Seedlings are sprouting in coco - what now? First grow!

[Guest]

aizen, it's been 9 days sine they pushed through the soil. Been watering with tap water pH'd to about 6.3 and rhizotonic at 1mL per quart(liter). rhizotonic has an NPK of 0.4-0.2-0.4. gaius has learned that White Widow is kinda nute shy but it looks like the Aurora Indicas are needing to eat.

Didn't mean to say 13/14 in my previous posts. I meant to say A+B. Jeeze man, I'm apparently fully capable of fucking up a train wreck! lol.

 

[Guest]

thas whats up mojo

im new to coco and im on the 1.5 grow right now lol. still flowering the cali o i got. my ak48's popped above ground like 10 or so days ago (really havent been counting lol)

im using 100% coco from botanicare, using flora nova nutes and the plants are looking strong this beats the shit outta soil imo, there already on there 4 set of leaves

i pep this thread daily as the ish u ask sometimes relates to what im doing and gaiusmarius is that dude when it comes to coco . good luck with ur grow later

 

[Guest]

Yeah aizen, gaius is the man with coco. He's got the growing thing down and we're really lucky he's got the coco forum. I hear ya on watching the thread, that's exactly why I started it. The questions I'm asking are the questions any new grower would want to know, I think. And if someone isn't new to growing, they might be new to growing in coco. I know from past experience growing other plants in soil, that soil has its problems due to the fact that it is such an impure medium to grow in. I struggled with whether or not to go soil or not but one day when I was at casa de pot looking at some of the soil mixes that other people were using. I went over to a bag of some soil mix, I can't remember which, but it was one of the mixes a lot of folks are using who grow in soil, and opened it with my pocket knife so I could get a close look at it. It was supposed to be a sterilized mix but when I looked really close, I could see even it had been contaminated with bugs. Had em crawling everywhere in it. It was one of those mixes that was pre-fertilized with nutes that were supposed to last a month or so and wasn't cheap. I made up my mind then that I was going to go with coco. And not all coco is the same. Some of them have residual salts in them and the buyer really needs to soak it and flush it in order to get rid of the salt. And then there's the cal mag thing that you have to do with some coco. I decided to go with canna coco because it seems so worry free. Whatever my canna coco has in it, it's something that I either put in it or it got in it, like gnats hehe, after I got it. And if I over do something, I can flush it out easily.

I know there are lots of ways I can fuck up my grow, cause I've already done it a couple of times with this, my first grow, but coco is so forgiving that I was able to fix it with advice from gaius. I owned a 37 foot sailboat for lots of years that I cruised in the tropics. One of the things I liked about sailing as opposed to power yachts was that it was a slow and steady means of getting from point A to point B. And no matter what mistake I made, I had ample time to fix it before it became a life and death situation. Coco is the sailing yacht of mediums. It's steady and stable.

And the fact that gaiusmarius is moderator of the forum means we've got, imo the best medium and the best moderator for that medium. If you've checked out his page, you know what I'm talking about. The guy is able to take clones from freshly rooted to flowering in just a few days and you can't do that without knowing your shit, man.

I'm going to keep this thread going and continue to ask questions that might have some of the more experienced growers laughing at me but guess what, I'd rather be laughed at, be relatively successful, and allow others to benefit from the dumb questions that I ask, than fuck up everything cause I'm too proud to admit I don't know everything and kill my plants. I notice that the thread is being read and there are few responses and that's great because it tells me that the people who are following it are either so far advanced that they don't need the info or they are following it and getting the answers they need without having to jump in and ask the questions themselves. I don't know much about growing but as I learn, I sure as shit don't mind someone coming in here and asking me what I've learned.

The kindness of sharing his knowledge and the patience with which he does it, with regards to someone who's obviously so clueless as me when it comes to growing says a lot about our moderator. Having said that, I've found that this site is full of moderators of the same character and mindset as gaius. This is a community of individuals and in any group of individuals, you're gonna run into the occasional know it all, asshole. Fuck, man, in the right circumstances and if the situation calls for it, I can be a person's worst nightmare, hehe, but ICM's forums are neither the time nor the place for fucking with people, if you catch my drift. Life's good here and we need to keep it that way, don't ya think??? So everybody relax and enjoy, sit back and let's have fun! People are free to poke fun if they like, but they should keep an open mind and learn along with me if they choose to do so. We've got a great teacher to learn from in gaius.

By the way, I'm using all canna nutes too. There are those who complain about their cost and hey dude, even I complain about their cost. But the way I figure it, they're made specifically for coco and it would probably cost me a lot more not to use them. And that's not saying that other brands of nutes aren't as good, I'm just saying that using them has taken a lot of trial and error out of my grow so far. I'm not nearly good enough to be able to figure out how to fix all the variables using another brand, or several brands for that matter, of nutes would introduce to my grow.

Thanks for stopping by aizen. Feel free to pull up a chair any time.

 

[Guest]

well said man

i knew about a couple weeks into my first grow that soil wasnt for me, i was gonna do hydro but then i read up on coco and boy is it F'in great. its really simple and i like being in control with the grow ya know. i cant wait to setup my drip system later this week. but im kinda clueless about what parts to get n such but i'll figure it out i guess

 

[Guest]

Nice havin ya around, aizen. Glad to hear you're as happy with coco as me. I'm sure you're gonna do great in the coco. And when you choose to go hydro, you're gonna be able to make that work too. Cause you're willing to take your time and learn before you jump off into it! I just read a thread started by a guy who was having trouble germinating seeds, and man, I sure know what that's like. It was funny though because the thread was started way back in September of '06 (that's like 60 or 70 years in weed years, ya know, lol). Dude, he was killing his shit right and left. Well he got 6 or so out of 10 original to live and by the time he was a couple of months down the road, all the sudden he was an expert, lol. He was even blowin off advice from long time growers who had saved his ass a couple of months prior, when he was in tears about his lack of ability in getting his shit to take off in rock wool. Do me a favor man, if ya ever see me, in this thread, starting to pop off like I'm the MJ guru from hell, PM me and cut and paste my earlier posts and tell me to just shut the fuck up, hehe. Probably won't happen that way though, I'm old enough that I've outgrown my earlier in life tendencies towards deity. lol.

Be safe buddy

 

[gaiusmarius]

wow mojo you are making me blush. i'm glad to be of help where i can. it's very rewarding to see someone on their first grow going from seedling to flowering plants. specially when they use coco. you will see once you start flowering you will be getting many more posts, things can be slow to begin with, but like you say, the views are certainly coming in eh,

you know i think you are right, the ww can take the nutes too. specially if they haven't had any for a while. normally i wait till the first three fingered leaf is spread open at the end of a stem, i.e. when it's no longer the top leaf.

anyway, like i told you, plants are adaptable cannabis more so them most, hence small differences in when to start feeding how much are not a matter of life and death. it's still mainly a patience game at this point. no big sudden changes and they will be fine.

after the feeding watch them carefully to see how they react. if it's not too early it will give them a visible boost in the next 48 hours after the feed.

peace

 

[bongoman]

if it's not too early it will give them a visible boost in the next 48 hours after the feed.

And if it is too early, what are the likely results? Is nute burn the only possible side effect of turning on the nutes too early? Or can it slow growth down and stress the seedlings?

Hope you don't mind me jumping in here - this is a great thread. I'm starting some seeds right now and am learning lots here.

And yeah, thanks to GaiusMarius for his efforts in this forum...much appreciated.

 

[Guest]

i had a lil bit of nute burn on my seedings i just flushed them with ph water and my ish aint skip a beat lol. there growing fast as hell n the root growth is amazing

 

[gaiusmarius]

And if it is too early, what are the likely results? Is nute burn the only possible side effect of turning on the nutes too early? Or can it slow growth down and stress the seedlings?

Hope you don't mind me jumping in here - this is a great thread. I'm starting some seeds right now and am learning lots here.

And yeah, thanks to GaiusMarius for his efforts in this forum...much appreciated.

no if it's early, then the leaves will get dark green and they will not move forward at the normal tempo, maybe a burned tip? but sooner or later they come through it. also with this low nute level we are discussing, the risk is minimal that they are not ready for it.

 

[Guest]

And if it is too early, what are the likely results? Is nute burn the only possible side effect of turning on the nutes too early? Or can it slow growth down and stress the seedlings?

Hope you don't mind me jumping in here - this is a great thread. I'm starting some seeds right now and am learning lots here.

And yeah, thanks to GaiusMarius for his efforts in this forum...much appreciated.

Hey bongoman, course we don't mind ya showing up here. Good to see you back, thought for sure I'd pissed you off referring to your post on the nutes and water, hehe. Glad I didn't though. I think it's like aizen said about burning his and the plants recovering. What gm has told me and what I'm finding out is that this medium is so willing to adjust itself quickly, that keeping a close eye on your plants and reading how they're reacting, allows a grower to reverse just about anything that is done by either adding or subtracting what's lacking or in excess to your water for the next feeding. I know that is possible with just about any medium but I think coco let's you do it quicker and with fewer residual effects. And if I've not been paying close enough attention to them and they're really looking burned by, let's say N, then I can flush the hell out of them, let them find equilibrium again and ease back into the nute thing.

Thing about using soil, even a soil/soiless mixture is that you've really got to work to get whatever you put into the mix that caused the problem out of the soil. And then if you're growing in soil and you are able to flush the nutes out of it, you're left with a soggy medium that's got no room for oxygen. If your plants were already on the brink of being over watered, now they've got another week till the soil loses enough water that the plants can recover. I'm not saying this cause I've ever grown weed in soil before but I have grown extremely sensitive plants in soil and I know how difficult it is to cure a problem. I gotta hand it to the folks who do it and are successful cause it's a lot more difficult than using coco. One of the great thing about coco is, you get the same results as soil without all the work and worry. At least that's my feelings on the subject.

I came home today and looked at my plants (just stopped and took some pics to show what I'm talking about, hehe, guess my ADHD is acting up) and I had let the AI's go till this afternoon so I could really look at the WW's and see if they were going to need to start on A+B too. They were definitely looking like they were hungry so I rechecked what was left of my quart of water with rhizotonic (at 1/4 strength or 1mL per quart) in it. There was a little less than a quart left in the jar so I added 0.4mL of A and the same of B to the water and fed the trio of nutes to the plants. They were still sort of damp from yesterday's watering but that's another good thing about coco, it's almost impossible to over water in any one single event (learned it from GM, so don't start thinking I'm a rocket scientist and really know my shit, hahaha). I put enough of the fortified water in that it pushed part of what was already in there out and I think what I ended up with for the plants to munch on is, in reality, water with less than 1/4 strength of food due to the fact that it was diluted by yesterday's watering. Make any sense? Does to me but that doesn't mean shit, lol. All this is fine with me cause it still should be enough that the AI's will show improvement if they were really needing it and it's not so much that the WW's will get burned if they didn't!

Seems like I can't write just a "hi there dude, eat shit and die" kind of a sentence and be done with it, hehe (not that I would have said that to ya bongoman). I gotta go on and on and on. Sorry. Here are the pictures. I think they're showing definite signs of hunger pangs.

3 White Widows (spokesperson in the middle trying to look tough for gaius, hehe)



Here it is again - still WW's







Aurora Indicas (AA's) definite yellowing due to lack of N (IMHO)




A couple are sort of out of focus, but the WW's look more yellow-green than they did yesterday to me. As always other's thoughts are appreciated, as I could just be full of shit about all this. And gaius, they were just watered so I know they're looking WET! lol.

 

[bongoman]

No sweat Mojo - I'm just along for the ride and realised that was I cranking the nutes too hard too early.

I have just germed another batch of Deep Chunk x Panama Red along side some Lowryder #2 outdoors.

I've got plenty of seeds so can start another batch and try and get it right from teh beginning. This latest batch has just popped out of the medium but the sun is pretty intense here (outdoors, southern hemisphere) so not sure whether they should be out in the midday sun just yet - only the cotyledons are fully present.

Just pulled em in as they were starting to topple as the medium had dried out so quickly in the heat, so now they are in the shade, and have put the pots in a tray of water to allow them to drink from the bottom up and gave a quick squirt to get some moisture back near the seedling so they could stand up! Hope this is OK.

Anyway, don't want to hijack Mojo's thread, but trying to get this whole seedling thing dialled in. It seems the trickiest aspect to growing in coco for me.

 

[Guest]

No problem bongoman, sounds like you've got shit goin your way. I'm going to concentrate on my 5 little plants before I try more. If I screw up, fingers crossed then at least I won't be considered a mass murderer, hehe. Think ya gotta kill 12 or more to slip into that category. Stop in and speak up any time ya want.

Good luck, dude

 

[Guest]

im gonna pop three more seeds just as soon as i c a lil more tap root

all i do is soak the seeds n tapwater then just plant the seed n 100% coco das it, that last go the seeds popped above the soil within 24 hours GYEA!! from there each plant got put under one 40w CFL

 

[Guest]

Sounds like that's working for you alright. Me, I use the paper towel method. Had a terrible batch of seeds to start with and I got them from two different places. That was before I found ICM and next time I'm ordering from the "seed bank." Matter of fact, already ordered 6 different strains of seeds a couple of weeks ago- not gonna send money for them for a couple of more weeks, hope they don't cancel the order. I've got a copy of what I ordered so if they do cancel, I'll just reorder. I had only about a 50% germination rate from both suppliers' seeds. Seeds were in terrible shape. But live and learn. One of the auroras was just barely able to make it through the coco and I didn't put them in the cups of coco until they had a good quarter inch tap root on them and only planted them about a quarter inch deep to begin with. Finally had to help it through and it's looked a little weird ever since. In my pics, it's the smaller of the two aa's. It'll probably be the best producer, hehe. Am also gonna try to pollinate a couple of flowers on one of the females if I get a male so I can save seeds. This may be a dumbass question but does anyone know I can expect if I pollinated a White Widow flower with Aurora Indica pollen? Just now thought of doing that if I don't get a White Widow male.

If anyone reading this has ordered from the seed bank, could you please tell me in what kind of packaging the seeds arrived. Just don't want them to be intercepted by customs, ya know.

luck aizen

 

[Guest]

mojo i pm'd u

 

[Guest]

Sorry all. I was just informed I shouldn't have asked the question about packaging and I agree. Never mind about answering that. I'm sure gypsy knows what he's doing and I'll trust his judgment. Thanks aizen.

 

[gaiusmarius]

hi mojo

seedbay sends neutral looking packs, but you do once in a while lose an order, specially to the US customs. that means a letter comes telling you it was taken. try and send the seeds to a trusted person who doesn't plan to grow. just in case. maybe keep the size of your orders so that it's not the end of the world if it gets lost. i personally have always gotten my order.

anyway back to your seedlings, as you can see if you compare pics, the two WW no longer have that perfect healthy sheen to them that they did in the pics before. you can see some slight burning along the leaf edge on one ww, not that it's a big deal, i just would back off again for one or two waterings with the nutes on the WW. the aurora seems to not mind. but the ww on the left doesn't like the higher ec, while the ww on the right doesn't seem to mind quite as much as the other one, it's still looking a bit dark for perfect growth rates.

 

[Guest]

hi mojo
anyway back to your seedlings, as you can see if you compare pics, the two WW no longer have that perfect healthy sheen to them that they did in the pics before. you can see some slight burning along the leaf edge on one ww, not that it's a big deal, i just would back off again for one or two waterings with the nutes on the WW. the aurora seems to not mind. but the ww on the left doesn't like the higher ec, while the ww on the right doesn't seem to mind quite as much as the other one, it's still looking a bit dark for perfect growth rates.

OK, gottcha on the nutes gm. Only problem is these pics were taken immediately after I watered them, I mean within like 10 minutes or so. Don't know how the addition of a-b could have had time to affect them. I had been watering with only rhizotonic up to this point and that at only 1/4 strength. You're right though, they do seem to have "lost that lovin feeling" though, hehe.

Here's a couple from this morning, I took them before I logged on to the forum cause my question was going to be about the leaf curling on the edges.

I'll also post the pic from yesterday so I can explain about the one that seems to have burned edges.

The WW at the bottom of this pic is the one I think you're talking about that has the burn on it. This is the one that I fucked up a few days ago when I misted the whole plant and put it under the light. Ya spanked me for it, and I haven't done it again, lol.



Pic from yesterday -The leaf curling I'm talking about is even showing up in this pic. Bottom one is the one I burned by misting the whole plant and putting it back under the light. I think it's the one you're talking about looking burned.



The next two are from this morning

Leaf curl on bottom two leaves (this is the tallest WW)




This is one of the AI's

Again, leaf curl on older leaves





The plants are still very damp from yesterday's first watering of water with A&B at 1/4 strength in it. Up to that point I hadn't given A&B to them. Water also had 1/4 strength rhizotonic in it.

Even being this wet, do you think a flush is in order? I don't want them to start showing signs of over watering. But you've said over watering doesn't really happen with coco, so am I good to go with a flush??? By the way, I check the water's pH before every watering and have been making sure it's about 6.3. All the water I'm giving them is tap water that has been run through a PUR water filter that is just screwed onto the nozzle of my kitchen sink faucet.

As you told me it probably would, any water I've held over after putting nutes in it, the pH has risen a little so I've had to add pH down (a tiny bit of General Hydroponics pH down) in order to bring it back down to 6.3-6.5.

Lighting cycle = 18/6
Temp under light = 70F ten minutes after lights on and climbs throughout the day to about 80F at lights off
Temp in room during lights out = 60F - 65F
Nutes at 1mL/qt (liter for you weird guys, lol) (fucking metric system bullshit, hehe) = :
Rhizotonic started when seedlings broke through soil
A+B added to Rhizotonic and water on day 10 cause AI's were yellowing and WW's looked like they were beginning to.
Watering schedule = been watering every other day - cups seemed dry at every watering - small fan seems to accelerate drying.
Fan = pointed at underneath side of light hood and barely making plants move
Light = 200W CFL in Hydrofarm hood - 7" from CFL bulb to plant tops - distance between is determined by temp at plant level - keeping in the 70's, avg. about 76-78F by adjusting light height

To summarize my questions (if I'm even capable of keeping it short, hahaha):

1. What's going on with the curl?
2. Could temp difference between lights on/off be affecting plants?
3. Should I discontinue A&B or Rhizotonic or both and give straight tap water.
4. Is my pH range of 6.3-6.5 correct (using General Hydroponics test kit, three drops of reagent to sample as per instructions cause I'm a cheap old fart and apparently resistant to change, lol)
5. Should I FLUSH now even with coco so moist????????

GM, I'm leaning towards flushing pretty strongly, my rationale being , if their supper is disagreeing with them, I don't want to make them to sit at the table and eat till they throw up, if ya catch my drift.

I'm an impatient man when my kids are sick but I'll wait for your answer. Not gonna do a damned thing till I hear from ya. How's that for lack of confidence. Apparently the gnat was right when he call me a "gutless POS grower wanna be." Not really, just don't want to fuck up my grow at day 12!

 

[gaiusmarius]

sorry i think i jumped the gun there. i had forgotten about the burned leaves from getting wet. it's only really the bottom one in the top pic, that looks a bit dark. but that doesn't mean you need to flush, all you need to do is give that one phed water for one go, without nutes. with the low nutrient levels you are applying, you will not be needing to flush, just water without nutes once and things should be ballenced out again at this early stage.

keep up the good work man.

 

[Guest]

Thanks, gm. They've been looking better and better all day. Think maybe the curl was due to temp variation between lights out at 80F and a 200W sunrise for them of 62F. Seems like I can almost see em growing! Nah, that's crazy. But they do talk to me, hehe. Thanks again, gm.