1st grow ever and in Coco - what's up with my ladies?

[DanC520]

Plant 1 (primary concern) today

Plant 2 (less of a concern, but still...) today

Long time consumer, first time grower. On about day 19 since I dropped seeds in water to soak. Everything seemed good so far, but something is now amiss. I gave a hefty watering yesterday afternoon and about 6-7 hours later, noticed some browning and its worse today (primarily plant 1). When I watered plant 1, water came out faster than expected and kicked up some water and wet coco, primarily onto the front left quadrant. So maybe that's my problem? I'm too green to know! I'll toss in a pic of plant 1 from a couple days ago, pre watering.

Plant 1 - two days ago

Medium: Coco
Strain: ILGM black widow, fem, photo (x2 - assuming labels correct)
Light: Sunsystem 315W LEC - phillips 4200 master color bulb @ 24 inches
Heat: 73-80 degrees
Humidity: 45-60 range
Water: ph 6.2, ppm 650, ec 1.4
Nutes: GH flora trio + cal mag (using growweedeasy schedule)
Age: about 17 days since popped.

I think that's the important info? Any advice appreciated. Thanks!

 

[OneLuvLabs]

Looks like a cpl things. Could be Overwatering, how much & how often do you water them? & or Did you pre flush/saturate ur coco in the pots with the ideal ph before you transplanted? what’s the current run off reading (ph/ppm) & do you flush ur pots at least once a week?

 

[OneLuvLabs]

If your pots are heavy give them some time to eat & dry up. You don’t want to water board your babies.

 

[DanC520]

Thank you for the reply

How often do I water?
-Once a day. Before yesterday, had been about 60-70ml a day. But not the full pot. More like a circle that expanded about an inch past the leaf range. I read warnings about not letting coco get too dry, so watered with a lot more yesterday focusing on outer edges of the pot. That's the splashing thing I mentioned above.

Did I pre saturate before transplant?
- Yeah, that was nearly two weeks ago. I went right from rooter to the pots. When I germinated, I charged the pots with ph-ed water with a lil cal mag

Run off readings?
- Maybe this is part of my problem, idk. I haven't had run off with how much I'd been watering and only a tiny bit with the watering yesterday.

Flushing them once a week?
- I'm just at the end of week two in those. I did not flush after week 1. I have been giving plain ph-ed water every third watering or so. But I'm sure the volume not up to "flushing" (see above run off comment)

Yeah, the pots are a little heavy right now. My instincts are to run plain ph-ed water until run off to kind of reset. But these instincts are based on absolutely nothing outside of what I've picked up reading. I'll let the pots get a little lighter first per your comment.

Appreciate the feedback!

 

[OneLuvLabs]

I’d advise when working with seeds to use the tiny seedling pots till you get a better root structure going on. So its fully saturated with every watering. I typically prefer to grow using clones less drama.

 

[DanC520]

I agree on the smaller pots. Planning on solo cups and 3 gal next time around. I'm sure clones in my future at some point. I imagine they'll start to be more available where I am. But for now, I got all these seeds, so going to give it my best and learn as much as I can along the way. No substitute for experience.

 

[Oldmateslim]

In Coco I try to use small pots 500ml-1l for seedlings and pot up in stages until they're ready for their final pot for flowering that way you won't Overwater, it's nearly impossible to over water in Coco unless the mass of Coco has no roots in it. The only time I've had an issue with Overwater is sprouting in a 30l pot which took a while for it to take off and required careful watering for ages.

Could be a nutrient issue but when this small they're alot easier to overfeed than underfeed so as long as your feed ppms aren't too High it should be ok, you can probably rule out pH unless you have crazy high or low pH tap water as Coco does a really good job at buffering water to just below neutral.

Could be too little light/too cold, I've had plants look similar from cold root zones and ambient temps.

Could be if your Coco is not buffered properly or has too high ppm from left over salts.

 

[Oldmateslim]

Don't stress too much though, seedlings are finnicky, get them through this stage and make sure they have enough light and good feed strength and when larger and have healthy roots be sure to water to runoff and keep an eye on ec coming out and flush when the EC out is stronger than ec in and you should be golden.

This is your first grow so you are bound to run into lots of little things but that's how you learn, years later I'm still learning and messing up seedlings and clones sometimes

 

[Oldmateslim]

"Cannabis Grow Guide - Coco For Cannabis - Science and Practice" don't follow this word for word but this is one of the most useful guides for Coco I've seen, also growcast podcast has a few really good episodes about Coco and are actually worth listening too start to finish as I've learned alot from that podcast.

 

[DanC520]

Appreciate all the the advice. Definitely looking to pot up in stages on next go.

PPMs have been 600-650 ish on waterings with nutes. Light seems pretty strong, not getting a lot of stretch, it kicks off some heat and ambient temp around 65 in the room. Ambient in my tent around 70-72, leaf level around 74-79. I feel like those in decent ranges. Im in the desert, so hard to get too cold inside. RH a bit of a pain, but I've kept in 40-60 range with humidifiers.

Overfeeding a possibility for sure. This all happened about 7 hours after my biggest feeding/watering to date. If not related to the splashing, still seems to line up with that feeding. The plan I've formed this evening is to let those pots lighten up, then give some plain ph-ed water until run off and see what that's testing like. But going to read a little more first.

Also thanks for the link. I had poked around that site some once I settled on coco, but will definitely give it some more attention. The not stressing is the challenge. Logic vs emotion lol.

 

[DanC520]

Update. If anything, I can reference back to this.

So watered to run off today and omg. The PPMs and EC were bananas! like 5x higher than amounts in for plant 1. Plant 2 was more like 3.5x, so I'm guessing why its much less affected. I feel a bit dumb for underwatering the pots till now and not checking run off sooner. The plants looking healthy prevented me from doing things I should have been doing (had I done proper research). Pots are pretty drenched now. So will let them dry up again and check again tomorrow. I feel like I'm on the right path at least. Hopefully able to recover.

 

[DanC520]

Another update. Feel free to ignore lol.

I think I've righted the ship here. I hit with a lot of PH water last Sunday, wasn't super pumped about the results, so get some florakleen and hit with that on Monday followed by a light feed. Alternated ph water and nute water this week. Cut off a couple leaves that were for sure dying on Plant 1. Have a few left with burn, but hasn't spread since Sunday. This is where I'm at when lights came on today.

Plant 1

Plant 2

 

[Gingercat]

This run is my first time using coco, started seeds in root riots transplanted to to solos then once I could slide the hole mass out I switched to 3 gal, once I got to 3 gal it was watering every other day to run off using flora trio + cal mag and rapid start... the plants will tell you when they want more feedings, towards the end of veg it was everyday now in flower I've got multiple feedings

 

[DanC520]

That's how I've set up my 2nd run. Rooters -> solo -> 3 gal. This first run went rooters -> 5 gal. Biggest issue was my understanding of keeping the entire medium wet. There must have been a lot of build up from my micro feedings. When I hit with a lot of nutes (and splashed leaves) last weekend, was too much for the ladies. It wasn't so much the feeding itself that got them imo, but the build up in the coco. The Aquaman post talking about watering to waste clicked with me. Now that I'm not so worried about overwatering, I can be more aggressive in watering, feeding, and flushing. I never did hard sciences in school, so this is a crash course haha.

 

[Gingercat]

That's how I've set up my 2nd run. Rooters -> solo -> 3 gal. This first run went rooters -> 5 gal. Biggest issue was my understanding of keeping the entire medium wet. There must have been a lot of build up from my micro feedings. When I hit with a lot of nutes (and splashed leaves) last weekend, was too much for the ladies. It wasn't so much the feeding itself that got them imo, but the build up in the coco. The Aquaman post talking about watering to waste clicked with me. Now that I'm not so worried about overwatering, I can be more aggressive in watering, feeding, and flushing. I never did hard sciences in school, so this is a crash course haha.

Crazy the growth dif between coco and soil

 

[DanC520]

Crazy the growth dif between coco and soil

I'll take your word for it. This is the only thing I've grown besides my waistline in the past 20 years.

 

[Billymgb]

Hello Danc I too am new to growing in coco. I started fertigating (feeding 3 x a day ) early on I read about this and went for it. It will cost more and if your hand watering it can be a pain but I have not had any problems and these autos grew so awesome. I am hooked on coco!!!

 

[DanC520]

Yo! Yeah, not sure if plants in 5gal will get big enough to need 3x a day. But could see it happening in 3gal. I am hand watering and built my other set up this week. I realized that basically 85% of my time is water related, 5% tending, 5% talking to the plants, and 5% being a plant hypochondriac . I might have already started prelim research into auto watering systems.

 

[Gingercat]

Yo! Yeah, not sure if plants in 5gal will get big enough to need 3x a day. But could see it happening in 3gal. I am hand watering and built my other set up this week. I realized that basically 85% of my time is water related, 5% tending, 5% talking to the plants, and 5% being a plant hypochondriac . I might have already started prelim research into auto watering systems.

I run an auto watering system on a 4x8 table pots sit on risers with a catch resovir that I pump out into 5 gal buckets to dump

 

[DanC520]

I run an auto watering system on a 4x8 table pots sit on risers with a catch resovir that I pump out into 5 gal buckets to dump

That looks pretty cool! Did you buy a kit or DIY? How challenging would it be for someone that is mechanically inept?