Absolute Beginner Questions for 1st Grow

[GNick55]

looks like it needs a bit of calmag..

 

[Derbudd420]

Thanks @Derbudd420 ! IF the plant was in Veg, would you ever consider using strong black tea as an insect spray?

Yeah in veg, maybe. I just released 1500 lady bugs on my outdoor girls as a preventative. Cheap little assassins

 

[hoobastank_enthusiast]

IF the plant was in Veg, would you ever consider using strong black tea as an insect spray?

FWIW I think there's a difference between buds and leaves in this context. You haven't gone into flower yet so the idea of something touching your actual buds doesn't really apply.
IDK about black tea but I have used neem oil in my actual herb garden before and it definitely damages the leaves. It might be organic but that does not make it easy on the plant. It's not something I would use on any plants at this point until I've tried some other less damaging methods of control.

 

[Hawk518]

FWIW I think there's a difference between buds and leaves in this context. You haven't gone into flower yet so the idea of something touching your actual buds doesn't really apply.
IDK about black tea but I have used neem oil in my actual herb garden before and it definitely damages the leaves. It might be organic but that does not make it easy on the plant. It's not something I would use on any plants at this point until I've tried some other less damaging methods of control.

I think these two plants are in flower, but this is my first grow and maybe I'm off.
I have Neem Oil and Captain Jack's Dead Bug spray (Spinorad), but haven't used either since they went into flower.
I was debating the black tea cause it doesn't have any scary stuff in it.

What less damaging controls would you try?

Thanks again @hoobastank_enthusiast !

 

[LoveGrowingIt]

ok basically.. the droplet magnifying thing is not true, only on plants with hairs on their leaves as to hold the water droplet above the leaf than creating a focal point for the sun to shine through.. water droplets on leafs do not create a focal point..

Great explanation! I've wondered about that for a long time. Thanks.

Looking at charts for N. VA, it looks like we’re not under 12 hours of sunlight til late September.

On the equinoxes in March and September, the Sun is exactly above the Equator, making the length of day and night equal at 12 hours each.

 

[hoobastank_enthusiast]

Oh I guess you are in flower. I thought you said late September at one point. So yeah you probably don't want to spray anything. Outdoor in flower doesn't have a lot of options at that point.

Generally it's going to depend on the type of pests you're dealing with but you can think about "companion" crops (there are other plants that certain pests really dislike which you can grow alongside) as well as other beneficial insects you could introduce into your space. You can also think about physical proximity to other types of plants as well as each other (more spacing makes it harder for infestations to jump plant-to-plant).

TBH as an indoor coco grower pests are one thing that have pretty much completely fallen off my radar and one of the biggest reasons I like inert media. A lot of pest problems start and end with the media your plant is in.

 

[Hawk518]

Gave them some CalMag yesterday. I’ve been feeding them GeoFlora Bloom (3-5-5) for the last two weeks. I already have two items I can feed them for high Potassium – MegaCrop (9-7-14) OR Sea-K (Soluble Kelp Extract)(0-0-18). Which would be better at this point? They won’t get any more GeoFlora til next Monday. Also, do I continue to give them the CalMag each time I water them?
Sprayed them both w. very strong black tea. Both sides of the leaves and the soil. Hopefully, this will kill off any of the insects that were ruining the leaves. Figured the tea can only help and not hurt anything. Plus, my plants now smell of mint.

 

[GNick55]

stay with the 3-5-5 for now.. yes add calmag with every watering along with the geoflora bloom..
calmag i’d say use 2 ml per gallon, the geoflora bloom i’d use 5-7 ml per gallon.. stop spraying the tea on the plant..

 

[fishmon]

Q1: I have white tips on 2 leaves. Plant is 5 weeks old. Last week I gave it a half dose of GeoFlora. I’ve done searches on white tips and answers are all over the place. Some say it’s bad and others say nothing to worry about. So, I’ll ask here: what are the white tips a result of? Nutrient burn? If so, do I hold off on giving them anymore GeoFlora next week? What do I need to do (if anything)?

Q2: Looks like it should be warm enough at night to leave them outside – read / heard that as long as above 55F, they should be ok. Accurate?

Q3: Still trying to figure out the possibility of setting up a grow tent. One MAJOR concern is the potential smell. How well do the carbon filters get rid of the smell? Worried that my books will absorb the odor. Has anyone had this kind of issue? If so, how did you solve the problem?

As already mentioned, nutes not needed so early. Even in a mildly amended mix I don't start introducing nutes until week 3 or 4 from sprout. Clonex seedling food perhaps before then. Always heard mild white tips ok but I'm not sure that's correct. Had a plant getting sick recently some white tips but found excessive nutrient build up in soil. Turns out she's a light feeder. Cut nutes and feed frequency and she's happy as a lark

 

[GNick55]

white tips is usually an early sign of light stress or calmag def..

 

[Hawk518]

10/29/23 - Yet another beginner Q: SPIDER MITES!

Noticed a lot of leaves with issues. Trimmed them all off. While trimming I saw what must be spider mites on the top of one of the top colas. WTH?! I swear they weren't there yesterday!

Please give me advice on what my next steps are. I’ve now read everything from:

• it’s no big deal if you’re close to harvest (which I am)
• it will be ok if you wash the buds
• OMG! Your harvest is destroyed. The End is nigh. Give up now.

 

[LoveGrowingIt]

10/29/23 - Yet another beginner Q: SPIDER MITES!

Noticed a lot of leaves with issues. Trimmed them all off. While trimming I saw what must be spider mites on the top of one of the top colas. WTH?! I swear they weren't there yesterday!

Please give me advice on what my next steps are. I’ve now read everything from:

• it’s no big deal if you’re close to harvest (which I am)
• it will be ok if you wash the buds
• OMG! Your harvest is destroyed. The End is nigh. Give up now.

Your biggest problem is exterminating the mites, so they don't infest your future grows. I had them recently and used AgroMagen GrowSafe. It worked well, but flowering was still early.

I've never had spider mites that made webs on the buds, so I don't know if you can harvest them. Alcohol and hydrogen peroxide sprays are safe to use there. I believe GrowSafe is safe, but I'm not sure about that. I'd spray those webs with alcohol ASAP. It kills both the living spider mites and their eggs. It's the eggs that can be hard to kill, and they'll come back if they're not killed completely.

 

[fishmon]

Just harvested a strawberry cough with mites. I was hunting them at lights on and before lights out for the last month with a 30x lens. I removed leaves with mites...daily. Was pretty much nothing left but sugar leaves at the end and was still finding them. Buggers are like cockroaches. If you see 1 or 2 there are hundreds more...and they reproduce like crazy. The size of your webbing tells me your issue is more advanced than mine. Even with all my diligent combat I think at best I accomplished a stalemate or fighting retreat. I've read that the webbing is basically a protective dome to capture potential predators. I also used Dr Zymes a few times. It pretty much kills on contact but not eggs. It is safe to use in flower. There are others but not many. I would harvest sooner than later and wash them. Then shoot for a perfect grow next go round (if there is such a thing). Wound up having to toss over half my harvest due to actual and suspected bud rot. Between the bugs and ridiculous defoliation the poor thing was horribly stressed. I learned that prevention and vigilance throughout the grow are key. A contributing factor to my ordeal was that I brought it in at about week 3 of flower to finish indoors. In hindsight this was a boon to the mites as this likely spared them from natural predators. Now I know the signs of mite damage as well as aphids (from another grow). Be ever stalwart and vigilant.

 

[Hawk518]

This was an outdoors grow, so extremely attractive to insects. Only brought it into the garage because it got too cold / rainy and wanted to prevent additional bud rot. All I can think of is that I didn't hit ALL the leaf undersides when sprayed SNS-203 and insects pounced!

Thinking of just cutting all leaves off and then chopping to dry. Still need to figure out exactly when to do a bud wash! And, who knows, this one just might be a goner already w. nothing left to salvage...which would Really suck after 6 months of obsessing about trying to grow!

 

[fishmon]

Wash on chop day. I trimmed everything roughly to sides of buds. Saved no trim. One dunk in lemon juice solution, over into peroxide solution, next rinse. Did a gentle shake off. Had a warm sunny day so was able to dry more before going into the drying tent. Good luck. I feel your grief. Mites suck.

 

[GGOGZin]

Wash on chop day. I trimmed everything roughly to sides of buds. Saved no trim. One dunk in lemon juice solution, over into peroxide solution, next rinse. Did a gentle shake off. Had a warm sunny day so was able to dry more before going into the drying tent. Good luck. I feel your grief. Mites suck.

I did 4 buckets. 5 gal in size.

Bucket 1: 1pt h2o2 and 4pt water (fungicide)

Bucket 2: fresh lemon juice (2tbsp/gal of water, and baking soda, 2 tbsp per gal) general cleaning like bug shit and debris etc

Bucket 3: Warm Water (tepid water) opens up buds to release more debris

Bucket 4: Cool water to close buds again

Then normal dry and cure, inspecting daily

 

[Salvo]

Q1: I have white tips on 2 leaves. Plant is 5 weeks old. Last week I gave it a half dose of GeoFlora. I’ve done searches on white tips and answers are all over the place. Some say it’s bad and others say nothing to worry about. So, I’ll ask here: what are the white tips a result of? Nutrient burn? If so, do I hold off on giving them anymore GeoFlora next week? What do I need to do (if anything)?

Q2: Looks like it should be warm enough at night to leave them outside – read / heard that as long as above 55F, they should be ok. Accurate?

Q3: Still trying to figure out the possibility of setting up a grow tent. One MAJOR concern is the potential smell. How well do the carbon filters get rid of the smell? Worried that my books will absorb the odor. Has anyone had this kind of issue? If so, how did you solve the problem?

I am still new, however, found that white tips are usually over nutrient and if you’re using a good quality soil, you should not have to give any nutrients until much older I use living soil had a lot of problems with traditional regular soil started using live in soil not too long ago and I love it the worms and the bugs. Keep the biology amazingly and if you’re interested go to YouTube look up build a soil I have a 4 x 4 bed 18 inches deep with the Coots recipe And a lot of my issues have gone away,I did order the kit from Builder soil so I wouldn’t have any issues of trying to mix it myself and I’m glad I did this as the first time in living siol is going great!

Also, when you’re using live in soil, you do not have to give nutrients like you would traditional as all the nutrients and needed items are in the soil for the plants when it’s ready for it

As for the temperatures outside that’s way too cold in my opinion, but I’m still learning
The tent is a great idea. And the filters are very good to control smell watch videos on YouTube from build a soil. He’ll explain how to use. Hope this helps. Good luck.

 

[Toohighmyguy]

10/29/23 - Yet another beginner Q: SPIDER MITES!

Noticed a lot of leaves with issues. Trimmed them all off. While trimming I saw what must be spider mites on the top of one of the top colas. WTH?! I swear they weren't there yesterday!

Please give me advice on what my next steps are. I’ve now read everything from:

• it’s no big deal if you’re close to harvest (which I am)
• it will be ok if you wash the buds
• OMG! Your harvest is destroyed. The End is nigh. Give up now.

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Chop chop . Clean your grow area. Some people around this site have good information if you choose to go that route. I would toss. Start the next grow. Your choice. It's all about learning and having fun. Grow on growmie

 

[Hawk518]

11/19/23 - Unfortunately, I’ve had pretty serious back issues and haven’t been able to care for these plants at all. Now, they look pretty horrible – tons of issues w. the leaves. Still on a 20/4 hour light cycle in hopes of switching from Flower back to Veg. Would like to transplant from one gallon fabric grow pots to either a 3 gallon or a 5 gallon. Put a humidifier in the room. Humidity was quite low (34%) w. temperature at 74 F. Will add GeoFlora Veg in hopes that it will help fix the leaves.

Not sure what's going on here. Too much light? Not enough of the proper nutes? Something else?

Any advice on what to do here?

 

[GNick55]

11/19/23 - Unfortunately, I’ve had pretty serious back issues and haven’t been able to care for these plants at all. Now, they look pretty horrible – tons of issues w. the leaves. Still on a 20/4 hour light cycle in hopes of switching from Flower back to Veg. Would like to transplant from one gallon fabric grow pots to either a 3 gallon or a 5 gallon. Put a humidifier in the room. Humidity was quite low (34%) w. temperature at 74 F. Will add GeoFlora Veg in hopes that it will help fix the leaves.

Not sure what's going on here. Too much light? Not enough of the proper nutes? Something else?

Any advice on what to do here?


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mmmm think they are useless.. just being honest brother..
hope your back is ok?..