First time grower, looking for advice, tips, suggestions. I'm on day 23 of my grow. I have 5 female seeds growing. Iv been watering every 2-3 days and they seem to be doing alright. I water with distilled water. I have them in fox farm ocean forest soil (5 gallon smartpots) iv been reading a lot of mixed opinions/threads on when to start feeding. Most ppl say start with 1/4 to 1/2 of the recommended dosage. Are my girls ready to be fed? And how should I go about mixing the nutes? Can I mix 2 teaspoons of the grow big into a 1 gallon jug with distilled water and just feed them like usual? Or every other feeding? I couldn't find a Good source for info on this. Here's my girls
Congrats on trying to grow your own! I am on my second grow myself-all organic. I would advise fertilizing your seedlings a couple weeks after they pop. Start slow on the nutes, using 1/4 the recommended amount, then 1/2, then depending how they are responding, go 3/4 or the full recommended amount. You are fine going this long without nutes because the Fox Farms soils are already nutrient dense. But I would begin as soon as you can. I would also avoid using a schedule that says you HAVE to water or fertilize your plants every 2-3 days. Each plant is different and therefore each plant will absorb liquid at a different rate. You don't want your roots to get waterlogged. I use organic Advanced Nutrients. It depends on what nutes your using, but I fertilize my plants when the pot is noticeably drier and lighter, then I water. Once again, I don't water until the pot is noticeably drier and lighter. I just repeat this process over and over....fertilize/water/fertilize/water/fertilize/water....Keep your eyes peeled for problems if your plants are not responding favorably to your nutes and make adjustments as necessary. Personally, I don't use distilled water. I just fill up gallon jugs of water and let them sit for 24 hours before using it. I use a syringe to put the right amount of nutes into the gallon jug and shake it up. What I start to flower my plants they should already be used to the full strength fertilizer schedule for vegetative growth, so I don't start the flowering period with reduced amounts of nutes, I start off with full strength bloom nutes according to the manufacturer recommendations. Because each weed plant absorbs liquid at a different rate, I have developed a great system for keeping track of my watering/nutes schedule. You might find it helpful. In my grow room I keep a daily chart of my plants and where they are in relation to each other in the grow room. I run 9 plants under a 600W, so I am constantly rotating them around every day. I have girl names for all my plants too...Lily, Hannah, Ingrid, April, Chelsea, Carmen...these are some of the names for my plants this grow. It makes it very easy to keep track of particular plants. So every day I fill out a new chart, which takes only a couple minutes, basically each chart is a 3x3 grid-3 boxes across and 3 boxes down. I can fit 4 grids on a standard sheet of paper, enough to cover 4 days of maintenance. Each box on the grid designates the position of a particular plant (using her girl name) in the grow room on that particular day. So every day as I fill out my chart I put the girls name that corresponds to a particular plant's position inside the grow room for that particular day inside the appropriate box. And in the lower right hand corner of each box I keep track of my watering and fertilizing for that particular plant. If there is a W there, that tells me that when the pot for that particular plant is dried out enough, it needs water. If it has an F there, that tells me that when the pot is dried out enough, it needs fertilizer. Then, if I water for example, I will cross out the W after I water it and put an F beside the crossed out W. When I make a new chart each day, I transfer all my info from the previous day's chart onto the new chart. Each plant name will move one position on the chart. Then, when I get to the actual maintenance of my plants (after I make my new chart for that day), I rotate the plants one position in the grow room. I take my plants out of the grow room and I look 'em over real good as I reset their position in the grow room according to the chart. The boxes are also good for keeping any other notes you may want to make. If a particular plant's pot is dry enough to water or nute, I look at my chart to see what she needs and give it to her. So every 9 days each plant will visit each of the 9 spaces available on the grow room. It sounds confusing but it's actually easy and keeps things very organized. If you do this, don't forget to give your girl's names and label your pots. Hope this helps!
Thanks!! I'm going to fed them tonight. I just checked them and they have another set of leaves what would you recommend for training method? I was thinking about doing a scrog but I'm not sure yet
Because I rely on a canopy with level cola tops, I use Low Stress Testing quite a bit. I also "top" my girls to avoid a single, central cola that will quickly outgrow the other colas. I can elabrate more on this later 'cause I gotta go to work now. But with LST, I have found that sewing thread works very well while my plants are stretching and still have flexible colas and side branches.