Ok, seems I am long overdue for an update on this grow. Still no humidifier and now the humidity hovers around 25%, so its probably a good idea to get some kind of humidifier in there. The plants were having a problem for another reason, I can only assume was my soil-less mix. I had used coco, compost mix and perlite and I think the coco sucked up or locked out any available calcium in the blend. I hadn't applied any with my feeds as it was not part of the
bio bizz line and I was trying to run that line almost purely. So ultimately the plants became deficient in calcium, iron and nitrogen. Here is a pic from Jan 6.
You can see the yellowing and down-turned leaves. It came on pretty quickly, much more quickly than I would have expected. On the 6th I added a top dressing of insect frass (2-2-2) and crustacean meal (4-4-1) to give some long lasting effects. I also gave a liquid feed of 5mL
BioBizz Bloom, 12mL molasses and 7mL of Photosynthesis plus. Yes, I meant to use bloom not grow in my feed. Within a day the plants were showing small signs of improvement. I attribute that to the insect frass which I have used to recuperate other plants quickly.
Because of the deficiency the plants were not taking up much water, so the next watering was likely the 10th or so as I wanted the medium to dry out a bit so the roots would stretch; but my notes aren't reflecting any watering, but I know I gave them one.
The next feed came on Jan 15th, this one had quite a bit in the mix but all seemed to be beneficial. The mix was 5mL Demeter's Destiny (calcium), 10mL fish emulsion, 7mL BioHeaven, 1mL MicrobeLife iron, 10mL molasses, and a few drops of
Mammoth P. I was seeing improvement by this point but wanted to really give the plants as much of a boost as I could. Because the plants were showing improvement I decided to up the light intensity and increased the light to 174 watts. I also potted up Gunslinger #2-C (the one I broke on Dec 27th, and re-cloned) in a mix of the compost mix I use, about 1 1/2 gal, and an equal volume of perlite with 4 tbsp of crustacean meal and 2 tbsp of insect frass. I am going to see if that makes a difference in plant growth as opposed to my mix including coco. Here are a few pics from Jan 16th.
in the group shot it is tough to see the improvements but the new growth was coming in much more green and they started growing at a good pace again. The improvement was more noticeable in the little Jack Mystery #2, its leaves had really greened up and the growth rate really began to increase.
On the 19th the plants got another feeding of 5mL Demeter's Destiny, 8mL Bio Grow, 10mL Fish emulsion, 1mL iron and 5mL Root Juice. I also moved the Gunslinger #2-C into the tent with all the other plants. It was fed the above mix diluted by 60%. So at this point the tent includes Gunslinger #1-A,B,C; Gunslinger #2-A,B,C; Jack Mystery #2 and Jack Mystery #3 (the runt).
On Jan 21st the plants were all fed again using only 5mL Demeter's Destiny and 5mL Bio Grow. Now the improvement is more noticeable.
The first picture is of Gunslinger #1-A which is the tallest plant in there, but it was looking much perkier and a nice amount of greening up. The second picture is of the Jack Mystery #2 which I was very happy to see improvement from. Its nodes are really tightly spaced making me pretty certain there is Master Kush in its lineage. Who knows what it will produce, but I am hoping its something pretty nice. In the final pic, the group shot you can see all the plants are looking more perky than in previous pictures; particularly the Gunslinger #2-B. It seemed to lag behind all the other plants right from the start but also showed the least yellowing, so I am hoping it is also the quickest to completely recover. Even the Jack Mystery #3 runt is looking better, so maybe I may be able to pull a few grams from it, though I have no problem tossing it if there is no space in the tent come flowering time.
Yesterday I increased the light to 200 watts. Today I am going to put Jack Mystery #2 in a 3 gal
smart pot with
Happy Frog just to make sure it is going to have no problems from here out. I may end up planting all of the plants into
Happy Frog for flowering to make sure I have no issues through that stage, problems in veg is bad enough.