My first girl--ever. Started the grow September 20. I used root organic soil, bio-bloom and fish mix. Was on 12/24 for little over a month and then 24/24. Does this plant look OK? The flowers appear a little whitish/gray? I have horrible color blindness and monitoring pH and plant color has really been a problem. I was thinking they would be more green--is this normal? Of course green/browns are the mail colors I have problems with. I had a couple yellow leaves on the bottom and some whithered and fell off. Watering with pH 6-7 tap water mixed with bio-bloom and fish mix. Got feminized seeds from Nirvana. Trying to monitor run off water but it is usually discolored from the soil and affects pH color and not sure how to fix that. Is this water typically clear enough to get a good pH color? Using this light: Any advice for this struggling newbie would be appreciated.
The shape looks ok, but I can't see any colour because everything is pink. What do you mean by 12/24 & 24/24? The first number is the amount of light hours and the second figure is the number of dark hours. Is that what you mean? The most common being 12/12, 18/6, & 24/0
I believe I did the light right but put in the wrong numbers. I started with 20 hours of light on four off for over a month during veg and then switched to 12 on 12 off for flower. Got any answers for the other questions? I could use some advice and someone with normal color vision to look at the photos to tell me if the plants look OK or not. Thanks.
Don't post pics taken under LED lighting. We use Roots soils too and they will feed a plant for a long time, but once the plant has used up the nutrients in the soil, the feeding is on you. If you don't feel comfortable handling nutes full scale, just pop that plant into a larger pot with some fresh soil. The fresh soil will feed it until harvest easily and you won't have to worry about it. Keeping the pH on the high end of the scale is not bad and, from what I understand, aids in the uptake of Magnesium and Calcium. Lower leaves yellowing and dying off are common during flower and actually, your plant will basically shed before it's time to harvest. By the time the trichomes are ripe, it'll look more like bud on a stick than a plant. LOL That rich blue/green color is what you're shooting for as far as it being basically healthy, but the plant goes through a lot of changes during flower as it stops sending nutrition/energy to the foliage and devotes it to developing out the buds. But as far as giving nutes go, the longer the plant has been in that particular soil, the less nutrition is left in it. We run a 10 week flower cycle. About 2 weeks before time to pull, I take clones off the plants I've been growing to replace the ones I'll take. This gives me my restock plants and gives the plants I've taken them from time to heal up and back to doing their thing. Once my clones have roots, they go into Solo cups and stay there until the plant is larger than the cup. From there, into 1 gal. containers. Each time, the plant needs to be larger than the container it's in before a transplant, but from 1 gal. to a 5 gallon bucket. They go in the buckets about 2 weeks before I plan to put them into the flower room. They have time to re-establish the roots in the bucket and are working with fresh soil at the time of the light flip, and we generally don't even give nutes until about the 4th week of the flower cycle. The stuff is really good and feeds for a long time. It's ridiculously expensive, but saves me having to do a lot of feeding myself...so hey, it's worth it. We run quite a few plants at a time and the more plants you grow, the more work involved. Anything that keeps me from having to work on them is good in my book. LOL But your plant looks good....as far as everything but the color and I can't tell about that because of the purple cast from the LEDs. If you'll repost some pics under natural lighting, we can tell you how you're doing on that too. Looks like you've done a great job for this to be your first plant. Congrats. But when it comes time to harvest, you probably need to let somebody else look at the trichomes due to the color blind thing. You need at least 25% amber showing to pull, but the longer you let them go and the more amber you get, the more potent your plant. Hope it turns out great for you though. TWW
Yeah I noticed a reddish tint to the photo. I'll have to take some more photos and see if I can get rid of that. Not sure what is causing it. Maybe too much light. OK..try this photo...Thanks.
Wow thanks WW. My idea was to supplement the lack of nutrients in the soil with pH balanced water with the bio-bloom and fish mix added to it. Would it be better to just transplant into new soil or should I keep watering with the aforementioned? Would you like to share the flowering nutrients you're using? So I guess my main question is would it be better to water with nutrients in the water or just transplant the entire plant? It is presently in a 10 gallon felt grow container. I didn't know what size to get so I went big. Trichomes are going to be a big problem for me. I know there are experienced growers on this site who can just look at a plant and say one more week, two more weeks. I need to fine another way to tell if it is harvest time and I've got some anxiety about it because I know that is an important time and I don't want to screw up at the very end with all the time and money invested. The last photo I took there were no LED lights going at all...just the flash from the camera to cut thru the darkness. Bud on a stick makes perfect sense from the pictures I've seen. I've read a little about cloning but since this is my first plant I don't really need to yet. I'm going to see how it turns out and I've got some extra feminized AK48 seeds. If it turns out great I may read more about cloning and your advice really helped on how to do that and what time. A thousand thank yous for your time and response.
It looks like you've been in flower for a few weeks and they look pretty healthy. You've got some yellowing leaves, but for the most part they're a nice healthy-looking green. I'm guessing you're checking pH with color-coded strips, which can be a pain in the ass, even for people with normal vision. I'd recommend a digital monitor. Oakton and Bluelab make vary reliable monitors that aren't too expensive. I've had the Oakton monitor for a month or so and it's worked flawlessly so far. Before that I wasted about $50 on cheap monitors that weren't reliable at all. White Widow autoflower x4
Thanks Charlie. I too bought a digital soil monitor and it didn't work at all. I am using pH color strips and there are several places I've read these can easily be used to check the water run off after watering, but the water I've found is not clear enough to get a good reading. So I just check the pH of the water I'm watering with and go from there. Thanks for the tip--with all the soil testers out there it is really hard to decide which to get and in general the reviews always seem to be negative compared to test strips. Appreciate you taking the time to talk to a newbie. Still waiting for a response to my question about whether to continue to water with nutrients or just transplant the entire plant into new soil. Transplanting would be hard as I've got the plant growing on string horizontally as you can see. Plus I used a soil container bigger than I should have...ten gallons. Lastly, if any of the computer geeks out there can tell me how to edit my name to one more appropriate I would appreciate it. Might have to re-register to get rid of 56ce26 and I'm not sure how that even came about unless it was added because the name WeedWhacker was already taken.
It's my belief that transplanting during flowering can slow flower growth and decrease yields, but it's just a theory. Like you said, you also have the hinderance of your string net. Bottled nutrients can give your plant everything they need to finish flowering. The 10 gallon pot they're in is more than big enough, unless it's an ungodly large plant. If it was me, I'd use bottled nutes. Roots has an organic two part system with supplements that looks pretty simple. I'll be using their soil and nutes for my newest round of plants. In regards to your name, I'm pretty sure GC doesn't allow name changes. It might be best to start a new profile. White Widow autoflower x4
Thanks Charlie. It is a medium sized plant. One last question and I'll stop bugging you. From what I've read, the Roots Organic soil does not have enough nutrients to carry the plant thru the entire four month grow period. Some say it does and some say it does not. Would it be OK for me to add BioBizz flower to the Roots Organic soil without any problems? I know the Roots Organic soil already has a lot of nutrients in it..just not sure if it needs a little supplementing the last two months of the grow or not. Man there are THOUSANDS of people touting their perfect soil mixes and they are all different!! Do I need anything else besides the BioBizz flower like Cal mag plus, molasses, or anything else? Just trying to keep it simple. Geeze, some people have concocions of 20 ingredients for flowering!!! Lastly, trying to find the magic balance between the watering schedule and the nutrient schedule. According to the Bio Bizz schedule you give the nutrients once a week. I'm hoping once a week won't be over watering. I do again have the plant in felt grow container. Totally confused about why people may want to "flush" a plant with pure water mid-grow too. Maybe to try to get rid of obvious plant problem? Thanks for helping out a doom ass with a lot of questions.
These will be my first cannabis plants in soil. My others have been in a coco/perlite mix which gets nothing but bottled nutes. I'm not familiar with BioBizz at all. I'll be using the Roots soil when after I transplant and switch to flower. I'm not counting on it having everything necessary for an 8-12 week flowering period. I'll have nutes and supplements on hand and will feed if and when necessary. With decent soil you shouldn't need CalMag. Molasses would be a supplement used during flowering or flushing, but it's optional. Yes, you'd flush to get rid of an obvious nutrient imbalance. It's harder to do with soil than it is with coco. Once a week shouldn't be overwatering unless the roots haven't filled out the container yet. In a fabric pot with a well draining growing medium they drink a lot and dry out rather quick. Watering twice a week, once with just water and once with nutrients, wouldn't be abnormal. White Widow autoflower x4
Thanks Charlie. I notice some of the leaves are drying up some yellow and falling off. Not sure whether this is normal part of flowering or if something else is going on. Thanks for sharing your grow info. I'll keep an eye on the plant and the soil and determine if watering is better once or twice a week. You are right--it does seem to dry out rather quickly.
I'm on my first grow and about a week behind you so take this for what it's worth but im also using roots 707 soil. I went from a solo cup to 1 gal pot to 5 gal smart pots. I've been using 1/3-1/2 recommended nutes since the 1 gal pots about every other watering. Now that they're in the final pots I'll probably add nutes two out of three waterings but I'm still going to keep it around 50 percent check out my first grow/journal https://forum.grasscity.com/index.php?threads/1423342/