plants all jacked up!!!!

[Citizen024]

Its general 5-5-5 plant food. Other the the microbes, its not so special. You can get something like it any nursery. The drawback with amendments is once they are in there, you have zero control of them. If your ready to flush/cut nitrogen, and its still going, well, its still going and you have to live with it. Yes it's easy no brainer nutrition- the drawback is this is very generalized nutrient use and your degree of control will be none. It has a bit high amount of N in it for blooming, could make your nug a higher leaf ratio. I did this before. All this different ingredients have differing release rates too, so they become available when they are ready, not neccessarily when your plant wants them.

I would use a light dose amount of it in your soil, also start them off with watering them with a light bloom food, and then wait a couple weeks and supplement with either teas or bottled blooming nutrients for just a couple weeks, then cut to nothing.

You could probably get through the first month just off the Peace of Mind and whats in the soil; but its less then ideal. I would make flowering guano teas with microbes myself. Or simply use a nice bottled organic nutrient: Pura Vida is my fav as of now, but you could go with quite a few options.

 

[built2last]

Thanks citizen. what your saying makes sense. I just transplanted last night into 3 gal containers and am going to begin flowering over the weekend. i am just a little worried about adding more nutes because of my lack of experience and finally get the plants healthy again. But the point you make about control especially with nitrogen is a very good one. you like pura vida? Everytime I hear that reminds me of costa rica. Thats their motto absolutely beautiful country. I only have a little experience with flora nova from previous grows years ago. Maybe I will pick some up and just use cautiously.

Good looking out citizen thanks

 

[csharper]

built2last, since you are a beginner, I still recommend not applying the peace of mind until you can get a majority opinion over here that your plants need it. Depending on how far you get into flower with the ocean forest nutes, it may be completely pointless, even detrimental to add more.

obviously, your water schedule changes for the bigger pots.

now, to head off your next issue in two weeks:
I noticed your underestimated flower stretch bigtime. You can count of 3x at least, maybe 4x since you have four bushes now.
1) the sooner you get the males out the better - in my observations, crowding causes more stretch than low light.

2) move your lights to the top of your tent. leave them there forever. forget about this 12" stuff, first that is way too close - 18" minimum for a 400 watt is more reasonable. But even then, the idea that you need to keep the light a certain distance from plants is flawed. It is backed by a misunderstanding of light dispersion/intensity, and as someone else put it so eloquently: "the light from these HID lamps does not magically disappear after a set height"
Where the light height does apply, is if you do not have reflective walls or have a very large multi lamp grow space, but not in a tent.
So basically, because your tent is a giant reflector, you can put the lights up high for even coverage instead of a really hot spot in the middle. The plants will be happier and you won't risk burning your plants as much.

3) You want to have the plants all start filling out at least 18 inchs below lamp or your quantity and quality will suffer from heat. You also need this canopy to be even as possible. How to accomplish this at this point? - simple: just bend your branches down 75-90 degrees until they snap/stay. Do not bend past 90 or mess with it once it snaps for a few days. You may need to do this twice, up through week four. Basically if a branch gets much more than 6" higher than the rest of canopy, go down 7-8" inchs and bend there not more than 90 degrees. As long as it is still lit and not under the canopy, the branch will heal in mere days and turn into a chunky monkey horizontal/vertical hybrid bud. Will yeild the same or more as if it grew normal without the height limitation.

Have had to do this myself the last three grows as I get used to my ebb and flow and the 24" it takes from my plant height. You may need to do it more than once per branch - I had to do it like 7 times to a nirvana white rhino sativa pheno and it still yielded more than every other plant in that grow. Just wait about 2-3 days between bends.

Here are pictures of my current grow, day 63, 800 watt - multi strains - 5/6 of these plants were bent heavily because I started overcrowded (14 in 4x4). There is easily .5g per watt, prob more. Pretty good considering my tent sucks and is offgassing so much the walls are turning brown next to the lamps.

 

[built2last]

hello csharper

thanks for stopping in. What kinda tent do you have? Grow is looking damn good.

your right i definately did underestimate the stretch. I just transplanted last night into 3 gal pots and theyre looking good. Like we talked about before I am going to begin 12/12 probably on sat. I need to get a light seal kit for my reflector. Right now I'm losing suction through the hood and the filter is not running efficiently. I figure I can seal the light, change the bulb to hps(switchable ballast), and begin 12/12.

What are you doing for intake air? Passive? In my hydrohut above the vents by the floor there are two holes one on either side that I am running 4" ducting from. I have to make a couple of 90 degree bends for light but thats what I'm doing. I don't see an intake fan and just wondering if you were doing something similar.

What your saying about the peace of mind I happen to agree with. I want to begin to understand and let the plant talk to me. When I think its ready is when I plan to add.

Interesting what you say about the distance of the light. It does make perfect sense and it is like one huge reflector in there. I was only thinking about penetration and avoiding stretch that is why I have keep at that distance.

Pretty much as of now the canopy is even with the exception of one plant. Its a few inches off. What you are recommending is supercropping am I correct?

I haven't seen any preflowers as of yet and am going to have to keep my eye out for males. I would like to take some clones and begin to run perpetual using cfl for now. Any recommendations on how?

 

[csharper]

thanks for stopping in. What kinda tent do you have? Grow is looking damn good.

4x4 homebox from htg supply august 2007, piece of crap.

What are you doing for intake air? Passive? In my hydrohut above the vents by the floor there are two holes one on either side that I am running 4" ducting from. I have to make a couple of 90 degree bends for light but thats what I'm doing. I don't see an intake fan and just wondering if you were doing something similar.

No intake, there is an 8 inch vortex running on 55v (on 50% variac) hung vertical between the two reflectors. So much static pressure my intake flaps really flap around. I have no idea where you run your intake ducting to - do you have fans on those ducts?

Interesting what you say about the distance of the light. It does make perfect sense and it is like one huge reflector in there. I was only thinking about penetration and avoiding stretch that is why I have keep at that distance.

You will stretch more if some plants are getting more light than others. Basically, the high light ones will grow, the low lights will weakly stretch because they don't want to be shaded. Then the high light ones will grow even more to overtake the weak light ones. Cycle continues causing way more stretch through competition than if they all had the same light. Plus the weak light plants turn into spidery weaklings.

Moving the plants to new spots to counteract makes it worse because they are constantly adjusting to the spot/orientation they are in - it confuses them way too much if you move them around willy nilly. The only time I move/rotate plants is when there is a major change to the tent like the elimination of a male. Kind of like if a tree falls in the forest it majorly changes the light to the floor drastically and the plants respond in kind. So since they are already going to be adapting to the loss of the male, thats when you move them to a new spot and just let them adapt there instead.

Pretty much as of now the canopy is even with the exception of one plant. Its a few inches off. What you are recommending is supercropping am I correct?

Yes, and there is real science and my own observations backing up the bend technique.

I haven't seen any preflowers as of yet and am going to have to keep my eye out for males. I would like to take some clones and begin to run perpetual using cfl for now. Any recommendations on how?

My 750 sq foot house can barely fit my tent - so I do not have that capability. However, if I had the space and happened to have your exact grow, I would:
a) number your four plants. Then take 2-3 cuttings off each plant (the lowest branches). Label the clones with their sibling's number. Take 2-3 because you do not have time to ensure they establish, so you are just going to hope that 1 out of 3 makes it.
b) Once you sex the originals, you will know which numbered clones are your new "mothers" (which are actually sisters). You do this before flower so you do not have flowering horomones in your clones (meaning you have to wait for reveg, plus I am pretty sure they would root better in veg mode)

 

[built2last]

I was thinking the same thing in regards to clones. I never knew about moving them before thats great to know. Looking forward to supercropping sounds awesome thanks for the advice.

 

[built2last]

another question for ya csharper. supercropping is ok to do while in flower? That is currently what you are doing right? like i was saying before currently canopy is pretty even with the exception of one being an inch or two short. leave them alone and watch? supercropp before flower and make sure canopy is even?

 

[csharper]

As late as you need to, I just did some at day 45. That rhino I bent 7 times between day 30-50. You just have to weigh out the benefits to your garden/the plant vs the cost of losing 2-3 days of growth on the plant you bend. At no point will it just give up and die if everything else is healthy - it will always fix itself, usually better than it was.

 

[built2last]

thanks man you've been very helpful. I'll keep you posted.

 

[built2last]

hey csharper another question for ya...I made another post about this but wanted your opinion. My filter is not working very good. I think it maybe because of the long ducting going to the light and coming from the light to the fan. filter>ducting>light>ducting>fan>outside. I have an elf filter and an active air 4" 165cfm. The reason the ducting was so long was because when i had the light down close to the top of the plants. What do you think? My thoughts are since the light is at the top of the tent now if i shortened the ducts considerably this may alleviate my problems