Another Newbie Having Problems

[ChrstphrHtch]

Hello Everyone,

I am very, very, very new to all of this. Basically, one of my friends had a few plants and gave me one of them. From what I have gathered, I think he had his lights too far away because this plant was all stem and no leaves when I got it. I'm not sure how old it is, but my problem is that the leaves keep getting more pale, the older they get.

As new leaves form and grow, the older ones droop, and start fading. Some of them are even white. I'm not sure what to do, and need some help! I have it in a pot, using regular Miracle Grow potting soil, with two natural daylight 1600 Lumen CFls, and one natural daylight 1250 CFl trained on it. I have been giving it some liquid nutrients but the closest to the 7-9-5 guideline I could find was 7-7-7. I'm not looking to be the best grower out there, and really this is my trial run before I see if I want to invest in this, but I really would like to do this as well as I can. Provided below are some pictures.

In this picture you can see that the leaves behind the most current set growing are fading and looking rather frumpy.
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In this picture you can see the leaves towards the bottom not growing, and are very faded.
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And a whole picture.
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Sorry, don't know why they are turned to the side. Anyway, if you have an suggestions please let me know!

[Weezard]

The red stem says the PH is too low.
That locks out Phosphorus.
298117
Because she can't process Phosphorus, she is looting the fan leaves for mobile elements.

As for the best way to fix that, I'm not much help.:stoned:

A real grower should be along shortly to advise.
While you wait, I suggest you visit our archives and look it up.
Just click on the first line in my signature. :D

Aloha,
Weezard

[ChrstphrHtch]

Thanks a lot, I had no idea a red stem was a bad thing...yikes. I'll have to get some hydrated lime and a ph tester. Thank you.

[ChrstphrHtch]

Just an update, shes looking much worse. I'm currently flushing the system, but not sure what else to do.

[someoldguy]

high man, first let me say welcome to the hobby and let me also assure you it is well worth the effort required to learn to grow successfully and reliably.

...now, as a brand new grower the first lesson is for you to understand, in your gut, that this grow isn't important except as a learning experience, even if that means you've learned some of what NOT to do, so long as you learn from this experience, it won't have been wasted time, even if it ends in 'failure' you will still have yielded much knowledge and experience.

anyway, you should know that Miracle Grow isn't so good for cannabis, some do ok with it but some have tremendous trouble, especially the inexperienced and being new i'm sure you struggle with when to feed them and such, ...in the beginning it can be awfully confusing.

so my advice is for you to take a mulligan of sorts and switch your style from a sometimes unforgiving soil grow to a stable and easy to run passive hydro technique called 'hempy buckets' which are an adaptation of ancient Roman technology that is brain dead easy to run and will produce some amazing results, more importantly, because they are so easy and stable to run, you will have the time to relax and learn to watch and read your plants.

anyway, here are a couple of links to supply's that you can have shipped from Amazon for small money that will do the job nicely for you as they have for me these last several years.

COCOTEK 5KG BALE


2.2 lbs. - MaxiBloom - Bloom Stimulator - Hydroponic Nutrient Solution - 5-15-14 NPK Ratio - General Hydroponics..

...and some examples grown in coco hempy's that were fed nothing but MaxiBloom from rooted clone right up to the pre-harvest flush.

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note also that these were grown in 2liters of coco only, that first pic is a pair of White Rhino's that yielded nearly 2zipz each.

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anyway, if you do some research you will find much information on the technique, be sure to avoid any advice from anyone who seems wedded too deeply in dogma, the technique was introduced by a guy who calls himself 'hempy' or 'dalaihempy' and while he has some skills, there are some sycophants who are best ignored, generally speaking, they take issue with ANY deviation and create trollish turmoil thereafter.

peace, SOG

[TANKJR]

Yes...If I was you, I would run to any nearby garden store and buy a PH tester and get a handle on the ph, like weezy sez...For no matter what you grow in or whether you use MG or coco or do hydro....PH is rather critical to any good grow and if you're guessing Ph, you're missing out completely on learning anything else...There are Sticky's about it if you wish to know more about it, search and read. From my experience, if the Ph is right on, everything else is ez. Hope this helps!

[emilya]

Having had made about every mistake in the book there is to make, I think I recognize a couple of things from your pictures. First, how often are you watering? They look like they might be drowning to me. Are you letting them dry out completely before hitting them with water? Remember that these are weeds, and they actually thrive if you torture them a little in this regard. Definitely get that ph meter too, and keep the ingoing water between 6.8-6.3.

Second, there seems to be quite a distance between nodes on your plants, indicating a lot of stretching, so your friend definitely had the lights too far away. Get your lights right down on them, no further than 4" away.

Lastly, forget nutes. You are in miracle grow, which already has the little nute balls in it. Anything extra until mid flower is likely to kill your baby off.

[ChrstphrHtch]

Alright, so from doing further research I decided to reorganize the growing area, ditch the soil, and restructure my lights. I added two more natural daylight CFLS, ditched the soil for 100% perlite, and bought a bottle of Fox Farm Grow Big. I will invest in a ph control kit, because apparently that seems to be my biggest problem. as for how much I was watering, maybe every other day when the soil was getting crusty on the top. From now on, I'll go with less is more.

Unfortunately since the last time I posted, things have fallen apart. Because I hadn't gotten a response right away, I kind of got anxious and overloaded on the nutes, which basically killed the plant. I'm hoping that with the changes I've made, and the addition of having better control over the PH will be able to save her. Here are some pictures of the sad state of the plant, and my new arrangements. The pictures that show the plant in the soil are from before I made any changes. I'm hoping theres some positive changes soon!

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[ChrstphrHtch]

And, yes, I know I messed up... :(

[emilya]

live and learn my friend... bet you dont make the same mistakes next time :)

[ChrstphrHtch]

I do have a question about controlling the PH though....I bought a PH control kit, with PH up, PH down, and a PH tester...how exactly do I use this. Obviously the PH is wrong, but am I adding the PH up to the watering and then test the runoff, or to just the perlite and stir it around (That doesn't really make sense to me)...should be here in a day or two and want to make sure I'm doing it right.

[Weezard]

Those questions, and many more are well answered, right here;

Cannabis FAQs / FAQ , Recipes, Medical Marijuana (http://cannabis.com/growing/index.html).

That's a link. Click on it.

It's all there, it's well organized, mostly accurate, and did I mention it's free?

Yes, it's a lot to read.
Until you think about the pain and expense of learning everyt'ing the hard way.

So, read, brah.
Next time I see you, I expect you to have some healthy plants!
298224

And you'll be answering newbie questions to pay for that free education, yah? :cool:
That's what most of us did, and still do. :)

Aloha,
Weezard

[Weezard]

high man, first let me say welcome to the hobby and let me also assure you it is well worth the effort required to learn to grow successfully and reliably.

...now, as a brand new grower the first lesson is for you to understand, in your gut, that this grow isn't important except as a learning experience, even if that means you've learned some of what NOT to do, so long as you learn from this experience, it won't have been wasted time, even if it ends in 'failure' you will still have yielded much knowledge and experience.

anyway, you should know that Miracle Grow isn't so good for cannabis, some do ok with it but some have tremendous trouble, especially the inexperienced and being new i'm sure you struggle with when to feed them and such, ...in the beginning it can be awfully confusing.

so my advice is for you to take a mulligan of sorts and switch your style from a sometimes unforgiving soil grow to a stable and easy to run passive hydro technique called 'hempy buckets' which are an adaptation of ancient Roman technology that is brain dead easy to run and will produce some amazing results, more importantly, because they are so easy and stable to run, you will have the time to relax and learn to watch and read your plants.

anyway, here are a couple of links to supply's that you can have shipped from Amazon for small money that will do the job nicely for you as they have for me these last several years.



...and some examples grown in coco hempy's that were fed nothing but MaxiBloom from rooted clone right up to the pre-harvest flush.

298177

298178

298179

note also that these were grown in 2liters of coco only, that first pic is a pair of White Rhino's that yielded nearly 2zipz each.

298180

anyway, if you do some research you will find much information on the technique, be sure to avoid any advice from anyone who seems wedded too deeply in dogma, the technique was introduced by a guy who calls himself 'hempy' or 'dalaihempy' and while he has some skills, there are some sycophants who are best ignored, generally speaking, they take issue with ANY deviation and create trollish turmoil thereafter.

peace, SOG

That all bears repeating!

298225

It's chock full of good advice!

Aloha,
Weezard

[emilya]

I keep a 5gal bucket of water in the flowering room. I have a fishtank bubble stone in the bucket to aerate it. This does several things, increases the humidity in the tent, puts a lot of extra oxygen that the plants love in the water, allows the chlorine to evaporate off, and oxygenated water does not allow the growth of anything nasty in the bucket. This is water right out of the tap and is right near 7.0 ph.

When I water, I take a pitcher out of this bucket of the amount of water that I know my plants need. Every other time (in flower) I add nutes to this pitcher, and every time, I adjust the PH of this water to 6.4ph using ph up or down. I also have gotten away from buying the ph stuff, I use pickling lime from the grocery store for ph up, and battery acid cut 15:1 with distilled water as my ph down... both, a whole lot cheaper than the products you just purchased.

I do not test my run off, because that number doesn't mean anything to me... it is no longer affecting the plant. I simply adjust the ingoing water to the proper range, 6.3-6.8.

You however are not using soil now, you are using pure perlite, and this is something that I have never tried. I did try hydroponics for a while, but I was way out of my comfort zone trying to put everything in the water that the plants could need, and not having the stable base and natural buffer for my mistakes that soil provides.
For my gardens, I know that the microbials in soil have a lot to do with the health of my roots, and I am not at all sure if that natural process can even work in 100% perlite. Someone with more knowledge than I will have to advise you on how to grow in that artificial medium, but I assume that it is going to be similar to how you would work an ebb and flow or similar system, and if so, your ph will need to be adjusted to those ranges. I am curious to see what you come up with, and will be following your next grow very carefully.

[ChrstphrHtch]

My posts disappeared, does this happen a lot?

[ChrstphrHtch]

Anyway, what do you think about growing with this? Seems like cheating, but kind of awesome:

tower-garden-growing-system

[emilya]

looks like fun, but not my cup of tea. I like soil, and the forgiveness that it gives to a new grower as mistakes are made. Some can handle the hydro systems and specialized systems like your tower, but I would end up growing strawberries or something like that in this special system. Cannabis can be a very heavy and unruly plant sometimes, and it may just get away from you in a rig like that.... or at least it would with me.

No clue what happened to your post... I saw the original come in via email but by the time I got here, it was gone. I would contact one of the very professional and hard working moderators of the site and ask them what happened and since I have only recently returned to the forum, I can offer no insight into this matter.

Emmie

[Shovelhandle]

what sort of pH meter did you get? Did you get any calibration solution? This is important as it is part of the pH meter. If the meter doesn't or isn't calibrated then it is useless. A decent meter is about $100. The Rapitest meters are bunk, as are their soil test kits.

[ChrstphrHtch]

I got a solution mix test. So, apparently I have to put a sample in the bottle, add the test solution, and then shake. Depending on the color, then I would have to adjust up or down. Bad idea?

[ChrstphrHtch]

I really like this idea...If I don't get the tower garden I'm going to do this. Just regular tap water, and you keep refilling it as you use it/it evaporates?