Late flower plant is confusing me

[HempKat]

Root ball is interesting. Not very white, and the stronger roots are not at the bottom. Like the bottom is too wet for them to get established down there.

You do realize he's holding that root ball upside down right? What I see is almost all roots at the bottom and little to no roots in the upper 2/3rds of the plant.

 

[f-e]

You do realize he's holding that root ball upside down right? What I see is almost all roots at the bottom and little to no roots in the upper 2/3rds of the plant.

lol
They're circling about an inch from the bottom. The one's that do make it to the bottom, are browner.

 

[HempKat]

lol
They're circling about an inch from the bottom. The one's that do make it to the bottom, are browner.

Ah okay you're just talking in terms of where the roots show and not so much the whole root ball. I get what you're saying now. Thanks for the clarification and if you celebrate it have a Merry Christmas.

 

[Themagnata]

Yeah they do say when growing organically you don't have to worry about ph as much but I always too that to mean the kind of organic where you take you medium and you mix it with bone meal, blood meal, kelp guano etc. Growing with something like Biobizz (I've never used it) might be enough of a difference from doing your own soil mix that does change that rule about ph. Is that if you don't test you lose out on a way to diagnose your plant fairly quickly and that could potentially have you chasing down the wring clues. If you don't want to ph that's no skin off my nose. I mean it's not like I work for a company that makes ph testing equipment nor do I own stock in any company that does. All I know is you first reported this problem 5 days ago and you say it's getting worse had you ph tested back when the problem first came up you could have ruled out a bunch of potential issue and maybe even have things solved by now. Maybe you're resisting the idea because you priced some ph pans and found there were expensive which they can be but the expensive ones usually last longer and are more accurate, You don't have to use an expensive pen though. I've seen growers reliably ph test their grow with a little $10 kit you can find at a pet store. AS far as your water yes, there are situations where it can be good to let your water sit for a period of time and things will change for the better. I don't know if the ph changes though, if I remember correctly the letting it sit is for treated water with high levels of chlorine in it. The chlorine will dissipate over time when allowed to sit while exposed to air. I've always used well water that was untreated and came out of the tap at a perfect soil ph of 6.5. You're say yours is coming out at 7.8 which is quite high. Now it might be that your nutrients and or the microbes in your soil are taking care of the problem but we'll never know for sure if you're not testing ph. How to test the run off is very simple you water your plants until water comes out of the pot (runoff). If you have a pen you can just stick the tester end directly in the run off and have your results a few seconds later. If you use the $10 pet store variety ph kit that usually involves taking a dropper, sucking up some of the runoff, squirting it into a vial adding a few drops of testing solution, wait for the color to change and then compare that color to a color coded care that comes with the kit. The whole process takes less then a minute. Okay so you've heard ph down will harm the microbes well guess what those microbes are plant like and they can also be harmed by ph that is too high or too low but that aside there are organic things that can be used to adjust ph but you have to be careful because some of them can make big changes if you use too much unfortunately I don't know what they are other then one of them is vinegar which is not recommended because it can dramatically drop the ph more then you want. I've also heard it doesn't last very long and will allow the ph to go right back up. Look when doing it properly you shouldn't need too much ph down, not concentrations so high it's likely to kill microbes. Also you asked about can you ph while using teas. Yes, you can. You're testing runoff and so that's presumably after you've added the tea. You're testing the run off because whatever the ph is coming out of the pot is most likely the same ph that the roots are experiencing. Watering the stuff before it goes in is kind of useless because what it is before it goes in and after it comes out might be two different things. It's possible that there are things in your soil that change the ph. So you test what is coming out and then adjust what's going in accordingly with the goal of getting the ph where it needs to be when it comes out because again the fluid draining out is most likely going to be at the same ph that your roots are seeing.

As for pot size and potentially being rootbound, okay it's possible that your plants are not rootbound I didn't say they definitely were I said that the way your plants are behaving (leaves wilting until you water and then spring right back usually only happens on of two ways, either the plant is rootbound or you're not checking the plants as often as you should. There is the third possibility that you're not giving them enough water but I left that out because you seem to think you're giving too much. Most of the time when a plant isn't root bound you'll need to water it every other day. In the beginning when the roots haven't spread out enough it might be a little longer like every third day. You said the plants in question are in week 14 of flower so I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the roots have spread out in the pot plenty and/or might be rootbound. If the plants are rootbound they usually need to be watered every day some times in even less then a day if you don't get in to check on your plants before the water gets used up or you're plants aren't rootbound and you're waitin more then every other day before you water again then you're not checking often enough. Whether it's because they're rootbound or you're not checking often enough either way that process of the leaves wilting and then spring back to life when you water, that's very stressful to the plant and some leaves will die and drop of the plant and the ones that don't will look like something is wrong Which something is wrong, your plant is wilting on a regular basis. So you tell me, if you're waiting longer then every other day you need to check your plants daily and try to water just before they wilt. If you're needing to water every day and it wilts well then your plant is almost certainly root bound. If it's not root bound then most likely there is a ph issue that is locking out nutrients that will also make leaves die off and look oddly. Now on the issue of pot size, you say the plants are at 14 weeks. That's a long time to spend in a small one gallon pot That's not factoring in anytime you might have vegged which means they've been in a one gallon pot for 4 months or more. Yeah maybe you've seen other people use one gallon pots and get great results But I bet they didn't let them flower for 14 weeks or more. Lets just say they did though unless you are doing everything exactly the same as them then the same size pot might not work for you. To really make a judgement on whether your plant is rootbound I need you to detail every thing you did from start to finish. Did you start from seed or clone, did you veg for any length of time and if so how long. How old were they when you switched to 12/12? Just to give you an idea of what needs to be factored in. I've seen one gallon pots become rootbound in less then two months, yours have gone for over 4 months or more then twice that time. It's just a matter of doing the math.

Heyy, thank you for taking your time to give me such a detailed answer. Because of Christmas and being with the family i could only read your answer today.. I hope you had a nice Christmas

In relation to the PH i understand what you mean, I'm going to buy a PH pen tomorrow and measure the run off of the plants and then I'll report back to you. I'm also curious now about where the pH will be..

In relation to the pots, well I'm starting to realize that i may have messed up in this area as well..

The plants are all clones, some vegged for 1 week and some vegged for 4.. so I have plants in different stages of growth.. some in week 12. Some in week 9 and some in week 6..
​​​​​I know.. pretty fucking stupid.. some may be root bound but the smaller ones that vegged for 1 week only, i kept overwatering them I guess, and the roots on this plants are brownish And are not so many that i can see.. but this plants are also on week 12 and are almost finished ( they are taking a lot of time to finish, i don't know if this is related to all the stress I've been causing my plants) so I'll just let them finish..
Basically i have a salad of things going on and it's being too hard to keep track of anything..

NOw I'm just thinking how I'm going to straighten this out

​​​Would it make sense to transplant any of the plants at this point? Maybe the ones that are in week 6?

​​​​​​If not, then I'll just try to water them everyday, start checking pH And run off... or should I just throw them away and start over?

Or maybe I could get another 5x5 tent ( i still have some room left) and divide the plants i have between the 2 tents so the plants can have more room ?

There is a lot of variables, Wich one do you think would make more sense at this point?

I also have a load of clones lined up already. This one's are from the phenos I liked the most. This plants I'm going to veg for 3-4 weeks in 1G pots and then transplant into a 3G pot before flowering? This would still be a Sog grow I guess?

 

[Themagnata]

Root ball is interesting. Not very white, and the stronger roots are not at the bottom. Like the bottom is too wet for them to get established down there.

Bad drainage I guess. Should I use a layer of hydroton below the soil for better drainage maybe?

 

[f-e]

Bad drainage I guess. Should I use a layer of hydroton below the soil for better drainage maybe?

Maybe. Though outside the pot is my usual answer. Just some way to lift them. I'm on 5mm glazing shims this week. Next week it might be jam jar lids, or an iphone. My seed trays are on mushroom trays from the local takeaway. It's unusual to see this though, so I'm not sure why it's happened. A pot should be fine, unless in a saucer.

HempKat Happy new year, ganja peer

 

[Themagnata]

Ok so today I measured the pH of the water with a pH kit.

The pH of the water before watering is in the between 7.8 and 8.2 I guess ( see picture below)

After measuring the run off the pH seems to be between 5.8 and 6.2, so I guess the oh is ok right? Also in my other thread some guys are saying they grow in small pots like mine and also don't pH while using biobizh nutes and their plants look great, so I guess you can do an organic grow using biobizh nutes and not PHing your water

water pH before watering:

Run off PH ( plant in week 6 flowering):

Run off PH( plant in week 13 flowering) slightly more acidic :

 

[HempKat]

Heyy, thank you for taking your time to give me such a detailed answer. Because of Christmas and being with the family i could only read your answer today.. I hope you had a nice Christmas

In relation to the PH i understand what you mean, I'm going to buy a PH pen tomorrow and measure the run off of the plants and then I'll report back to you. I'm also curious now about where the pH will be..

In relation to the pots, well I'm starting to realize that i may have messed up in this area as well..

The plants are all clones, some vegged for 1 week and some vegged for 4.. so I have plants in different stages of growth.. some in week 12. Some in week 9 and some in week 6..
​​​​​I know.. pretty fucking stupid.. some may be root bound but the smaller ones that vegged for 1 week only, i kept overwatering them I guess, and the roots on this plants are brownish And are not so many that i can see.. but this plants are also on week 12 and are almost finished ( they are taking a lot of time to finish, i don't know if this is related to all the stress I've been causing my plants) so I'll just let them finish..
Basically i have a salad of things going on and it's being too hard to keep track of anything..

NOw I'm just thinking how I'm going to straighten this out

​​​Would it make sense to transplant any of the plants at this point? Maybe the ones that are in week 6?

​​​​​​If not, then I'll just try to water them everyday, start checking pH And run off... or should I just throw them away and start over?

Or maybe I could get another 5x5 tent ( i still have some room left) and divide the plants i have between the 2 tents so the plants can have more room ?

There is a lot of variables, Wich one do you think would make more sense at this point?


I also have a load of clones lined up already. This one's are from the phenos I liked the most. This plants I'm going to veg for 3-4 weeks in 1G pots and then transplant into a 3G pot before flowering? This would still be a Sog grow I guess?

First off thanks for the Christmas wishes even though I didn't get it till now. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas as well. Mine was actually kind of non existent. My wife passed last year due to end stage kidney failure. We never had kids, just cats and the last of those died last year as well at age 20 which is pretty old for cats. The year before my Mother passed and she was the person most responsible for bringing the Family together for the holidays. Anyway with her gone and then the pandemic on top of that me and my brothers have not gotten together the past 2 Christmases. So for me this year Christmas was spent completely alone and felt like just any other Sunday. Since nobody was coming by or there to share it with setting up decorations seemed pointless as did fixing any special holiday dishes or treats. The most exciting thing I did that day was to play Grand Theft Auto Online for a few hours. So it was all just kind of....meh. I'm not looking for sympathy as this is just the sort of thing that happens with people when they get older and friends and family start dying off. New Years will probably be the same, I doubt I'll even bother to watch the new year get rung in on tv.

Anyway now that I've bummed everyone out (sorry if I did, it wasn't intentional). I would not advocate throwing any plants away unless they look so bad you don't think you'll get much or any bud out of them and you could use the space. Personally I'm too hard headed to just give up on something I've invested that much time in. Now as far as what you have cooking now I wouldn't be approaching it so much from the standpoint of straightening it out as much as just how to keep from much more harm happening and get what you have finished.

It probably wouldn't make much sense to transplant any of them at this point. If the youngest is 6 weeks from the start of flower there's not much more root development likely to happen and if you do transplant it will likely shock the plant and stall it's growth briefly. The only reason I might consider transplanting any of them is if I knew staying on top of watering them as often as needed would be a problem. I would say it's probably better they go thru the little bit of shock of transplanting then allowing them to experience the stress of wilting and being brought back to life. If you can avoid that then I'd just leave them be and in the future if you want to stay in the same pot the whole time maybe try to veg them for no more then 2 weeks and if working with clones you can even consider going to 12/12 as soon as roots show. If you do decide to transplant any of the ones you have in flower I would say to try and find a pot just slightly bigger then the ones they're in now or if you only have 3 gallon pots maybe only fill them halfway. I say that because if the roots aren't likely to develop much more then there is no sense in wasting too much soil that will barely get used. I don't know that having multiple tents will do you much good at this point other then you would be better able to separate older plants from younger plants. Still if you plan on always having plants in different stages of growth it might be worth having multiple grow spaces to accommodate that. There are people who successfully run plants at different stages in the same grow space trying for a perpetual harvest but I've always felt that doing that was the most labor intensive way to grow and if you can't stay on top of everything it's real easy to run into problems. Due to various circumstances mainly involving health and money, I haven't grown for several years but when I grew regularly I used 2 spaces one for flower where all plants went into that space at the same time so they could be harvested at the same time (if I had multiple strains I would use strains that all flowered in the same time frame). The other space I would start vegging a new batch of plants just after I started the others in flower, so that when the ones in flower were done, I had a whole new batch ready to flower. That's the closest I ever came to a perpetual harvest.

Having plants in differing stages of growth in and of itself isn't stupid so don't be too hard on yourself. The problem though is when you do that it creates extra challenges for you. The biggest being that it becomes difficult to keep the canopy even because if you flower them at the same time in the same space the ones with the most veg time will get pretty big while the ones with the least veg time will typically be much smaller. You could balance this out some if they have very different growth characteristics but it's still a challenge in my opinion and if you keep your grow very challenging and demanding it becomes much easier to burn out and lose control. If you still want to go that route though then at least meticulously document everything so that you always know what to expect from which plants.

Now as for these clones ready to go, if they're all rooted but not in 1 gallon pots and you want to grow SOG style I would say just put them in the one gallon pots maybe give them a few days for the roots to start to spread and put them in 12/12 right away. You could veg 3-4 weeks then transplant to 3 gallon pots but that's going to take up much more space and usually in a SOG you want the plants pretty close together. Vegging for a month first would be better suited for a more normal typical grow where you want to encourage a lot of secondary growth in addition to the main colas. Typically with a SOG all you want is the main cola and maybe a couple of secondary buds per plant but I guess some of that depends on how many plants you'll be working with.

This time I did read ahead and saw your results with ph testing so let me talk about that some. For a soil grow, a starting point of 7.8 to 8.2 before applying it too the plants is pretty high. But then you say your runoff is 5.8 - 6.2 which is too low and maybe the plants at 13 weeks are even lower? What you don't make clear though, is the 7.8 to 8.2 just water or is that water and fertilizer mixed together? Same for the runoff is that with fertilizer added or not? The reason I'm asking is that's a pretty huge shift I mean pretty much 2 whole points. For soil the sweet spot is 6.5 so at 7.8 - 8.2 that would lock out most everything (nutrients) on the high end and at 5.8 - 6.2 that's going to lock out most everything on the low end. Now if the 7.8 to 8.2 is just plain water then I guess it's pretty good that it's that high because your biobizh nutrients seem pretty acidic to lower it down to 5.8 - 6.2 and if it causes that much change then you pretty much would need the water to be even higher then 8.2 to get it to 6.5 when you give it to the plants. Now if that's just straight water going in and you're not adding nutrients that means there is a lot of nutrient build up in your soil from previous feedings and that's what's dropping it so low. I'm having a tough time figuring out where the problem is here not knowing if the 7.8 to 8.2 is just water and then maybe you added the biobizh and watered and end up with 5.8 - 6.2. It's the runoff numbers that are most important though as that's the ph the plant is seeing and we need to figure out how to get that up to 6.5. It would seem that since different plants are giving different numbers there is some buildup of unused nutrients in the soil lowering the ph more in which case you might want to do a watering or two with just plain water to try to clear that out. In fact the plants at 13 weeks if they're almost done you probably shouldn't be giving them any more food anyway. Most people stop feeding nutrients to their plants the last 2-3 weeks of flower and just give plain water.

Now it's really too late in the game for this but if you're growing organic and you want to keep the ph fairly stable and in a healthy range for soil a common additive people mix in their soil is this stuff called dolomite lime. Not only is it an organic way to buffer the ph but it breaks down into calcium and magnesium which plants need a fair amount of and most fertilizers depend on being supplemented with a cal-mag product. If you add dolomite lime though that really needs to be mixed into the soil before you add the plant as it takes time to break down and start helping to buffer the ph and give calcium and magnesium. If you added it now it probably wouldn't help much. It's really hard for me to suggest anything since I'm not sure what is being measured meaning before watering is that just the ph of the water itself or after you've added biobizh and same thing for the run off, is that what you get giving the plant just plain water or it that water and biobizh together? If that is with biobizh added before watering then I'd find it helpful to know what the plain water tests at and what the runoff tests at with just plain water. It would also be useful to know were you watering with biobizh added each and every time you watered or were there times in between when it was just water and if so how often? I mean something is seriously off for it to start that high and come out that low but I need more info to try to figure out what is happening.

Now as for these people who use small pots and biobizh there may be details left out that explains why their plants are just fine. One possible explanation is if they are using coco coir instead of soil? Coco has different ph requirements and can tolerate lower ph values, for coco 5.8 to 6.2 sounds about right (although I'm not entirely sure since I've never used coco myself.) Another possibility is they are using soil like you but they've added dolomite lime or other stuff to help keep the ph balanced. Still another possibility is they're not feeding as much biobizh or as often. Maybe they give plain water every third feeding ( a common routine for soil) That's why I said your grow needs to be exactly the same as theirs before you can compare results. It's not necessarily enough to say well I use the same size pots and the same type of fertilizer. Also the ph value their water starts at might be different then yours. It might be that you think you're comparing apples to apples when really you're comparing apples to oranges.

 

[HempKat]

HempKat Happy new year, ganja peer

Thanks f-e Happy New Year right back at you

 

[Lester Beans]

Add your nutrients and then adjust pH to 6.5-6.8 for soil grows.

It DEFINITELY makes a BIG difference. Also pH down does not kill anything ffs.

I would harvest that plant that refuses to finish and put a healthy plant in its place. You have some cloudy trichomes so the herb will be fine.

Your roots do not look like drainage was an issue. If anything they look like the plant was underwatered most of its cycle.

 

[TanzanianMagic]

Ok so today I measured the pH of the water with a pH kit.

I would invest in a pH pen and a ppm/EC pen. If you grow with any kinds of synthetic or liquid fertilizer, you have to know how much you're giving the plant before the roots get burnt.

I rarely use bottled nutrients now, however the first time I used fermented hemp seeds as fertilizer/spray, I definitely checked the pH and EC. Turns out the like most fermented product, the pH was very low like vinegar or wine, and too much affected the pH of the water. Turned out a cap per half a gallon was not too much. From then on, I didn't check the pH.

Same with soil or compost - checking the pH with a soil meter can show when the compost or supersoil has become stable. Which is usually at a pH of 7.0.

 

[Themagnata]

First off thanks for the Christmas wishes even though I didn't get it till now. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas as well. Mine was actually kind of non existent. My wife passed last year due to end stage kidney failure. We never had kids, just cats and the last of those died last year as well at age 20 which is pretty old for cats. The year before my Mother passed and she was the person most responsible for bringing the Family together for the holidays. Anyway with her gone and then the pandemic on top of that me and my brothers have not gotten together the past 2 Christmases. So for me this year Christmas was spent completely alone and felt like just any other Sunday. Since nobody was coming by or there to share it with setting up decorations seemed pointless as did fixing any special holiday dishes or treats. The most exciting thing I did that day was to play Grand Theft Auto Online for a few hours. So it was all just kind of....meh. I'm not looking for sympathy as this is just the sort of thing that happens with people when they get older and friends and family start dying off. New Years will probably be the same, I doubt I'll even bother to watch the new year get rung in on tv.

Anyway now that I've bummed everyone out (sorry if I did, it wasn't intentional). I would not advocate throwing any plants away unless they look so bad you don't think you'll get much or any bud out of them and you could use the space. Personally I'm too hard headed to just give up on something I've invested that much time in. Now as far as what you have cooking now I wouldn't be approaching it so much from the standpoint of straightening it out as much as just how to keep from much more harm happening and get what you have finished.

It probably wouldn't make much sense to transplant any of them at this point. If the youngest is 6 weeks from the start of flower there's not much more root development likely to happen and if you do transplant it will likely shock the plant and stall it's growth briefly. The only reason I might consider transplanting any of them is if I knew staying on top of watering them as often as needed would be a problem. I would say it's probably better they go thru the little bit of shock of transplanting then allowing them to experience the stress of wilting and being brought back to life. If you can avoid that then I'd just leave them be and in the future if you want to stay in the same pot the whole time maybe try to veg them for no more then 2 weeks and if working with clones you can even consider going to 12/12 as soon as roots show. If you do decide to transplant any of the ones you have in flower I would say to try and find a pot just slightly bigger then the ones they're in now or if you only have 3 gallon pots maybe only fill them halfway. I say that because if the roots aren't likely to develop much more then there is no sense in wasting too much soil that will barely get used. I don't know that having multiple tents will do you much good at this point other then you would be better able to separate older plants from younger plants. Still if you plan on always having plants in different stages of growth it might be worth having multiple grow spaces to accommodate that. There are people who successfully run plants at different stages in the same grow space trying for a perpetual harvest but I've always felt that doing that was the most labor intensive way to grow and if you can't stay on top of everything it's real easy to run into problems. Due to various circumstances mainly involving health and money, I haven't grown for several years but when I grew regularly I used 2 spaces one for flower where all plants went into that space at the same time so they could be harvested at the same time (if I had multiple strains I would use strains that all flowered in the same time frame). The other space I would start vegging a new batch of plants just after I started the others in flower, so that when the ones in flower were done, I had a whole new batch ready to flower. That's the closest I ever came to a perpetual harvest.

Having plants in differing stages of growth in and of itself isn't stupid so don't be too hard on yourself. The problem though is when you do that it creates extra challenges for you. The biggest being that it becomes difficult to keep the canopy even because if you flower them at the same time in the same space the ones with the most veg time will get pretty big while the ones with the least veg time will typically be much smaller. You could balance this out some if they have very different growth characteristics but it's still a challenge in my opinion and if you keep your grow very challenging and demanding it becomes much easier to burn out and lose control. If you still want to go that route though then at least meticulously document everything so that you always know what to expect from which plants.

Now as for these clones ready to go, if they're all rooted but not in 1 gallon pots and you want to grow SOG style I would say just put them in the one gallon pots maybe give them a few days for the roots to start to spread and put them in 12/12 right away. You could veg 3-4 weeks then transplant to 3 gallon pots but that's going to take up much more space and usually in a SOG you want the plants pretty close together. Vegging for a month first would be better suited for a more normal typical grow where you want to encourage a lot of secondary growth in addition to the main colas. Typically with a SOG all you want is the main cola and maybe a couple of secondary buds per plant but I guess some of that depends on how many plants you'll be working with.

This time I did read ahead and saw your results with ph testing so let me talk about that some. For a soil grow, a starting point of 7.8 to 8.2 before applying it too the plants is pretty high. But then you say your runoff is 5.8 - 6.2 which is too low and maybe the plants at 13 weeks are even lower? What you don't make clear though, is the 7.8 to 8.2 just water or is that water and fertilizer mixed together? Same for the runoff is that with fertilizer added or not? The reason I'm asking is that's a pretty huge shift I mean pretty much 2 whole points. For soil the sweet spot is 6.5 so at 7.8 - 8.2 that would lock out most everything (nutrients) on the high end and at 5.8 - 6.2 that's going to lock out most everything on the low end. Now if the 7.8 to 8.2 is just plain water then I guess it's pretty good that it's that high because your biobizh nutrients seem pretty acidic to lower it down to 5.8 - 6.2 and if it causes that much change then you pretty much would need the water to be even higher then 8.2 to get it to 6.5 when you give it to the plants. Now if that's just straight water going in and you're not adding nutrients that means there is a lot of nutrient build up in your soil from previous feedings and that's what's dropping it so low. I'm having a tough time figuring out where the problem is here not knowing if the 7.8 to 8.2 is just water and then maybe you added the biobizh and watered and end up with 5.8 - 6.2. It's the runoff numbers that are most important though as that's the ph the plant is seeing and we need to figure out how to get that up to 6.5. It would seem that since different plants are giving different numbers there is some buildup of unused nutrients in the soil lowering the ph more in which case you might want to do a watering or two with just plain water to try to clear that out. In fact the plants at 13 weeks if they're almost done you probably shouldn't be giving them any more food anyway. Most people stop feeding nutrients to their plants the last 2-3 weeks of flower and just give plain water.

Now it's really too late in the game for this but if you're growing organic and you want to keep the ph fairly stable and in a healthy range for soil a common additive people mix in their soil is this stuff called dolomite lime. Not only is it an organic way to buffer the ph but it breaks down into calcium and magnesium which plants need a fair amount of and most fertilizers depend on being supplemented with a cal-mag product. If you add dolomite lime though that really needs to be mixed into the soil before you add the plant as it takes time to break down and start helping to buffer the ph and give calcium and magnesium. If you added it now it probably wouldn't help much. It's really hard for me to suggest anything since I'm not sure what is being measured meaning before watering is that just the ph of the water itself or after you've added biobizh and same thing for the run off, is that what you get giving the plant just plain water or it that water and biobizh together? If that is with biobizh added before watering then I'd find it helpful to know what the plain water tests at and what the runoff tests at with just plain water. It would also be useful to know were you watering with biobizh added each and every time you watered or were there times in between when it was just water and if so how often? I mean something is seriously off for it to start that high and come out that low but I need more info to try to figure out what is happening.

Now as for these people who use small pots and biobizh there may be details left out that explains why their plants are just fine. One possible explanation is if they are using coco coir instead of soil? Coco has different ph requirements and can tolerate lower ph values, for coco 5.8 to 6.2 sounds about right (although I'm not entirely sure since I've never used coco myself.) Another possibility is they are using soil like you but they've added dolomite lime or other stuff to help keep the ph balanced. Still another possibility is they're not feeding as much biobizh or as often. Maybe they give plain water every third feeding ( a common routine for soil) That's why I said your grow needs to be exactly the same as theirs before you can compare results. It's not necessarily enough to say well I use the same size pots and the same type of fertilizer. Also the ph value their water starts at might be different then yours. It might be that you think you're comparing apples to apples when really you're comparing apples to oranges.

I'm sorry for taking so long to answer, I have been quite busy this last week..

My deepest condolences on the loss of both of Mother and your wife, I know your love will always continue even though you are parted.

This year and last year I did not have a real Christmas aswell, I moved from North Europe to South Europe with my wife and my Dog 2 years ago, and I haven't seen the rest of the family since then because of the Pandemic.. So it was basically just another Sunday for us 3 aswell, we didn't even gift each other anything.. weird times we live in..

Now to answer your question about the PH.. everything I tested was only water. I did not test the PH of water with nutes. The PH of the run off I tested was only water and No Nutrients.


This last week I went and got my Grow updated, I bought another 5x5 tent, a couple of 2Gal pots, bought some fans for the airflow inside the tent and some sticky traps ( started seeing some thrip damage on some leafs here and there but nothing big yet).

Now I Have 3* 5x5 tents for flowering and 1* 4x4 Tent for my mothers and clones..

So I separated all the plants, now they have more space. Where I'm at is very Humid, I have a dehumidifier turned on 24/7 and my humidity is still in the 70's.. if I forget to empty the dehumidifier the humidity will rise to 85%.. is also raining alot where I'm at and I live completely on top of a Hill on a top floor, and I have a feeling the humidity is higher because I'm also so high.. 2 days ago I went outside with my dog and I felt like I was walking right in the middle of a cloud, everything was foggy and I wouldn't be able to see my dog if he ran away 10ft.. just so you get an ideia..
I was very worried about getting mold..

But now the plants are doing much better.. the younger ones, I gave them a good watering until I saw run off.. now I'm trying to stay on top of them but its still confusing to me because it seems they show signs of under and over watering at the same time, or maybe i just can't read the plant well


I Also harvested the plants that were on week 14..
I already harvested them before christmas, on the 23.12, hung em up to dry for 8 days and now they are in a glass with a 62% booveda pack. They've been there for 3 or 4 days now, yesterday I smoked some buds of different phenos of the Lemon cheese, the weed tastes okay, is okay from the taste, but the high is weak, I also have a high tolerance but I was expecting at least a bit more..

Right now I'm smoking the Banana Krumble as I write this. The taste is also okay but better I guess.. different.. I think it needs more curing.. the high on this strain is a bit better but is still nothing special..

I still have some plants finishing week 13 and I'm gonna take them down this weekend.. I have been flushing these for 1 and half week..below are some pictures..

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[Themagnata]

Flowering Plants week 13

 

[HempKat]

Okay, if the ph you tested before watering the plants was just water and you never added the biobizz and got the reading you got from the run off that suggests there was a lot of salts from previous watering built up in the soil to cause a shift in ph from that high to that low. That suggests to me that there was a pretty good period of time where the ph was off enough to lock the nutrients out and that would explain the way your plants started to look so distressed. Since the ph was likely off enough to lock out multiple nutrients this would cause multiple signs of various deficiencies and that would do a number on your plants if it went on for an extended period. Giving them just plain water even with the ph so high though was probably the best thing to do, the watering to run off helps wash out that build up and eventually that high ph water is going to bring the ph back up to a better level but if you kept doing that without something to bring that ph of your water down things would start going wrong in the other direction as the ph began to rise. If I were you I'd be kind of concerned about what is making that water's ph so high. At that level it sounds like there is a fair amount of something other then just hydrogen and oxygen in the water. If you have a place you can have your water tested you might want to do that so you have a clearer picture of what you're working with. Some issues with water ph can be cleared up by just letting it sit exposed to the air for a day or two before you use it. The most common thing this resolves is a high chlorine level which can be found in water that's been heavily treated to make it safe to drink or maybe I should say safe-ish I imagine drinking aa high concentration of chlorine can't be too good for you. Now there are other ways around water issues but they have their own problems one is to get a reverse osmosis or RO system that your water gores thru this will clean up the water and bring the ph down some but there is the expense of installing it and maintaining it. Another option is to buy distilled water to give to your plants but with as many plants as you have that would get pretty expensive and buying that much distilled water might cause people to notice and wonder what you're doing with all that distilled water and when you're running a grow operation you really don't want to draw attention to yourself. Aside from expense and unwanted attention both those options leave you with water that doesn't have much of anything in it and some things you want to be present like calcium and magnesium so with those options you would likely need to supplement calcium and magnesium. Dolomite lime in the soil will help with that some and help bring the ph down too but you may still need to add calcium and magnesium on top of that. The water analysis could reveal other important information like you may have a fair amount of certain nutrients in your water naturally that are also duplicated in your fertilizer and that could potentially cause a toxicity.

Now measuring just the plain water is kind of an unnecessary step when you're adding nutrients to the water because that's going to change the value so when feeding the plants you should mix it up first to now the ph value of everything before you add it to the soil and then measure the run off to see how things are looking to the plant after you feed it. This could take a few feedings to get right though, once you got the right ph figured for it goin in then you should be able to adjust it to the right value every time and keep the runoff right where you want it. You should also periodically (typically every third watering) give just plain water as that helps to keep excess salts from building up in the soil. My guess is you didn't see problems during the veg phase because veg nutrients are mainly just nitrogen with small amounts of potassium and phosphorous. Then it probably came on late in flowering because even though flowering nutrients have more potassium and phosphorous maybe it took a few weeks to build up to a point where it caused problems. The bottomline is to avoid issues you need to find a way to keep the ph right at 6.4-6.6 and preferably at 6.5 when growing in soil. I wish I could tell you a simple surefire way to do this but the reality is it's going to take some trial and error (dialing in) to get it right but once you do you should be able to keep it there better. Now if you do start a routine of just giving water every so often then measuring the water with no nutrients in that particular instance has value and then it's pretty safe to shoot for the ph to be around 6.5 because if there isn't a lot of build up in the soil from giving just water on a regular basis then the ph coming out should also be around 6.5.

Now as for this issue of feeling over watered at times and under watered I'm wondering if the high RH is your problem there? When I was growing I had to run a dehumidifier as well but doing that I was able to keep my RH right around 55% so it didn't cause me any real issues unless I forgot to empty my dehumidifier then it would go up but I usually didn't run into that very often increasing circulation helps some and that's also good for keeping pests from being a problem. Some of what you see in the leaves now may be left over damage from when you were having all those problems when leaves become stressed/damaged if you resolve the problem so of that damage might return to a more normal state but it usually never returns 100% and some damage once it's thare will stay there but as long as the leaf is still working for the plants it shouldn't die off. Giving the plants more space, adding fans to increase air movement should help with things but you still got to solve the ph issue and that's just going to take time and trial and error. It's going to be a little trickier if you are resistant to using ph up and ph down. I get your reasoning about not wanting to kill off the beneficial microbes but I'm not convinced using ph up and ph down will do that. You might want to research that more? The same things that cause problems for the plants should also cause problems for the beneficial microbes since they work in a symbiotic relationship with the plants. Most ph up and ph down solutions are based off the same macro nutrients we feed the plants so it just doesn't make sense to me they would harm the beneficial microbes. I think you indicated that you got that from something you read here? Unfortunately you have to take what you get here with a grain of salt because sometimes people state things based more on feelings then on science or experience. That's not to say that everything is wrong but rather you can't just run with everything you read here.

Now on the experiences you're having with the quality of high and taste with you buds one problem we all run into at some time or another is building up too much of a tolerance especially if we are a heavy/daily user of our buds. There's really only two ways to resolve that. One is to use less and/or less often but that can be hard and kind of sucks if you enjoy getting high regularly. The other option you seem to be striving for which is to have a good variety of strains and then just keep switching around on what you enjoy. One day you smoke one strain, the next another and then another and just keep switching around. You have to keep in mind though, especially when dealing with a new strain. Not all strains are going to be great for you. Also what might be great for one person might just be so so for you and that's likely because people are also different and have different body chemistries. A strain that leaves you feeling less then satisfied just might not be a good strain or it just might not be a good strain for you.

Finally, the buds don't look all that bad to me, sure the ones with damaged leaves don't look so good but most of the leaves get trimmed off so I bet the ones that look a bit worse the others will look better to you once they're trimmed and cured.

Anyway I'll leave it there for now, hopefully I've given you some things to think about and try along with the changes you'll be making that will help you next grow to be free or mostly free of problems?

HempKat

 

[Mattbho]

Sorry kat . Maybe he threw in the towel. You can lead a horse to water.

FYI for any new growers that want to grow this marvelous plant a picture is worth everything .

All these plants were left without water to the point of roots dying back . This is shown by the bottom few leaves just hanging there limp those are goners .

Problem was compounded by adding more nutrients to hydrophobic media. This slowly burnt all the remaining leaves .

Those pots would work for sog or mulit feed coco ... once they dried right out im afraid op was doomed.
New growers seriously under estimate how much liquid these gals need at peak useage.

Best way to rehydrate a dying plant would be slowly and soaking is a almost a must imo . With no bottoms on those pots im sure u thought they were completey watered but they more.than likely weren't,

If he would have sat them all in a few inches of water he could have rehydrated the soil properly . Notice i said water, not soup

When soil gets this dry the water just runs threw them you almost have to bottom water to get them hydrated again .

 

[blondie]

Good info In this thread. Thanks to contributors. For anyone finding this, some years ago I had a grow that didn’t appear to finish. Not new genetics to me, soil was dialed in well for this strain. An 8-9 week strain ran until 16 weeks. I was really going nuts and finally started getting low on my stash so pulled them. They didn’t look at all done but wow packed a hell of a punch and excellent taste. For whatever reason, it just looked like it had time to go, but I suspect I could have pulled at 9 weeks and been just fine. Don’t think I would let go that long again. Trichs didn’t change all those weeks..

 

[St. Phatty]

Ok so im pheno Hunting and I think my plants are stalled. This strains are supposed to be ready in 9-10 weeks and I'm on week 14 already.


i also have some plants in week 5 in this same tent that are going well, well at least yet.. don't mind these, my concern is the more advanced ones

View attachment 18018958

Plants in that first post look Ready to Harvest.

Very smoke-able.

 

[Creeperpark]

You can learn so much from this grow. All those implications could be resolved if he used larger containers. So much extra work tending to 30 containers. If you up-potted into large containers you could better manage your water intake and feeding.