1st grow help

Helluva plant for five weeks! Soil pH is not critical, as you can see.

Madbud said:

Helluva plant for five weeks! Soil pH is not critical, as you can see.

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Yeah man. Everything I read leads me to believe that PH is a very critical element of cannabis cultivation and I don’t Doubt that it’s true On some level. But I think she looks good. She’s closer to 7 weeks but I’ve somewhat exceeded my first plant expectations. Thanks for the response

Comes a time you trust what you see and not a cheap soil probe. Beautiful plant, no?

I don't know the specifics, but I do know that temperature does affect ph. My ph meter advertises itself as automatically adjusting the ph based on the temp it's reading. One regret I have with my first few grows had been relying on the cheap $20-$30 ph pens, I've had three and they all read somewhat inconsistently even after calibration, one is really all over the place. These inconsistent readings were actually causing my plants problems and making adjusting for ph mostly a guessing game. I recently bought and $80 Apera instruments ph tester on Amazon that's very well reviewed, I'm hoping it will prove adequate. I don't want to shell out several hundred dollars for a professional quality meter.

As for soil ph, I wouldn't pay any attention to one of those soil probes. If you really want to know your soils ph get one of those soil test kits where you put some soil into a vile, mix it with water, add a few drops of a chemical then refer to the color chart. I really don't think soil ph is much to worry about though, if you're starting with the right soil and watering correctly I don't think it's super important to check.

Most importantly your plant looks healthy, I wouldn't go making drastic changes when everything is going well. It might be a little on the dark green side so maybe you could try to drop the nitrogen a bit in your feedings but I'd even hesitate to do that because it looks fine right now.

That's kind of encouraging to know you used a cheap led (always what I use) and it looks like you didn't top. You'll do so much better on your next grow but it looks healthy for now. Keep it up farmer.

Madbud said:

Comes a time you trust what you see and not a cheap soil probe. Beautiful plant, no?

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Yes very beautiful imo. Thanks for the input

Thanks for everyone’s input. Much appreciated. I feel like I’ve absorbed sooo much info over the past couple months preparing for this first grow. Just wanna make sure I’m not overlooking somethin simple.

Snakeskins said:

That's kind of encouraging to know you used a cheap led (always what I use) and it looks like you didn't top. You'll do so much better on your next grow but it looks healthy for now. Keep it up farmer.

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You can definitely get bud with a cheap led, they're just generally about the same efficiency as an equivalent wattage HPS. So his "600w" led is probably like 200 actual watts from the wall or so, it's probably equal to 180w-250w of HPS as opposed to a high-end led where 200w of led can equal over 400w of hps. It's definitely worth upgrading to a nicer led, but if you already have a cheap one and are short on cash, go ahead a keep using it. Just don't buy another cheap one when it comes time to replace it, HLG boards aren't that expensive.