Well, reading all these howto's I thought I might as well contribute what I know about marijuana, and so far that is what not to do. I have never grown marijuana or anything for that matter but I have 2 technical degrees and I thought how hard could it be. First of all let me tell you it takes a really long time to grow pot. Okay, maybe a watched pot never boils (lol) but I wish the weeds in my yard grew this slow. I started in mid September and I don't think I am even close to harvest. I have spent over $1000 and have yet to harvest a single bud. Every time I go to Home Depot I can't seem to get out w/ out giving up $70 or $80 bucks and don't get me started on how much money I have dropped at my LGS (local grow shop). I have collected a plethora of growing crap. Right now I need to go to Walmart to get ice cube trays for easy cloning and another watering can, one for flowering and one for veg. I have a ton of this Earth Juice product. Boy that is a scam – those fuskors made a different Earth Juice formula for every stage of pot growth and sometimes 2. I bought 4 of these cool wire shelving units @ $90 a pop thinking it would be perfect because the plants would drain well then I found out that most people use catch trays. That would be good because then I could maybe even reuse some of that over priced Earth Juice that I just let go onto the floor. BTW I found a local farm store has Earth Juice at half the price of my LGS. My first plan was to grow using fluorescent lights so I spent $300+ on all these fluorescent lights from my LGS only to later have them tell me I don't want to flower w/ fluorescent. Shit! So now I need a hps. They had 400 watt on sale but I was overly concerned about power usage and opted for a 250 watt that actually cost more than the sale price of the 400 watt. I am still kicking myself for that one and thinking about just going down there and buying the 400 watt so I don't feel that pang of disgust every time I look at my 250 watt. I started w/ bag seed, a debatable move but it's what I had. All 10 seeds germinated and grew. Only 3 turned out to be female. I let them veg too long but honestly don't think that is my fault. Veg implies growing so I grew them to the height I wanted. Flowering implies veg stops (they stop growing) and they push flowers. Boy was that wrong. When I changed to 12/12 they took off. So 3 weeks into flower I was starting to run out of room in my new cool shelving units. I just read a post on FIM vs pinching and within an hour decide that is my solution. I run into my grow room thinking I know my shit and start trying to pinch the tops of my 3 plants – the top bud came right off 2 of them. Now I have them tied over. Always sleep on major decisions w/ your plants. Cloning – Before I put my plants into flower I need to take clones for my next grow. So i go to my LGS and buy a humidity dome, heating pad, rockwool cubes and of course Earth Juice cloning gel and Earth Juice catalyst. They tell me what part of the plant to cut then stick it in the gel then stick it in the rockwool that is soaked in the catalyst. I now know they meant to dilute the catalyst first. I used most of the bottle on 5 cubes. I figured out my mistake pretty fast but it was done so I decided to let it ride. It only took a couple of days before they began to mold. A week later I thought it might be prudent to take more clones. I take 10 more in peat pellets so 15 total hoping for 5 - 8 to make it. I kept enough water in the tray so that the cloning medium was touching the water. The catalyst drained out of the 5 rockwool cubes into the tray and soon the mold covered the entire tray and started to grow on the other clones. 3 weeks later 2 of the rockwool clones left and no roots so I plant them anyway. One of the peat clones has roots, still waiting on the others. After 2 weeks realizing that the mold was out of control I bought fungicide. If the fungicide doesn't kill them the mold would. Right now if I get 2 or 3 I will be lucky. To be honest I have done a few things right which I might post about later and despite my tone I am really enjoying this hobby.
haha man am i glad i read this post...not to see how you messed up, but just because i needed a good laugh. good luck with the rest man...and maybe ask a few questions on the board??
Sounds like there is something else your story illuminates about what not to do -- start buying stuff and growing without reading a ton first. Many of the issues you ran into could have been avoided by reading and reading here and other free resources on the internet. Don't try fimming buds, you can tie them down even late into flowering (though be careful not to bend them too far as the stalks get stiff and woody as the plant matures and could snap). Just remember that mistakes and failures are just lessons in disguise. Good luck, you'll do great on your next round.
all this sounds SO familiar . I am on my first grow and havent made any major mistakes YET. I could easily screw something up on any stage now to in the future even into curing which would break my heart if i ruined everything at that point. Its hard to be patient. That was the biggest thing for me. Also i belong to a few growing forums and i think its important to read alot to distinguish good information from mis information. Alot of people say different things perhaps unintentionally. But i try and weed through it all. I think its funny your going to walmart for the ice cube trays. I just did it this weekend. Are you building the cloning thing made out of ice cube trays for bottles? I made mine sunday and semi tested it.
Great Post. It illustrates the point "haste makes waste". The art of growing is an exercise in patients. I know i have learned alot about patients since i started growing. The 2 months it takes to flower cant be rushed and if you try you will fail. Even though you have made a substantial capital investment in your setup you will will forget all that hardship with the first puff. and all will be good again. Keep it up, success is always checkered by failures. I came into this hobby with some experience with creating and maintaining reef tanks. In the reef hobby we NEVER EVER listen to the LFS(local Fish Store) and i suspect its the same with LHS( local Hydro/grow shops). They prefer to sale over educate. There is nothing in this or any hobby that is more crucial to success than patients and fuck loads of research. GooooooooooGLE rules! Good luck and take er easy!
sorry to hear about your grief dude.. Regarding your flourescents not being good for flowering, if they are warm, not cool or daylight flouros, you can certainly use them to supplement your 250 hps..try and place them so the buds down low are getting the light. I hear you about the earth juice too, you can go broke buying nutes. I always use half what they say to, as someone here was smart enough to point out they wan t you to use as much as possible so you have to go buy more..Since adjusting my ph and using half strength nutes, burning my girls has become a thing of the past, and they are nice and healthy. always read the damn instructions on the bottle.. I fried a prized lady using cha-ching because i was to lazy to read the container and didnt realize it is to be used every other watering.. Check out growbot's thread about cloning, its very informative and if you want to read up on flouros, kamelredlight has an excellent thread you should check out..to learn about fimming/topping, check out dierwolf's thread. There's all sorts of usefull info on this forum, read up brother and good luck with your ladies...
even if those floros are cool white, (are they t5's?) you can use them in conjuntion with the hps for flower. it'll be closer to "full spectrum". and your story sounds so much like mine from the last hobby before growing which was nitro powered r/c cars. i spent over $3000 in four months, just to find out how much of it was overpriced (before i discovered ebay) and 80% of it i didn't need. but i agree with the credo- mistakes are lessons in disguise. i love that one.
LOL shit man! Im an engineer, my spelling sucks! And some times spell check makes me look like a retard.
Yeah, like the joke about a man who runs into a doctor's office and says, "Nurse, I have to see the doctor right away! I'm shrinking!" and the nurse tells him to have a seat. After a few minutes he jumps up and says, "Please nurse, I have to see the doctor! I'm shrinking!" And again she tells him to have a seat. After a few more minutes he jumps up again and says, "Nurse, I just have to see the doctor right away! I really am shrinking!" And the nurse says, "Sir, you're just going to have to be a little patient." (Rimshot) (groan)