ROOKIE GROWER IN TROUBLE!!!

Greetings to those other growers I'm trying to collect intelligence from... Your expertise on this matter will be very appreciated. As my name states, my blood run green and I have been smoking since I was young. I'm tired of shelling out bucks...so here I am, starting an era of growing my own buds.

I embarked on this mission maybe 6 weeks ago. I successfully germinated my seeds and put them in 4 inch pots. I had 8 altogether. After reading some FAQs on the boards, I am going to get rid of my 2 males and I suspect their pollen might have gotten on my other 6 female plants. What kind of consequences are we talking about if this took place?

As for remaining 6 females, It has been more than 30 days. First three females are growing nicely but nearing only 1 foot. I have seen pictures of bigger plants at one month old. My other three female plants is less than a feet long, does look healthy but... small!

Two mistakes I might have made:

1. I left them in the 4 inch pots too long... I just transplanted them into a bigger pot 3 days ago.

2. The room I built in the basement for the lovely plants... Does not have strong air circulation.

Take a look at my pictures and give me feedback on my setup. I used miracle-gro potting soil. The better females are placed under their own 100w CFL bulbs and reflectors. The lesser females share 4 foot 2-tube flourscent light.

I keep them on 18-6 lighting schedule but occassionally leave lights on for 24 hours since I wanted them to grow quickly. Was this my third possible mistake? Did you see F#1 & F#3 having some flowering done? How did that happen?

I sure hope I don't have to start all over again!

F#2 Pictures continued and F#3.

F#4, F#5, F#6

I also learned how important mylar is... I guess I need to surround the plants with mylar to maximize the lighting effect. O'well... :jointsmile:

Its hard to say whats going on with them, there wilting and yellow. Could be too much Nutrients/water.

Well you made a lot of mistakes....too many for me to point out, although I don't even have grow experience I know a few things. Anyways read up on the boards and learn from your mistakes. The females that were pollinated will simply produce bud with seeds and the bud may not be as good.

Yeah, here'd be my list:

You are burning them with those lights first...the lights are so close you can see the pattern of the light burn perfectly on the plants...not to mention the wilting which is either burn, overnute or ph problems blah blah.
You need better air circulation...if they can't breathe well they aren't going to grow well
Better soil would be great and at this point...perhaps necessary
you need to check the ph of your soil and check the NPK etc of your soil
can't be changing the lights here and there....you have to be consistent

You definitely need to do some research and yes... those look fairly fried to me. And with the conditions you are describing them in I'm not seeing alot of hope for their future but perhaps others who grow in soil here would be more helpful (and hopeful) as I generally grow hydro.

Good luck and study up. ;)

You had them in 4" pots for over a month? What were the roots like when you transplanted? Also, Did you add any perlite to your soil to help it drain? Does not look like it.

you should get your hands on some information and read read read

what i've just found is the HUGE amount of Growing information avaliable on bittorrent.

i've got GIGS of grow videos and you can d/l everything you'll ever need to know quickly.

its worth checking out
if you dont know what bittorrent is, pm me

Wow. I do feel like an idiot but it'll take a whole lot more than a ruined crop to get my spirits down. :D I have been doing tons of reading all for naught. They didn't mention if i should be consistent with lighting or probably I was wasted when I was reading that part

As for fan, I guess it was just a dumb mistake on my part. I thought I would get away with it. I am going to run to the store tonight and see if I can salvage my first three females.

I think mylar surrounding will help the environment greatly.

To answer some questions:

Weedhound: I kept the CFLs and flourscent lighting 1-3 inches away from the top as recommended. Lack of a fan really ruined it, I guess.

Lord on Perlite: Nope, I didn't do that. I'll make a note of that. I'm preparing for my next crop.

Harris7: Unfortunately I'm deaf so all of those videos are no good unless they are subtitled. So my information is mostly based on text.

The most sticking point for me before I begin my next crop, can I veg and flower my plants using CFLs alone? I might have been overwatering my plants so I'll be keeping a close eye on that as well.

Is it possible to harvest my plants without using fertilizers at all? Using tap water only? Or there is no way easy out of this and gotta learn the whole science to raising a good crop, eh?

Thanks for the help, dudes and dudettes!

WELL....you are gearing up aren't you? Good for you to get serious about it. Growing isn't hard if you follow the "rules" and be consistent. I grow hydro so soil is not sometihing I know much about but I can tell you that if that is the recommended height for your type of light they still are getting burned by the heat of your lighting....it is simply too close.

I cannot tell you if you need nutes for soil growing or not.....I suppose it depends on your type of soil but generally people add things or use "certain" types of soil to meet their needs. Some of the soil growers here can help you with that I'm sure. Even if you do need to use nutes you don't need to be a chemist....many of them are off the shelf ready to use blah blah so you just need to know how much how often.

I do not think cfl lighting is very good for flowering plants (you aren't at that point yet are you?). There is a section in the forum indoor growing subtitled indoor lighting that may be able to give you some answers. (I pretty much use what lighting my hydro guy tells me and have learned to keep my mouth shut because even if I did ask him why I wouldn't understand it anyway):D

Dont change your lighting around at all! Your plants are thinking that the sun is controlling the lighting not you so you are sending them into a tailspin when you change things around like that. ;)

Good luck to you and don't give up......it's a learn as you go thing and once you get dialed in you will love it. :thumbsup:

Of course, you put your plants into the flowering stage with those CFLs. Don't worry about the equipment.
What you need is a good observation and care for your plant. If you understand what plants need to survive, you can just stick in some dirt and let it grow.
Check temp, Adjust PH, Add perlite and provide fresh air.. That's all they need. Don't put that clamp lights too close and over-water your plants.
Good Luck~

Hallo There
We are new to this as well weve had a couple of average crops,we have found things are not as easy as it sounds we thought its a weed anybody can stick it in apot and it will grow----NOT SO---- an awful lot of reading and research is always advisable dont despair though our third crop is looking good so keep at it learn from this forum, we have and it makes a difference, so hears to healthy plants and a good big win on lottery Ha Ha
Good Luck
"Lang may yer lum reek" as they say over here. :)

Greetings everyone!

Sorry if it took me a while to get back to you guys. I was so frustrated with the slow growth that I rebuilt my grow room, had a twin-fan system installed and used 8 100w CFL bulbs instead since they emit a lot more lumens than the shop lights. See the photos below of my new setup. When mylar gets here, I will put it up on the walls and have a detachable wall to enclose all of that light inside! I'm sure the plants will be happier with this new setup.

Now, as you all gave me some kind of tips what I need to do to improve the conditions. Also I did a lot of readings on the forums. It looks like many of harvesting is completed within 3 months period?

Prior to planting my new garden, I relied heavily on this "deluxe Marijuana Grower's Guide" by Mel Frank. Let me quote some of his work:

Artifical Lights

p.59
Start the plants under long light periods of from 16 to 18 hours daily. After the plants have reached a good size, usually between three and six months, shorten the light cycle to about 12 hours to force flowering.

p.81
Two eight foot fluorescent tubes (160 watts) will easily grow eight six-foot plants.

Because of that, I settled on 800w light system (9,000+ lumens) and will live with that until I can afford HPS lighting for flowering room.

Some of you had little hope for my current plants. I think two of them might be permanently damaged and will be cut at the root. The remaining 4 seems to be recovering and from p.59 - it seems that they can live and grow long enough to initiate flowering.

I would like your thoughts on this. Maybe Mel Frank has been discredited by this community. I appreciate it very much, folks! :smokin:

By the way, I did use heatdish for short time but realized it wasn't needed. The room average temperature is above 70. (72+) Should I produce more heat to trigger better photosynthesis? I am also thinking about using this DIY-CO2 set-up.

http://servershift.info/index.php?q=...E2ODcwLnNodG1s

There are two extremely good books on growing in my mind....Marijuana Horticulture by Jorge Cervantes and The Cannabis Grow Bible by Greg Green. I do have a book by Mel Frank but have not found it to be as full of accurate information as I would have hoped. Howevere there are many people who follow his methods and are happy with them.

I am impressed with the amount of work and time you are devoting to your plants.....love it when people put that kind of energy into something and your future growing will reflect that. Your list of supplies etc is a good one....you WILL appreciate your hps lighting much more than your cfls.....the difference between night and day.

Sounds like you are moving in the right direction and again I applaud you for your hard work. Hope your plants come back and reward with you some good smoke.

Good luck to you. ;) :)

Hey Weedhound,

Thanks for the input on the growing books. We'll see if I end up getting those or not. I always had a thing for plants and am hoping my green thumb will help me get by with this first crop. But I can imagine my 2nd crop getting better already.

I'm curious - I used Miracle-Gro soil. Is that a big deal?

And I did some shopping on the internet. Some seed stores have this label on their seeds:

Flowering period : 9 - 11 weeks

That is almost 3 months. Does it usually take that long for plants to flower or that varies by strains? Or is the general practice to haste the whole cycle so we can get wasted sooner than later? Clear this up for me if you can!

Thanks!

Most of the time growing in soil takes longer than growing in hydro. I don't grow is soil but I have heard that miracle gro is not a very good soil to use. If you run a search on this site I think you can find people who listed the problems with it.....my understanding is that usually you can "get away" with it but need to suppliment it with some good nutes.

There are as many different types of marijuana as there are dogs really. Each one has different characteristics such as how big they get, how much bud they will yield and how strong the high is etc etc... so different types of marijuana take different lengths of time to finish. This is a process that cannot really by speeded up in any way.....it's just part of growing.

There are some types of weed that are "made" to finish faster, stay smaller, etc....the names "Big Bud" "Early Girl" "lowryder" are all examples of strains of mj that have been bred to finish quickly. One thing to remember......the faster you push them to the end the less of a yield you will get. Lots of times in hydro plants can have a pretty good high to them by the end of six weeks flowering but I have not seen this to be true in soil....although 8-10 weeks waiting will give you a better yield with a more kick-ass high.

Probably the fastest strain I can think of is lowryder. It can be grown from start to finish in 8 weeks.....(plant seed....8 weeks later you can smoke it) but the downside is that you have spent two months growing and will not get a large amount from it. If you go for 3-4mos (total) with a different strain you may get a WHOLE lot more for your trouble so it can be worth it to grow for a longer period less often. Again however, we are talking hydro; soil just doesn't grow things as fast.

remember what you are growing is a weed. most kinds of damage done to a plant can be corrected. miracle-grow has people that love to grow in it and people that hate it. to grow a very basic plant all you need is decent soil (if you have a garden or really green lush grass at home you can start with some of the pre fertalised soil from there) and some water. remember this plant does grow, and more often than not thrive, on its own in the wild with absolutley no care or interaction from us. the nutes that you add to your soil produce better looking and more quality plants. thc levels will be higher in plants with nutes and it is an overall more attractive plant. indoor growing is hard to do. you have to almost perfectly recreate a natural situation. check the plants twice daily and keep a notebook of what you observe (number of fans on a leaf, color, dead or dying leaves and this sort of thing, basically anything you think could be helpful in the later stages of this grow and for future grows) bottom line is anybody that has been growing for a while will have their own little things that they do that they smear by. one of my buddies would same his fish skin and guts and mix them with his soil before he planted. i know that sounds nasty but thats been a fertalizing method for all kinds of plants for a long time. don't be affraid to screw up. hell maybe one day you can write a book for us. oh yeah, if i were you i would do my best to keep the plants from your first grow alive. if your females did get pollenated you will have seeds to grow next time. and you probably won't get a very high yeild from those plants anyway so stock up on those seeds.

Thanks Weedhound and twentysac-

It is quite an experience since I have signed up. I went ahead with growing my current crop and found about this forum later in my grow. I think some people was quick to think that there's no hope coming out from my crop. Hah...

It has been growing slowly, I'm sure, from recovering on my earlier stumbles. I have this feeling that my plants are sativa kind and the type that develops main cola, not really like indica that has shooting branches all over. And it must be a strain that takes a while to grow, probably 5-6 months. During that time, I will obtain the necessary materials, soil tester, nutes, and mylar. This crop probably has went through a lot of changes during their grow. Because of that, I will not really expect a lot out of them.

But heck, I'll be growing a new crop soon. I'm thinking of having another grow-room. Duplicate the effort I'm doing now with new seeds ordered from the internet.

I'll be sure to use this resource center and share the knowledge... :cool: Grow on, my friends. It's a way to beat the government and legalize the whole thing. I'll take this to the politics forum. Later...

Go get 'em! Ineresting avatar....:stoned:

Miracle Grow soil is basically good for any kind of plants. Most of soils that are being sold in home gardening stores and Walmart are in top quality. Believe it or not..
It's already mixed with nutrients(provides upto 3 months) so soil growers need to be careful when adding fertilizers. If you don't like the result, you can also mix and make your own organic soil or go hydroponic.

Weedhound, yeah, I love Apple and the internet. And that avatar does look like he's stoned all the time, eh? Haha...

Anyway, my current crop is recovering nicely and I think they do need some plant food eventho the miracle-gro soil has timed-release nutrients. Full of crock! I know to raise my next crop with no nutrients in soil and do it all by myself. I have read some threads and some strains are slow growing so I'm hoping they will burst out when the flowering period begins (tonight).

I am already looking forward to my next crop. I wouldn't mind doing a grow log here. I'll post pictures of my current crop later on!

Thanks for all the advice and tips. :thumbsup:

If they are healthy they will double in size during flowering.....sometimes triple depending on the strain. You've done a good job BRG.....it's fun to help people who are willing to put the work in. Keep us updated please....and ps....we LOVE photos... :) ;)

I'm back.

Since weedhound mentioned people love pictures - I just took recent pictures of my plants 5 days in flowering stage. (12/12 lighting)

Using Miracle-Gro soil and plant food - I'll see what I can get out of this crop and will make improvements for my next crop. (Fox Farm soil, Botanicare nutes and no rookie mistakes from seedling to harvest!) As you can see, I added mylar and I can see the impact it has on the plants already.

Right now, they are short and stubby, and I don't know what to expect out of them. There's one tall plant with great flowering already - I'm hoping for the best from this one.

Enjoy!

Pic #1: My favorite plant
Pic #2: My another plant that is flowering
Pic #3: Short and stubby plants
Pic #4: 11,700 Lumens set-up (economical)
Pic #5: Surrounded by mylar

Wow BRG....those look TONS better! Good job!! They will really gain some size in flowering so don't be surprised if they take a big jump. I'm really impressed with how much they have turned around! :thumbsup:

excellent turnaround bro,those ladies looking really good now.best of luck with the rest of your grow and keep us all updated on your progress:thumbsup:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by harris7

you should get your hands on some information and read read read

what i've just found is the HUGE amount of Growing information avaliable on bittorrent.

i've got GIGS of grow videos and you can d/l everything you'll ever need to know quickly.

its worth checking out
if you dont know what bittorrent is, pm me

---

you can learn everything you need to know...right here. biottorent is a pain in the butt...doesn't work for 1/2 the people 1/2 the time. Please advise from knowledge or link to appropriate post. We would like to see our members get support 'here" at Cdot.

Gotcha Big L. ;)

10 inch pots.....do you know how many gallons they hold? That sounds about the right size....usually a 3 gallon pot should be plenty.

Touch them as little as possible during flowering. Depending on your strain some types of cannabis can take as long as 12-15 weeks to flower (sativas)
Nice thought huh? ;)

Thanks BRG....you should read the update cause I really put them through the ringer with my last fungus spraying of them. They are recovering now thank goodness but it seems there is always something I do that is just WRONG!!!:wtf:

That "dust' you are seeing is exactly what you want. :thumbsup: They must be starting to smell nice too. And I know exactly what you mean about wanting to touch them. ;) The little trichomes growing are so delicate now that the more you touch them the more good resin you can knock off. :(

I absolutely love growing these plants myself too. :) :jointsmile:

BRG those last two are males...that's why they look weird to you. Dump them asap....(ps they make for good cooking if you use enough of them). Spray them with water (gently) before you remove them to help keep any pollen from spreading around.

Those are some MANLY males. ;)

Also you cannot top during flowering....ony in veg. If you cut them now what you cut will simply be gone and not grow back. We will get you going on that for your next grow.....tons of cool stuff to try.

Your two females look nice and happy. :thumbsup:

Yeah, I just reread the post you put out before about the dust.....did it come from the males and was it yellow? If so pollen.

It's a live and learn thing BRG. For cooking I use the entire plant except the stems. Put them away from you females and let them dry. Then I run them through a strainer to grind them up. It takes alot if you aren't using full on finished bud (i use 40 gms for a batch of cookies) but in the recipe section you can find info on what kind of things you can make with them....and some of them you don't need huge amounts to try like the firecrackers or mixing it in your tea etc....

If you have pistils coming out of your last two plants then they are females....males don't have any pistils ever. :thumbsup:

Let me add: I am using miracle grow organic choise, and it works great...being organic. I would not suggest using the regular soil. It is set up to grow "Grass". Thew formula for "grass" and "weed" are far apart!

The Organic Choice soil is organic so it balances well for "weed". I would not spend the extra money for Foxfarm Soil...waste of money.

Botanicare Products are awesome, but despite my Love for Pure blend pro...It does not produce massive yields, like the results using General Hydroponics 3-part. However, I have always used Calmag+, Liquid Karma; and I use PBP for my veggies...Until this week, when I am mixing my own water soluble minerals and creating my own MIx. Peace, hope this helps.

p.s. organic is great, but will always yield smaller. If you want more bang for your buck, then you need chem ferts, and organic additives.

Yes, watering increases as they grow. My plants are eating about 1/2 gallon of water and nutrients a day so they can really take a big jump.

PPms in soil.....not really sure....ppms are a hydro thing. It's used to measure the amount of nutrients etc you add to your water=parts per million.
As far as i know you simply add whatever it says on the bottle to your water...no need to measure ppms in soil but maybe other soil-growers do so I will leave that question for them. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Weedhound

Yes, watering increases as they grow. My plants are eating about 1/2 gallon of water and nutrients a day so they can really take a big jump.

PPms in soil.....not really sure....ppms are a hydro thing. It's used to measure the amount of nutrients etc you add to your water=parts per million.
As far as i know you simply add whatever it says on the bottle to your water...no need to measure ppms in soil but maybe other soil-growers do so I will leave that question for them. ;)

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PPM is important regardless of medium choice. Do pay attention, as your soil can build up a deadly toxidity if you don't leach your soil once a month to rid soil of your rootzone of toxic salt build-up. Peace

There you go.....latewood there are reasons I don't grow in soil. Reasons like I just don't understand it. ;)

You got some real beauties growing there BRG....you are going to have some nice smoke when you finally dry those ladies and test them. :thumbsup:

For those who can do well in soil I say great....I've tried it and despite many MANY attempts I find I simply cannot grow things in soil. I suck at it; I'm terrible at it....I don't know how many ways I can say it. If I put it in soil I will kill it. Everything is guesswork...does it need water? Or did i give it too much water? More nutes? What kind? How much? And then everything takes forever in soil.

Hydro will grow your plants quicker and larger...that part is pretty much a given. But here is what I personally love about it. I can reduce the entire growing experience to a number. There is no guesswork involved. By testing the ph, ppms etc etc I can get a very good idea at any time where my plants are healthwise and what, if anything, they need. I can make adjustments before the plant is sick enough to show an issue and fix it long before I would even realize there is a problem with a soil plant thanks to all my little numbers.

Hydro definitely has its own drawbacks but for me there are a lot less of them in hydro than in soil.

Once a thread gets long a lot of people stop looking at it because they have to read alot...start some new threads...the more the better so people can get to know you. :) Put your photos in the cannabis pic section also and you'll get some responses too. :thumbsup: