I
Islander
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We are in the process of completing our first "large" scale grow. 8 1000w lights over 90 5gal smart pots filled with FoxFarm Ocean Forest with 25% perlite added. Various different strains with Grandaddy, OG Kush, and half a dozen Sativa. I used a Botanicaire feeding schedule that was provided by a friend/mentor who also provided the clones.
I had great veg growth during the first 4 weeks with healthy happy looking plants. Fimmed at about the 4 week mark and shortly afterward went into 12/12 from 16/8 light sched.
A couple of weeks into bloom I found my first powdery mildew and it was fairly advanced. As I was not actively looking for it, so it got a good hold in before I really found it. Started with Safer fungicide. Realized after about a week that giving the affected plants a squirt or two was not going to get the job done. I then brought out infected plants and really dosed them with the safer and would mist most other plants as a precaution. Went through 6 or seven bottles in a couple of days. Still there. Then I switched to Neem oil. This seemed at first to work better, but again I found myself spraying, spraying, and spraying. Started mixing up my own Neem. Still Spraying. I am on these threads trying to find out all I can about PM constantly. I found myself wandering around the grocery store when I had gone in for a pound of coffee mumbling "powdery mildew, powdery mildew" to myself trancelike. Then came the Hydrogen peroxide. Again an initial success but again it comes back and back. I increased strength until I was spraying the odd plant with a straight 3% solution. I stopped when one plant seemed to "dry up" and go yellow overnight! I finally hit on Green Cure and have been happy with it, one good treatment and the mold seemed to really subside.
But then while I was in the final 2 weeks of feeding before starting my final flush. It is about now that I notice that I have entire sections of plants, about 25 in all that are yellowing rapidly and looking very very poorly. They are gradually getting so dry (in spite of watering) that they are getting crunchy to the touch. They for all intents appear to be dieing. When I look at their buds with a scope however, they show lots and lots of healthy looking trichromes. So I carry on.
I am now in my first week of flush (5 days) and was forced to harvest the worst looking of the affected "yellow, crunchy" plants. There are others yellowing now.
Anyway, when harvested, these first most affected ones had virtually no root development. Their roots were thin and spindly barely reaching six inches out of the clone cube and just along the top of the pot. 80% of the soil material was not used at all. Hardly any root material at all.
What is up with that????? This non development of healthy roots has obviously hampered the plants ability to handle stress, and even the flowering process.
I personally am not happy with the Nute program. It just seems to me that I put these tiny little plants into these 5 gal pots of the most expensive highest quality organic soil, and then bombarded them with loads and loads of over the top Nutes. There must have been more that enough in that soil to get those little things vegging? It seems to me to be tooo much Nutes for too long, and too strong. Why grow roots when they are throwing food virtually down our throats?
I do still have some killer plants waiting to be harvested with healthy leaf and plump juicy nuggets. Beauties. I strongly suspect that when they are harvested, they will have large healthy root systems encompassing the entire soil area.
What is the solution here!!!!!!!! I have lost way too much yield to this premature yellow, dry, crunchy, deadish plant syndrome. HELP!!! What shold I do differently next time?
I had great veg growth during the first 4 weeks with healthy happy looking plants. Fimmed at about the 4 week mark and shortly afterward went into 12/12 from 16/8 light sched.
A couple of weeks into bloom I found my first powdery mildew and it was fairly advanced. As I was not actively looking for it, so it got a good hold in before I really found it. Started with Safer fungicide. Realized after about a week that giving the affected plants a squirt or two was not going to get the job done. I then brought out infected plants and really dosed them with the safer and would mist most other plants as a precaution. Went through 6 or seven bottles in a couple of days. Still there. Then I switched to Neem oil. This seemed at first to work better, but again I found myself spraying, spraying, and spraying. Started mixing up my own Neem. Still Spraying. I am on these threads trying to find out all I can about PM constantly. I found myself wandering around the grocery store when I had gone in for a pound of coffee mumbling "powdery mildew, powdery mildew" to myself trancelike. Then came the Hydrogen peroxide. Again an initial success but again it comes back and back. I increased strength until I was spraying the odd plant with a straight 3% solution. I stopped when one plant seemed to "dry up" and go yellow overnight! I finally hit on Green Cure and have been happy with it, one good treatment and the mold seemed to really subside.
But then while I was in the final 2 weeks of feeding before starting my final flush. It is about now that I notice that I have entire sections of plants, about 25 in all that are yellowing rapidly and looking very very poorly. They are gradually getting so dry (in spite of watering) that they are getting crunchy to the touch. They for all intents appear to be dieing. When I look at their buds with a scope however, they show lots and lots of healthy looking trichromes. So I carry on.
I am now in my first week of flush (5 days) and was forced to harvest the worst looking of the affected "yellow, crunchy" plants. There are others yellowing now.
Anyway, when harvested, these first most affected ones had virtually no root development. Their roots were thin and spindly barely reaching six inches out of the clone cube and just along the top of the pot. 80% of the soil material was not used at all. Hardly any root material at all.
What is up with that????? This non development of healthy roots has obviously hampered the plants ability to handle stress, and even the flowering process.
I personally am not happy with the Nute program. It just seems to me that I put these tiny little plants into these 5 gal pots of the most expensive highest quality organic soil, and then bombarded them with loads and loads of over the top Nutes. There must have been more that enough in that soil to get those little things vegging? It seems to me to be tooo much Nutes for too long, and too strong. Why grow roots when they are throwing food virtually down our throats?
I do still have some killer plants waiting to be harvested with healthy leaf and plump juicy nuggets. Beauties. I strongly suspect that when they are harvested, they will have large healthy root systems encompassing the entire soil area.
What is the solution here!!!!!!!! I have lost way too much yield to this premature yellow, dry, crunchy, deadish plant syndrome. HELP!!! What shold I do differently next time?
