I am a newbie, i need help

Discussion in 'First Time Marijuana Growers' started by nucleo, Dec 3, 2008.

  1. Ok, here goes...

    7 Feminised Dutch Passion's Super Haze
    Hard Tap water of PH 7.8-8.5 before nuts/ph -/+
    Germination in Aerogarden Classic

    A long story short - I germinated 7 in the Aerogarden Classic medium without realising that the medium already had seeds inside - mixed between spring onions, parsley, coriander, ect...

    After a couple of days, some sprouted and i realised the other seeds which were all different for every pod they supply you with had also sprouted.

    4 out of 7 sprouted, of which 2 of the 4 that did were showing a much greater improvement (i'm talking about the super haze).

    After 2 weeks, they were maybe 1-2 inches tall. Now i know by looking at other people's grow that something was wrong with mine. So i open the sponge medium and attempted to remove any seeds or roots other than the super haze.

    I left them in the aerogarden from germination for a month using the nutrients that Aerogarden supply you with - 2 tablets every 2 week and change the water after a month.

    So when the month elapsed, without doing any research, i popped the hood off the Aerogarden and used 6 LED lights for another week. At this point i used Formulex cloning nuts since i had nothing else at the time. It was used at a 1:10 the ratio of it's full strength sine i misread the side of the intructions and put .3ml per litre instead of 3ml.

    I transplanted 2 of the healiest out of 7 to a flood and drain hydroponic system after the week had elapsed.

    The hydro system was of clay pebble medium which i had washed thoroughly in my bath tub before inserted into the flood and drain buckets.

    Being a total newbie, i didn't think rockwool was necessary so i planted them straight into the clay pebbles with roots of only about 3-4 inches long.

    This flood and drain system was also set up with LED lights peaking 6 bulbs of 15w each, mixed on a 1:5 ration being more red 660mn over the 450mn blue.

    The lights are placed 1-2 inches from the top of both plants. The timer was set to flood for 3 minutes and drain immediately after that every 3 hours.

    On the 6th week, i had received a ph meter, vitalink veg and flower nuts, liquid oxygen, liquid silicon, ph up and ph down solutions.

    I flushed the water out and changed it with new water in order to add nuts and management to the solution.

    I had also realised that my hydroponic tank was a 22 litre volume and i had only put half the water (11-12 litres) but without messing up the nuts ration. I just hadn't realised i could add another 10 litres in the tank volume.

    So on the 8th week i added another 10 litres and more nuts, however i had no ppm meter to see if i was burning them. However, i saw no sign of ph or fert burn on the tip of the leaves.

    NOTE: When i was growing in the aerogarden, these are the two that showed no sign of ph or fert burn, however the other 5 showed fert burns and also 2 of those died which also happened to be bigger than the ones in the hydro tank at the time i picked them out. Meaning the ones i kept were the healthiest and strongest maybe?

    Ok back what i was explaining - I messed up really bad with ph down and many times i had to use ph up to recaliber the ph between 5.5 - 6.5.

    I used liquid oxygen everyday except when i can't make it home (which isn't longer than 2 days).

    However, i have no heater to warm the water, which might be affecting plant growth since it's christmas - the tent is pretty warm but the water is cold.

    Also another problem i am having is that due to the fact i didnt use rockwool, when the flood and drain system operates, it sucks the plant towards the pipe that lets the water run back down into the tank. Therefore my plants move from the center of the bucket to the edge of the bucket and end up touching each other.

    Now i know this shoulds bad but, when it's flooding, i put both of my hands into the bucket and without trying to hurt the roots, i move the plants back into the center of the pots because their leaves end up overlapping each other and as you know with LEDS light penetration is poor in a situation like this.

    The other thing is, it's been almost 2 months since germination.

    24/7 LEDs have always been on, and i have changed the flood and drain system to flood for 30 minutes every 3 hours instead of only for 3 minutes. This has been altered only in the last 2 weeks.

    I would just like to know what to do. I need some advice because it looks like at this rate, ill be veging until jan and i want to switch to flowering asap.

    Then again this is a first grow, so i would like to know what you think.

    I have taken a few pics, so it gives you an idea of were i stand.

    The one on the left is 12 inches tall and the one on the right is about 8-9.

    Upon touching the stems you can small the fragrance of super haze, it smells so good you don't really want to stop smelling it. It's kinda fruity and exotic, i've never smelt anything so good.

    Sorry about the picture quality, it's only a 3M pixel phone, for future reference, i'll try to get a digital cam. Then again i would have never had thought i'd be posting here.

    These are previous to most recent - i can't fit them all in so i will reply to my own post and show you the rest i took today
     

    Attached Files:

  2. The previous two were from today aswell, so add them onto these.

    Notice the radius of the plants moving towards the outter line of the pot due to the flood and drain w/o using rockwool in the previous pics?
     

    Attached Files:

  3. I am sorry, but nobody is going to read this whole post. Well, I won't say nobody because I did, but I may be the exception.

    Too be perfectly honest I am surprised the plants have made it this far. So bravo for that. For two months old they are severely underdeveloped. I am not a huge believer in LEDs, especially the style you have, so I think that may be your problem. They look nice and healthy, but to have not even begun to grow alternating nodes after two months of veg is a problem. They ar not sexually mature yet and that should have happend 2-4 weeks ago.

    It sounds like these plants have been through a lot. If it were me I would start another grow and flip these plants to the flowering cycle. I think that regaurdless of how long you veg them you will be dissapointed with your outcome. But, it was your first grow. You were bound to make mistakes. And it looks like you learned your lessons along the way.
     
  4. I didn´t.
     
  5. I would start flowering right now.
    By the time your in your 2nd to 3rd week of flowering your plants are gonna grow a
    bunch. I would expect your plants to be at least 2 to 3 feet tall at that time.

    If your in a flood-n-drain. You should only flood as long as it takes to fill up your pots.
    Which should be 5 minutes. Plus, you should only be flooding every 3-4 hours when the
    lights are on.
    Leaving the lights on 24/7 doesn't do anything.
    When the lights are on, Your plants store all that energy and grow when the lights go off.
    I don't know much about L.E.D's but I do know that they work alright during vegg, I hope you
    have something much stronger for flowering.
    When you mix your first batch of flowering nutes, start off with about 1000 ppm's. Then raise it by 100 every week until you get to the 4th week, then start to decrease by 100 until you get to the 7th week. The 8th and 9th weeks are for flushing.

    I'm surprised that after all the problems you've had that your plants are still alive. :cool:
     

  6. I was just pondering the 24/7 lighting i didnt know why people did it, i guess it doesnt do anything, 18/6 saves electricity too, thanks for the nutes schedule also:hello:
     

  7. id love to see the source for this..... ive read nothing but the opposite from science and other growers for many years.
     
  8. yeah can this get cleared up because my plants would really appreciate knowing lol. I just took them off 24/7 and into 16/8 because they were getting a lil yellow and droopy. Green and healthy now though :D
     
  9. Some plants (not MJ) need the dark cycle. 24/0 is ideal for MJ. The only benefit to the dark cycle is increased root development.
     

  10. and a little time for the room to cool down if there is a heat issue.... i suspect this is why your plants are doing better now timid...
     
  11. Thank you for replying to my post. And yes, along the process i realised that doing this didn't just require to plant and keep fingers crossed. When people say skunk is a weed family plant, most first time growers wouldn't imagine the kind of preparations and care you have to dedicate towards these plants. When people think weeds grow in your back garden and everytime you yank them out they grow back again, doesn't mean if you grow a mj plant without giving it all the care that's needed it will produce buds and will grow like the images that circle the web.

    But yes, iv'e learnt my lesson and im going to hit on lowryder #2 to see if i can get further with them while i flower these 2.

    Sativa plants are said to be harder to grow and need more patience, however i knew nothing about the both (indica/sativa) and just decided to go for what i thought was the most pleasant smoke iv'e tried which is the super haze as you can see.

    As you can see with LEDs the bottom leaves never get much light however i can litteraly lower the lights and the leaves can touch the bulds without burning for days, but i don't think being so close would do it any good at all.

    I am going to enchance the LEDs for flowering (from 80 watts you see there to 345w) and will switch to a 4hours on - 4 hours off cycle since you convinced me i will be better off with a new grow. So for now i will experiment and will keep everyone updated. I am also going to throw in another setup on top of the 345w which will be of hanging LEDs like christmas lights all around the plants so the bottom leaves can also receive light.

    I know it sounds crazy and as you said id be better off with a hps or mh but the whole principle of my setup is to grow them without any heat emitting from the tent and without having to use extra electricity to get rid of that heat. Therefore infra-red will never pick up the heat.
     


  12. Do you mean 4 hours of light followed by 4 hours of dark?



    Paranoid much? ;)

    I wouldn't worry about heat emission if i were you. Unless you have a huge grow op and are dealing from your house you are probably not under suspicion by the police.
     
  13. Yes that's what i mean.

    And yes, i am passively paranoid, with everything i do. It's not mj related, it's just many bad things happened to me in my life when i used to be relaxed. Now i can't control it. I minimize all risk factors and eliminate them asap. Due to my knowledge, heat was an issue, and nowdays a lot of people are bored, so i would hate someone did get lucky because i was at ease.
     
  14. Never heard of anyone growing with that light cycle. Not saying it would or wouldn't work, but it seems a little complicated and unecessary to me. Any reason why you have chosen this cycle?
     
  15. i assume ur talkin 4-on 4-off for veg? MJ wont flower with only 4 hours of dark...
     
  16. Well was planning to do 4/4 for flowering but if it wont work, then i'll do a 12/12
     
  17. Ok. Changed the water which was at 1456ppm with Vitalink Veg A+B and replaced it with tap water (sorry i can't get my hands on distilled).

    The pH was 7.5 without nutrients.

    The water was about 340ppm before injection, and 1154ppm after adding Vitalink Bloom A+B.

    The pH was 6.5 after adding nutrients. So it was adjusted using 3ml of pH down which brought it to 5.4.

    Then 4ml of Liquid Silicon was added to the tank which brought it back up to 5.7/5.8.

    85w of LED Mixed spectrum to 5:1 ratio in favour of red light has been switched to 12/12.

    50w Heater was placed inside the tank and will turn on 30 minutes before the flood and drain mechanism switchs on to water the plants to warm it to 25C.

    The flood and drain timer has been reverted from a 30 minute flood to only 5 minutes before draining.

    Bamboo sticks have been placed centered and the plants are now cable tied to the stick (hopefuly due to the lack of rockwool, the sticks will now stablise the plants from moving to the outter rims of the bucket were the draining pipes are located).

    Another 250w of LEDs will be inserted later in the week and an additional christmas light style LEDs will also be put in (another 45w) to ensure the bottom part of the plants get light aswell.

    What do you guys think?
     

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