well, not sure I would call it awesome..... I screwed it up big time, just never confessed it on here yet... but I must have over bent the main stem top bend initially and after a few days between the bend and the growth from the plant, the main stem split through almost halfway. was afraid I had literally decapitated the entire plant at the 3rd or 4th node. I had to release the stakes holding the main stem bend. over the next few days it straightened out almost all the way back to original non-bent height except for some total plant lean what was probably just from the whole plant getting pulled a bit over from the initial bend training. At least Blue Dream got topped for height control. LSD is supposed to be a taller plant than Blue Dream and now she is unbent and untopped. I may be in trouble! LOL now the rest of the LSD training went "ok". but may be defeated and completely screwed by the unbent top. the whole idea was kinda like a scrog but without a net - just staking down flat the branches to keep them at a basically relatively even height and stretch them out so each budsite grew it's own rather than up the branch into the next flower as it would normally. increase light exposure and increase budsites / colas. the other branches staked out ok for the most part and allowing for decent light exposure to the areas that would have easily been under the canopy, but now that unbent top is going to shoot up on me and make me raise the lights, away from where I need them close to the other branches / bud sites I have trained down! I have a bad feeling that I'm going to be in a worst position than if i had left her untrained! That main stem bend was key to making this work. learning new things, in this case LST, can be good, and other times can get frustrating. Blue dream also had her lower branched staked down and out to let the bud sites get out from under the canopy but hard to see. I stopped after the first couple nodes though because her structure was too different - branches were much shorter and harder to train out effectively. She got topped though.
Thanks man, I did a bit of reading on the subject as I've always associated salt with instant death for growing. I blame the Romans. It's interesting and once you realise that it's all elements that are beneficial in the right amounts, with the right application for the right reason. It seems unlikely that it would have a high % of sea salt, but I would still like to know the % before I use it for top dressing, and what % would be "acceptable" in a 10gal notill. So I will try to contact the company and see if they can give me the %. I don't really know how I would extrapolate from that whether it would be sufficiently low enough or not however, but the top dressing would only happen once per cycle so I can't imagine it causing problems. But in the meantime I can give my worms a treat. I've read a bit about people using epsom salts as a germination aid, as in dropping the crystals into the seed hole, which blew my mind a little bit. And yeah what a great primer! Will keep hold of that. Smokey your plants have done so well, I looked back at the photos you posted at the 2 week mark and now - amazing stuff. I would freaked out if I'd bent my stem like that! Glad it recovered though.
never saw epsom salts used in the planting hole, thats a new one, but I 've used epsom salts as a foliar and as a soil drench in my veggies garden a lot. do a foliar spray about once a month and soil drench a for a watering at same time. You can see the plants throw out flowers and blossoms over the next couple days! the plants LOVE it. i DID freak out a bit while doing it - scared I was going to break her in half... and turns out I was right, i split the stem. but she will live to tell the tale..... another lesson learned! They have grown pretty good though over the last 26 days I think today is.. have to look at my grow calendar, BEST part though - other than training and a few teas I have done basically NOTHING and as plants they look healthy as I could never wish a plant to be. good color, great growth, no deficiencies!! In the past I spent my grows fighting deficiencies, ph problems, or just a crapload of busy choses like topping off hydro reseviours, changing them out, mixing nutes, BUYING nutes lol. almost no work and better results.
Argh I just noticed that I have a bit of a fungus gnat thing going on in the tent. Never had to deal with them before, bit concerned cos I've read that the larvae can go to town on the roots of young plants. There's quite a few of em in there. I plan to top dress some neem and crustacean meal (which is already in the soil anyway), mist the surface of the soil once a day with a neem oil solution, and hang some fly stickies for the adults. And maybe buy some "mosquito dunks" as well - maybe that's overkill? I know sand is effective but I don't really want that in my pots, don't have any DE either. OS, I also was wondering how long you keep an aloe solution around for? As in, does it "go off"?
i have a few gnat every now and than in my veggies garden, not a big deal. the yellow sticky hanging things work well. my biggest pest issue in the veggie garden is white flies. non-stop cycles of them. neem the fuck out of the tent every 2-3 days, paying particular attention to getting the undersides of the leaves. the white flies go away for a few days until the new one hatch and it starts all over again. I have neem meal in my new soil so it's not as bad as it had been, but a number of the same plants are in the garden even though replanted with the neem meal soil so I'm sure I repotted a few eggs and flies themselves. Luckily, no pest issues in my med tent. (damn, you know i just jinxed myself). i think a big reason may be all the fans blowing and the exhaust fan/ filter. I keep the med tent closed and with all the ventilation and air movement inside that tent I'd think it would be a very difficult environment for a flying pest to make a home. That's one of the reason actually I have 3 fans blowing at high speed in such a small tent. PLUS the exhaust fan.filter. Makes it a difficult place for them to survive. On the other hand, I'm terrified of getting spider mites. had them once years in the second time i ever tried growing. it was bad, ending up closing down the grow, scrubbing the room completely, and not growing again until last year. should have put some DE in my soil, suppose we could still topdress it. DON'T do DE if you are going to have worms in your soil though!! it will shred their bodies! suppose to be crawling over shards of glass for them i understand. poor little guys! LOL
Gotcha, I'll avoid using DE. I don't have any anyways. My gnats are all hanging out right at the top of the tent, that seems to be where they spend their time. Using fans seems like a good thing to also try, not just to keep things dry but also as you mention to keep them from flapping around. So obviously I have my extract, but I also have a couple of small fans which I'm not really using yet as the plants are obviously quite small still and I didn't want to knock them over. How would you recommend I set up my 2 fans? Maybe one pointed just above the plants, but not directly at them and the other pointed at the top of the tent where they seem to congregate?
I actually have 2 of my fans clips on the poles of the tent. one is pointed at each plants directly as I want a good breeze over the plants. i set it up so that the plants get hit with the breeze from the fans but enough to create a good air circulation around the plants and make sure that the plants are MOVING in the breeze, but not so close to the plant that it gets a windburn. you need to play around with your distances until you get a feel for it. it's not hard though. I consider the air movement for pest deterrent only one of many reasons you want fans going in your tent, ESPECIALLY if it's closed up. first, I have the fans for air circulation. if you don't have constant air movement around the plants, you can get little micro-climates around your plants, and most particularly under the leaves, the air will stay and get stale. the fans create constant air movement so the plants receive good, fresh, o2 to all the leaves all the time, not just stale air. Second, the air breeze makes the plants sway back and forth, just like a breeze outside. this movement of the plant creates tiny micro cracks in the plant that makes its stronger it as it heals - the breeze makes the plant stronger! just like exercise makes your muscles bigger. Additionally, and more pertinate to LED lighting as i understand it, the LED lights are so narrow and focused compared to a bulb-based lighting, that the plant movement in the breeze also allows the light to be spread over more surface area on the leaves rather than pinpoints of little laser rays of light hitting the same tiny areas the whole grow. of course, turning the plants everyday would do the same i guess, but this is constant movement, not just once a day. I always make sure I have a LOT of air movement in my tent! my veggie tent is left open and besides two of the same pole clip-on fans i use in the med tent, i also have a big stand-up floor model oscillating fan blowing med to high speed 24/7 in the garden tent. as far as I'm concerned, you can't have too much fresh air to the plants and as long as fans aren't blowing the plants over in the wind or blowing them out of the tent you almost can't have too much air movement.
Thanks man. I have clip on fans too, I've got them set up so that there's just a slight rustle to the leaves now and have one pointed full power at the ceiling to disperse the crowd. Quite a few have gone for the stickies already. I've stripped back the straw mulch and watered in some neem meal, and have a neem oil solution in a mister on standby. Leaving the straw off for a while should help keep the surface too dry for them as well. Anyways fingers crossed that those bits and the neem applications will take care of it.
sorry, didn't see your question about the aloe before. for my aloe vera spray, i make up a 32oz (.95l) spray bottle and just let it be until i use it through. usually only last me few days though. i tend too mist them everytime I peek in on them
Looks like you guys have helped each other figure this stuff out! Outstanding! This is exactly how this whole thing is supposed to work! I can't think of a thing to add carry on. I don't think the gnats actually want to have anything to do with healthy living roots. They like dead and decaying stuff, and love it wet. They are mostly an annoyance. Don't feel like you have to do anything rash to get rid of them. The couple of subtle tricks you guys described are right on the money! cheers os
Me too ok cool, thanks. The reason I asked was I read someone saying that an aloe solution has to be used immediately or else it goes bad. I've not noticed anything with my spray and it's been around for a few days now.
if that's true, it's news to me. unless I learn differently I'll keep doing what I am. so far no bad effects and the plants look great...
i never considered gnats too much of a problem. as you say, an annoyance at most, but no real harm, at least that's ever experienced. The white flies are a different story and they piss me off every week. they just suck the life out of leaves and plants. Everytime I see a leaf looking poorly for no reason, mostly yellowing and limp, i shake the plant and see the damn things fly off. I grab for the bottle of neem oil again........
So is that white fly as in cabbage white fly? The little fuckers that look a little like seeds when they hang out on the underside of leaves? If so then I feel you. I had them all over my kale, you shake a leaf and this cloud rises up. Shudder. I wonder how many of those critters I’ve eaten! I experienced similar die off and recovery cycles, it was a pain. The butterflies are even worse with brassicas. Ever had leaf miner in spinach or similar? Talk about leaves just being drained of life.
yep, most likely the same white flies. pain in the ass those damn things lol they hang on the underside of the leaves and suck the life out of them. shake the plants and if it's bad it's like awhile cloud taking oof. if not so bad it's just a few of them. I see them flying off as I'm spraying the plants and hit them midair! LOL
and since e I never learn, and have a really hard problem with LITFA most of the time, I couldn't stop worrying about my LSD plant and having to unbend the top because of the stem split. so I bent it agin. this time much higher up and with the recent stretch much more flexible. just bend the top 3 nodes down so they were just under the next lowest branch. as i understand it this should make the plants auxins realize there is no dominate cola anymore and push energy to the other bud sites.
here is LSD-25 auto: day 27 the metal strips you see holding the branches are strips of stiff wire bent to a hook to hold a branch. The idea was the keep the branches laid out flat and down to reduce vertical height but also open up bud sites to better light to develop. and a more even canopy rather than the standard x-mas tree shape. pretty much same idea as a scrog, but i don't have a scrog net and didn't get one built and this seems easier at the time... i was wrong! LOL here is Blue Dream. day 27 bottom 2 nodes had their branches staked the same way to let them grow outward from the canopy for better light than than she was topped. She's pretty bushy little Dark Devil day 4 thank you nature for my wonderful medicine!!
yeah, a few hiccups but overall it's ok. once i got past the seed germination issues this has been my most enjoyable grow overall so far and it's only day 27. what's nice is NOT chasing deficiency or excessive nutrient issues, or ph issues, or whatever issue pretty much almost daily if not daily as in hydro. Not having to worry about the plants feedings, notes, etc lets me concentrate one how the plant is actually growing, getting to learn new stuff like the LST, which I wouldn't couldn't do before because all my time / energy was spent solving problems. meanwhile i just keep trying to follow your advice and take the time to read and research to find out the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing and for what reason when. always trying to learn and this is a brand new hobby / passion for me so i have EVERYTHINg to learn, that's a lot thanks for all the help you give!