Could my lights be causing this?

[jonnynobody]

Ok nice one.
Like most I do want decent yields but its not the be all and end all, Its nice to have different strains for taste strength and high`s and make the grow more interesting, I love sativa high best.

I ordered the ghost train because it was advertised as the "strongest strain on earth." Meh. Not in my opinion, but it's a quality enjoyable high. The flavor and punch is just too intense for my preference. I cough and cough like a lung is about to come up. My current lineup is maui waui, black widow, critical mass, ghost train (soon to be replaced), girl scout cookies (last run), jager, and blue dream. Maui, critical mass, and jager are my producer strains that also have outstanding bag appeal and are highly sought after. Of those 3 strains I like to burn the maui most frequently. It's just a very well rounded, tasty, and smooth smoking strain. Black widow is a great one too, but I'll probably be replacing it after this cycle. It's rarely requested and took 13 weeks to finish flowering. The quality of the smoke is great, but it's not a keeper strain because the yields are medium, the flower time is excessive, and in the end the juice just isn't worth the squeeze because it's not sought after. I'm strongly considering GMO cookies and pre-98 bubba kush as replacements for the BW and GT. I have jack herer, god bud, big buddha cheese, and bruce banner in stock. The god bud looks very interesting. Hawaiian crossed with purple skunk. It's supposedly a very purple flower with an intense fruity aroma. Jeez after typing that I feel like maybe I should be germinating a few of those right now

 

[DukeFluke]

I'm at my wits' end. Trying to figure out what could be causing the plant problems I am having in veg. The only things that are different really is the medium (course coco core) and the lights - EB Gen3 4k CRI90.

Completely flush your pots with a 1.0ec strength of the base feed and nothing else until what comes out of the bottom is within 0.2 of what you're putting in. You'll see a turnaround starting at 48 hrs and new growth will start to come out healthy.

Unknown coir can cause you all sorts of problems if you don't anticipate these issues and flush them immediately. My best advice is to use coarse coir as an amendment to a known buffered brand of bagged coco and pre treat it with a high phosphate feed with extra calcium and magnesium before mixing it in. It's what I do and it works well. Go 2 : 1 branded bagged coir to chips. It's a good ratio

Do that and then bring your temps up a few more degrees (including night time) with a heater to stimulate transpiration and post back your results after one week.

 

[Star Dog]

In the process of heavy defoliation. Once more at week 3. Otherwise the canopy is full of leaf that shrouds most flower sites resulting in few top shelf colas. Defoliation solves that problem. Ghost train in the front just does not grow leaves. Kinda like gg#4. Very potent flowers, but no foliage. I find that's been common with pure sativa or sativa dominant strains. Tall. Lots of branches. No dam leaves. Leggy as shit. If I didn't defoliate it would just be a jungle of leaf diminishing the value of my yield significantly. You haven't seen anything yet. Wait until you see when it's actually defoliated. 10 days later you'll never know it even happened, but the flower sites that were previously shrouded will have been allowed to grow and proliferate. Final defoliation at week 3 cleans up the canopy for a solid finish where the flower sites are all bathed in sunlight. Of course the week 3 defoliation is a much lighter defoliation. Why? By week 3 most strains will have completely stopped all vegetative growth and will devote all biological reserouces into flower production. In a nuthshell there will be no regeneration. You can't leave them naked. You want to go in with a surgical approach to ensure a big fat fan leaf isn't blocking a bunch of what could become primo top shelf flowers. After the week 3 defoliation it's just watering, staking branches, supporting heavy colas, and running an occasional pure water irrigation to rinse away fertilizer salts from the medium.

I flipped a couple of weeks ago after a delay trying to sort out an issue, I think it's a bit busy now some squares have 2/3 tops/stems so I've removed leafs with any shoots under them, I don't usually defoliate so I'm bit unsure about it, the alternative would be cut off branches and that isn't appealing.

I've removed about 15% from the back two would you take more?

 

[bernie344]

I flipped a couple of weeks ago after a delay trying to sort out an issue, I think it's a bit busy now some squares have 2/3 tops/stems so I've removed leafs with any shoots under them, I don't usually defoliate so I'm bit unsure about it, the alternative would be cut off branches and that isn't appealing.
View attachment 4816559
I've removed about 15% from the back two would you take more?

I think you have removed enuff for now lets see after they haved finnish stretch.

 

[tilopa]

i am trying this coarse cocos /chips atm too.
thinking its way less salty then cocos pith and mine was very easy to wash.
problem with cocos is often the releae of a lot K when it dries, the fibre simply contains lots of it.
K have a single charge and is released everytime it got replaced by a doubble charged mg or ca.
this can be a good thing later in flower, otherwise it often cause problems if not taken in to account.
well the cocos chips really cant be overwatered so giving them a good flush cant hurt.
runoff shouldnt be higher then 0.2 more to hats going in.
dont think you need to go down to EC 0.4, 0.8 should also to.

i never needed a EC of 1.5 at this stage, 1 to 1.2 should normally do well.
dont go too high with the basesalt would say, give more calcium nitrate as the meidum eats some of the calcium and the cocos provides lots of K anyway.

you have quite some factors in to play when you have dunked them in nasty stuff recently, maybe thats simply the cause of the burns.

while, consider also.
what you captured with the lux meter and converted can be way of.
sensitive young plants i sometimes just give a 200ppfd and even less, just as much that they dont stretch to the light and have a easy life.
your cuts there really dont look like theyre after heavy growth atm, looks to me they want to root out a bit and then grow for you.
so going easy on them now is may a good idea, think its quite important to start them slowly in a new enviroment.

its maybe a combination of several factors.

I've lowered the power on my lights to around 8000 lux. The conversion I'm using from that Irish dude in youtube, seems pretty smart, is about 195 ppfd. Do you think 8000 lux could be way off of that?
What nutes do you use?

 

[tilopa]

Completely flush your pots with a 1.0ec strength of the base feed and nothing else until what comes out of the bottom is within 0.2 of what you're putting in. You'll see a turnaround starting at 48 hrs and new growth will start to come out healthy.

Unknown coir can cause you all sorts of problems if you don't anticipate these issues and flush them immediately. My best advice is to use coarse coir as an amendment to a known buffered brand of bagged coco and pre treat it with a high phosphate feed with extra calcium and magnesium before mixing it in. It's what I do and it works well. Go 2 : 1 branded bagged coir to chips. It's a good ratio

Do that and then bring your temps up a few more degrees (including night time) with a heater to stimulate transpiration and post back your results after one week.

I flushed earlier with .4ec. I'm going to start feeding them 1ec tonight slowly. I'll check the runoff.
I'll try mixing some mother earth coco in with it next time.

 

[jonnynobody]

I flipped a couple of weeks ago after a delay trying to sort out an issue, I think it's a bit busy now some squares have 2/3 tops/stems so I've removed leafs with any shoots under them, I don't usually defoliate so I'm bit unsure about it, the alternative would be cut off branches and that isn't appealing.
View attachment 4816559
I've removed about 15% from the back two would you take more?

If you're almost 3 weeks into flower I would only gently defoliate. Your plants will not regenerate leaves that late into flower. They look good. I would recommend you attempt a thorough defoliation on 1 plant next cycle to see how the plant responds and get used to the process. Once you become more comfortable with the process you can then begin defoliating your whole garden. Baby steps though. The first time I saw someone defoliate their plant I berated the grower, and that grower simply understood something I did not about maximizing yield. I kept wondering why my yields were low, but my trim bucket was full of leaves. Then I finally read about defoliation, why it's done, the results it produces, and how to do it. 1x in veg. 1x at the 12/12 flip. Final light defoliation at week 3 flower. Done. Top the plants all through veg. At least 2 toppings. Preferably 3. Maximize flower sites. Minimize unnecessary leafy growth.

 

[Stealthstyle]

As much as could be done. That is ghost train haze x moonshine haze. Almost a pure sativa. Legs for days. Few nodes even with topping. The payoff with this particular strain is it forms potent, resinous, dense and highly desirable golf ball sized flowers at each node site. Quality is consistent from the bottom branches below the canopy to the tops directly under the light. Great genetics. Not stellar yields though. I couldn't run more than 2 buckets of this strain. It's what I refer to as a foo-foo boutique strain. I personally do not like it and do not smoke it. It's too much like gg#4 for me which I also do not like. My favorite strains so far have been blue dream which I'm flowering this cycle for the first time in over 10 years and bubblegum kush strictly from a satisfaction perspective. BD was also an incredible yielder. A lovely strain that should be in every cannabis garden's lineup.

Who sells the best blue dream?

 

[Star Dog]

If you're almost 3 weeks into flower I would only gently defoliate. Your plants will not regenerate leaves that late into flower. They look good. I would recommend you attempt a thorough defoliation on 1 plant next cycle to see how the plant responds and get used to the process. Once you become more comfortable with the process you can then begin defoliating your whole garden. Baby steps though. The first time I saw someone defoliate their plant I berated the grower, and that grower simply understood something I did not about maximizing yield. I kept wondering why my yields were low, but my trim bucket was full of leaves. Then I finally read about defoliation, why it's done, the results it produces, and how to do it. 1x in veg. 1x at the 12/12 flip. Final light defoliation at week 3 flower. Done. Top the plants all through veg. At least 2 toppings. Preferably 3. Maximize flower sites. Minimize unnecessary leafy growth.

Thanks buddy, it was Jan 20th that I flipped...they're 15/16 days into 12/12.
I've just snapped a few pictures of them.

The bigger leafs at the front left didn't have any decent shoots under them so I left them intact.

Cheers SD

 

[cobshopgrow]

I've lowered the power on my lights to around 8000 lux. The conversion I'm using from that Irish dude in youtube, seems pretty smart, is about 195 ppfd. Do you think 8000 lux could be way off of that?
What nutes do you use?

its pretty hard to give a concrete advice as the readings of different meters can be so different, besides that i am still experimenting myself.
if youre using the same lux meter he is using and the same spectrum (you 90, he only 80 maybe?) the factor can work out.
all these errors adding up and in the end the result can be complete rubish.
8000 is very safe and on the low side would say, shouldnt be stressing them.
they normally can take more.
its not the absolute way for sure, i just can say how it works for me atm.
i start my clones with 50-60W, when they pray all day i go higher to 80W,100W and so forth and simply watch that theyre happy most of the day, my tents are 0.75-1sqm.
my ppfd readings are often from 160-350 in that time, then its often time to flower and things change.

i use some similar to jacks with RO water.
thinking the megacrop 2 part recommendations are quite sane and should work for jacks also (same stuff anyway?).

 

[DukeFluke]

I flushed earlier with .4ec. I'm going to start feeding them 1ec tonight slowly. I'll check the runoff.
I'll try mixing some mother earth coco in with it next time.

No, you've made another mistake.

I don't have time to explain right now but in a nutshell, 1.0 - 1.2 ec of a balanced base feed in coir is around the sweet spot for any strain of cannabis plant you'll ever grow. That's why if you need to flush for any reason, you want to reset the media as close to that as possible.

It's not the case that putting weaker feed than it needs balances out the issues of overfeeding. This is one of the biggest misconceptions in growing. You will go from a hot medium to one with deficiencies and still not see the type of growth you're looking for.

By the way the 1.0 ec recommendation is based on a background (tap water) ec of 0.2.
It's 0.8 - 1.0 ec on top of whatever your tap is. If the tap's 0.4, your final ec will be 1.2 - 1.4

The 1.2ec you're feeding with now won't get to the bottom and centre of the rootzone for a few more waterings, and if it's been flushed that could be for some time. It will also be diluted by what's already in there. Flush with the strength you want the media to be at, no more or less.

 

[tilopa]

I just wanted to follow up and say that my plants are looking much better. New growth coming in well and they are all praying to the lights now. One cause that I have discovered was that my EC meter was reading too low. I have one of those cheap amzn pens, so I bought a Bluelabs Truncheon and tested it and the blue lab was reading about .6 higher than the pen. So, if I started with 1.8 it was really 2.4.

Several flushes and then started feeding more often at a lower ec and they perked right up.

Another thing to note, and more on topic for this forum, these LEDs are far from plug-n-play. I haven't given up on them because I'm sure they just need tweaking, but I am convinced, from observable evidence, that these can stress the plants out very easily. Meaning they can be too intense, which I believe is in the blue spectrum, and cause the plants to not respond well. I've really had to dial them back a lot. As you said cobbshop, my lux meter really doesn't give a very accurate reading. I am using a conversion for 4k but that conversion does not take into account CRI and efficiency. So, even though my lux reads 15k and my conversion says that should be only about 380 umol it could be a lot higher. Or am I wrong? I guess I should just pony up the cash for a proper par meter, but....

 

[cobshopgrow]

absolute, conversion seems to just work if one made a conversion factor with exactly your lux meter type and using white leds only.
380ppfd isnt low also for veg, think i never went above that without getting problems (others prob. had more luck?).
and never had plants taking a EC of 2.4 over time also, you got the right dials it seems.

 

[DukeFluke]

Another thing to note, and more on topic for this forum, these LEDs are far from plug-n-play. I haven't given up on them because I'm sure they just need tweaking, but I am convinced, from observable evidence, that these can stress the plants out very easily. Meaning they can be too intense, which I believe is in the blue spectrum, and cause the plants to not respond well. I've really had to dial them back a lot. As you said cobbshop, my lux meter really doesn't give a very accurate reading. I am using a conversion for 4k but that conversion does not take into account CRI and efficiency. So, even though my lux reads 15k and my conversion says that should be only about 380 umol it could be a lot higher. Or am I wrong? I guess I should just pony up the cash for a proper par meter, but....

Don't trust that bluelab 100% either. I had the same problem as you just recently and it was my bluelab that was reading low. Check it every week or so.

You're right about LEDs. They take some getting used too. Start them high and on full power (rather than low and dimmed) and get your temps up, add silicon to your feeds, and you'll see the type of growth you want.

 

[PSUAGRO.]

What's adding silicon/silica going to do for a dicot (cannabis)?...... Their is a reason why it's not an essential element.

I had issues with chloro peak blurples, but"white led" based spds alleviated most of it ime. Yes, their is a learning curve, just like when we switched from fluoro to hid.

You'll get the hang of it, humans/plants can adapt.

 

[DukeFluke]

What's adding silicon/silica going to do for a dicot (cannabis)?...... Their is a reason why it's not an essential element.

Are you citing research from 1921 by any chance?

There's been a good bit published since then