First grow, day 18

[Rougarou]

From left to right:

El Nino (f), Bubblelicious (f), Nemesis (f), Afghan kush x Skunk (f)

How do my girls look? Think they're ready for the 400w mh? I have a cooltube fixture; how far away do you guys think I should place the light?

Other than that little light burn, so far so good. My runoff pH readings have remained consistant, though i'm still about a week away from first feeding. The only one of the girls that's shown yellowing of the cotyledons is the Afghan Kush x Skunk.

 

[IE2KS_KUSH]

If these were in my hands I would water them as normal one more time...soak them well...then next time they dry out repot them soak them real good and let them grow. They look nice hope you get good stuff.

 

[IE2KS_KUSH]

I wouldn't put the 400 on till after I repot....or if I did it would be at a safe distance ...its kind of overkill those cfls will do fine for a while. I got 2 mothers a reveg...a male...and about 30 clones all under 5 23 watt cfls and 2 2ft shop light floro jobbers that got 4 20 watt bulbs...my plants don't get HID lighting until I put them into flower.

 

[Scrappy-doo]

Congrats on your first grow you're gonna love it!

Your girls are off to a real nice start. I agree with IE2KS you should repot before kicking it up to the 400. They just don't need all that much light yet.

What kind of soil are you using? What kind of nutes? If your Afghan Kush x Skunk is hungry give her a little snack to hold her over till next week.

Gonna be a fun ride man I'll pull up a seat. Good luck.

 

[Rougarou]

If these were in my hands I would water them as normal one more time...soak them well...then next time they dry out repot them soak them real good and let them grow. They look nice hope you get good stuff.

They're not even three weeks old. Should I have to repot already?

Soil is Fertilome Ultimate Potting mix. Nutes will be FF Grow Big, Big Bloom, and Tiger Bloom, when I start feeding them. I have the feeding guide. When I first feed them should i do it with a half-strength dose of Grow Big?

Thanks for the compliments, guys. I have high hopes for that El Nino.

 

[Scrappy-doo]

You definitely want to start with a light dose of food and build up slowly. They will let you know when they are hungry, like that Afghan Kush x Skunk is starting to.

Be careful with the food. It's much easier to fix if you underfeed than it is if you overfeed.

As far as potting goes, they would be fine in those little cups of a while, but personally I'd rather give their roots some more space. Maybe into like a 4x4 square pot or something. Then a few weeks later into their final container you're gonna flower them in. They are gonna grow a lot faster in a larger container.

 

[someotherguy]

mornin' man and welcome to the hobby.

below i've listed 2 threads that changed EVERYTHING in my grow, unfortunately, it took me more than 2 years to find them.

[URL="https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=191645"]*The K.I.S.S. Method*[/URL] by Ioni Botani.

[URL="https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=147954"]Coco Hempy style. by the original hempy[/URL]

if you take the time to read them, ...and they're both LONG threads, ...you won't regret it.

peace, SOG

 

[Rougarou]

UPDATE: Had to feed the girls for the first time. The oldest two have been in the cups 3 weeks on Friday, and the cotlyedons look like crap so I guess it's about that time.I just got home from class and three of them are showing either early stage Nitrogen deficiency or early stage Potassium deficiency. Nitrogen def doesn't make much sense since my soil test chems said i had abundant nitrogen on planting day so I dunno. Both images look very similar to the condition of my babies. I fed using Grow Big with just a hair under 3 tsp/gal (because the lowest graduation on my little cup was 3 tsp) using 7.0 de-Cl H2O to give me a food pH of 6.5. Runoff pH varied depending on water used but all four of them ended up with runoff pH between 6.1 and 6.3.

This is the picture I compared to.

http://www.marijuanapassion.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=158412&d=1295751999

 

[Scrappy-doo]

Most likely nitrogen. Very common when that age and have not been fed yet. They're just letting you know they're getting hungry is all.

Ph sounds good. So you have a ph meter? How about ppm meter? That will take all the guesswork out of how much to feed.

 

[Rougarou]

 

[Rougarou]

I have a TDC meter but I think it was defective out of the package. a full first dose of Grow Big according to the feeding schedule (6 tsp/gal) should only have a ppm of 750-850. I used a little less than 3 tsp/gal and it said my ppm was 1080. Rather than trust a cheap meter that has a suspected error I just fed at less than 1/2 strength.

The meter I have is the black/yellow Milwaukee ph600 (?). My botany professor said that's fine for recreational purposes and graciously donated some 7.0 buffer so I can zero it out. pH is the one thing I have complete control over and i've been strict as heck with it.

 

[Scrappy-doo]

Check the tds of your tap water. Mine is like 100 150 ppm's. Or you can grab some distilled water. That should read 0 or close to 0 ppm's.

If your meter is correct and the solution you made is 1050 that is a lot for such young plants. I run coco so it's a little different, but 1050 ppm's would be for plants late in flower.

Having a working TDS meter is absolutely not necessary, but will make dosing much easier.

Have you considered upgrading to coco? Since you are being very strict with your ph you'd prob be real good with it, and you'll double your yields.

 

[Rougarou]

TDC of tap water is 127 ppm. Fertilized water is 1080. I don't understand. I dosed it with half of what FF stated and the TDC is *still* 1.5 times what the grow guide says it should be with a FULL dose.

I've already watered. Should I flush some of it out?

 

[Scrappy-doo]

Yes absolutely! Make a solution of 400 ppm solution and flush with that. This way they will still have some food but you flush out the excess.

Afterwards may also be a good time to think about a transplant. One thing that can be an issue with soil is overwatering. If you completely drench your soil it can become waterlogged and the roots can drown and die. If you transplant into even just a slightly larger container that is only say 50 or 60% wet there will still be plenty of air for them to breathe.

 

[Rougarou]

Flushed them the best I could and have to hope for the best. I don't think it was strong enough to kill them. They're definitely not liking being watered so soon after being fed. The leaves started to do that overwatering arch almost immediately...well, half an hour later.

Should I continue on as planned with an every other watering feeding schedule? Or should I drop it to every third watering since they're so small?

 

[Scrappy-doo]

Every other should be fine. Then just watch'em and when they tell you they're hungry again and can take more food, up the dose a little bit.

 

[Rougarou]

Up the dose on the next feeding? about a 650 ppm or so? I took that same 1080 ppm solution, about 3/4 of a gallon, and poured out half. I filled the rest with distilled water, tested the ppm. Read 860 or so. I poured out half of *that* and filled the gallon with distilled.

That's not a whole lot of nutes at all. WAY less than the FF guide says I should be at for week-old seedlings. These guys are 2 and 3 weeks old. What gives? If the guide is wrong how the heck do I dose my nutes?

 

[Scrappy-doo]

I can only speak from my own experience which is in coco. I used to run soil but it has been quite a while. I can't see it being really any different however. In coco no matter what brand of nutrients you are using, at that stage of life they should be getting anywhere from 400 - 600 ppm's at the most. Lots of people don't even feed at all until they are either bigger than that or until they start to show signs of hunger, ie nitrogen deficiency.

However in coco we feed with every watering. My advice is conservative, as one of the most common mistakes a new grower makes is overfeeding and hence nute burn.

Just found a thread on this topic for you. My apologies to IC if this is against TOU... just trying to help a fellow grower out.

http://boards.cannabis.com/organic-growing/73458-ff-grow-big-ff-tiger-bloom-users-read-please.html

 

[Scrappy-doo]

I'd wait to up the dose. I'd keep it where it's at for at least a week and then see how they look. There's no rush they're doing just fine.

 

[Rougarou]

So it's been five days since the little escapade with the FF Grow Big, and the Afghan and El Nino have developed some serious yellowing on two to three of the lowest fan leaves. One of the El Nino's leaves is so yellow it's nearly transparent. Despite the plan to transplant them to jiffy pots this week, I went ahead and fed them a 650 ppm (water started out as 120ppm) strength solution of Grow Big. I used 1 1/2 tsp/gallon.

That stuff lives up to its name. Even flushing most of it out last Wednesday left enough goodies to make the plants grow visibly larger. we're talking 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch per day worth of height and girth. The Nemesis has caught up to the El Nino in size and the Bubblelicious should be outside the cup in another day or so. I'll update with pics tomorrow night in a new post.

I think I'm gonna buy another trio pack. Cannabis notwithstanding, I can't wait to see what this stuff does to my maters and corn.

Watermelons...meh. Out of 3 sprouted seeds I think only 1 is going to survive. It's doing fine. The other two are still ridiculously tiny and look near death.