[MEGA]Community Growing advice, tips, tricks, & experiences Part 4

[justsayknow]

This video will change your opinion of hydroponics. Particularly additives. Organics ftw.

Huh? Growth regulators... sounds nasty. Good reason to stay away from commercially grown stuff and those particular ferts.

What about other chemicals like cloning gels and rooting formulas? Have food safe tests been done on those sort of things? You could probably argue that there should be more rigorous standards for smokable materials as the gut is a bit more resilient than the lungs when it comes to expelling foreign substances.

What do you reccomend for cloning and what is in it?

 

[Prelude2TragedyII]

Well, for my hood, the hole for ventilation is only 3 or so inches, I have an extraction fan that is about 6 inches.
Electricity here is pretty awful as well , so I feel you. About 4-500$ a month.

Still sorry to hear about the loss of bud though, I know that shit sucks man.
Hopefully the next grow goes better for you, and yeah, Im trying to get everything ready for May.
It'll be interesting to see how things turn out this year, I feel like I have a bit better of a chance growing this year
than last. All of my space in the backyard has been turned over and is about 3 1/2 feet deep, 2 1/2 feet deep.
I will mix soil and perlite about 1/2 with clay, just to keep the soil from turning back to clay, and hopefully to add some nutrient (and Ill have to add dolomite lime, but I still don't know how much to add, as I have no Idea what the pH of the soil is.

So , is guerilla gold the name of the actual strain your going to be starting? Im planning on switching to a sativa after these Northern Lights, getting tired of Indicas

And do the roots actually take in any of the material that would be in rooting powder?
I'd imagine that when plants are that young, and you grow them 2-3 times their size from when they were cloned, that there wouldn't be much residual left.
And I'd think all of that material would be gone, because the plant would require a complete different set of nutrients and other things to start flowering, which is quite a while after you would clone (for most people, I guess I have seen some people flower clones a week after cloning)

Going to upload pictures in a few minutes.

 

[justsayknow]

^I'm guessing the plants would take on some of the material but I don't know what effects it would have on them or if they hold any of it in their cells. I've only ever done rooted cuttings with plants (non cannabis) so I've never taken the time to see what is acually in rooting/cloning formulas

I would say whatever standards are used in the food growing industry would be a good start with regard to judging the saftey of chemicals used on plants destined for human consumption though...

You are probably right though, given the length of time from rooting to flowering you would think the chemicals would have left the plant.

 

[^Xayo]

I really need some advice from you guys. As I said I have one more plant going at the moment, I thought she would finish up within 2 weeks but I don't think so any more. She is shooting out white hairs everydays, more than when she starte flowering originally. But on the other hand I need to switch to 18/6 as soon as possible because we already got mid of april and I wanted to set plants outside at the end of may. Makes for about 1 month of veg.

So...should I rather harvest early, hoping that the longer veg time of the outdoor plants will make up for it when harvest comes around at the end of summer ?
A few more detailed pics from her ( I never manage to get really great looking pictures from her, something is blurry all the time)

NSFW:

Is there anyone willing to give a guess on how long she will continue to sport white hairs ? I know that no one in the world can be certain about it just by judging from pics but I really would like some guesses, because I am for my part clueless.

She is an unknown bagseed plant btw. (the weed was said to be from amsterdam)

 

[justsayknow]

Shouldn't be too much longer but who knows. Two weeks? Apparently those jewellers magnifying glasses are really good for checking the colours of the resins. Look for milky ones in abundance and some amber ones. It looks too early to me at the moment but I don't have enough experience to tell you a definite number of days or weeks...

BTW that last pic is a pretty good shot there is focus on the bits you are interested in

 

[Artificial Emotion]

Huh? Growth regulators... sounds nasty. Good reason to stay away from commercially grown stuff and those particular ferts.

What about other chemicals like cloning gels and rooting formulas? Have food safe tests been done on those sort of things? You could probably argue that there should be more rigorous standards for smokable materials as the gut is a bit more resilient than the lungs when it comes to expelling foreign substances.

What do you reccomend for cloning and what is in it?

There is nothing wrong with hydroponics per say in my opinion. It's only the 'additives' that don't have their exact ingredients listed or if they do, they don't list all of them. If you stick to just the basic nutrients from a reputable nutrient manufacturer you'll be fine. General Hydroponics are leaders in the market and have been around for decades. They even supply Nasa so they have an incredible reputation, so if you stick to their basic nutrients you'll be fine. The Lucas formula, which is designed to be additive free, is particularly good. If in coco the basic Hesi coco nutrients are great.

The market is completely unregulated so manufacturers will add all sorts of shit because they know they can get away with it. If their customers use their products and get high yields they know they will come back for more. That's why I stay away from companies like Advanced Nutrients. Sorry if anyone is a fan but they seem really dishonest and underhanded, so I just don't trust them.

Rooting hormones are fine. Clonex in particular is great. However they're really not needed. I know people that never use them and they get a 100% success rate.

 

[Artificial Emotion]

Well, for my hood, the hole for ventilation is only 3 or so inches, I have an extraction fan that is about 6 inches.
Electricity here is pretty awful as well , so I feel you. About 4-500$ a month.

Still sorry to hear about the loss of bud though, I know that shit sucks man.
Hopefully the next grow goes better for you, and yeah, Im trying to get everything ready for May.
It'll be interesting to see how things turn out this year, I feel like I have a bit better of a chance growing this year
than last. All of my space in the backyard has been turned over and is about 3 1/2 feet deep, 2 1/2 feet deep.
I will mix soil and perlite about 1/2 with clay, just to keep the soil from turning back to clay, and hopefully to add some nutrient (and Ill have to add dolomite lime, but I still don't know how much to add, as I have no Idea what the pH of the soil is.

So , is guerilla gold the name of the actual strain your going to be starting? Im planning on switching to a sativa after these Northern Lights, getting tired of Indicas

And do the roots actually take in any of the material that would be in rooting powder?
I'd imagine that when plants are that young, and you grow them 2-3 times their size from when they were cloned, that there wouldn't be much residual left.
And I'd think all of that material would be gone, because the plant would require a complete different set of nutrients and other things to start flowering, which is quite a while after you would clone (for most people, I guess I have seen some people flower clones a week after cloning)

Going to upload pictures in a few minutes.

I appreciate the sympathy but it'll turn out for the better I think. I like to see the glass as being half full. Also my mother is coming to visit me soon so I have to make sure there's nothing suspect here, so that's another reason to focus on a guerrilla grow instead

Hey I would definitely avoid adding perlite to the soil! That's a big no no. Organic matter is the best thing for improving soil, trust me. Organic matter can be peat, manure.

Definitely don't add dolomite at the same time as that stuff, and certainly not at the same time as fertilizer since they will react. Clay contains all the nutrients cannabis needs. The roots of the cannabis plant outdoors behaves differently in a pot and so they can reach out for an unlimited supply of nutrients. Fertilizers are only really needed for sandy soil or soils that have been worn out from years of chemical farming. If you want you can add a potash fertilizer during flowering though to bulk up the buds.

The strains I'll be doing for sure are KC33, KC36 (see pics below for what it looks like), KC Mango and various landrace seeds. I think from now on I'm just going to stick to outdoor growing because I can't take the stress of growing indoors, so taking my grow down has been a big weight off my mind. I don't know much about the guerrilla gold to be honest but I guess I'll find out soon enough

NSFW:

NSFW:

NSFW:

As for the rooting hormones, I think it's important to make the distinction between rooting hormones and the type of growth regulators they were talking about in the video which have been banned and would never be used in commercial agriculture for fruit and veg. The rooting hormones in the likes of clonex have been proven to be safe and effective, so are different. That said, they're not really necessary the first place IMO. Maybe for other plants, but not cannabis.

I really need some advice from you guys. As I said I have one more plant going at the moment, I thought she would finish up within 2 weeks but I don't think so any more. She is shooting out white hairs everydays, more than when she starte flowering originally. But on the other hand I need to switch to 18/6 as soon as possible because we already got mid of april and I wanted to set plants outside at the end of may. Makes for about 1 month of veg.

So...should I rather harvest early, hoping that the longer veg time of the outdoor plants will make up for it when harvest comes around at the end of summer ?
A few more detailed pics from her ( I never manage to get really great looking pictures from her, something is blurry all the time)

NSFW:

Is there anyone willing to give a guess on how long she will continue to sport white hairs ? I know that no one in the world can be certain about it just by judging from pics but I really would like some guesses, because I am for my part clueless.

She is an unknown bagseed plant btw. (the weed was said to be from amsterdam)

I would give it another two weeks as justsayno said.

 

[Prelude2TragedyII]

Having problems with uploading the pics I have work, Ill try when I get back

 

[Damien]

NSFW:

Having problems with uploading the pics I have work, Ill try when I get back

 

[Artificial Emotion]

Are you going to flip to 12/12 soon prelude? Have you considered doing a SCROG?

 

[justsayknow]

I tried to find some info about the rooting hormones and it seems there are a few different chemicals that are in use. Naphthaleneacetic acid seems to be the most common one and it looks like it is fairly safe for humans unless you eat the product straight out of the jar. Not too sure about ecological effects but thats another story. Some of the newer rooting hormones have had less research done on them though...

With regard to plant growth regulators it seems that some of them are approved for use in horticulture in Australia particularly in Apple and Pear Orchards Hmmm... An Apple a day?

 

[Prelude2TragedyII]

Oh wow, how weird, when I left for work, the pictures wouldn't show up on my post (and still don't ) but, I see, someone can see my pictures so, Im assuming they are in fact there
I'll have to check my rooting hormone and see what it's made out of.

I've actually considered scrog a few times, but I've noticed that with the size of my closet, I usually end up moving things around alot while the plants are still growing.
If I start doing scrog (which I might, as I would assume I could harvest more from scrog, than just 3 plants standing upright)
Is there anything special I would need? Other than a large container? and a screen to bend the plant through.
Have you tried growing Scrog? What were your results with it? Ive heard alot of mixed things about it, so I just started growing in pots.
But I'm definitely willing to try different things if I have the help I need along the way (which is what this thread is for :D )


I'm pretty excited about this grow though.
I've always had a difficult time keeping plants alive without turning yellow and starting to die off.
Ive cut back my nutrients to about 1/2 of what the bottle recommends . I water the plants every 2-3 days, and feed them just once a week/every other week(depends on how they look)

Hopefully flowering goes smoothly when it comes around. I always seem to run into nutrient lockout or deficiencies when mid flower.
And I haven't quite decided when I want to flip to 12/12 yet, as of right now, my plants are about 12 inches, I was thinking maybe 18-22 inches then I will flower.
Considering it's a indica dominant plant that shouldn't leave me anything over 36-40 inches right?

 

[Artificial Emotion]

If done right your yield will massively go up compared to growing freestyle with no training. I have grown SCROG style before and it's one of my favorite growing methods. You just need a screen, and some method of supporting it. If you can grow in coco you won't have to pot up like you should in dirt.

As for the stretch, they should double or triple in size, but probably just double.

 

[Prelude2TragedyII]

How long do you think it would take to fully veg a plant with about 2ft X 2ft of screen?

How would coco work without having to continuously pot up? Remind you, Im horrible at flushing & making nutrient solution for the plant .
Well, I have improved a bit, but , I still have a long way to go.

What makes me nervous about Scrog, is basically betting all of my chips on one plant. If I mess up somehow, or screw something up without noticing right away, Ill lose everything, with multiple plants, I can screw up, lose a few, and still get by, you know?
Well, I guess I could scROG 2 plants at once right? I'd imagine it wouldn't be as easy as working with one plant, lol
Idk, I wish I was more confident in my growing to be able to do that, but , during summer, I may as well try it out and see how it goes, as temps will be far too hot to have multiple plants in there...
Haha...What an awful rule I follow, buy enough plants so I can accidentally kill some and hope the rest live.. hah....

-edit-
Do plants really double in size? I guess I never really payed close attention, or measured my plants height.
I'll probably flip them next week, or so, if that's the case (for some reason I always felt like the plants just grew maybe half of their original size during flower.)

 

[Artificial Emotion]

^ it depends. Would you be using cuttings or seed plants?

With coco you start the seed in a small pot of coco, or in a root riot or peat puck or whatever, plant in a small pot of coco and then once that's rooted through, plant straight in the final pot of coco, so you don't need the same number of stages of potting up as you would with soil.

If you have a decent coco nutrient it can be quite simple. If you get Hesi bloom, you can (and I would advise you do this) use this throughout vegging and blooming. You literally just use a pH pen with no EC meter needed. It really is as simple as adding the right ml per litre Hesi bloom and then adding enough phosphoric acid until the pH comes down to the right level. It really is that simple and is so idiot proof you'll probably find you don't have the problems you've been having since there's less to go wrong, especially if you just stick to the tried and tested Canna coco professional. In fact, if you do use Hesi bloom, canna coco professional and a decent pH meter, I can guarantee you that it would be so simplified it's hard to go wrong. Yellowing leaves - up the dose. Burn tips - lower it. Although if used at the right levels this is unlikely.

In any given pot - say an 11L pot - coco will outyield compost, so your yields could potentially go up if grown in a given time. I think you will find the growth rates are so high and the plants so lush that you won't look back. In fact, I'm planning on going coco if I start growing again in Spain.

If you're worried about SCROG why not do a vertical grow. That is, run the scrog nets vertically on either side of the bare bulb? Not only will your yields go up massively, but you'll be able to run more plants and therefore spread the risk a bit thinner. v-srog is about the most efficient growing style there is, bar growing under the great halide in the sky.

Yes plants can easily double in height during the stretch. If you think that's bad, don't ever grow pure sativas. Although sativas are harder to grow and take much longer, the ends justifies the means though. You've most likely never tried a pure sat (forgive me if I'm wrong) so it's worth trying one at least once, especially if in future have a dedicated area to flowering and can just leave it in there for 14-16 weeks. If you flower a rooted pure sat clone, the total growing period can be cut way down though.

 

[Hoes call me santa]

Hey AE, it's my turn now to ask you to empty your inbox hehe!

Thanks :D

My babies are so smelly by now. I touched a bud with my finger and my finger smelled so good after haha. I'll try to get some pictures soon :D

 

[Prelude2TragedyII]

My babies are so smelly by now. I touched a bud with my finger and my finger smelled so good after

Haha, I can't help but laugh at that, poor AE, a slave to the weed growers.

Oh yeah, and I'd probably be using seedlings since its indoor, cuttings I plan on placing outdoors.
Would it make much of a difference? I would think a seed would work better since it tried to branch out so much.

And you are correct, Ive stayed mainly with indica, due to ease of use.
I've been wanting to grow sativa for quite a while now, as Im getting tired of indicas, and want to see something different aswell.
I would probably go with a clone on my first sativa grow. Ive seen alot of sativa seeds very high priced, and I know I can just go walk and get a clone for -edit-$ (I guess if I were to start with seeds they might be similar in price now I think of it)


I've never thought of doing a vertical scrog. , that would be interesting to see, would I need bulbs on multiple sides?

So many ideas now, IDK WHAT TO DO! lol.

 

[Artificial Emotion]

^ i would edit out that price. I sometimes forget too, it's easily done

If you grow like I said with Canna coco professional and Hesi coco bloom and a pH pen I can almost guarantee you won't have the lockout issues like you've been having since it takes so many other factors that can cause issues out of the equation.

Take a look at this thread at icmag. In that vertical forum you should have a look as there are lots of ways of doing it. Vertical growing almost always yields massively more than conventional growing on a horizontal plane.

If you're growing SCROG style growing from all clones of the same strain would be ideal. Theoretically you could grow from multiple strains from seed, and people do, but it's not ideal. You could grow the conventional way with seed from various strains and find a keeper, clone it and then grow vertically or horizontally using SCROG style.

Say you buy a pack of Black Widow from Mr Nice (the best and original White Widow strain available), you're far more likely to find a phenotype that suits you which you prefer and which grows best for you and your setup if you grow from seed. If you get a clone, you're relying on someone else's choice of phenotype. The high, taste and the way it grows might not be to your liking. There are other advantages to clones like the fact that they reach maturity much faster. You should be able to find other pros and cons with a search online so you can decide. I don't think clones necessarily branch out less. I'm not sure why you found that. The advantage of growing from clones is that they are, or should be if it's done properly, sexually mature already, so if you wanted you could flower it immediately after rooting. Whereas with a seed plant, if you were to flower it before it's sexually mature, not only would the yield be much lower (as Xayo unfortunately discovered with his grow) but the bud will be 200-300% less potent than bud from a sexually mature plant. This is why you always need to grow seed plants at least until they show pre-flowers. For some strains pre-flowers show much sooner than others, so it varies and you might have to be patient.

Sativas can be manageable if you know what you're doing. If you keep them restricted in a really small pot for 2-4 weeks at the start of 12/12 when they stretch like mad, and then pot up into a much larger pot once the stretch subsides, it will end up being much much more manageable. You can also LST them, so as long as you follow these simple steps, growing sativas can be easy.

Here's a pure sativa (purple haze x panama) that I was recently growing after the stretch had finished. I didn't train it at all but the height wasn't too bad. If you can imagine if I had LST'd it, the height wouldn't be an issue at all.

NSFW:

NSFW:

If you want a sativa strains that behaves like an indica strain, I would really very strongly recommend Satori from Mandala seeds. It's very inexpensive as well. From all the reports I've seen, people consider it to be a sativa type smoke but easy to grow and with a great high and taste. All the people who have grown it seem to think it's just as good if not better than a lot of strains that cost five times as much. I would get it whilst you still can if you do decide to grow it.

If you do decide to go full on pure sativa, take a look at some other Ace Seeds strains like Bangi Haze (see image below for example of what it looks like!).

NSFW:

Female Seeds are doing a Nevilles Haze and a fast Neville's Haze that look interesting, and which are very cheap. I might give them a go (especially the fast one). Below is a pic of the fast neville (again, not mine) which looks really good. Apparently the haze flavor and high still come through, which is promising! It can be flowered in about 8-9 weeks which is really handy.

NSFW:

[/URL]

Haha, I can't help but laugh at that, poor AE, a slave to the weed growers.

Oh yeah, and I'd probably be using seedlings since its indoor, cuttings I plan on placing outdoors.
Would it make much of a difference? I would think a seed would work better since it tried to branch out so much.

And you are correct, Ive stayed mainly with indica, due to ease of use.
I've been wanting to grow sativa for quite a while now, as Im getting tired of indicas, and want to see something different aswell.
I would probably go with a clone on my first sativa grow. Ive seen alot of sativa seeds very high priced, and I know I can just go walk and get a clone for 10-15$ (I guess if I were to start with seeds they might be similar in price now I think of it)


I've never thought of doing a vertical scrog. , that would be interesting to see, would I need bulbs on multiple sides?

So many ideas now, IDK WHAT TO DO! lol.

 

[Damien]

That fast Nev is a beautiful looking plant!

 

[Artificial Emotion]

It is isn't it. I think I'm going to buy a 5 pack of the feminized fast nevilles myself considering they cost so little.