Hello All, This is my first post, thanks in advance for your advice and thoughts. I've learned a great deal here and on other boards and I hope to share my experiences and observations after my first grow. I'm currently in the 7th week and I've run into a bit of trouble with my plants, which I'll detail shortly. The setup: 3x3 tent growing in garage (heat issues), although I do have intake from outside and exhaust back into garage (unfortunately) 2 x 300 watt LED lights started with 8 plants, different strains, most of them clones from dispensary, a few from seed. FFOF soil mostly in 2.5 gallon square pots, switched from FF to Roots nutes during early flowering Issues: My Girl Scout Cookies plant suffered from heat stress, so I increased the intake and exhaust to cool the tent. I then moved the LEDs from 8" above to 16" above. I then started noticing my Citrus Sap (GG4 x Tangie) had some small pests in the soil, so I started treating it for fungus gnats. That is a small plant so I noticed that the soil was not drying out very quickly, and likely invited the gnats in. A related issue with some of the plants was that I was overwatering since I'd give them a week and they weren't drying out. I then saw that the leaves were getting very dark green with yellow tips, so diagnosed that as nitrogen toxicity. I went on a one week trip to the Northwest and came back and my Headband and Sour D were in bad shape (wilted, dead leaves), underwatered and who knows what else. I watered them thoroughly and hope I can salvage some kind of harvest from them. So, at this point, I am harvesting in 2-3 weeks probably and hope to have some buds I can use. I'm looking forward to my second grow but here are some of my takeaways: 1. Don't grow in summer again. Ever. Gets too hot in there (as hot as 91 but consistently in the low 80's during day even with fans turned up) 2. Watch over feeding 3. Watch over watering, especially indoors. I never had that issue outdoors with the heat from the sun drying the soil out quickly. 4. Grow less plants, consider particular strains e.g. my Skunk #1 which has a reputation as being pest resistant, is doing great despite my fuck ups lol 5. Consider smart pots indoors - I think it will dry out quicker than plastic pots and I won't have to deal with them getting root bound 6. bottom line - be more observant and respond quickly! Do you all have any other advice or thoughts from what I've said here? Any ideas are welcome. Thanks.
Thanks Ryan for your reply. I have been growing with GalaxyHydros. I started with one in veg and then added a second one during flowering. I thought since they were LED I wouldn't have to worry about heat or could get them close to the plants but that was not the case, so I've had to make some adjustments. I posted this information on another site and they mentioned I may have nutrient lockout given the fact the soil on a few of the plants are not drying out. Any advice on that? I've tried flushing once already.
with the high temps you mentioned above i dont know why your soil wouldn't be drying out every few days. Especially in 2.5 gallon pots. I wont be able to help you regarding any sort of nutrient stuff. It is still something i have to dial in myself. Looking back over your original post, You said you have intake from outside. Is this a fan blowing air into the tent? If it is you may want to consider using that fan as another exhaust. I have a setup similar to yours (smaller tent) in my apartment and i do not have the means to exhaust outside. I run a 6" fan connected to a filter to cool my LED setup. With the fan cranking at full speed i can get the temps to about 1 F over whatever room temp is. I usually run it at half speed though. I would think you could accomplish the same if u can move more air out.
Thanks, Ryan! That helps and its good to know others are doing things similarly yet also differently for their situation.
Yea, ADD DRAINAGE. That's one thing I learned after a few first grows. Ready bag soils aren't too ready IMO. FFOF FFHP FFLW all come with perlite. I still add crap load of perlite and some coco, clay pellets and other drainage helping material. Soil gets compacted after watering. Everytime you water your soil goes down a bit. If you dump out of a container then it goes down even more. So you can end up with compacted soil in bottom, slower root development and slower soil drying, someone's even root rot. Add to your drainage. That way, you water more often, you add smaller amount of nutes but more consistently and always flush after 3-4 weeks of full strength nutes depending on size of pot. Once you get the system down, it's hard to run into issues. I grow in summer where it's 95-100 outside. I have lights on during night and off during day. I always hook up an AC with thermostat and no issues whatsoever.
Good points, Sheldon. I put in some perlite but apparently it's not enough. It's funny but even though I'm still finishing up this grow I'm really looking forward to the next one.
It's called the itch, I'm drying the current grow and can't wait to go buy or rent a storage and grow the crap out of it. Got so many ideas don't know which to do. Whatever you do, pick strains carefully and as you said it, less plants better. You pay more attention, no overcrowding and less work, result can be just as good if done right.
I'm not bitching here but why would you ever flush soil? Do crop farmers flush prior to harvest? Do tobacco farmers flush? This is such an urban myth that has somehow maintained its traction when it comes to soil. Hydroponics? In some cases yes absolutely.
Lol you're forgetting crop farmers tobacco growers and blahblahblah don't grow in 2-3-5-7 galling pots. You water and your salt build up washes away. In a god damn pot that you're feeding weekly, that stuff doesn't go anywhere, plant uses what it can and the rest mostly stays in and saturates the soil, hence FLUSH IS MANDATORY. If you're one to need to see things for themselves to believe, so be it. Feed your soil and don't flush, your plants will tell you what's wrong. Also you don't really flush in hydro, that's called changing reservoir water.
I look at it as feeding the soil and not the plant. I used 5 gallon fabric pots with organic soil and feeding/watering from a heavily areated barrel with amendments in a filter sock. Flushing would mess up the bio in my system but with synthetics it wouldn't matter what bio you wash out of the syst. I'm harvesting this week and never flushed for 11 weeks.
Sure if you don't feed weekly, no need to flush. If soil is rich enough to keep it going for 3 months then yes why flush. However most other folks do add fertilizers weekly and you can't not flush. Unless you got a very large pot.
Oh and since we're posting pix of our plants, and these are all flushed, I wouldn't have gone more than 5-6 weeks without flush with these girls.
Plenty of people have grown the same thing without flushing so don't get all Mr. know it all and say that you have to because you don't even if you're using synthetic's. Next time don't use the flash because it makes your bud look way stickier than what it really is, see what I mean
I've been growing for 20+ years and I always considered flushing a waste of time. Why would you want you plant in washed - out soil for it's last week or 2? That's when she needs it most! Just my opinion. Peace, Comrades.