Hi all, Going to be growing Runtz in FFOF soil. LED light. This is an important grow for my psyche since I'm coming off of two failures. My first grow ever (Chemdawg Daddy) went perfectly and ended up with a great product/harvest. My second grow was GG4 and I nute burned and overwatered her to death; ended up with widespread budrot in Week 7 of flower. I then started a strawberry cough seedling and overwatered her as well. Learning the hard way over and over again! So this is my comeback grow - I'm growing a backup seedling in a solo cup as well to ensure I don't mess it up. To avoid my prior major mistakes, I am going to do complete wet-to-dry watering cycles on this grow and I'm only going to feed once per week at 1/2 strength once I get to flower. Here is Day 1, just sprouted this morning!
with all FFOF growers on here I advise caution and to add 25% perlite to that FFOF, its hot stuff and many growers like to re use with just adding a fresh scoop at each grow good luck
good luck friend i still screw up after saying the same thing as you lol just stick to your guns that is a huge pot to start in with ffof best of luck personally i would have started in a solo with potting mix then transplanted to make sue she didnt burn but you should be fine and did you add perlite? you may regret that too but thats just me and i am no expert
I actually have another sprouted seed (same strain) in a solo cup with some additional perlite as a side experiment/insurance plan haha! It is right next to the big pot should anything go awry.
Fwiw, I planted a clone in half ocean forest and half happy frog, saved about 1/4 of the happy frog for the top. She was put out side. That girl hasn't needed anything except some high P and K nutrients during flower. Pics are from about aonth ago. I haven't had a chance to get an update yet. I advised my dad to only use the granular nutrients at half strength until he saw any deficiencies and he hasn't as far as I know.
Alright, here she is day 4. I've been doing much better on wet-to-dry cycles which has been my main issue in the past. Seems like it's much easier to fix underwatering/undernuting than overwatering/overnuting as long as you're keeping a close eye on things. There is definitely an art to watering! Will be doing the old knuckle trick and feeling the pot by weight as she gets bigger and into veg/flower.
Day 6. Been watering every 2-3 days. I check the soil moisture level with a combination of the knuckle test, pot weight, and an analog moisture meter. They all seem to be correlating. She appears to be healthy, leaves pointing upwards, second node starting to come in. I'm hopeful she'll "take off" in the coming days! After my disaster GG4 grow, I bought a pH meter. My soil pH is about 6.7 (slurry test) and the water going in is consistently 6.2.
I think she's finally starting to take off! I let her dry out really well before watering today. Third node starting to come in. I'll eventually top back down to that node to create the manifold!
Here she is Day 10! 3rd node coming in, 4th node just popped up. Once she's at about 5 or 6 nodes, I will top her!
The advice given to me was to wait until node 5. The difference being I don't count the cotyledons as a node. So if you do go to 6.
Day 12! She's coming right along. 5th node is just starting to peek through (can't see in the picture). I'm thinking I'll wait until the 5th node starts making some headway (maybe a week) before I top! Then I'll tie down the two new mains and top again once they hit their 3rd node. Then I will flip to flower! I'm finding it gradually easier to let the soil dry out before watering again. As I learned from my last grow, less is more for both watering and fertilizer. I'm hopeful that I'll avoid the overwatering/overfertilizing/root rot disaster that happened last time!
Does anyone know what these spots are (see arrow)? These are pictures from this morning and this evening. They seem to be confined only to the leaves of the second node right now.
Well, overnight the leaf discoloration progressed quite rapidly, so I ended up trimming them off. Hopefully that wasn't a mistake, I am a bit nervous about doing so while she is so young. Not quite sure what is going on, but here are the pictures of the sick leaves. Water pH is 6.2 and soil pH is around 6.7, seems too early to be having nutrient issues. I hope it's not a mold/fungus issue, the humidity/temp has been in range. The rest of the seedling looks healthy for now, but this is unwelcome news. Just can't win! If this grow goes south, I think I'll probably take a break for a while since this will be 3 failures in a row!
It may just be too hot for it still. But steady as she goes, she'll show you if she's happy or not. When it comes to trimming I tend to leave them on till there's almost nothing left. The leaves are food stores for when conditions aren't perfect, when you remove them it will take from other places and on seedlings you definitely don't want that.
Thank you all for your help! She seems to have done okay after taking those leaves off. I made some adjustments to my ventilation to drop the humidity a bit and I think she liked it! She's got the typical "praying" look going that I was looking for.
She's starting to grow with some vigor now! Do you all wait until the 5th node is growing out before topping? Or just go for it as soon as you can see it?
Alright, went for the topping. Always feels so wrong. I'll give her a few days to recover then clear off the stuff from nodes 1 and 2. Plan to train and top each new growth tip at the third node, then will flip to flower. Hopefully she does well!