First time grow Cemo & A Stranger

[newfarmer]

Uggg So minor setback "I Hope" 2 nights ago I feed everyone in the tent. I used the heavy feeding formula from Canna along with a dose of CalMag. My 5 in 1 Chinese made piece of shit meter finally bit me in the ass. I looked inside the tent this morning and ir was pretty sad. Lots of burnt leaves and shriveling plants. So I spent the whole morning pulling everyone out from under the scrog and into an emergency shower!!! Man I knew I would have to learn some hard lessons but I was hoping probably like everyone at my stage of farming to not have to. I just got finished buying new testers yesterday and when I tested the runoff if read in the 2000's PPM .. FML I have probably set myself back at least a week. I guess we will see if they bounce back. They went from looking like nice healthy plants to a bunch of scragely weeds.

 

[jigfresh]

Is that the 'after' picture? If so they look alright. I've treated plants pretty damn bad in the past and had them come out really nice for harvest. 2000ppm.... Holy cow man. At least you got things figured out a bit now with that.

I really dig the screen you made. The plants look happy even if they aren't perfect. Good luck.

 

[ttystikk]

Keep truckin', it's a learning experience- after all, you just paid tuition, lol

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link- and there are a lot of links in the chain of cultivation!

 

[newfarmer]

Hey thanks jigfresh I really hope they will be okay. I know right?? 200ppm, I had a crappy multi purpose meter made in china that was totally lying to me. I had just figured it out the other day right after I had fed them. I went and got new testers and glad I did.
I watched a couple youtube vids about screens and then took a crack with this one. I just used some spare lumber I had in the garage and built the frame. Then drilled in screws 3/4 of the way into the wood at 2 inches apart all the way around. put some legs on it and then took a half hr and strung it up. Thanks for the props.

 

[newfarmer]

Keep truckin', it's a learning experience- after all, you just paid tuition, lol

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link- and there are a lot of links in the chain of cultivation!

This is defiantly true. I have just started and I am just learning all this cultivation craft. It still hurts though as I'm sure you know when you put your soul into something and you see it suffer.

 

[newfarmer]

Hi Guys,
So things are looking much better. I did have a little bit of loss due to scorches leaves but all in all not as bad as I was thinking it was. I do have some questions that I cant seem to find the answers to and was hoping you could help. I just flushed all the plants in the tent. I tested the runoff of one of the pots near the end and it was in the 400's PPM It has been taking 7 days for my plants to dry out between waterings. They have been in flower for about 5 days now. I havn't feed them anything since the flush. What would you suggest my first move should be? The pots are still pretty wet and won't need another watering for a few more days.
Here is a pic of everyone in there now. What do you think?

 

[ttystikk]

I suggest running half and half bloom and veg nutes at a total of about 500 ppm (EC x 500 scale), at 5.6-5.8 for the next week or so.

Next run, use a LOT less coco, because all that volume is causing unnecessary trouble.

 

[jigfresh]

The girls are looking real good bro. I suck at soil or anything close, so I have no input on that. But they look great.

 

[newfarmer]

Wow I didn't think I used too much coco. I just filled my pots and transplanted my plants into them so that they were full. Should I be using smaller pots? I'm using 7 Gal pots now. I have raised the temps in my room a bit to try and speed up some drying out. I'm pretty sure I'll still be looking at a few more days.

 

[Funkstarfish]

I suggest running half and half bloom and veg nutes at a total of about 500 ppm (EC x 500 scale), at 5.6-5.8 for the next week or so.

Next run, use a LOT less coco, because all that volume is causing unnecessary trouble.

it could be the transplant up to 7gal is a bit of a huge step. You would not believe how some guys do in 3gal coco pots to finish. What it means when you pot up that big is there is a lot of coco that is holding water and nutes but no roots there, so you get wet and dry pockets. the entire container does not dry very evenly. then you can't water and feed as often. or if you choose to feed and water the same, you get sogginess. if you are using a better ratio of roots to coco, you end up with more consistent feeds. I'm sure someone else will clarify a bit better.

 

[newfarmer]

The girls are looking real good bro. I suck at soil or anything close, so I have no input on that. But they look great.

Thanks man. I'm really looking forward to seeing how they turn out. I am really tired of paying a lot of money to buy from someone else and have abbsolutly no idea of what I am putting in my body or finding good weed that I like to smoke. I really don't like the fast heart racing high. I'm more of a get face melting high and then try and burn a hole through the wall with my X-Ray Stare!! lol

it could be the transplant up to 7gal is a bit of a huge step. You would not believe how some guys do in 3gal coco pots to finish. What it means when you pot up that big is there is a lot of coco that is holding water and nutes but no roots there, so you get wet and dry pockets. the entire container does not dry very evenly. then you can't water and feed as often. or if you choose to feed and water the same, you get sogginess. if you are using a better ratio of roots to coco, you end up with more consistent feeds. I'm sure someone else will clarify a bit better.

Thanks Funkstarfish!! That makes a lot of sense!! I never really thought of that. I just figured after some reading that bigger pots make bigger plants and why wouldn't I want bigger plants. When I up potted I went from 1 Gal to 7. I didn't really have this problem because I wasn't watering them all the way through at first. After a week or 2 I started running them right through. Right now the 7 Gal pots have roots poking out the sides of the pot right near the bottom so I know they are well established in there. How large to you figure a plant in a 7 Gal pot needs to be to eat every 3 or 4 days? Right now it's kinda hard for me to tell because of the screen but if I had to guess I would say that they are between 2 and 3 ft tall right now. Here are some pics from today. This is DAY 7 Flower. I'm not a 100% sure of how long to keep tucking them
under before I just let them get tall. I kinda figured another week 2 in total but that was before my misshap. I'm not sure how fat that put me behind and weather I should move my timings to the right a bit more more? what do you think?

 

[ttystikk]

You're in flower, you're dealing with stuff, just keep truckin'. Another week or so and the stretch will taper off and you'll see stacking, that's when you can slow down or stop tucking.

The thing to remember about hydroponics is that the plants get no nutrients from the media- that's all in the water, hence the name, 'hydroponics', or 'water gardening'. Thus, having a large volume of media is unnecessary and even counterproductive if the plant is too small.

Next time, one to three gallon plots should be entirely sufficient under that SCROG- you really want them small enough to need feeding several times every day, not once every several days. That's what keeps the media flushed out so it doesn't saturate or build up excess nutrient salts.

 

[jigfresh]

Another week or so and the stretch will taper off and you'll see stacking, that's when you can slow down or stop tucking.

What he said. When they stop stretching, stop tucking. It will be pretty clear actually.

 

[newfarmer]

Hi Guys

Well a couple of things have happened since my last post. I was having problems with what looked like more burning slowly starting to creep in on one of my plants. I gave it some more balanced water to see what the runoff was and it was still pretty high so I flushed it out until I got the runoff back down to the 500PPM. That was a few days ago and didn't really see any sort of possessive effect to what I was doing. Everyone started to look a bit droopy and I really didn't know why. soil was good, EC was good, They just seemed like they were getting dried out and I didn't know why. Then last night I went down during the night cycle which I never do and BOOM!!! "Hey why is my light on"?? F&*% 5 days ago I went down right at light switch and was tucking them in. The light went off so I flipped the little switch on my timer from "Timer" to "ON" And I never flipped it back. I feel like an idiot!! Such a simple thing that I missed seems to have caused me lots of problems. First I scorch them half to death then while there trying to recover I shocked the crap out of them with 24/7 light Ugg.

Well I guess I am back on track for now. I'm sure there will be something else before this is over. Here is a pic of everyone in there. I tucked them in for what I think is the last time unless I see any unruly growers.

 

[ttystikk]

Oh I hate it when I do that! I think you'll be all right since it happened early, although you probably prolonged your stretch phase a bit.

 

[newfarmer]

Oh I hate it when I do that! I think you'll be all right since it happened early, although you probably prolonged your stretch phase a bit.

Thanks man, I will watch them closely and keep tucking this week if I need to. Do you think that having my light on 24/7 would cause my plants to drink less water? Just seems like water consumption is going down when I thought it should be going up.

 

[ttystikk]

Thanks man, I will watch them closely and keep tucking this week if I need to. Do you think that having my light on 24/7 would cause my plants to drink less water? Just seems like water consumption is going down when I thought it should be going up.

Didn't you mention you flushed your girls recently? You might have to figure that into their water consumption.

 

[newfarmer]

Didn't you mention you flushed your girls recently? You might have to figure that into their water consumption.

Yes I did but even just before that it seemed like it had slowed right down in terms of feedings.
Do you think a plant under light 24/7 would drink more or less water than a plant with a proper night cycle?

 

[ttystikk]

One would reasonably think more...

 

[jigfresh]

I think if your pH is off they can drink less. Sucks about the light. I would guess it might slow them down as they are confused, but hopefully they won't hermie at all. They still look happy either way. :)