Why is growing good Marijuana so difficult?

sounds like your loving them to death
ease back and let the plant grow, you cant force feed them , even though they are just a weed, they only take what they require to live

 

It isn't hard, at all. In fact, growing is the easy part. First off, before you do anything, you need to read about shit. So, pH: pH is what your problem is. You HAVE to pH EVERYTHING. You need to buy a GOOD pH/PPM(EC/TDS) meter from online. Amazon works. Your pH should be set to 6.3. At 6.3 the plant will have ALL the nutrients it needs available to it's root system. That's your problem. You also need it to be 68-75 degrees, with relative humidity levels between 55-62%. Then, you have to LEARN HOW TO READ THE PLANT to see what problem is arising. If you're getting lockout, you need to flush the hell out of it, check the pH of the runoff, and once you get it down, then pH your solution to 6.3 & run with it.

Cal Mag lol - nobody needs a fucking bottle of ca/mg, ever. I'm a hydroponic grower, and have never once in 15 years used ca/mg. It's in your base nute line. As long as you pH your shit correctly, you'll never need it.

 

yeah, because that was exactly what he needed to hear. jesus. his problem is: HE DOESN'T PH HIS SOLUTION/WATER. pH IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING WHEN GROWING. IT DETERMINES WHAT YOUR PLANT GETS TO EAT.

 

did i ask what your opinion was?
you might re read the SOIL remark water boy
you also might ask yourself if you really know it all

 

I don’t bother with checking the ph of the tap water I use. I grow in soil. Even the few times I’ve finished a run of plants indoors I grew in soil. I prefer growing outdoors in the ground in a plot of prepared/amended living soil (full of worms etc). My indoor grows I used a good potting soil. For both indoors and out I did supplement with vegetable food and bloom food once a week. As to insects outdoors you have to deal with the bud worms/caterpillars and for that I use BT applied once a week after the plants start flowering. You can use other stuff too but I’ve always found the best defense against pests is a big healthy plant.

Obviously if you are running hydro or some other type of flood and drain style operation (rock wool cubes, coco, soilless) knowing the ph of the water you use is a must. Ph is just another factor to be controlled along with providing your plant with the nutrients it needs that it can’t get from its growing medium naturally. I’m just a grower who prefers simplicity in my methods. I’ve always managed to get a harvest. I’m no pro and I’m sure many wouldn’t want what I grow, but it suits my needs and is as good if not better than the black market cannabis available where I live. I can grow outdoors for only the cost of the seeds, and can easily harvest enough to last me till I do it again next year!

 

It's an organic grow.

 

A few years back I set out to teach myself to grow, and I also had a lot of difficulties at first (hell I still do from time to time encounter something that's a head scratch-er)

If you are getting nute lockout often, it can be several things

#1 too many nutes, or too aggressive a feeding schedule
#2 Root rot or related issues preventing uptake (can happen if soil is too dense or over-watered, basically not letting roots "air out" some)
#3 PH or pest issues (the whole point of using dirt as a medium is that it acts as a buffer to keep PH from swinging too wild as opposed to like a hydro grow where that stuff does matter a lot) but that appears to have been addressed by my fellow posters.

Without going into specifics (throw me a line in my journal, PM or w/e if you have something specific) here is how I overcame that hurdle on deficiencies.

I'm assuming you've got some sad ass plants like the ones I used to grow, and you want something a bit more impressive and higher yielding, like making the jump from this to this or similar?


Here were the biggest things that helped me move from noob to just half-ass grower over the last few years)

#1 ditching the blurple LED's I was using for more full spectrum "white" LED boards or bar lights (immediate improvement on bud size and overall growth)

#2 upgrading the actual intensity of the light, I usually have something pulling 400-600 watts from the wall per 4x4 section (I use SF-4000 lights as mains but anything that can get you at least 500 umol/s of light to the outer edges of your grow space without being too hot in the center (over 1,000 u/mol typically unless you also use high CO2 atmosphere.

#3 Ditching the feeding schedule I've seen of every major nute manufacturer, they are often too aggressive, esp if you are growing in a hot soil. I prefer to wait until the plants start showing some problem, then do a "regular" feeding, give about 24-48 hours to see if it clears, then maybe add more..

So if you notice your bottom fan leaves fading and shriveling like so
Thats the time to give a high nitrogen mix feeding (the "veg nutes" like grow big are usually high nitrogen (the first number in the 8-4-4 ratio or w/e most nutes have on the bottle, is nitrogen) Although fan leaves fading off is also natural in late flower as the plant steals nitrogen from them to power bud growth. Also stretch and pre-flower are still hungry times for the plant for nitrogen. (wait till you see baby bud sites imo before switching to a lower nitrogen "flowering" nute.

I'm assuming you have NPK covered as most major nutes do, but are you getting all the minor, ancillary compounds to the plant like magnesium and calcium (cal-mag). So for example if you are just feeding a straight N-P-K nute to the plant without mixing in some earthworm castings or cal-mag (dry soil amendments, top dressing, liquid nutes, many ways to get those elements into the soil), it will also start to show deficiency. If you just pour more high NPK nutes onto it without addressing the other compounds (if they are the cause of the deficiency), it will only make things worse.

Its not the most efficient, and it won't get you on the cover of high times being "reactive" in plant care, but you can easily be pulling 3-5oz per auto and 8+ ounces per photo once you get the hang of it, and there are people that do far better than that as well (but imo pick a method, master the basics, then branch out into more crazy stuff if you feel comfortable)

Keep it simple, don't mess with the plants if they are not showing any distress, and next time your leaves start looking funky, post a few pics and generally someone will let you know what the likely culprit is until you feel comfortable just making adjustments based on what you see, and the buds will come.


Best of luck mate, I had a few times in my early days that I was also extremely frustrated that I couldn't "get it right". I think its like riding a bike, once you "get it" a lot of things just fall into place imo (but every grow I still typically encounter something new, and usually screw it up the first time)

 

IMO start building your house from the ground up,"walk before you run" kinda deal. Treat em like you are growing tomato's, NOT super weed. gnats = a dirty grow room (in my case) Too much too soon? you will get there.

 

If I'm not growing in coco, I start my seed in the pot it's going to grow in. Here's a seed started in a 20 gallon air pot, promix vermiculite lime and gypsum.

 

I think if you are growing in organic soil indoors you wouldn't need to ph your watering because your soil would be a buffer like outside, now if you grow in promix or coco then yes you got to ph your feedings to the right pH so roots can up take what it needs.

 

its a weed that's grown for millions of years with no human help,
do a grow with very little nutes ..(see nutes like humans see vitamin pills)
you will see a huge difference

good luck

 

organic doesn't mean you don't need to pH anything. just means you won't feed w/ nutes that aren't omri certified/in the soil lol.

no matter what: pH - pH - pH - pH - pH

That's why there is lock-outs.

 

uhhhhhhhh......lockouts are caused by what? improper pH. whether it be solution, or soil pH. Either way, it's not wrong. I wouldn't know shit anyway, I've just been growing in rdwc for 15 years. let me just not pH anything and we'll see what happens.......LOL

 

I think you have a lot to learn.

 

I've met a lot of growers who grew incredible weed. They said that was the easy part. It's just figuring out the balance of nutes and other things.
They said the hardest part, was the cure.

You can have very good weed, but fuck it up during the cure.

 

Don't drink distilled water and don't use it for plants. I use tap water, far less trouble then when I was using R.O. water.