motagrow

Hi guys first time grower here... I have three plants going. The first one is about a month old ... let me answer the questions before I go into more details.


1. Are you growing from seed or clones?
Bag seed first two from same bag third from a much better bag


2. How old are your plants?
1st plant ~27Days 2nd plant ~21Days 3rd Plant: ~14 days

3. How tall are your plants?
1st plant 3.25", 2nd: 3.5", 3rd: 2.75"

4. What size containers are they planted in?
1st & 2nd plants in 5" terra cotta pots.. 3rd in a 3" styrofoam cup

5. What is your soil mix? all organic potting soil... the brand escapes me... but no perlite at this time.

6. How often do you water and what type of water do you use?
About every 3 days. Using Distilled bottled water

7. What is the pH of your water? ~6.4

8. What kind of fertilizer do you use and what is its NPK ratio?
I have Fox Farms Grow Big, Tiger Bloom, and Big Bloom... see below...


9. What kind of lights do you use and how many watts combined? (HPS, MH, fluorescent, halogen, incandescent "plant lights")
4x CFLs = 108Watts @5500K


10. How close are your lights to the plants?
Maybe 4-6"


11. What size is your grow space in square feet?
~4.6'

12. What is the temperature and humidity in your grow space?
78F-83F... Humidity??

13. What is the pH of the soil?
Don't know need to get a test kit

14. Have you noticed any insect activity in your grow space?
no

15. How much experience do you have growing?
zip zero... but I'm decent with other plants

So I started using foxfarms nutes pretty soon in. I know it was sorta against a lotta stuff that I had read but they provided a feeding chart that looked pretty good so I started to follow it for plant 1 and a little for plant 2. I think I have a little bit of nute burn going on so i cut the nutes for the last week and flushed plants 1 and 2. Plant 1 is also having issues because a few of the leaves have yellowed and now browned up... Perhaps nute burn? Any one know what's up with the splotches on the upper leaves?







Plant 2... only got a week or two into foxfarm's nute program then i cut it back. I am not sure about this plant. I think its a runt pretty small.






Plant 3... Wow this guy took off! Pretty much the biggest plant I have and half the age. This plant has not had any nutes but it is developing yellow spots and a little yellowing in the lower leaves. Notice the one of the leaves is starting to curl up-what's that all about? I think this plant needs to be transplanted pretty soon.







Little bit more on the nute situation. Foxfarms recommends 1 table spoon per gallon but I don't want to make that much mix for 3 small plants. I've tried to cut it down to 1 cup... From my calculations this is about 1/3 teaspoon per cup of water... does this make sense?

Okay so what do you guys think? When should I start the Nutes up and at what schedule? Do I have a N deficiency in any of the plants? What size pots should I transplant to? 1 gal or 2 gal? My grow space is only about 3.5 feet tall so I will prob start to flower around a foot or two if they are ladies. Oh yeah and I have some foxfarm potting soil for the transplant.

Thanks in advance for any and all help!

Oh yeah and I just watered them after taking these pictures

Zait

I'm no expert but I'd say wait longer before you use nutes...also when i did the math i got that you should be using .1875 tsp / cup not 1/3 tsp...also some people use 1/2 strength or 1/4 strength for seedlings

Actually the real reason I'm posting is cuz i've heard not to use those clay pots as they absorb water....maybe remember for next time cuz i don't think its crucial.


I'm sure these plants will turn out fine tho...sounds like you've read enough to have the fox farms collection

good luck

motagrow

hummm... I wonder how i am going to measure out .1875 tea spoons... perhaps I'm just gonna need to mix like half gallons and water my other plants?

And for sure next pots are gonna be plastic.

SsensiSstar

Hello there. Your plants are looking good. However I would be careful with the synthetic nutes u are using. Since you are a first timer- I highly recommend getting an organic fertilizer. With organics you are less likely to burn and kill your plants. Also you don’t want to give those little guys too much fertilizer yet. Think about it, you wouldn’t give a baby an adult dose of medicine. So be really careful that you don’t burn and kill those guys. Also I don’t think u have a N deficiency, but an Mg deficiency in the plants with the gold spots. Add some Epsom salt to the water next time you water them, it should help as long as your soil ph is correct. Most soil ph testers are crap though, so I wouldn’t recommend for example those rapi-test ones. I had one but mostly you just break roots when you stick it into the soil and damage the plant. Instead try to measure the run off water, which has traveled though your plant soil, to get a more accurate idea of you soil ph.


Also you said...

"My grow space is only about 3.5 feet tall so I will prob start to flower around a foot or two if they are ladies."

You should be really careful here! 3.5 feet is WAY to small to do a normal (as in not scrog or sog for example) grow! If I were you I would flower them much earlier than 1-2 feet, b/c during flowering they can double or triple their size. I would even say that as soon as you sex them, flower them since your space is so limited. If they get too big look into some training techniques. Also you can control plant size by pot size. So basically if you have 3 gallon pots you will have huge plants. So choose the pot size wisely!

Hope some of that helped. Ciao!

motagrow

hey, thanks for the reply!

few questions for you:

what is the ratio of Epsom salt to a liter of water? I bet I am having the mg issue because of the water is distilled... any idea if I should use a different type of water? My tap water is very very hard so I went the bottled root...


How soon (or rather at what height?) would you set the lights to 12/12 in my situation?



Thanks again

buzzmobile

You are watering too often. Let the plants dry out a bit and many of your problems will go away.

johnny-0

When you go to water them again use bottled drinking water-It contains many trace elements that MJ likes.P.S. I use 1 tea spoon per gallon for epson salts.

SsensiSstar

About the Epsom salt, i would have to agree with jonny-o...about 1 teaspoon or so per gallon. And yes make sure not to over-water! THe soil needs to really be dried out 100% before you water each time. I dont know about using bottled water, but i think as long as the ph is right bottled water should be fine.

And about the flowering and height...well it is up to you when you start 12/12. I'm currently growing under the same height restrictions as you, but im doing a sea of green grow. I dont think this would be the most effective for you with only 3 plants.

Instead read up on scrog, screen of green. This might help solve some of the height issues that you could run into with only 3.5 feet. But if that is too much for your first grow, just send them into flowering as soon as you can sex them, and train the stems. That would be the most simple. There is lots of good info on this forum about how to train stems.

Another suggestion is pruning. In this case you could start now, and you actually cut off the top cola (the newest growing one) at a 45 degree angle. After about a week of healing, it forms 2 colas. Then after those two are healed (or after about 1-2 nodes have grown from them) cut again the newest colas the same way, and you will end up with 4 main colas and a plant that is more bushy than tall. With this method you also have more potential bud sites, no guarantees, but i love to do this if I have the time to. It requires somewhat longer vege, since it is only recommended to prune in the vege stage. It can also be done with a scrog grow.

Well hope that is not too much info, but enough to help you get on the right track. Just keep searching and reading this forum, and you will find lots of good info. Good luck! Ciao!

motagrow

Wow guys! thanks for all the fast input. I really really appreciate it!

I will need to read up on LST. And your cutting method. I'll swap the distilled water for drinking water. I think LST might be good for my situation.... Basically I water whenever I start to see the plants start to droop... that seems to happen every 3-4 days.... Must be the clay pots.

Here's a question for you guys... I have a few fish tanks here... I do regular cleanings siphon all the crap outta the gravel ect. How would this water be for the plants? I mean it would be organic but the PH in my tanks might be a little to high... but there wouldn't be any chlorine. I imagine all that fish organic matter (poop mostly) would have a high N concentrate?

In any event when do you think I should start nuteing up another week or two?

About sexing... I was under the impression that the only way i could sex them was to throw them under 12/12 lighting... Is there another way to do this? Or should I throw them under 12/12 for a little bit until i can sex then go back to 24/7 on?

Thanks again in advance!

motagrow

Here is a update....

Plant #2 didn't make it... I knew this was going to happen. But oh well. I'm still having some yellowing issues with plants 1 and 2. Oh yeah, and I started LSTing! These pictures were taken just after I applied the second set of ties... Anyways onward we go:


The first four pictures below are of plant 1 . I have transplanted to a 1 gal pot w/ foxfarm light warrior soil w/ a few handfuls of perlite mixed it. The transplant was completed about three weeks ago. Plant 1 is about 8 weeks old now. I've switched off of distilled water to water out of a britia... ph of that water is around 6.4. Also prior to the transplant I watered a few times with epsom salt as described above . Last week I watered w/ 1 tbsp of Grow Big to gallon... (that is what the foxfarm feeding chart describes as what I should start off with). Oh yeah with the plants in the bigger pots I am watering about every 5 days.... Waiting 7 days is to long as the plants look very droopy at that point.

Also wanted to say since I've added the big grow the top growth has gotten much darker green...

Plant two is pretty much the same story except its about 6 weeks old. see the last three pictures.

Can you guys recommend anything to help me out.?

Can we tell sex yet?

Why haven't the plants started to branch out? Is that because the lower leaves keep yellowing off then die'n?

When should I start 12/12? Another week or two?

Thanks in advanced.

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