I'm using an AeroGarden Space Saver 6. I have 4 plants and they're all really healthy looking. They're about 4 weeks old but they're already about to outgrow the AeroGarden they're in! They're on the 6th leaf set, is that too early to stunt them? Would that cause them to bud sooner? I really can't have them very tall at all, because I don't have anything else to put them in and these lights are on a timer and everything. I'm way too lazy to grow any other way, so hopefully this will produce some alright yields.
most people who use non auto-flowering plants in aerogardens will flower them after 1-2 weeks to keep them small,or lst them,if your plants are already 4 weeks old and you havent even started flowering them yet your going to have troubles.
I take that back they're actually only 3 weeks old. Here are some pictures I just took. They just got 7 pointed leaves, as you can see from the pictures. The first one is a picture of the top of the plant, the second is a picture of the new stems that are starting to grow in at the joints of the old stems, and the last one is just an overall picture. As you can see the two on the right are bigger than the other two. The one on the bottom left corner was started a week after the other 3 so that's why it's noticeably smaller.
those brown spots on the plants is not a good sign your lacking something. reference the link in my signature.
I just stunted the tallest two by pinching off the smallest leaves at the very top with some tweezers. I made sure not to get any of the stems below it or anything. Should I go to a 12/12 lighting pattern now? Should I leave the lights off for a while to force budding even sooner?
Your first attempt is going to fail if you simply leave them as is. But since you say the ag is all you want to do, you may want to cut your losses and retry on an autoflower strain, the shorter and smaller, the better. Would suggest searching on aerogarden grows across the forum - good luck!
I decided I'm going to go get a HPS light today. Do you get them from hardware stores? Anyway, I'm going to 12/12 that. That should produce some bud?
Ok, someone has to tell you the details, so it might as well be me since I made the same mistake. Again I'd really recommend reading up on ag grows across the forum (lighting threads too). First off, look in your res. By now you probably have a pretty good root mass going. It will get even bigger, and each plant's roots are tangled up with the others. The ag res is *very* small and can't support several full grown plants. Even if you could manage to grow them out all the way (not), your tangled root ball will eventually become so large that it will be pushing out the res - you couldn't get enough water to it at all. Sure death to all your plants. Secondly - you can't possibly grow all those plants in there without the leaves completely shading each other out, and they will definitely grow *way* outside the ag's light coverage. You might be able to get away with one (and I mean one) regular plant in there if you lst carefully, but as someone else said it is too late for that - and again, you have several in there so it wouldn't have worked to start with. That said, here's what I did after all the above dawned on me... I pulled the plants downward through the holes (there was no way I could separate roots, so couldn't pull them upward) very carefully - the branches are still very pliable at this point so if you do it slowly they will fit thru the little holes. But first of course, you have to take the plastic things off from around the base. I put them in a large prepared res all stuck together (I had 5)... coaxed one to each corner and left one in the middle. Added bloom lights, switched to 12/12 - ended up w/2 males and 3 females. Cut the 2 males, which left nasty dying roots mixed in with the girls healthy ones, but there was nothing else to be done for it. Now they are at harvest point, but only because I did all the above. So again... you say you want to stick w/just the ag - again I would suggest cutting your losses and starting up an auto or two in there. If you're considering buying another light, then things could turn out differently... but only if you transfer and provide them w/what they need - which moves you from the ag only setup to yet another setup. Think about it! Good luck!
This is a really old thread but I'll reply for anyone who might be reading this and thinking about using an Aerogarden for the 1st time grow. I'm sure a lot of first-time growers after researching the cost involved in a serious indoor grow think this is an affordable option. Really, not so much. If you never grown before indoors a lot can go wrong and there are several issues with an Aerogarden which increase your odds of failure. The 1st is the size. It's just too small. Growers will want to fill all your seedpods with a plant. Doing this will certainly set you up for failure. The roots will quickly outgrow the tank size. The leaves will all shade each other because the plants are growing so close together. Then there is the problem with the size of the tank. It's also too small and you're going to have problems controlling your nutrient level, pH, TDS and temperature. Any which of these can cause big problems. Then there are the problems with the supplied nutrients themselves. If someone is going to be doing this on the cheap by using an Aerogarden, they are probably going to buy the "grow anything" pods, which don't come with seeds so you can use your own, but they do come with an included bottle of fertilizer. It's miracle grow. Anyone who has ever used miracle grow to grow weed knows that this is a big problem. You can't use one nutrient from start to finish. The nutrient levels are wrong across-the-board and again you are setting yourself up for failure. Finally, there is the light. Just not enough wattage. The lights range between 20 W - 40 W LED. This is on a scale of at least 10 times less than what you actually need to grow 6 plants or more. I see above that someone else talked about using an auto flowering strain which will grow shorter. I've never done this but I got to wonder why you would want to? As the old saying goes, anything worth doing is worth doing right. Using an Aerogarden is doing it wrong and I guess, maybe there are some people that I figured out how it can be done? I don't know but again, why would you want to limit yourself and risk so many problems. So here is how I use an Aerogarden and it works pretty well. Once I sprout seeds I put them into the Aerogarden. This allows me to grow 9 seedlings for about 10 days. I can then pick the 6 strongest. Any longer than 2 weeks and the roots start getting tangled up. Another great use is cloning. I take cuttings when my plants are in vegetative stage. I then transplant to the Aerogarden and continue a vegetative light cycle in the Aerogarden. My grow room can then be placed in a 12/12 light cycle for blooming the mother plants. Because it's going to take a little while for rooting to occur on these clones, you have a lot more time in the Aerogarden before you start getting into issues with the roots tangling up. This is a good thing as you can leave them in the Aerogarden for a solid month or more before you start getting into problems with the roots growing into each other. By this time, my grow room should be done flowering, it's time to harvest and I have clones ready to go into the grow room. Rinse and repeat.
Yes, please don't use an aerogarden for an entire grow. It takes serious light and space to grow significant harvests indoors. The only thing I could see those being great for is a clone machine. If you rigged a humidity dome it would actually make a great clone machine if you had one laying around.