Medium Won't Dry?

so i have 7 3 gallon pots, i'm just now finishing week 5 in flowering
big plants
2 plants are in soil, the rest are in coco-perlite mix (50:50)

but i run a pretty high RH (50-75%) (not much I can do about that right now), and i have a problem that the media take about a week to dry out nicely. i also had fungus gnats - so I mulched the media with perlite on top - this made the problem even worse - now even after a week it's still pretty wet inside.

what should I do? should I water even though it's wet still? I fear I will get overwatering, rot, and more gnats if i do. but if I don't... hmmm... what will happen?

it's just weird to be watering every week and a half or two weeks in soil!

perhaps i'll just foliar feed today, and let them dry out for a few more days.

I had that happen to me when I used promix bx, I just backed my lights off and let my temps go up a tad for a few days and it dried out.. I think it was cause by my humidity spiking when the lights were out and of coarse turned on the dehumidifier

air movement, you need fans blowing on the plant/s, also a soil drench with azamax will get rid of any pests.

sorry i assumed that you were using fans... that too

max316420 said:

I had that happen to me when I used promix bx, I just backed my lights off and let my temps go up a tad for a few days and it dried out.. I think it was cause by my humidity spiking when the lights were out and of coarse turned on the dehumidifier

Click to expand...

That's good advice.

Bottom line, you're going to need to change some stuff in your environment. If your temps are in the 70s, see if you can get into the low 80s. I can't imagine they're growing very fast like this?

thanks!

well it's not so simple. The plants are in a box inside a room. I tried my best to seal the box but it's not a 100% light proof. So I have to close the shutters of the room's window at night completely to keep it dark. Thus the RH spike in darkness hours. I don't live in the US and I have no access to any gnat control. So mulching with perlite was my only option, and I'm still seeing those bastards here and there (but in low numbers).

I had a fan blowing, didn't make a big difference, but I had to turn it off now because I found a herm. I don't want to remove it from my scrog now, so I plucked all the nans I could find off, but I turned off the fan to be on the safe side. I'll probably have some seeds anyway, I just don't want to have many.

A dehum would be way too expensive for me now, but there is one thing I can do - get a desiccant. I'm hoping this will improve things before I get mold on my buds. Would very much like to hear more suggestions.

Punk: They are 5 weeks in now so they are concentrating on buds right now, but otherwise why wouldn't they grow? They have been doing very nicely, see my journal from a few days ago: https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/412749-2010-1-indoor-coco-perlite-13.html#post5714669 . It's not an ideal environment but it's not that bad either.

Please tell me what you think and what you would do in my stead. It's a tricky situation.

I had a similar "problem" regarding needing an open window at night, but still keeping the light outside.

It was a simple fix, and the result is an open window, with outside air always available 24/7 - and no light from outside can enter.

I bought cheap 100% light-proof, and strong but thin, plastic - that you can cover your whole window (and a bit more) with (keep window open when fitting it). I don't know the name for this plastic. I simply duct-taped it in place, covering the whole window.

I then made round 100mm (4 inch) holes in the plastic - at two locations, one for exhaust and one for intake. But my setup is a bit more complicated, you probably only need one hole - if all you want is outside air in.

You need inline fan for the hole(s), but luckily they are very cheap (+ small & quiet) because they don't have to overcome any resistance.

The holes in the plastic was reinforced, and a short piece of PVC-tubing (same diameter as fans) was fitted to each hole, so the fans could be fitted easily.

Sorry for my english, I wish I had a camera. It was easy to do.