Jack Torrance
Active Member
It all started when a friend of mine left some seeds on my coffee table. I didn't really put that much thought into it when I took them and simply pushed them about an inch deep into the soil of the corn plant in my living room with my finger. This was in the summer and I guess that there happened to be enough light and warmth coming in through the window that alas! One of them actually sprouted!
This is when I started looking up growing on the internet and how I found this website. I made a few mistakes at the beginning, partly because I wasn't really that serious about growing, I still am not actually. My first mistake which turned out to be a BIG mistake was using soil from the outside of my duplex when transplanting from the corn plant's container to a small plastic kitchen container with holes drilled into the bottom of it. I'll explain in a little while what happened if you don't already know...
Here is the plant in it's very small container after about a week or two of being constantly under the light of an aquarium with a bulb made for aquariums with plants in it.
August 29th:
You may notice that the stem is slightly purple, but just barely.
I finally decided that I should transplant into an actual plant container which I had leftover from an Aloe Vera plant I had bought. This container was actually pretty small too. Part of my reasoning for this transplant was how the purpling had gotten much worse and the first leaves (emryonic?) were turning yellow! I bought Expert Gardner Organic Mix to use as my new soil extra soil.
When I took the plant out of the first container I realized that the soil mass was a clayish soggy mess. This soil had not been draining well at all.
September 4th:
You can see how the stem was REALLY purple.
This next section is going to be a bit in fast forward...
I bought a clamp light from my local hardware store and put a 23 watt CFL Daylight bulb in it. I started using an outlet timer and set the time to 20 hours of light and 4 hours of dark. I also placed a small box fan blowing on the plant. The plant was growing slowly and was still exhibiting purple stems, though, not as bad. I had started using Schultz All purpose Plant Food Plus and because of the Purple stems I bought some epsom salt. When I was watering, I would add dechlorinator, Fertlizer and few drops of vinegar until the ph would read as 7.0 with my aquarium ph test kit. I guess that the water around here is pretty basic. Every once in a while I would add a little of the Epsom Salt to the water.
After about two weeks I bought another clamp light and moved the plant into an 8 inch pot after seeing the roots growing out of the bottom of the second pot. The plant in it's growing space looked a bit like this...
October 24th:
Definitely small for it's age, but that's not really something that bothered me as this was and still is a learning experience.
Something that did bother me were the lowest leaves that would always wilt and get to the point where I could easily pluck them off. I thought this was a nutrition problem at first. I think that it still partly was because of that because this plant food is a 10-15-10 formula and that the plant wasn't getting enough nitrogen, but I didn't want to overnute with the Phosphorus or other nutrients.
One day I pulled the plant out of the growing space and sat it on my desk while surfing the web. When I examined the soil closely I noticed what is one of every grower's nightmares:
RED MITES
Not only that but when I dug into the soil a little with my fingers I was seeing tons of little white worms! FUNGUS GNATS.
I went out and bought some Triple Action: Incectide, Miticide, and Fungicide (Pytherin and Neem oil are the active ingredients).
I sprayed the plant and the soil. The plant did not seem to like that too much, it started to wilt a little bit, but the bugs didn't seem to like it either. I started spraying the soil every few days between watering (which I was doing less often now to keep the fungus gnats from laying more eggs). The worms would come to the surface and start squirming. It was pretty gross.
But this did not seem to kill them off. Maybe it did kill some of the bugs but there were still mites and the worms.
But.. eventually after consistant use, or maybe it was just because the weather had gotten much cooler outside and inside my duplex (we try to not use too much electricity (AC) or gas (heater) here), They FINALLY disappeared. It was probably the less frequent watering too.
I also had hung up a fly trap in the room which caught a total of one fungus gnat. I think that is because they were mainly being killed as larvae, or maybe hainging fly traps just don't work that well.
After all of this I bought one more Clamp Light and a 42 watt soft white CFL and the plant seems to have been growing well ever since!
Despite all of this stress the plan started showing female preflowers which was a big relief! (Is it natural for this to happen even though I didn't put the plant into flowering? Is that because it is an autoflowering plant?)
Around the begining of November I started slowly decreasing the amount of light per day to 12 hours. I would decrease the amount of light by about an hour a day (starting at 20on-4off).
I also topped the plant midway through getting down to 12on-12off because I was afraid that It would get too tall. I have since started using dental floss and clothespins to LST the plant.
November 7th:
November 11th:
November 15th:
So here I am with a plant that I've grown from seed with 3 CFLs about 5 days into flowering. Some of the stems are still a little purple, but it doesn't look that bad to me. I've kind of accepted it?
It looks to me like it has a pretty good amount of flowers growing? correct me if I'm wrong.
What do you guys think? Give me some input Please!!!
This is when I started looking up growing on the internet and how I found this website. I made a few mistakes at the beginning, partly because I wasn't really that serious about growing, I still am not actually. My first mistake which turned out to be a BIG mistake was using soil from the outside of my duplex when transplanting from the corn plant's container to a small plastic kitchen container with holes drilled into the bottom of it. I'll explain in a little while what happened if you don't already know...
Here is the plant in it's very small container after about a week or two of being constantly under the light of an aquarium with a bulb made for aquariums with plants in it.
August 29th:
You may notice that the stem is slightly purple, but just barely.
I finally decided that I should transplant into an actual plant container which I had leftover from an Aloe Vera plant I had bought. This container was actually pretty small too. Part of my reasoning for this transplant was how the purpling had gotten much worse and the first leaves (emryonic?) were turning yellow! I bought Expert Gardner Organic Mix to use as my new soil extra soil.
When I took the plant out of the first container I realized that the soil mass was a clayish soggy mess. This soil had not been draining well at all.
September 4th:
You can see how the stem was REALLY purple.
This next section is going to be a bit in fast forward...
I bought a clamp light from my local hardware store and put a 23 watt CFL Daylight bulb in it. I started using an outlet timer and set the time to 20 hours of light and 4 hours of dark. I also placed a small box fan blowing on the plant. The plant was growing slowly and was still exhibiting purple stems, though, not as bad. I had started using Schultz All purpose Plant Food Plus and because of the Purple stems I bought some epsom salt. When I was watering, I would add dechlorinator, Fertlizer and few drops of vinegar until the ph would read as 7.0 with my aquarium ph test kit. I guess that the water around here is pretty basic. Every once in a while I would add a little of the Epsom Salt to the water.
After about two weeks I bought another clamp light and moved the plant into an 8 inch pot after seeing the roots growing out of the bottom of the second pot. The plant in it's growing space looked a bit like this...
October 24th:
Definitely small for it's age, but that's not really something that bothered me as this was and still is a learning experience.
Something that did bother me were the lowest leaves that would always wilt and get to the point where I could easily pluck them off. I thought this was a nutrition problem at first. I think that it still partly was because of that because this plant food is a 10-15-10 formula and that the plant wasn't getting enough nitrogen, but I didn't want to overnute with the Phosphorus or other nutrients.
One day I pulled the plant out of the growing space and sat it on my desk while surfing the web. When I examined the soil closely I noticed what is one of every grower's nightmares:
RED MITES
Not only that but when I dug into the soil a little with my fingers I was seeing tons of little white worms! FUNGUS GNATS.
I went out and bought some Triple Action: Incectide, Miticide, and Fungicide (Pytherin and Neem oil are the active ingredients).
I sprayed the plant and the soil. The plant did not seem to like that too much, it started to wilt a little bit, but the bugs didn't seem to like it either. I started spraying the soil every few days between watering (which I was doing less often now to keep the fungus gnats from laying more eggs). The worms would come to the surface and start squirming. It was pretty gross.
But this did not seem to kill them off. Maybe it did kill some of the bugs but there were still mites and the worms.
But.. eventually after consistant use, or maybe it was just because the weather had gotten much cooler outside and inside my duplex (we try to not use too much electricity (AC) or gas (heater) here), They FINALLY disappeared. It was probably the less frequent watering too.
I also had hung up a fly trap in the room which caught a total of one fungus gnat. I think that is because they were mainly being killed as larvae, or maybe hainging fly traps just don't work that well.
After all of this I bought one more Clamp Light and a 42 watt soft white CFL and the plant seems to have been growing well ever since!
Despite all of this stress the plan started showing female preflowers which was a big relief! (Is it natural for this to happen even though I didn't put the plant into flowering? Is that because it is an autoflowering plant?)
Around the begining of November I started slowly decreasing the amount of light per day to 12 hours. I would decrease the amount of light by about an hour a day (starting at 20on-4off).
I also topped the plant midway through getting down to 12on-12off because I was afraid that It would get too tall. I have since started using dental floss and clothespins to LST the plant.
November 7th:
November 11th:
November 15th:
So here I am with a plant that I've grown from seed with 3 CFLs about 5 days into flowering. Some of the stems are still a little purple, but it doesn't look that bad to me. I've kind of accepted it?
It looks to me like it has a pretty good amount of flowers growing? correct me if I'm wrong.
What do you guys think? Give me some input Please!!!
