ROOKIE GROWER IN TROUBLE!!!

[Weedhound]

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)

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:

Weedhound Reviewed by Weedhound on 04-11-2007. 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 Rating: 5

[18toki]

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~

[Nightcrewman]

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.

[bloodrungreen]

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

[Weedhound]

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.

[bloodrungreen]

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!

[Weedhound]

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.

[twentysac]

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.

[bloodrungreen]

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... 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...

[Weedhound]

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