BKKG's First Grow!

I don't have a reliable way of measuring soil pH, since my chem testing kit hasn't arrived in the mail yet. The best I could do would be to steal some litmus papers from my school's lab, but even then I wouldn't be able to get the container they come it, which has the color matching chart to evaluate the pH.

The water I generally use is distilled bottled water, which ought to have a pH very close to 7. But there were two small waterings in which I had to use my house's tap water, which I don't trust at all. I'll be performing a flush today, to try and save the plants from whatever's going on, and at the very least keep them going until my pH equipment arrives.

Wish me luck on the flush everyone, I'm very nervous. I'll update later with pics, so check back sometime tonight.

 

OK, transplant and flush done to the best of my ability. There's nothing new to see yet, which is why I haven't added any new pictures today. There's some Miracle-Gro in Iggy's pot, and all of Honey's new soil is Miracle-Gro (I ran out of the topsoil I was using before, and the only kind of soil that I could buy at the store was Miracle-Gro).

I've got my fingers crossed, and I'm really hoping that the plants can pull through. I'll update tomorrow with new pictures, hopefully there'll be improvement to see.

 

Beautiful plants as always, gonejah. My soil does have some perlite in it, and the Miracle-Gro that I translplanted with has more. It should help some.

I water every three days or so, but I check by sticking my little finger about an inch down into the soil to feel for moisture, and see how much soil sticks to me. I don't think that overwatering is much of an issue.

And as for the flush, I used bottled water from the store, which should have a neutral pH (I was very careful about this, as I'm reasonably sure that my tap water caused this problem).

 

It's a miracle! An absolute miracle! The plants are perky and happy once again! The lower leaves (the ones that yellowed) don't look any better, but the other leaves are back to their dark green color, and are no longer drooping down! I'll post pics later, but yes! It worked!

 

Here are the pictures I promised.


Here's Iggy from the top. The tips of her leaves are still browned on several leaves, but the coloring is better than before.


Iggy from the side. You can see that her leaves are no longer drooping, they're finally perking up!


This is Honey from the top. Her leaves are also improving their color, and looking as bushy and happy as ever.


And finally, Honey from the side. Her leaves aren't drooping anymore either.

The plants are alive and growing again! Yay!

 

Day 27

Sorry it's been so long since an update! School's been kicking my ass lately. But luckily, since the plants had been transplanted so recently there wasn't much growth for you to miss.


This is Iggy from the top. She's got new growth coming out of the top. Her color is better since the transplant too, it looks like she's back on track.


And Iggy from the side. You can see how perky her leaves are again, despite the fact that they're bigger than ever (except for the lower ones, which may be beyond saving).


Here's Honey from the top. Like Iggy, her color has improved tremendously since the transplant, and new growth is sprouting from her top. However, her stem isn't properly supported in the soil, and so the plant is tilted severely sideways. I haven't been able to get anything to rig it up yet, although I'll be fixing that early tomorrow. Her stem has bent itself in response though, which at the very least shows that she's still alive, so that's something!


And finally, this is the latest terrible picture of Honey from the side. Someday I'll figure out a good angle to take that picture from. But anyhow, you can see some of the stem lean there, but also how nicely her leaves are hanging.

What do people think about how my plants are doing? How are their size for this stage of their lives? I'm concerned that even considering the transplant, they're undersized...

 

Anyone?

 

So my plants survived their transplant and started to grow again, which was great. But now there's a new problem, in which the leaf tips are starting to turn brown. I've attached several pictures:


Here's Iggy, you can ignore the lower leaves which are a paler color, because those are left over from her earlier problem. But the upper leaf tips, although a bit blurry, areclearly turning yellowish and then brown at the tip.


And here's a closer up (and sadly blurrier) picture of the browning. You can see the leaves, even the newer growth, have that discoloration and a slight downward curl.


Here's Honey, who is obviously doing much better than Iggy, but is still starting to turn colors at the very tips of her leaves. They are yellowed slightly, but not yet brown.


And finally, a close up of Honey's issue. You can see that the tips are just barely starting to change colors.

I looked through Ganja Geurilla's web page, but I couldn't find an y pictures that were just like my problem, so I figured I'd ask here again to get experts' opinions. Does it look like a pH issue again, or maybe a nutrient issue this time? I've finally got equipment to deal with both, so hopefully this won't set me back too much.

 

Alright, I did another emergency transplant into good Creekside topsoil (which I had to drive 20 miles to get). It had to be done though, because the Mircale-Gro was nute-burning the plants. For the most part it went well, with two exceptions. The soil was cooler than it ought to have been, but I couldn't wait for it to warm up to room temperature. An hour or two in the box evened it out, but I'm sure that the low temperature didn't help with the plants' stress. And Iggy's roots definitely had problems, her root ball was smaller this time than in her last transplant and when dumping the last of the excess soil it was clear that there were roots present in it, which means that they were severed from the plant itself.

I'll update with pics as soon as there are changes that you can see, but both plants seem alright (as far as I can tell at this stage, they're leaning towards the light and look a bit perkier than they were).

 

Day 33

I don't know if you'll be able to tell anything at all from these terrible pictures, but here goes:


This is Honey from the top. You can see that most of her leaf tips are discolored, including some of the newest growth. This makes me very nervous, but it could still be the same as the damage from before plus my own paranoia. I suppose it could also be because of stress from the transplant, but I don't really know...


Here's a picture of Honey from the side, if you can tell anything at all from it. Nice perky leaves, at any rate.


This is a close up of the damage on the newest growth, the discolored tips. I know that this probably won't be anything that anyone can use to tell anything at the moment, but it may serve as a reference for comparisons in the future.


A picture of Iggy from the top. I still can't tell if any of the damage has gotten better, worse, or stayed the same. My nervousness is really hampering my diagnostic abilities.


And a picture of Iggy from the side. Her lower leaves are still looking pretty bad, and may be a lost cause. But her upper leaves are looking pretty nice I think.


And finally, a close up of Iggy's newest growth, along with some of the damaged older leaves. I know that this picture is terrible, but I'm hoping that it can be used as a comparison for later as well.

Is it too soon after the latest transplant to tell if the plants are responding well or not? And are the pictures too bad to tell anything at all? I'll find a better camera somehow, if I need to. Am I just being too paranoid about all of this?

On a positive note though, the plants seem to be in the last push of their vegetative growth. They're putting on some height, and it's easy to see (though maybe not from my pictures) that they're finally starting to look like plants that have been growing this long without issues like the ones I've had...

 

Day 36

After this past month of growing, I've noticed the obvious difference between my plants and those of other growers that I've seen. Mine are much smaller and less mature. I'm fairly sure that the reason for this is the very low amount of light that I had for them- it was only 46 watts total before (without the tube lights, which didn't add that much light anyhow). Because I had to remove the tube lights due to stability issues (one of them almost crushed Iggy!), but that gave me the room inside the box to add two more lamps! I found some slightly better bulbs, and so now I've got four cfl bulbs for a total of 98 watts! I know that that's still low for two plants, but I'm hoping to see some improved growth from them in the next few days.

Another issue which has stunted my plants have been the three serious problems I've had over the course of this grow. First the pH became imbalanced, which compromised the soil, which required an emergency transplant. But sadly, the only soil I could buy around my house to transplant into was Miracle-Gro. The plants improved for a couple of days total, but then started to suffer due to nutrient burn, which needed another emergency transplant. Both plants are recovering now, and have started to grow again, which gives me hope that they'll bounce back just fine.

So even though a month of vegging should be enough to start flowering, the slow growth due to lack of light coupled with the lack of growth due to the periods of shock following transplants mean that the plants aren't even a foot high yet. Which is fine, I guess, since this is my first grow I'm just lucky that they're alive and growing, whether it's slowly or not.


Here's Iggy from above. Her leaf damage is still there, but the leaves seem to be growing again.


Iggy from the side. You can see that her leaves are nice and perky, not drooping, which I take to be a good sign after her root damage during the transplant.


Honey from the top. You can see that her leaves are growing too, and are still much better looking than Iggy's, because Honey had less of a problem then she did. Her leaves were pointing a bit upwards earlier today, but I think that this was just a reaction to being too close to the light. Since she's been moved down, she should be able to handle the new lights just fine.


And finally, Honey from the side. Her leaves are quite perky as well, and this picture really shows how she's growing some space on the stem between leaf sets. I expect she'll be developing some little branches soon!

So that's today's update, but I have a couple of questions. Is this the right time to start doing some LST? The altered timing of my veg cycle has thrown off my plans (I was originally going to LST at about 25 days, but now I'm not sure when...). And second, how do you think that the timing for flowering will be affected? I'm expecting another week and a half to two weeks, but that's just wild guesswork on my part.

Thanks for reading, and I'm sorry I've been so stingy on the updates! School's been kicking my ass lately.

 

Yeah, they seem to be bouncing back pretty well. And mine aren't as light as they appear; the brightness of the light inside of the box washes out their colors quite a bit, outside of the box Honey is a nice dark green. Iggy's not quite as dark as Honey, but given her troubles it's not surprising that she isn't doing as well.

 

Okay, I know that it's been a very, very long time since I last updated this, but it's veg and there isn't that much that's interesting going on. But finally, there is! After doubling the light in my box, the plants have shown much better growth, growing taller and fuller than ever before, and some new branches have even begun to form!


This is Iggy from the top. Her color is still much lighter than Honey's, but she's clearly growing alright since she's developing new branches too.


Iggy from the side. Her leaves are still nice and perky, and in the lower left of the picture you can see the new branches that have begun to grow.


Here's Honey from above. Her leaves are much fuller than Iggy's are, but she also suffered less from the pH and nute burn issues than Iggy did. In the lower right you can see her new branches starting to develop.


And finally, Honey from the side. This is an awkward shot I know, but you can see that she's getting taller than she used to be, with better spacing between leaf sets than before. You can also get an idea of the relative height of her new branches in the lower right.

So as you can see, it's an exciting time because my plants are finally stable and growing well! As I mentioned before, I have no idea how much longer they'll be in veg before they're ready to flower, because of the transplant issues and because of the insufficient lighting that they had for the first several weeks of their lives, but I'm hoping that they'll be ready in two weeks or so.

One question that I do have though is that the leaf tips on both plants (including the newest growth) seem to be a bit lighter than the rest of the leaf on every leaf. It doesn't seem to be causing any problem, and I don't know what would cause it (I still haven't fed them any nutes, because I'm scared to do that before flowering after my Miracle-Gro experience). But the plants seem to be healthy otherwise, and are developing well, so I don't think that it's a sign of anything bad. Is this normal?

 

Nothing exciting to report today, since we're in veg the plants are just a little bigger than they were in the last update. But since journals generally only get read if they're updated frequently, I figured I'd share that growth with all of you. But today I used a lighter so that you can see the size of the plants!


Iggy from the top, as usual.


And Iggy from the side, but this time I included a lighter so you can get an idea of her size.


Honey from the top, again as usual.


And Honey from the side, but I've again included the lighter so you have a point of reference.


This is a closeup photo of Honey's newest growth. I think that these are new stalks (the stem is almost horizontal here), but I could be mistaken. Are these new stalks that will produce a new top cola each, or do the seem more like branches to you?

I do have some questions which I'd be grateful if someone would answer. Obviously these plants are small for their age, due to the emergency transplants they've undergone as well as the lack of light that they had for the first month of their lives. But are they too small to take a cutting from to root clones? I ask because I'd like to be able to check their sex now, since the whole project's been delayed like this.

Also, I know that it's hard to see in the pics, but even some of the newer growth is showing slightly yellowed tips. This may be left over from when the leaves were younger and the plants were dealing with their issues, and I'm seeing these tips now because the plants are growing more thanks to the extra light. But since I haven't used any nutes, I was thinking that maybe this could be a deficiency in something? I'm sure it isn't pH since I'm watering with distilled water (pH=7), and testing the soil periodically. Does this seem like a deficiency?

Thanks for reading, more updates soon (and hopefully I'll have some better quality pictures soon too).

 

Does anyone have anything to say regarding my questions?