Thought I'd try to get a thread started where people could talk about some of the silly mistakes they may have made in the past. Maybe if enough people respond, this can become a thread that curious growers can visit to see exactly how NOT to do something.

I'll start:

A few years back, I made a soil mix that turned out to be one of the nasties messes of my then short growing career...

I was pretty new to organic gardening at the time, and had just harvested my first semi-successful organic grow using nothing but all natural products. I saw how forgiving organic fertilizers could be, especially to someone who wasn't really all that confident with nutrients, nutrient regimens, etc. So when the time came for my second organic grow, I wanted to replicate my earlier success, only this time I really wanted to boost my yield. And here's where everything went horribly wrong.

I've never been big on using heavily prefertilized potting soils that you see available all over the place. Miracle Grow, Schultz, Jungle Growth, etc., they all seem to give lots of people problems with everything ranging from pH to accidental overfertilization. So, early on, I started making my own soil mixes. My first organic grow was no different, only I added much of the fertilizers (bone/blood meals, guanos, worm castings, etc.) directly to the soil as amendments, instead of supplementing with them later on. Like I said, my first organic grow went smoothly, so I thought I'd bump it up a notch for the next one.

My preferred mix, ferts excluded, included: mushroom compost, black garden peat, perlite, lime, and humus... when I can find it. My botched second attempt was no different, only I ran out of the compost and humus that I needed to fill my larger pots. I had some, just not enough to fill all the pots. So, instead of taking my lazy ass to the gardening store to pick up some more, I decided to fill in the gaps with this big bag of garden peat I had lying around. Like I said, I was lazy, and really wanted to go ahead and transplant right away. (The plants were about a month old at the time, and I was going to let them veg out for another month in larger pots.) For the amendments (fertilizers), I threw in an ass load of bone meal, blood meal, seabird guano, high-nitrogen bat guano, and worm castings. I didn't even bother measuring out how much of this stuff I was using, I just dumped a lot of it into the container I use to mix soil. There was no method to my madness, and I assumed that with organics I could do no wrong. After mixing everything up thoroughly, I thought I was well on my way to a badass second organic harvest. I was very wrong.

I took the new concoction and filled up ten 3gal pots with it, then transplanted my perfectly healthy seedlings into each pot. I was even feeling cocky about my newfound organic abilities, and decided to add about a half inch of worm castings as a top dressing. For the first week, things seemed to be going just fine. The plants looked healthy, and didn't appear to be stunted by the earlier transplant. Then, starting around week two, I began to notice that my foliage was starting to turn a deep, dark green color and that the leaves were starting to droop. I kept watering as normal, though, thinking little of it at the time. Then the leaf tips started to burn on EVERY plant, and began curling up towards the sky. I finally concluded that something was amiss, and figured I had probably overfertilized with all the stuff I added to the soil. (Like I said, I just dumped the shit in there... no measuring was involved.)

So, arriving at the conclusion that a flush was eminent, I took each pot into my bathroom and got to it. What I saw almost made me puke. Have you ever seen those movies where someone's in the shower and they're bleeding profusely for whatever reason? The runoff of my soil looked IDENTICAL to blood being washed down the drain. It was a thick dark red color, and didn't even seem to dissolve in the water surrounding it leading it to the drain. To make matters worse, it had one of the funkiest smells I've had the misfortune of breathing. If I had to compare it to anything, I'd say it smelled like a very wet and dirty large dog mixed with cow manure and sweaty ass. The smell permeated into the bathroom walls, then throughout the entire house, which left me on the verge of losing my lunch. I probably flushed each pot with 15 gallons of water, and it simply would not wash clean. The runoff was a little bit lighter in terms of color, but now I had another problem. I forgot that I added an unproportional amount of peat moss to the soil, and now it had absorbed as much water as it possibly could, AND a good deal of my perlite had been washed away during the flush. Water was now just making a big puddle in the top of the pot, and wouldn't drain.

I knew I screwed up, but hoped that the flush may have done some good. At least enough for me to make it to the next transplant. Again, dead wrong. The soil would not dry out. Nearly two weeks after the flush, the pots were still saturated with water... and only the top few inches of soil were actually dry. The plants looked pitiful, and now to compound the problem, they were thirsty. Every time I'd water just enough to saturate the top few inches of soil, I'd produce more of that nasty bloody runoff mess... and the whole house would stink again.

As the weeks passed, the plants deteriorated more and more until I finally just gave up on them. To make matters worse, I was so preoccupied with trying to save them, that I never got another crop started and my first organic stash was well-depleted before I had the chance to grow some more. So I was left without any smoke for about 3 months, and a foul smell that took forever and a day to get rid of.

The moral of this story? More ISN'T always better, and no matter how much you think you know, you still have room to learn, and possibly make disastrous mistakes in the process. Now I measure EVERYTHING! :jointsmile:

(And sorry for this lengthy account, I have the tendency to go into lots of detail when I recount my former disasters. Anyone else got a horror story they'd like to share? Hydro, soil, whatever... I'd love to hear it.)
Mr. Clandestine Reviewed by Mr. Clandestine on . Biggest Growing Mistakes... Thought I'd try to get a thread started where people could talk about some of the silly mistakes they may have made in the past. Maybe if enough people respond, this can become a thread that curious growers can visit to see exactly how NOT to do something. :D I'll start: A few years back, I made a soil mix that turned out to be one of the nasties messes of my then short growing career... I was pretty new to organic gardening at the time, and had just harvested my first semi-successful Rating: 5