Few pointers for new/newish growers

[Puffzter]

I was answering a question in my growlog and my post grew big and I ended up with a text that might be interesting to some growers that are starting up or are doing one of their first grows.

You have choosen your strain, you have your growspace and have choosen nutes and grow technique. Now what? How can you do the best of what you have?

This is what I believe to be the most important:

There are a few things I believe makes out the corner stones of what you need to know and understand to grow well.

* Light is VERY important. Give them as much as u can and reflect back as much as possible from walls and floor. Photosyntesis makes carbonbased building blocks for your plants and the more of those the faster and healthier the plant grows. As long as you don't heat burn your plants more is always better. Light degrades 4 times when you double the range to the light source, good to know. Make every beam count.

* Air flow: Understand how the air flows through your growspace. You constantly need to get fresh air flowing through all parts of your plants. Why? Well fresh air contains CO2 and CO2 feeds the photosyntesis. The most important nutrient your plant "eats" is CO2. It is of such importance that simplified you can say that nutes in the water and soil are only there to make the uptake of CO2 possible. A plant is made up of mainly carbon and 100% of that comes from the air. Good nutes are really important but the bottle neck is in the photosyntesis. Its easy to satisfy a plants nutrient needs but VERY hard to optimize the CO2 uptake.
In my growarea I had passive intake on the floor below the charcoal filter hanging in the roof sucking air out. A lot of my fresh air went 2 meters straight up and got sucked out. So, I put a small fan on the floor at the intake blowing the fresh air into the center of the room to be sucked up through the plants canopy instead. The bigger fan moving the air over the canopy was also moved directly above the air intake so it would get any air trying to escape directly from intake to exhaust. It blows it on to the canopy now. Results from this change could be seen in a few days in the vigor of the plants.
In short, watch your growspace and try to figure out how the air moves. Take measures to get as much of the intake air as possible to move through your plants before it moves out of the room again.

* Keep it clean. Dead leaves or what have you attracts pests. Once you get those you are in Irak. Sure you can keep them at bay but there are no certain ways of winning per se or stopping the attacks completelly. So, don't give pests an easy way in. Avoid having living leaves touching the grow medium as well. Get them off the plant if they do. (I don't in any way mean that Irakies are pests by the way just that the war wont be won once it is started, there will alway be pockets surviving and starting new attack sooner or later) In short try your absolute best to not come into a situation where this will be an issue.

* Know your genetics. If you read up you will learn how the plant is expected to grow. If you learn that a plant grown freely will grow explosive upwards during its 3rd week you might wanna train it before that if you grow indoors. I made this mistace and now have room to spare horizontally but are fast running out of space vertically. That is not a good way to grow. I could have used my grow space better. Keep that canopy even and use up horizontal space rather than vertical. The less light that hits the floor and the more even canopy you have the better. Top, FIM, ScrOG, SoG, LST to make that happen. A Cannabis plant can easilly grow 8-14 inches in ONE week during stretch periods!

* If you never ever nuteburned your plant you are under feeding it. Slowly go harder and harder on nutes until you do see signs of burns. Keep notes. Once you do hit the wall back off a bit and you can be certain you are at an optimal level for your strain and your grow op. Do keep notes though so you know the next time. Also know that generally they can take more and more as they get older so your first time around you might have to do this a few times.

Know these simple things and try to use that knowledge as good as possible and the rest will be much easier imo.
These points are a part from the obvious natrually. You need to know how to water or manage a hydro/aero, choose medium and grow technique, genetics etc etc but that is a given. Once you have started to grow and have choosen your equipment I think these 5 points are the most important to become as good as possible in.

Now I am no expert at this but I do know what I need to know and need to learn (which is still a lot).

My next time around I will plan more ahead and know better what to expect and be ready for that before it happens.

Puffzter

Puffzter Reviewed by Puffzter on 09-04-2008. Few pointers for new/newish growers I was answering a question in my growlog and my post grew big and I ended up with a text that might be interesting to some growers that are starting up or are doing one of their first grows. You have choosen your strain, you have your growspace and have choosen nutes and grow technique. Now what? How can you do the best of what you have? This is what I believe to be the most important: There are a few things I believe makes out the corner stones of what you need to know and Rating: 5

[Dutch Pimp]

Well said...Puffzter...:thumbsup:

Especially the part about fresh air supply daily. It's probably the most underrated item for indoor growers. I use two methods for supplying fresh air to the canopy; blowing/cooling the 15 inch space between the light and top of the plants.