Another Newbie Having Problems

[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.

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!
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And you'll be answering newbie questions to pay for that free education, yah?
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.

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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.

Attachment 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!

Attachment 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?