OAD's WW Grow Journal

Hi All and welcome to my grow journal.

This is my first grow so I am learning as I go. I hope that with this journal I can help a few people out and get some comments/advice/help from anyone else who has grown in a simular situation before.

I am growing White Widow in a quality grow tent using a 50% nutrifield COCO, 50% perlite mix and Nutrifield COCO nutrients.

Nutrifield | Products - NUTRIENTS - NF COCO A&B
Nutrifield | Products - MEDIUMS - NF COCO BAGS

Some of the benifits of using a soiless mix is that you can completely control the watering and nutrients with little worry about the ph in th soil.... if you know what you are doing. As you will see from my plants they have gone through quite an ordeal as i have tried to figure the correct amount of everything they need.

The pots I am using for the moment are self watering, they hold an amount of water in the bottom of each which means the medium stays moist for 2-3 days.

I have selected this light for my grow after talking with the great staff at my local hydro:
130 watt self ballasted grow grolights lighting plants envirolites cool queensland Australia Gold Coast

The temperature at the plants level goes from 22 degrees celcius to 28. it never gets above 85 degress F.

After having some trouble with the local tap water I have started using bottled water in 15 letre bottles. I find these bottles very easy to add the nutrients and ph addititives by using a childs medicene sucker. I always have one bottle with nutes, and one without (both ph'd) so that i can easily give the plants about 70%-80% strength nutes.


As you will see by looking at the closeups my little plants have seen their fair share of disasters. I caught them just in time and I have learnt a lot but my biggest issues were:

• Assuming all the tap water was the same PH every day
• Underwatering
• Overwatering
• Didnt realise COCO had no nutritional value at all

I also noticed that with the light to close the leaves will start to go brown, however I am pretty sure that it was not the light, but the other problems I was causing.

As this stage I will be more then happy if I can just figure out the perfect routine for my setup to bring these little guys back to health so that my next grow goes much better.

My current schedule is to water them after the water runs out from their pots, and when the probe tells me that they are die. I give them about 70% of what the nute bottle says, anymore then that and i find they start showing signs of nute burn.

I have just switched the lights to 20 - 4 to give them a little down time in the middle of the night.

From here your either going to read how to successfully grow in a soiless mix or your going to read how NOT to grow in a soiless mix.

Day 2 of new regime:

Well today my plants seem to have recovered a lot! There are a few burnt spots on the leaves, which I think are from accidently spilling nuted water. That is something I will have to be careful of from now on.

The color has sprung back in the newer leaves, and the droopyness has gone. It seems I made a good move (finally) by re arranging my grow room to have less plants but closer to the lights.

There are a few places on the edge of the new leaves that are crisping up. Could be a sign they need more nutes.

I am a little conserned with the watering. My probe keeps telling me that the medium is dry, however there is water in the bottom of the pots still. I have a feeling that there might be a problem with how I mixed the perlite, I think the bottom of the pot is allmost completely perlite which might be stopping the water from coming back up the mix... I really dont want to repot and add extra stress so Ill see how it goes for another day or two.


Question for hydro growers, do you keep the meduim mostly damp? or should i be waiting until the medium is crisp?

Noticed the leaves browning today on the new leaves... struggling to see what I'm doing wrong but it could be over watering.. I have fed them a little too much over the past few days, trying to rehydrate and re nute them back to health my guess is that the water in the roots is causing them to starve for carbon dioxide?

I am going to leave them unwatered to 2 more days and hope that the browning subsides. I have also lifted the lights a little higher just in case its the light cuasing heat stress.

I also noticed when I came home the temp was up to 85 degrees F at plant level. I have installed a huge fan in the grow room. It wont be able to stay in there once they start growing taller but it really helps keep the temp lover

Today I did a majour upgrade to the grow room!

First I bought a 600w grow globe and ballast after taking some advice from the local hydro shop. unfortunately it was just far to hot to handle. The blokes were nice enough to let me exchange it for a 400 and while i was there i got an exhast motor and duct.

The CLF just wasnt doing its job well enough. For one plant yes it is great, but for any plant that is not almost touching it its useless... let alone what happens when the plants get big enough and the light cant reach the bottom leaves.

so the new light is installed, exhast installed and its like having a tiny sun in my closet.. cant see anything after poking my head in there... perfect.

I'll post up some pics tonight, the whole thing even with the ducting is very stealthy. Its about as loud as ducted heating in the room and unless you know what your lookin for its very sneaky.

comments welcome anytime!

Pics as promised...

the space is fantastic, temp is 78 degrees F nice and stable. I hope the light helps pick these sorry looking plants back up and I hope my next grow which starts in this week will have a better outcome.

Any tips or improvements would be welcome!