? Never planted a thing in my life before heh, been around it plenty sure, but never did it myself. It's a wonderful thing osmosis and knowledge... EDIT: My bill before summer is typically around 80-100 USD. At summer my bill gets around 150-180, and just recently was around 220. I'll see what it is for the next month as I haven't had to use my dehumidifier yet. It would hurt my empty wallet if I had to throw another 150 at a MH system and then another 50 onto my electric bill. Plus at that point i'd have to completely stealth my room which is further cost. For my current setup, stealth and CFL is the only way to go right now. But I hear what you're saying though. Cheers. EDIT2: With MH, the plants will uptake more nutes and water obviously, and I don't have the equipment to keep track of that, nor the nutes to correct that. Trust me if I had the money I would've attempted screwing up with hydro/MH/HPS. Nevermind CO2 or ozone if it came down to it.
Today I found a fully yellow bottom leaf on my second strongest plant. One of the leaves on a weaker plant looked a bit rusted and felt as such too almost. Gonna look in my book and see what we got. I've also got these bugs on my peat discs that look like a nano caterpiller. They're black with a long abdomen, a small red spot in the upper 1/3 of them, and a black head. Theres a handful of them. No notable bug damage, all my leaves are whole, save for the occasional blade tip that looks to have been torn but I might only have a few of those. Gonna do a little research, will let you know what my educated guess tells me. Nope. Couldn't find the bug that's on my plants. I officially don't have any of the pests typically mentioned for mary plants. I do have the occasional jumping spider, several tiny gnat bodies that die inside my CFLs (not the bad ones), the rare ladybug, and then the little black bugs I mentioned. The best I can describe them is that they're about the size of mini ants, but look like caterpillars without moving the way they do, have a red section/spot where the "chest" would be, and then the head. They gather in groups of about 8-15 on the sides/bottoms of my inflated jiffy pellets. I read on another forum if they're not on the pest list for mary plants, it's a good bug. So yay for me I guess. I'm also going to guess that the bottom yellow leaf I found was either a lack of some nitrogen (5-15% chance) or somehow that leaf just wasn't getting any light (80%) - though I find that hard to believe with the leaf spacing I have, the light placement, and reflective box. The leaf was a solid light yellow with a blur of green at the very beginning of the leaf. Gave all the plants another bottle today, fed the clones a few drops of the stuff too and then dunked them in water. The leaves on all my plants look normal, various healthy shades of green, burnt leaf tips on a few of my plants as well, though I can't tell if that's from too much nitrogen or just my environment. I'm currently using a large mouthwash bottle that I fill with water i've left out in the air for days, fill that with 3 teaspoons of molasses, and about an equal amount (if not more) fish emulsion (nitrogen). After I mix that, I split into my advil bottle and feed. It feels like my mix is a bit stronger than average, but I think it's my high temperature room with the constant 60% humidity and the plants are just trying to overcompensate somewhere. The burnt tips damage doesn't go any further though save for the occasional bottom leaf that's just had it coming.
High All seems like I need to clear a few things up for ya mate... The tin foil will be fine.. the hot spot theory.. well its a theory..thats all.. it will not cause hotspots whatsoever... Your plants are hungry.. this is why they are pale, give them a nice shot of a veg nute high in N would be good.. Youve already seen letting them dry a bit produced good growth... heres a tip for ya... the plant loves the cycle... water then dryness.... if its damp all the time the roots dont grow.. Thier job is to go find water.. well if the water is right beside em, why would they look for it... So by letting them dry a bit.. the root structure gets bigger... Bigger root structure.... bigger buds... thats just the way it works..hydro or soil doesnt mattter...bigger roots bigger buds... This is why most soil growers water every other day or so... they let it get nice and dry them just swamp em.. that gives by far the best growth in soil... Your babies look good mate.. I think they will be fine... tghe spots ur refereing to are most likely PH related..next watering check ur ph.. tyou want it 6.5-6.8.... hope this all helps mate... welcome to ur new favorite hobby//
Cheers. I went from tin foil, to tin foil covered in reflective tape. It's semi transparent duct tape, for ducts. Not the black/grey sticky rubber stuff, the aluminum/poly tape - made things twice as bright as regular foil. It's hard to determine the plants cycles. Some days i feel like it's asking me to water it, other days it's not, but despite that it doesn't follow repetitive growth patterns. And yeah, it kinda is my new favorite hobby. The dense growth gets frustrating especially since my stakes worked to keep the main stem pulled down but now my stakes are far too shallow. Before 3 inches would do, now I need at least 8 if I want to keep the thing down there. And yeah, all my plants evened out with growth, but i'm not so sure about my clones. We'll see at the end of this week when I throw them into 12/12 regardless of health. If they're still alive at that point I think the strong will survive. Gotta take clones from that bitch and replace my crappy ones/males.
Some of the leaves are looking a bit under the weather, so I followed yodas advice and gave them another bottle of water today. I sprayed the plants with seltzer for some CO2, raised my lights up about an inch and a half cause the plants are starting to reach the lights and get a bit crispy. After I sprayed with seltzer (helps with nute and light uptake) I fed them the water, dropped some nute water on my clones (one or two of which have made new growth it looks like) and then sprayed with more seltzer to wash off any nute water. Cheers.
So yesterday would've been their second day in a row getting nute water after yoda suggests. This morning, i've got bottom leaves on my topped plant turning half yellow, and one fan leaf having yellow veins with interveinal yellowing. Not good! EDIT: Okay, so I looked around a bit, and can't find anything to describe what's happening to my plants. It's not underfert, or overfert, and it can't be the light because the light was shining right on this particular leaf. To the naked eye, interveinal yellowing had just begun, the veins are yellow, and whatever green is on here is in between solid green and pale green. I have no clue what's going on but i'm going to observe my other plants and see if they want more nute water before I give every plant some nute water unless this one plant is overfed because the topped plant's main stems grew a bunch again overnight but I noticed the leaves were drooping down as if it were flowering. I'm going to give all the plants plain water instead of nute feed and i'll decide what to do between comments here and reactions from my plants to the regular water. EDIT 2: Not good! One of my plants, I found a rotting leaf, removed that, and we have a spider mite problem on that plant. It's just begun though, where I could clearly see at least 4 fully grown mites - I plucked both those leaves just to reduce population, as those were also the only leaves I could see that were affected. I'm going to try to figure out some pest control, heard from one guy a half clove of garlic per bucket for a week does pretty well with most pests and fungi. I finally figured out also how to use my ties better, because having them in a U shape they wouldn't stay in the ground because it was so airable, but putting them in the shape of a fishing line, the hook snags the plant nicely and gives me an extra 4 inches of dirt I can push them into. So now all my plants are tied down correctly, I gave them another bottle of water. I dunked the leaves with mites on them in my plain water to make sure those little jerks drown (won't use that water till tomorrow anyway so they'll either be dead or will have crawled out by then.) Also, I noticed on a different plant the stems are kinda thin as if the plant decided to grow anyway whether or not it's biceps would get some size on them or not. The stems on this plant are also red/purple, but none of the others are. So i'll let ya'll know what I find out from my literature. EDIT 3: Just wanted to be clear, I gave my plants nute water today, not plain water. The only times i've ever given my plants plain water was in a spray bottle. So unless I specifically cite plain water, "water" or "bottle of water" is referred to as nute water. EDIT 4: My book says pretty much anything excessively pungent will affect spider mites. Garlic, hot pepper, citrus, lemon probably and so on. It also says to cycle what you use because the mites will get used to it after a few days. The eggs take about 5 days to hatch, so once a week the type should change. EDIT 5: Saw yodas bubble clones, got embarrassed and threw out three weakling dried up clones after finding spider mite eggs in them. Oh well. Plenty of branches coming off my main plants. Can always make mothers out of them if I have to. Need to take the next cuts with more nodes. Mine were much too small.
This morning I gave them a fresh bottle of water, except this time I put in 5 teaspoons of molasses and a little over 2x as much fish emulsion as I usually put. My logic is, I noticed my leaves getting a wee bit pale-er, my topped plant lost two low branches that were being created and two leaves turned camoflage yelow on me, and the fact that I would split a bottle of water between 5 clones (3 of which were pathetic) the two that are left have exposed roots today! My logic also includes yodas suggestion to do so, as well as the thought that my plants are hundreds of times bigger than they were when I started the normal feed. I'm not sure why one of the 2 remaining clones has a leaf starting to turn yellow, I think i'll put them in the center bucket later to get more light. I'm going to think about how i'm going to handle cloning my plants correctly.
wow dude. Sounds like things have took a turn for the crazy. Yoda is right though, it sounds like you're overwatering, especially for a soil grow. You need to give them more of a dry soil. Stick your fingers down in the soil 2 inches. If you feel moisture, don't water. One thing I do is peel a garlic clove (not even a whole bulb) and stick it in the soil so it's in the same pot as my plant. This basically has kept me 100% pest free for the past month. Give it a try. Seriously though, don't water for 3 days and see what happens. Oh, and if you have a yellow leaf or two that's good! Don't pluck them. The plant is using those leaves for a dumping place for excess nutes and other things. If you pluck them the plant will just make more yellow leaves elsewhere. Would you recommend picking up that book? And can you post a link to it on amazon? edit: Oh yeah! You mentioned droopy leaves, that's just another sign of overwatering. edit: And the leaves that are like fly-trapped means high heat. Raise your lights (which I think you already mentioned) or rearrange your fans.
The extra couple bottles of water i've been feeding lately doesn't seem to be doing much in the way of giving the plant what it wants. I haven't gone into the room going WHOA! growth! I mean, i can see some of my plants growing below the hooks but not as fast as i've seen on average. My clones however, one actually grew some. Both have grown a bigger root system so i'm going to open up another bag of the same dirt my plants have and put them in 12oz containers. That aught to be enough just to see gender and test some of the smoke genes it has Cheers.
Yeah, the clones were probably closed to damn near killed trying to root but they can do it because it's a weed and they're resilient little bastards. I'm really pumped to see them grow. Put up pics soon. The plants are limited by their root growth, I've seen it with my plants. I'm also doing a CFL grow. I was overwatering like crazy so their growth was limited. You want it more like simulated rainstorm/dry period scenario. The rhythm lets them grow. They need more time between waterings and heavier waterings. Like 5 days but flood the whole thing. MJ loves that shit.
I'll put up new pics tomorrow. Want the plants to dry out the soil a bit and grow some more for that. I'm gonna transplant my two good clones into bigger pots today so you'll have pics of that tomorrow as well. Cheers.
my first box when i was 13 was tin foil lined had 8 cfls a uv bar and some other light and it never burned anything sure i recommend mylar cuz tin foil sucks but last option its alright i guess since hes using cfls though should just white paint that beotch
I went to walmart and bought a 3 dollar security blanket from the camping section. That's a better option that aluminum foil. That is cheap. But what you have sounds better anyways. I doubt its possible to give plants heat spots from CFLs.
When I transplant, should I water with plain water the first few days to let the roots grow or use nute water?
If the soil already has fertilizer in it I'd say just plain water or plain water supplemented with hydrogen peroxide (tbls/gal). If it has no fertilizer in it I'd say it's your call. Experiment and learn from this.
i'll do nute water because when I gave the clones nute water in their jiffy pellet it was almost like magic. going to transplant them now and water and spray, hopefully we'll have some sweet shots for you tomorrow. At least if the nute water fails i'll know what was too much. But considering the fact that their mothers love the stuff at the given moment anyway, I figure they're going to behave the same and I just have to repeat the rain/drought thing. CAUSE MJ LOVES THAT SHIT EDIT: Just fyi, my humus/manure is only 1-1-1 so yes, i will be adding nute water. EDIT 2: Ok! so they've been transplanted. Too bad you guys can't wait a few days to make my clones look bigger The pellets were kinda dry as hell cause I hadn't checked on them all day (bad) glad I finally got them in soil so I can stop worrying about it. One of the regular ones I've got in a tin coffee container, and the other in a clear wonton soup container because I want to see how much water ends up at the bottom of my cans and how fast it disappears.
Heh my regular babies are but not my clones. The transplant plus the severity of their jiffy pellet dryness yesterday put some stress on the plants and this morning they look like they've gotten their shit together but still look a bit sickly. I'm considering modifying my room setup. Time for a little research. Pics up anyway as promised a little later in the day. No pics till tomorrow (because i got highhhhhhhh because i got highhhhhh because i got highhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)
Ok, i'm gonna go take my pictures and put them up. Had to rotate them all this morning so the main stem was facing light. My clones seem like they're fighting well, but my hook clone just looks horrible. The good news though is that it's other leaf that was laying on the dirt is now up! So roots are taking shape. When I tranplanted the clones i gave them maybe 1 or half a bottle. The condensation in that container covered the inside of it but this morning condensation was only on the bottom half so I gave each clone a quarter bottle just to give them some strength before the big root push. There isn't really much growth going on save for the topped plant which grew a tad. No new yellow leaves, the spider mite issue isn't much of a problem yet, only on a few fan blades (3ish). I saw how much my hook leaves on the mother were fly trapping yesterday (half closed) so I raised the lights up another inch or so. Pics in a bit. EDIT: We have pics, but again a security token is missing is happening to me! Pics will have to wait.