i think she'll survive but there's no question i stunted the main cola. i don't think ive screamed the f word louder in my life when this happened.
Hi Valerien, Don't beat yourself up. We have all made mistakes and damaged our plants in different ways. I am still discovering new ways to screw them up by accident. One of the features that make this hobby so enjoyable is the continual learning. I am always anxious to try out new things with each grow and experience helps to build confidence. I think that your pictures indicate Bushmaster overdose. The leaves get very broad and thick and clawed. It may not hurt the end product but it makes the plants appear strange and somewhat stunted. When using a small reservoir, I have found that very small amounts of Bushmaster will do the job. Sometimes, if the plants are naturally short, I don't use it at all but when I realize that they are going to be too tall for my cabinet, I add about 6 drops to my four gallon reservoir. I usually do this twice, a few days apart before a flush (like maybe on Monday and Friday and then flush the following Monday). I like to use it when the plants are just beginning to flower. I never use it more than three times. The label indicates that the product's effectiveness depends more upon how long it is used for than upon the strength of the dosage. My experience indicates exactly the opposite when using a small reservoir. Also, when using Bushmaster, avoid Floralicious and Superthrive. Bushmaster likes a low TDS and when it's also used in combination with some additives, it can slow growth and cause strange deformities and coloration. At least, that has been my experience, for whatever it's worth. Bushmaster can be a valuable tool but it takes a little practice to become proficient at using it effectively. Hang in there and your patience will be rewarded.
thank you for the external reinforcement! any encouragement helps. I'll definately be adding the bushmaster by the drop if/when used again instead of a quarter teaspoon at once. I went camping this last weekend with some high school buds and left my wife several dosages of ph down and wrote down "friday night" "saturday morning" "saturday 2 pm" "saturday night" "sunday morning" on them and asked her to check ph, if it was above 6.1, dump the entire contents into the water. she advised me it was hitting the 6.3-6.4 range just about everytime she did this so I'm pretty satisfied. bud sites are growing, i think the leaves around the top bud site are even straightening out a bit. the stem has recovered what it appears 95% from the reflector falling previously mentioned. must repeat to myself often, learned so much, next hydro grow will be better, want some smoke from this girl though the soil/bagseed plant is doing very well. I decided to try fimming for the first time. pics below: (looking for feedback on my fim please!)
no one commenting on my fim job sucks, still trying to tell if I did it correctly. it kinda looks like it's coming as 2 sets of 2 fan leaves instead of 2 fan leaves total. watered the soil plant today. will wash out the res of hydro plant tomorrow as it's been a week. there's tons of new/healthy root growth if I havent mentioned this since the beginning of this week. something I assume I'll see earlier on my 2nd try on Hydro now that I've eliminated most environmental factors over this 1st grow. several of the lower leaves that are not connected to any bud sites have gone from yellow to brown. but everything at top canopy level and connected to any buds looks good. main bud site + 1 or 2 other sites are really starting to thrive and get small fan leaves in between sections of bud like I see on other peoples pics. I figure i've been flowering about 3 weeks and 6 weeks to go but havent been keeping much track other than this journal (that's what its for!) and will have to look back to reference an exact date.
the soil plant was starting to grow wide, it's not an auto so I'm expecting it to get bigger than the plant in the PC. I know it will be limited by its bucket size/root growth and wont fill it up but I wen to walmart and purchased a clothes closet. swapped the cardboard box out for the closet and wired up the light and 80mm fans. looks good + will have plenty of room if i want to use a bigger bucket to start with next time. going to look into purchasing some panda film from local hydro shop today to stop it from being a giant beacon of light.
Good move with the clothes closet, Varerien! It limits your potential when the growing space is too small. Also, it's a lot easier to inspect your plants. Also, the bigger space can allow better air circulation. If it gets hot, you may want to punch an exhaust hole on the top that you can plug up when the lights are off. I bought a little seat at the Napa Auto Parts store. It's on wheels and it has a round padded seat that can go up and down with a lever and it makes tending the plants a lot easier than bending and kneeling. Your plants are doing great and you should be really proud of yourself. I got discouraged when I started out because my first grow was so straggly and sick. If I had been able to have the success that you are achieving, it would have been a real boost to my confidence. I think you pay better attention to the plants than I did. You will be very happy sometime around the end of July I would guess -- and those buds will be scary!
thank you! I'm fairly excited about every aspect of the soil grow except that it was a bagseed hehe. I have been considering throwing together another bucket and starting an additional plant in the clothes closet with one of my auto seeds, with intentions of putting the light on cycle for the first plant/bagseed still and since it's an auto I think it will do it's own thing no matter what I do as long as it gets water and some sort of light? or do you think I should just leave it at one plant in there for now? I'll throw some pics up tomorrow. Regarding my hydro plant, I made a couple threads in absolute beginners and hydroponic forums asking people if I should cut off the colored roots since I have a good amount of healthy root growth coming in around it now. I got very little to no feedback and decided to go ahead and cut the roots while washing my res out just recently. Hopoing this ends up being for the better. resevoir ppm at 700 atm. there's some yellow coloring in the middle of a few fan blades but I think it's from the humidifier/magnifying effect as it's only on a few top blades and on that side of the box where the humidifier intake is. Gonna leave it be for unless it gets much worse as it's already set only being on for 15 minutes with 1 hour breaks in between. main bud site in the middle looking better. i don't know all the characteristics of a 'cola' but it's not like... bullet shaped yet.. have only been flowering a couple weeks though. was showing sex for a week+ prior to switching to 2700k, i'm not sure when flowering 'officially' starts on an auto plant but I put my 2700k cfl in on 6/3. Was only showing pistols from preflower sites until a few days after the 2700k light was inserted I believe. I really noticed the plant start to kill off lower leaves from that point and it started moving bud sites up to the canopy level.
Don't worry about the bagseed heredity. Sometimes they come from plants that had great potential but were just not raised well. It may not be good to introduce a new plant and run the risk of introducing some contamination, virus or bug into your controlled environment. As it is now, you can tailor the environment to the flowering plant's best advantage. You are getting close to the end and there is no point in taking chances. I also believe that from now on the roots can be left undisturbed if you are using an airstone. Don't worry about some leaf yellowing, it is typical. Even with an auto flower plant, the harvest day can vary. It's really hard to leave them alone during the final weeks. You will be astonished at the bulking up that will begin in about three weeks. Try to be patient and you will congratulate yourself when you are enjoying the results in August. Then, start again immediately before you begin to forget things and the second time will be even better without a doubt.
sounds good, will leave the bagseed/soil plant solo it's looking really good/green other than the 2 retarded fan leaves from my fim attempt that look like someone's hand with 3 finger tips cut off. I think I should see sex soon I need to check my journal for when I started it. you are right about the bud size gaining mass, even with all the stress i've put her through I'm very happy to see her start to bear fruit. The rapid ph rising issue still exists, i'm starting to think this isnt from the dead roots and I may be transfering a micro amount of the ph-7 solution I use to recalibrate my digi ph meter into my res via the meter itself. I wipe it off but I tested this by taking 2 cups of fresh RO water, calibrating my meter, wiping it off/shaking it off like i usually would and then putting it back to the fresh RO water... watched the PH slowly but surely drop to 7.0 over the course of 10 minutes. will make sure i'm super carefull during my next res wash, will do it tomorrow or late tonight if i get bored.
have been putting my resevoir top offs to 900ppm and I'm fairly sure the yellow spots have stopped progressing. after res wash tonight/tomorrow I will bring the soup to mid-high 900's.
didnt wash yesterday, will wash res today. topped off with ppm in the high 900's and gave the soil plant some water this morning@ 400ppm.
With a small tank, I try to stay around 900 ppm. Also, my experience has been that washing the reservoir is unnecessary as long as it is flushed on a regular basis. I generally have some mold, nutrient scum, dead roots, bits of growing medium and maybe even a few mosquitoes in there and it doesn't seem to hurt a thing. I used to obsess about tank condition but now I just flush every two weeks and everything goes well with my 4-gallon setup. I believe that the plants like to be left undisturbed as much as possible. Of course, what you are doing is obviously working well. I'm really enjoying your posts and I just wanted to share. I have also experienced unexplained ph fluctuations occasionally. I just keep adjusting until the problem goes away as it always does. I think it is usually nutrient related, but as long as you don't let the ph runaway, and keep it adjusted, the plants will be okay. I always experience a steady ph rise for several days after I add a sweetener such as molasses. I am now using agave nectar during the final month. Agave nectar is easier for me to control and doesn't leave that weird molasses scent overtone in the finished product.
funny, after reading your last post. i realized my 'washing' the res never really involved washing it other than rinsing it out really well, and rinsing it with h2o2 and maybe a wipe down from a paper towel. i actually washed the res with dish soap yesterday when I flushed everything out. Only mistake I can think of this time is that I just let the roots sit in fresh RO water that had h2o2 in it and then ph balanced. I did NOT flush out hte growth medium this time or upper roots in the lower part of hte net pot. I figured I didn't need this since my last flush was only 5 days ago. ph was in the high 6's this morning, re balanced to 5.4-5.5'ish range before heading out for some work. 8 hours later im at 7.0... (verified with the colored drops, my digi ph meter is not malfunctioning) it never gets above 7.0 I feel it HAS to be from some previous exposure to my ph-7solution used to calibrate my ph meter. should i rinse my digi ph meter off in alcohol? I have not calibrated in a few weeks now but I cannot nip this damn ph problem in the butt... one other thing is I can say it takes a larger quantity of the PH down concentrate to get the soup down to 5.5 after several days w/o wash and being topped off daily than it does right after a wash. i'd say i'm using more than 3x the amount of PH down after a week to get it to 5.5 than I am after day 1.
only other thing I can think of is if sparkletts water has something in it... it's at 8-15ppm when fresh.. I am fairly sure it's RO water but probably has trace elements added for taste.. possibly a ph buffer added? considering getting some distilled water from the grocery store.
since i cannot get a hold of my PH issue I am wondering what it could possibly be. I know I recently increased nutes because of yellow spots in the middle of the leaf thinking it was deficiency. maybe it was not deficency and i've been burning it and this is making it worse? i dunno, made a thread here about the ph problem: http://forum.grasscity.com/hydropon...tant-ph-problem-please-help.html#post11080076 and then another thread about the yellow leaves with pics here: http://forum.grasscity.com/absolute...help-yellowing-leaves-veins.html#post11080094
a few pics of the clothes closet after i set it up. its a few days old now and the soil plant is a bit bigger than the up close aerial shot of the one seen here. few updated pics of the hydro girl too w/ some bud shots.
Yellowing (Chlorosis) - Chlorosis is a yellowing of leaf tissue due to a lack of chlorophyll. Possible causes of chlorosis include poor drainage, damaged roots, compacted roots (see Root Bound below), high alkalinity, and nutrient deficiencies. Nutrient deficiencies may occur because there is an insufficient amount in the soil or because the nutrients are unavailable due to a high pH. **Note- Always check the pH before increasing nutrient level. In the last few weeks of flowering a yellowing of the leaves is completely normal as the plant uses up all stored nutrients. sounds familiar... haha.... I think this started right after I cut the roots that I thought were causing the PH issue... raising the PPM was probably a bad call on my end. my wife is sleeping and I cannot flush the soup right now to lower the ppm but I will later this morning. ill drop it back down to 700 and see if it's at least a bit more managable. the more I think about it, beforehand it was rising from 5.5 to 6.3-6.4 after 6 hours, now it's 6.8-7 so I think I'm on track here....??? external reinforcement is always nice grasscity!