Full time caregiver with full time problems

Psiloeye

Member
I am a caregiver in Michigan and am having problems with my soil grown plants. I am going to start at the beginning so here goes. I have been growing medical grade marijuana indoors for over a year now and still am having problems with my grows. I started off pretty good though. My first grow was for me and one patient and I had a closet grow for veg and moved them downstairs for flowering. I ran quite a few different strains and had pretty decent results. My first couple grows were done with Hydrofarm T5 8bulb grow lights, veg and bloom bulbs, Foxfarm ocean forrest soil, and foxfarm nutes. I decided after getting donations from my patients to switch to HID lighting and move the veg room downstairs also. I built two very large tent type rooms with zip up doors and installed a 6'' inline duct fan for air intake in veg, vortex 6'' inline duct fan to cool the HID's (2-1000w HPS), hooked up a CAD four outlet lighting controller with a 220v feed to run HID's, also another 6" inline duct fan for fresh air intake for flowering room, hooked up a 30 pint per day dehumidifier and ducted it to blow warm air out of flowering room, A/C ducted in from central air with 6" duct, one ozone generator rated for up to 30,000ft on timer outside of the rooms. I run 2-8bulb hydrofarm T5's for veg and run 2-1000w hortilux bulbs in air cooled hoods with glass and 3-8 bulb hydrofarm T5's with flowering bulbs for flowering lights. The veg room stays on 24/7 and the temp is around 80 degrees at all times and around 50-60 percent humidity. The flowering room fluctuates from 80-85 degrees when lights are on down to around 70 when lights are off. I have minimal problems during veg and I do all my own cloning with a 60 site EZ cloner. I start having the problems during flowering and only during flowering. I constantly am under attack by bugs in the flowering room and keep it clean leaving no dirt or dead plant material laying around. It used to be gnats but I got those under control with fly strip type traps that lure them in. I now have problems with mites all the time. I have tried everything including Safers soap concentrate spray, Mighty Wash, Dr Doom bombs and spray, the rubbing alcohol method mixed with water and a few drops of dish soap I cant get rid of them. They seem to stay at bay enough to where they dont cover my buds with webs but I constantly see webs on leafs and stem nodes. And when I look under the leafs I see the mites but also see tiny things that look like larve, tan color larve. I went out and bought some Tanlin concentrate drops for the soil to control what I believe is gnat larve but need your input. I also run into problems with my plants to where the stems wont thicken up and get droopy and produce tiny buds and the leaves on those plants look almost dead but somehow the plant is still standing. The buds look good but there isnt much. This has happens to quite a few of my floweing plants and usually like 2-3 weeks into 12/12 when they start to get little nugs. They look like tall plants that have stretched to much and just droop and dont produce much at all. Its like the buds get only so big and just stop growing and start to look worse and worse until I crop them. I have flushed them all and even tried liming the soil with fast acting lime to address a possible ph lock out or problem. I cant upload pics due to my camera being broken so will have to describe things to you as well as possible. The plants look sick and I want to save the crop. This is only happening to some of the plants. I have ATF plants in flower that produce well and do just fine but other strains like Jillybean and Purple elephant are looking sick. The jillybeans seem most affected. I use GH floro series nutes with cal mag and I use High Brix plant molasses during flower. I used the GH florokleen to flush them and flused more with RO water. I always use RO water bought from Culligan Refill station. I have four patients now and have a pretty big obligation so any advice is welcome and any questions also.
 

trichome fiend

Well-Known Member
...I think your problem lies within the fertilizer your using. FFOF is a high quality, pure organic soil. If you read on the bag, it tells you that the stuff is good for 3/4 weeks. You could simply transplant into a larger pot at the time, repeat every 3/4 weeks and your plants will need nothing but water throughout the grow.
...GH flora are synthetic fertilizers, or salts....salts, that are low on the pH scale. When you add salts to organics the salts dehydrate the microbes and kill them off, leaving your soil lifeless.
...IMHO, I would do away with the synthetic fertilizers while growing in soil, salts and organics don't mix....use your GH flora series in a more suitable medium, such as hydroton, grow rocks, soilless, exc...

...edit: For the mites I would get some ladybugs, and Azamax.
 

WattSaver

Well-Known Member
Lets start with bugs, my guess is that your bugs are coming from your air. Are you drawing air from outside?? If they just keep coming back then there must be a continuous source. My mites came from outside, even in the frozen winter. I cured it with a hepa filter on the intake.

I'm not a fan of ozone generators, my wife used to sell commercial units, and they will dissolve/weaken many different plastic and rubber products, I've seen it with my own eyes, don't know if this could be it, but if its a change from your previous grow I'd check it out.

I'm thinking that ventilation could be the culprit, give us more detail on your venting sir.
 
Top