Here we go again!

drabstab

drabstab

Active Member
Allll right, my nutrients are finally here. A quart of flora grow! I have been giving my girls plain water for weeks because of how ridiculously long the shipping was taking. First nodes are almost totally yellow-green, the rest is pretty pale as well. Let's hope they bounce back to life! I'm not posting any pics of what they look like right now... I wanna see them perk up a bit first. Anyway, the roots are already in deep water (barely, maybe a single strand per plant) and I took my water pump out. If you're ever forced to use peat pellets instead of rockwool, you might wanna just go DWC without the tubes. It was just causing problems for me.


Reservoir temperature is around 73 degrees, so I'll be trying to work out an ice bottle routine that'll keep it a little lower.

PPM of my plain tap water is 220. .. guess I'll go with micro hardwater. I'm glad I waited.


As for my soil girl, she's looking pretty good (I guess). The new little oval leaves that were popping out all over the buds are now sprouting new buds. She looks like she's about to get a whole lot bigger.

I'm almost positive one of the hydro babies is a boy. I have a gut feeling. Let's hope I end up with three girls :):):)
 
drabstab

drabstab

Active Member
Go ahead and take a look at the first pics I put up of my seedlings. Here are recent pictures. This is as far as plain water will get you. Also I've included pics of my room mate's plants (big pots under the long tubes) and the other three little ones. He just recently took a lot of large fan leaves off of his bushy ones because they weren't bushy enough for his taste... I guess.

Started my nutrients last night, Ph is staying pretty constant.
 

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mercer88

mercer88

Well-Known Member
drabstab said:
I'm gonna start by telling the story of my first grow.

I started growing six months ago, in my bedroom at my parents' house. I had a bookshelf that had sliding doors at the bottom which revealed a compact growing space where I could start my babies. I started saving seeds from random bags, mostly mid grade and other seedy bags. Originally I was super-sketched out and I devised a foolproof plan. I constructed a grow box out of cardboard, taped foil to the inside and put small tap lights at the top of the box. I figured as long as there was light, my plants would be fine. Needless to say, I had not done much research. The tap lights were on at all times and I kept having to replace the batteries. Eventually I got tired of these tap lights and I instead took the plants out of the box and grew right in the compartment in the bookshelf. I used a 15-watt fluorescent tube, soft white, and left it on at all times. During this time I was over-watering my plants, was not regulating temp or humidity, and had no air circulation whatsoever. The only time my plants came out was at night, while my parents were sleeping.

They grew under these conditions for several months. The veg stage took much longer than I had anticipated. Keep in mind my plants are only getting water, and are growing in plain potting soil (no nutrients). I also never topped, fimmed or trimmed my plants whatsoever. That was the sort of thing I was afraid to try. So about three months in, my plants were growing too tall to fit in the bookshelf, I had to move them outside. I had five plants at the time, and this was going to be difficult. My parents were sleeping one night and a friend of mine and I took the plants out of the house and into my car, by stuffing them in my soft guitar case after covering them with black plastic bags. A few were in my friend's large, loose purse. They were growing in cut-off two liter bottles at the time. I moved them to a place in the woods near my house, and put them right on the edge of the trees because it was night time and I figured they'd be fine overnight. I left the garbage bags on to hide them, though in retrospect I should have left them uncovered.

I went back the next day and carried them out to a deeper spot, where I put them in trees. I brought five plants out in to the woods, but only three survived the move. I never knew whether these were girls or boys.

The plants stayed out there for two or three months. It's hard to remember exactly. I would take trips back there every week or two to pour a load of water on them, and every once in a while a capful of Miracle Gro Pour-n-feed plant food, and was otherwise relying on the rain. I should probably mention also that I transplanted them into larger pots. Two of them, that is. The other one dried out pretty quickly and didn't make it. So I was left with two plants up in trees, doing the best they can. I was lucky enough to have one of these turn out to be a girl. I found this out when I took a trip out there and found that there was a tiny flower starting on top. The other was too far up in the tree for me to tell, but I assumed it was a girl.

After they had been out there for a while and had started to flower, I moved out of my parents house and finally had a place I could grow conveniently. When I went back to take the plants down, the girl was looking pretty good, and I found out the other one was a big tall boy with plenty of pollen sacs. This one had been flowering for a good while. The girl was not too far away, and I got pretty worried that she would start making seeds. I moved her into my new place and that's where she is now.

When I moved her inside, I had no lights suitable for growing a large plant. I still had not been doing much research, and I went out and bought what I assumed was a good light. I ended up with a warm white 18-watt bulb, which I thought was just fine. My plant had been growing in my closet with this light for a month or so before she made her first and only seed. I had no idea what it was until it was already a whole seed.

I removed the seed and eventually put five 26-watt soft white CFLs on it, after joining this forum (thanks to the bubbleheads). My plant has been flowering for a long time, and seemed to be taking way too long. I figured this was from a lack of proper nutrients, and so I made a new custom soil mix using bat guano, potting soil, peat moss and bone meal, then kept feeding it with pour-n-feed. After a bit of root shock, the flowering took off pretty well. I don't know exactly how long she's been flowering, but it has been well over three or four months. I know she's not done, though. Not enough orange hairs.

Anyway, now that I told you this horrible story of abuse, I figure I should show you some pictures.
Click to expand...

lol poor bitch plants

wtf was u doing to them :(
 
MostlyCrazy

MostlyCrazy

New Member
Look like a little micro will fix that right up. As you said, you've taken tham as far as you can w/o nutes and the new growth seems to be robbing from the older growth the micro has lots of N in it along with the other goodies. They are really not doing that bad considering. You should be commended for geting this far!
 
drabstab

drabstab

Active Member
MostlyCrazy said:
Look like a little micro will fix that right up. As you said, you've taken tham as far as you can w/o nutes and the new growth seems to be robbing from the older growth the micro has lots of N in it along with the other goodies. They are really not doing that bad considering. You should be commended for geting this far!
Click to expand...
Thank youuu I'm ordering micro in a week, will I be all right with just Gro for now?
 
MostlyCrazy

MostlyCrazy

New Member
May develop slight deficiencies (or maybe not) but they are too young for it to be serious at all. Take it easy on the nutes at first (1/4 dose the first couple of days). They will green up a bit in that time and then you can hit them with another 1/4 dose 2-3 days later if everything looks right.
 
drabstab

drabstab

Active Member
Here's what they looked like a few days ago, when I had just started my nutrients. The leaves are still droopy, but they are so much greener already. I think this is after two days of nutrients.



Yesterday I had some inspiration and felt like working on them a little, so I built a reflective area/box for them to grow in. I have reflective material (car windshield reflector) around three sides of the box, and 3 mil. black plastic sheeting over that. The opening to the box is a doubled-over piece of black plastic sheeting that I hooked up with velcro so I can peel it up and move the res in and out easily. there is no top to the box, to allow air circulation during the day. I have to cover the box with towels at night so that there aren't any light leaks. I think that is what is making my flowering soil girl take so damn long.



There are no light leaks whatsoever from this box when it is covered with the towels, but even when I have the fan blowing in there the temperatures are getting too high. I put them in the box yesterday and covered it up right before the lights turned off for the flowering girl. This morning I checked the temperature of my reservoir - 90 DEGREES FARENHEIT. This is a problem. I'll be freezing some water bottles. Here's what they look like as of right now. Notice the difference?? The bucket has rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise since the first picture.



And here are their roots, lookin' good! (I think)




Still no micro-nutrients. I'm ordering them now.
 
MostlyCrazy

MostlyCrazy

New Member
They are looking excellent! Especialy with no micro nutes! Those wil give you a kick start due to the extra N and some building blocks contained in the micro mix. Really like your light set-up and reflective survace addition. If you have more light they will have more power to process more nutes and grow bigger. Keep your humidity in the 60-70% range if you can. Wet towesl close to the res will do the trick.
 
drabstab

drabstab

Active Member
MostlyCrazy said:
They are looking excellent! Especialy with no micro nutes! Those wil give you a kick start due to the extra N and some building blocks contained in the micro mix. Really like your light set-up and reflective survace addition. If you have more light they will have more power to process more nutes and grow bigger. Keep your humidity in the 60-70% range if you can. Wet towesl close to the res will do the trick.
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Thank you, I am very pleased with the way they're growing. The leaves are so lush and thick compared to what I'm used to with soil. I have a temp/humidity meter I'll stick in there later tonight. I'll roll up some wet towels right now though. Thanks for the feedback, always appreciated!
 
drabstab

drabstab

Active Member
MostlyCrazy said:
Oh yeah, I forgot!
Click to expand...
Comes with the territory man... :bigjoint:

Anyway right before taking that pic yesterday I took a look in my res. Wasn't smelling too great, water was a little cloudy, Ph was about 6.5.



So I took it to the bathroom and started working. When I took the lid off of my bucket, I noticed the roots on the biggest plant were a little slimy looking. It looked like it was just starting, there were only a few droplets hanging onto the bottom of a few long brownish strands. Other than that, the roots were looking nice.



I cut off the brownish goopy ones because it didn't make up much of the plant's roots. I was just kinda going with my gut. Here's how much I cut off:



After that I let them sit in some bubbly H2O2 water that I've since realized was NOT Phed. This means it was at or above 7.6, since my water is very ph rich. Not smart, I know.

Here's what they look like during the res change. Notice the leaves curling down a bit. Hadn't noticed before.





Cleaned my bucket out like normal, filled it up with cold water and put a splash of H202 in there, replaced the air stone and added nutrients, phed the water down to something like 5.5 and put my lid back on.

Good as new, right?? Wrong. Something is different. They are looking a little yellow, leaves aren't supporting themselves as well, and there's a little brown spot on one of the fan leaves of the plant that had the root issue.





No slime in the bucket now, but they don't look right! I'm freaking out, my temp/humidity is the same as it's been (80ish, 45-55%ish).

I have very hard water, still no micro-nutrients in the mix, plain FloraGro and h202, PH down from GH.
 
Stgeneziz

Stgeneziz

Active Member
No Micro? How Come? Im not familiar with the formula you're using. I'm curious about it, I've used micro my whole grow, every plant. Have I been doing something wrong? What about your res temps, have you checked them lately? My buckets get pretty warm sometimes, even when the ambient temps are normal... I don't think you have a huge problem, are you using the SH nutes, or did you just buy the GH trio elsewhere? that plants pretty big, she prolly needs the other 2 in the mix. I'm usually at the 1-1-1 ratio by the time i'm ready to flower... good luck! =)
 
drabstab

drabstab

Active Member
Stgeneziz said:
No Micro? How Come? Im not familiar with the formula you're using. I'm curious about it, I've used micro my whole grow, every plant. Have I been doing something wrong? What about your res temps, have you checked them lately? My buckets get pretty warm sometimes, even when the ambient temps are normal... I don't think you have a huge problem, are you using the SH nutes, or did you just buy the GH trio elsewhere? that plants pretty big, she prolly needs the other 2 in the mix. I'm usually at the 1-1-1 ratio by the time i'm ready to flower... good luck! =)
Click to expand...
Oh no, I'm not using micro because it hasn't arrived yet. There are four plants in the bucket right now. I think that's probably the problem along with a stressful res change yesterday. My only question is, do I re-do the res change in order to rule out the possibility of something being horribly wrong in there, or do I leave them in there and let them adjust? I'm telling you, I can see the change in them, and it's bad. I don't know what it is but they are very unhappy right now. Sometimes my res temps get a little high, but I've since solved that problem. My res stays at like 70-75 degrees, and the air is about 70-80 degrees with 45-55% humidity or so. I'm not using anything from SH right now, it was all DIY.
 
Stgeneziz

Stgeneziz

Active Member
OK. it's noooot that bad. I would be patient and observe.. when you get all your nutes in order. do a res change and slowly add the appropriate amount of each. the spot on the leaf could be a deficiency due to an incomplete diet.. i'm not sure. The key is to be patient... trust me. DON'T over fix. lol.
 
drabstab

drabstab

Active Member
Thanks for the response St, I'll hopefully have my micro in a day or two. I'll wait on the res change til then. I think it was probably because of the Ph jumping around so much within like twenty minutes. Plus I think it's pretty low right now. I'll take your advice and wait it out. +rep
 
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