AK47, Super Silver Haze, and Super Lemon Haze Homegrow

[Air Freshener]

Shit.

Shit.

Shortly after posting the last message, I soaked one of my plants and let it drip-dry on the windowsill. When I picked it up to put it back in the grow tent, it looked like some soil had washed out. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was not soil at all.



These look like aphids to me. They were hiding out in the soil and the water flushed them out.

In my experience, these little bastards are impossible to get rid of completely. What's more, if one plant has them, certainly the other two do as well.

Well, at least this answers my question. Should I just quit now and chalk this grow up to experience?

 

[pinecone]

Should I just quit now and chalk this grow up to experience?

Either that or start running some experiments on how to get rid of them safely. This really explains a lot. I'm sorry this happened to you.

Pine

 

[Air Freshener]

After a bit of research on the web, I decided to go for a solution of the insecticide Imidacloprid (20%) at 1mL/L. I submerged each pot in a bucket of the solution for about a minute and have left them on the windowsill in full sun to drip dry. Will re-apply after a week.

Also cleaned out the grow tent with a rag to remove dust, dirt, and other possible contaminants. It looks like this grow will be more for learning than for producing. I guess I'm ok with that. Learning's good, right?

 

[Reg Dixon]

Wow you have some real problems to tackle there. Hope you get through them. Sounds like you are taking a sensible approach. To my beginners eye those aphids look like little pebbles in the soil. Maybe even a bit of sand.

 

[Air Freshener]

Snipped a couple tops of the Super Lemon today:



The Super Silver is looking a bit sad. The aphids took their toll and I'm a bit scared to pull it out of its pot and have a look at the roots...might be nasty down there. It's not consuming water like the other two which makes me wonder if there isn't some root rot going on

 

[1971]

try Botanigard ES

 

[1971]

in addition, you could contact these people to see what they would recommend:

http://www.rinconvitova.com/aphid control.htm

and then delete this thread since it is depressing

 

[Air Freshener]

Bit by bit...

 

[fonzee]

I'd remove as much soil as possible and transplant to a bigger pot with proper soil and give compost tea drench for a few weeks to create some competition on the roots (by fungi mainly).

by the way, you could easily clone your plants and start over at this stage.
In your case I would just hack them down to clone-able pieces and start a new grow. This time use proper soil.

 

[Air Freshener]

Fonzee I'm seriously considering it, although I've never cloned before, which could leave me wide open to complete and total failure...

 

[fonzee]

don't kill your plants before the clones root, that easy.

you could even clone in a cup of water by taking cuts and drop them in the cup.
controlling the temp. of the water in the cup will really speed things up.

I use a somewhat more advanced way - I use jiffy peat pellets.
Expand them - put the cutting with an angled cut and some rooting hormone inside the jiffy - squeeze a bit so that the jiffy grabs the cut - put in a terarium for a week - water - look for roots a week later.

For the terarium:
get a clear plastic box high enough (10"+), poke a few holes on the top, after you put whatever you want inside close the lid.
I use 2 food containers and duct them to each other.
Again, temp. control speeds things up.

For a single cutting:
*Cut a soda plastic bottle in the middle half way so it doesn't split the bottle in two
*Fill the bottom with some NEUTRAL mix - peat, coco, rockwool, seedling oriented soil etc.
*Jam the cutting in the medium
*close the bottle and duct it
*open the cap
*wait 2 weeks.


Clones need some light (a 32W CFL works great for a few) and temp around 28°C along with minimal air exchange (to prevent rot) and if the roots aren't submerged in water the canopy needs high relative humidity.

 

[pinecone]

For a single cutting:
*Cut a soda plastic bottle in the middle half way so it doesn't split the bottle in two
*Fill the bottom with some NEUTRAL mix - peat, coco, rockwool, seedling oriented soil etc.
*Jam the cutting in the medium
*close the bottle and duct it
*open the cap
*wait 2 weeks.

I sometimes just use ziplock bags over regular 16 cups filled with growing medium. If you have a reasonable amount of daylight hours you can also root clones in a window.

Pine

 

[Air Freshener]

Moved to bigger pots...

 

[Air Freshener]

Fonzee, pinecone, thanks for the help. I should have started the clones sooner, now I'm afraid I won't have time. I will be looking to move in June and need to have everything well done and put away by then.

 

[Air Freshener]

Update



I think temperature has had a lot to do with the slow growth and small leaves that these plants have been experiencing. It's been way colder at night that I thought. As soon as I started closing up the tent completely at night the plants started growing normally. And stinking! They are really getting stinky.

Noticed that some of the leaves were curling in a weird way at the ends. Not sure what could be causing this...maybe not enough water?



I think I'm gonna switch them to 12/12 on the first of march. We'll see how it goes.

Thanks for any helpful advice!

 

[MrSterling]

Interesting read! Glad to see your plants are perking up.

 

[Air Freshener]

Day 3 of flowering. Starting to stretch a bit.



This temperature thing has been a constant battle. Because the exhaust fan is continually running, cold air keeps getting sucked into the tent. This is fine when the light is on, but when the light is off I have to turn off the fan and put an electric radiator right up next to the tent to keep the plants from getting too cold.

 

[whatthe215]

Looking so much better outta those small pots and their nasty aphids.

Did you change soil completely as well?

 

[m8ty]

ahh i knew it look like aphid damage from the 1st pic, how you rid of the aphids again?

 

[Air Freshener]

I dunked the soil completely in insecticide containing imidacloprid. The aphids haven't been seen again...*fingers crossed!*