hello there, i'm attempting a first grow here, i'm currently in the 8th week of vegetative. i've been using LST and micro topping to create this shape, an accident during the early weeks slowed growth for a while, the stem had been broken almost in half but she survived. my light setup is 7 26 watt cfl bulbs, i keep them on a homemade rig. the spectrum used is 4- 2700k bulbs and 2 6500kish bulbs, with 1 3500k bulb ( i had read that a small amount of green spectrum is good). i realise that you should use the blue shade of bulbs for vegetative but i had bought the wrong type 2700k, which is for flower time right? but the 4 still worked fine, so i did not bother to replace them, because i live in a rural area and there isn't a place to buy specific materials for miles. so, i want to put this thing into flower mode soon, within the next 2 weeks. if i change light spectrum to 4 more 6500k bulbs, now, will i notice a change in development? am i using enough light? The soil is an MG potting soil with 14-14-14 npk ratio, i repotted from a 1 gallon pot 1 week ago, i believe is was on the verge of rootbound but there didnt seem to be any shock from the transplant. i've only been using epsom salts and water (from a river with fish) there were signs of deficiencies but the epsom seem to make it go away. overall the plant looks healthy to me, but possibly growing slowly i can't tell where she should be at this point. definately a female btw) here's a picture of what i'm talking about... also i don't know what species it is, i found an old stash of seeds from back in the day and grew 2 of them, 1 turned out a male so i disposed of it.
approximately 8 weeks a little less including the seedling stage. my lamp fell over and almost killed it when it was about 3 nodes tall. but it resumed growing and the break formed a knot. intitially i was not going to lst or super crop at all.
Hi. Welcome to the world of indoor growing. As far as light goes, the CFLs will be fine for veg and you can't put too much light in there around them. More light means a bigger plant and a bigger plant produces more at harvest time. When it comes time to flower, you really need to get something besides the CFLs. They will flower your plant, but the plant will be spindly and the buds arid. CFLs just don't put out the strength of light to get the most out of your plant during flower. Did you add any perlite to that MG soil? If not, you really need to add about 40% perlite to the mix for optimum drainage. These things don't like their roots sitting around in moist conditions all the time and the perlite added to the average bag soil makes for much better drainage. Keep in mind that it is going to take that plant a little while to root into that 5 gallon bucket. The first thing they do when they go into soil is set about building their root system. The larger the container, the more soil and the more time it takes to get rooted in well and back to growing foliage. You will always have a period of time after a repot that it seems as if you're getting "slow growth." That is just because your plant is rebuilding it's root system into the new container. I would be sure and give it enough time to do that before I put it into flower. When you see the foliage pick back up and start growing vigorously and the plant starts using more water, that generally means the roots are good and you can move along in your process. As far as nutes go, you really shouldn't need any for awhile. The MG soils are loaded with slow release fertilizers and adding in nutes on top of that will just burn your plant. Nutes are meant to be given once the plant has used up what came naturally in the soil. A 5 gallon bucket of MG has a lot of fertilizer already in it and I would be afraid to give anything else until several weeks in the bucket. Be careful with your watering and don't over water. You don't need to water the plant until it's at least 80% dry or until you lift the container and it feels like it did when you loaded it with dry soil. But I would go back and add that perlite if you don't have any extra in there, because that is a big deal. As far as your river water goes, I don't know but the pH needs to be between 6.3 and 6.7 for soil grows. Watering for an extended time with water out of pH range will lock up the roots of your plant and it won't be able to take in nutrition. I would get a cheap test kit and see if I couldn't test it to make sure it was good. But overall, your plant looks pretty good. It's kind of odd looking I guess because of the topping you've done to it. Oh, and one more thing, you should always let your plants get slightly root bound before transplant. That is not a bad thing. If you try to repot before that, you'll usually do more damage than good because the root ball tends to want to fall apart. The quickest way to get them to adulthood...for a normal strain of seeds, is to pot them up one size at a time and confining the amount of space the must root into. When the plant gets bigger (wider and taller) than the container it's in, it's usually time for a repot. We run on a 10 week cycle. By the time my flower room goes through a 10 week cycle, I have taken clones and grown them to a size and gotten them into the container they will flower in. When I pull, I have a fresh batch to restock with. We usually run about 25-30 plants (if I'm doing a whole batch at once) every 10 weeks. I've recently started cycling them though so I don't have to manicure a whole room full at once. LOL I HATE trimming. Good luck with yours. You can go to the new grower threads here and get a lot of great basic information about indoor grows. There is just as much a process to how it's done as there is the need for a good setup to grow with. Most people only put thought and time into the setup part and then find themselves lost as a ball in high weeds after they actually get a seed to germinate. LOL Happy growing! TWW
thanks for that prompt response! let's see. i did not add perlite at all couldn't get any from the store at the time.but , i've been watering it about once a week or when the bucket is light , like you said.trying to not overwater, i drilled additional holes in the bucket for auto cropping the roots or to allow the soil to dry faster. when i do water the plant she flexes out within the hour, it's cool to see. also however, i have taken clone cuttings about a week ago. they're not dead, i planted in peat pellets, but i used a local honey makers honey to grow the roots instead of rooting hormone or aloe gel, there is a hemp store in the nearby town but i have to arrange a trip to get that. i had a bad feeling about the clones survival without the right things. but we'll see, having a back stock of grow like that would be great. without knowing or testing a whole lot, i assume the perlite is ideal when/if its time to flush. it's exciting though, i wasn't going to put a ton of effort into this grow, but i do want some good smoke by the end of course. if my wallet can take the bite, i'll look into getting a hps and ballast, used, if not, i have to settle for cfl quality. but again we'll see. thanks again.