The Official House and Garden Thread

Jozikins

Well-Known Member
how to tell the difference between male and female pot plants
That is one hell of a question and very hard to show with our shitty camera phones. You should be in the beginner or noob threads for these kind of questions, this is for discussing the House & Garden fertilizer and advanced cultivation.

As for what you are looking at on the plant, you are looking where the leaf and the branch/stalk intersect where the largest fan leaf is, look for something that look looks like a green water-drop shaped calyx, with a blonde or white hair shooting out of it, those are called pistils. If you have pistils than you have a female. If you look closely and looks like a banana bunch of green grapes forming, chop it down ASAP!! Male flowers start as one pod, and then quickly explode into clusters of pods. You may not be able to tell a male pre flower right away, but as soon as it develops you know. I hope you are using good genetics from a seed bank, and not bag seed! A first time grow is too much effort and money to be put into bag seed. Even if your first grow gives you ugly buds, you want them to be at least dank ugly buds. You know what I'm saying?

Good luck buddy! I might email you pictures later to help you out. But I will not guide you threw your grow, I get sucked into that way to easy here on RIU! I just want to help too much! haha
 

droman

Active Member
i am currently running the H&G line at their full strength right now aqua flakes AB and all the supplement nutes. I am also running a few other things in there like magical, Bloom sea weed and Head master. I got this combination from the guy at the hydro store who is super helpfull and really knows his shit. so far the plants are super responsive and vigorous week 1 of flower had very very minor signs of nute burn on just a few fans and this week (week 2 of flower) they are thriving all new growth looks great.
 

Jozikins

Well-Known Member
I always like to flush between veg and flower to make sure I don't have any thing built up in the medium, because my flower formula will be hotter than my veg formula. Feed your plants according to what they want, not the feeding chart. If the chart calls for 11ml of both A and B, but your plants don't like anything over 9ml of A an B, keep it at that. I've never ran "Head Master" but be careful with extra additives, the H&G line is solid, besides the lack of a carbohydrate and a ca/mg supplement. Besides those two exceptions it doesn't really need anything, despite the fact that H&G is developing more shit. Everyone makes extra additives to people using other line ups. Well, at least anybody trying to make money, and that's why you go into business, right?

Please keep us up to date with photos and let us know how your plants are liking the new products!
 

droman

Active Member
yeah i do a flush at the end of every week i have a hose in my room with a sprayer and soak all the pots with fresh water let it drain into the rez then pump everything out of the rez

works marvelous. NOT running R O water but that will possibly be purchased for the next batch need to make it work with out it for now and shits lookin amazing.... my larrys dream seems to defenately be sativa dominant judging by the major stretch it just did into the 2nd week of flowering but nodes everywhere!
 

Jozikins

Well-Known Member
Screw R/O, I use a decholorinator. Some people have some mean-nasty tap water and just have to get a r/o though. But 3:1 waste ratio? Balls to that. I was doing that for 2 years and had a killer water bill until the day I switched over to a decholorinator.

I only use R/O for clones and seedlings now. Plus a Decholorniator is cheap as hell + has way more output in comparison to a R/O. It used to take and hour or more to fill a 5 gal bucket, now I can do it in 5 minutes.
 

raindog

Member
Ok HG fans. Is there any point in adding nitrogen fixing microbes or other beneficial microbes to the HG line? Maybe early in Veg? I'm doing a 50/50 coco/perlite in 2 gal smart pots set in lava cinders. I have heard great things about Mykos and Azos but don't want to be foolish as this is basically a non organic Hydro gro.. could the coco make any sort of symbiotic relation possible?? Also I'm worried that, if the chemicals don't kill the microbes, and they do their thing, I will need to adjust my EC as the plants will process nutes so much better. Any thoughts? Thanks!!
 

Jozikins

Well-Known Member
Synthetic sources of Phosphorus over 25ppm can possibly render endo mycorrhizae totally useless. While on the other hand, natural/organic slow-releasing sources like Rock Phosphate are made more readily available by endo mycorrhizae. All of these beneficial fungus and bacteria and their affect on plants is still a more recent area of research, and your personal research and observation is very valuable because of this. Anything you notice otherwise than what is recorded is progress in this area of science. Ecto mycorrhizae don't do a lot of good for annuals, so you don't need to waste too much time researching that unless you have some trees or shrubs that just won't perk up.

Coco can create an excellent environment for a jamboree of different organisms, that is one of the reasons it is so widely used by different cultivators of different crops.

But the best advice I can give you is to return your 2 gal smart pots and get some 3 gal smart pots. You better believe you can pull a decent harvest off 2 gal smart pots, but you can pull a better one with less trouble in 3 gal smart pots, especially as a beginner.
 

raindog

Member
Ok Great and thanks. How do I know my ppm for phosphorous? I have a blue lab combo meter to check overall ppm. So maybe treat the new veg plants that will have less P with the mycorrhizae. Will this be of benefit?

The reason I may go with the 2 gal pots is that this is a hydro gro, not a coco grow. I am using full line H & G Hydro nutes (not the coco line) and want to treat this as hydro as opposed to coco grow. Thus the 2 gal pots and water more often. Also my reason for 50/50 perlite/coco.. better drain.
But I do like the sound of a 3 gal smart (root) pot. Makes sense to me.. more soil action taking place. However.

2 or 3 gal it's still not soil, not organic nor has the space needed for organic symbiosis to occur. I wanted to keep the deal hydro not just watering with ebb/flo.

So my question is. Will I kill the mycorrhizae with a top shelf chem based nute program?
 

Jozikins

Well-Known Member
Don't worry to much about mycorrhizae if you are doing a hydro style grow. Mycorrhizae is for plants growing in pots that will be absorbing all the water through the roots until the plant is dry. Mycorrhizae make nutrients more available by breaking them down and feeding them to the roots, at the same time they are making water more available in the same process. If you are using a program like H&G in hydroponics, you will see a minimal difference from mycorrhizae, it may or may not be worth the extra money. I have ran the hydro formula in DWC with mycorrhizae, and did not see enough of a difference to continue on with it unless it is a micro grow for personal use, and you are trying to get the absolute most out of the few plants you have. I did have better results with my DWC mycorrhizae grow, but there was not a big enough sample to make any conclusions. From most of my research, however, there isn't a huge benefit to hydroponics and endo mycorrhizae.

What you will be doing for hydroponics is a little different than DWC, but the roots are saturated in a media for most of the day so it isn't much different. Phosphorus is available to plants at 25 ppm, so most fertilizers containing P will have at least that. Now, mycorrhizae won't be totally useless if you add synthetic P, I have done it and gotten visible results from mycorrhizae. But it is much more effective in an organic source of P.

Since you are doing it hydro style you could totally get away with 2 gal, but 3 gal would give you some plants with beefier stems. We like beefy stems.

You have a bitching sweet TDS meter, but it won't tell you how much P is in something. You will have to call House & Garden up and ask. You will probably get Rob. He is a real busy guy but he is very informative and a very cool guy if you ever get a chance to kick it with him. So give him a break if he takes a little while to get back to you, he does the same amount of work as a 9 man team.
 
I have some mykos in my botanicare ready grow coco right now...about veg wk 2. Pulled a few smaller clones and checked the roots, all seemed good. My first time with the mykos. I talked to the company rep and he said it would be good, but not to use the Azos with Roots Accelerator. He said that Azos causes the plant to produce hormone A will roots delivers hormone B and this is counter productive.
 

Jozikins

Well-Known Member
I have some mykos in my botanicare ready grow coco right now...about veg wk 2. Pulled a few smaller clones and checked the roots, all seemed good. My first time with the mykos. I talked to the company rep and he said it would be good, but not to use the Azos with Roots Accelerator. He said that Azos causes the plant to produce hormone A will roots delivers hormone B and this is counter productive.
Good to know, if you can get us a little more details on "Hormone A and Hormone B," please let us know. I would like to research it for a better understanding.
 

Hulk Nugs

Well-Known Member
Magic Green

Not sure if am using the wrong sprayer or maybe spraying to close, but after i give all my plants a good spray under and on top of the plant then let them start drying up. I wait a few minutes and then check on plants again and i have never seen a nice coat of spray on the leaves. There are always little puddles or just drops on the leaves and normally that's the only part i notice that gets dark green. Does any one else notice this ??

Yea and something i noticed today i never have before after the foliar spray, is the color of the foliar spray(dark) was on the edges of some leaves.
 

puffenuff

Well-Known Member
Magic Green

Not sure if am using the wrong sprayer or maybe spraying to close, but after i give all my plants a good spray under and on top of the plant then let them start drying up. I wait a few minutes and then check on plants again and i have never seen a nice coat of spray on the leaves. There are always little puddles or just drops on the leaves and normally that's the only part i notice that gets dark green. Does any one else notice this ??

Yea and something i noticed today i never have before after the foliar spray, is the color of the foliar spray(dark) was on the edges of some leaves.
I sometimes get those spots like the magic green just dried up, doesn't appear to be harmful to the plants. I was thinking maybe I didn't dilute the solution with enough water? I think next time im going to actually smooth the spray over the leaves with a brush after spraying and see what happens
 

Jozikins

Well-Known Member
Magic Green

Not sure if am using the wrong sprayer or maybe spraying to close, but after i give all my plants a good spray under and on top of the plant then let them start drying up. I wait a few minutes and then check on plants again and i have never seen a nice coat of spray on the leaves. There are always little puddles or just drops on the leaves and normally that's the only part i notice that gets dark green. Does any one else notice this ??

Yea and something i noticed today i never have before after the foliar spray, is the color of the foliar spray(dark) was on the edges of some leaves.
Shake magic green vigorously before mixing and after mixing, as well as before very use. Remember that Magic Green has a very short shelf life once it has been mixed into water. A light mist is the goal with any foliar spray. Drenching them or even giving them a "good spray" can be counterproductive. A light mist is always the goal with fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides. A heavier mist with a fertilizing product can cause over fertilization of an isolated portion of your plant. This can cause your roots to slow down in development. If your plant can so very easily eat fertilizer through it's leaves, what is the point of expending precious energy on root growth? And of course, wimpy roots leads to big problems, so we would like to avoid that. If you accidentally over spray a plant, grab the plant by it's stalk and gently shake the plant free of excess droplets.

Always make sure your foliar spray is 250ppm or less, pH 5.6 - 6.3, ideally 5.7 is what most manufacturers will suggest. Anything over 250 ppm and we risk over feeding our plants, and wasting expensive Magic Green.

If your Magic Green is leaving puddles on your leaves, use a wetting agent. A single drop of biodegradable dish soap will do just fine, or if you want a more specific product, you can try Saturator by Dutch Master.
 

Jozikins

Well-Known Member
It could also be the quality of your mister itself, forgot to mention that. A lot of spritzer bottles don't make a fine mist, it's more like a fine splash. I noticed this yesterday when i was spraying my friend's garden down with bicarbonate to kill off his mold, and I saw little extra dark blue-green splotches on the leaves. It's because he uses a little spritzer bottle instead of a mister. You can get sprayer that advertises as a "mister," and you can easily find one of those by browsing through your local hydroponics store for about 5 minutes.

Good luck and happy gardening,

Jozikins
 

william69er

Active Member
Hay guys
long time reader first time poster.read all al.b fucts posts/threads (things) and it convinced me to give it a go.(why not??) and I mean on a similer scale to his(40 plant perifial**) previous to this I had only growen a couple little shity plants in a closet.how ever they didn't come out so good haha(streched,stressed,purple,yellow just amiture realy(won't go there)) so I'm bulls deep in dept now but we finaly got our shit together(a year later) and got the clones(10) in an what not only to discover they have spider might from here to narm and back. So they got turned up side down in a bucket of "neem" stuff 3 times in a week.sure enough that got the little pricks.the clones were in jiffy pots when I got them.I wasn't keen on putting them in to soil pots and waiting for them to be big enough to clone so I just put them in to a 50/50 mix of perlight/rock wool (wilst still in the jiffy cube) in hindsight it probly would have been better to do just perlight(NAWELL!) any way i'm 4 weeks in and were going strong.

Now here's were this thread comes in.the grow is in the woop woops so were on boar water(I think or stream hhhhmmm??) we have a 100/liter storage tub (I use litres becuse I'm kiwi) I can't remember off the top of my head what the ph is before nutes but after we only have to add 4ml to 100liters to get ph to 5.6-5.8 and add 180 ml A+B to get ppm1120 as per H&G Guide lines for vege plants. We also add 1ml/litre ho2o (yes that's right!!) Oh we also use 2x50mm air stones in the res 24/7(havnt gota timer yet)
any thorts/opinions would be cool.
 

Hulk Nugs

Well-Known Member
Anyone using Greatwhite, if so how are you running it? Dosage, hydro or hand feed, how often. Any tips would be much appreciated.
 
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