Hey GC, I'm from east Jersey, and started my grow with 2 plants on April 27th, and earlier this week (May 9th) I started 5 more seeds. It's been sunny for a few days, but still in the 50's degree range even now (May 14th)...I'm putting them in small flower pots (the type you find small flowers in at nurseries) with the standard Miracle Gro potting soil, and bought All Purpose plant food (20-20-20) and was going to use 1/4 strength twice a week. I also have the Miracle Gro Bloom Booster (15-30-15) for when it starts budding around August. I water the plants every 3-4 days with about 16.9 oz of water. They are in the woods in a fairly open area, and at around 4:30-5 P.M (The time I usually go there) they are in direct sunlight. I also am planning to use the LST growing method, to increase the surface area of light the plant can obtain, and to hide it better in the woods. I've been looking around for any information of outdoor grows, and it seems people's plants are mostly much larger than mine, more in indoor grows, but some outdoor grows are easily beating my 2 week old plants with theirs in general size, height, number of leaves, etc. I'm looking for any advice that could be helpful to this situation, and also about the products I'm using. Is there any way to know how to find the best place to put a plant(with the most hours of direct sunlight)? How can I incline my plants to develop into females, if even possible? Should I top and LST these plants in order to get higher yeilds, or could this simply waste time for recovery or stunt my plant's growth even worse than it already is? Is the increased yeild enough to be worth the 2 weeks of recovery? (Or at least thats how long I've heard it takes for the topping.) How important is the pH really, and how can I maintain it at the perfect 6.8-7 pH within non extraordinary means? This is my first grow, and I'd just be happy to grow a decent quantity of my own, smokable bud. I'm figuring I have 7 plants total now, and 4 could possibly be males, which leaves me 3 females. I'm hoping they will be at least 1.5 feet tall. Is a 2 ounce minimum harvest too much to expect from this type of grow? I need all the tips I can get from all you experiences growers, so let me know any answers to the questions above, and any tips you guys have found to be very important with your grows. Thanks GC! Stay Blazed
For more background info on the actual plants, they have their two "starter" leaves, and two of their first true pot leaves, which are now 3x the length of the starter leaves and about 1/2-3/4" above them. The total height of them is about 2.5-3 inches tall, and the second pair of true pot leaves is beginning to form, but are barely even visibly forming at the tip of the growth stem at this point. The plants are now about 16 days old.
50 50 chance of male female if your using standard seed. You can buy Feminized Seed and they will all be girls. Only way to know is in a few weeks when you suffer the let down of having males . Ph Balance is critical. If you dont maintain it and it gets to high or low you can kill it, and suffer from nute lock. Basically the plant shuts off feeding and then your plants go to hell till you correct it. Go to Amazon.com and look up PH Balancer. Its two chemicals and a test kit. You test then bring it up or down. Very easy to use. Make sure your testing water after you add nutes. As for your MG Soil not the perfered because it has time released nutes. Watch it on adding more nutes since MG has the time released. You can very easily over nute MG soil because of that. You can easily cause havoc over nuting a plant or just plain kill it. For your pots why small? There beating you because they have bigger pots. You can go straight form seedling to a 5 gallon pot. I just did that with my 2nd grow. Moved them from a solo cup to 2 gallon air pots. There growing fine. Bigger the pot bigger the plant gives its roots space to go out. Go get some grow bags and Fox Farm Ocean soil. Good luck!!
Thanks alot, helps more than you know. Any other tips anyone's found useful would be much appreciated.
Growing outdoors in 50* weather is to cold especially for seedlings and will slow root development and plant growth leading to possible death.... Should grow indoors till the temps outdoors get above 60-65* with optimal temps at 75-80*
Im from Brooklyn so you are one of our suburbs. Good luck with the grow. Lot of of people have problem with miracle gro. They add ferts to soil. Be careful not to over fertilize.
Some people say that feminized seeds are feminized by a chemical process and therefore is ng. Others say they offer a greater chance of turning hermie. I personally dont know. All the seeds I am currently growing have been feminized. It is an issue. It must be dealt with.