[MEGA] 2010-2011 Community Growing advice, tips, tricks, & experiences

[subopm420]

Nitrogen is the biggest mobile element meaning it can travel anywhere on the plant.
Usually the def will start on the lower to middle part of the plant, and then will usually happen to older leaves first. Then the deficiency will work its way up the plant. Your plant can be green on top, then yellowing on the lower leaves when the deficiency is starting out. Yield will be greatly reduced without good amounts of nitrogen in your plants. Sometimes in bad cases the leaves will turn a purplish color along with the yellowing.

Unlike a magnesium deficiency, nitrogen def will start from the tips and work its way back to the leaf node. Nitrogen and Magnesium get confused. The best way to tell them apart is, nitrogen deficiency starts around the tips and works its way to the back of the leaves, where a magnesium deficiency will cover the entire outer part of the leave and make the entire leaves yellow leaving the veins to stay green. If your plants are having a slow growth rate and have yellowing of the leaves, then most likely it’s a nitrogen deficiency.

Or N???

 

[Wise420]

Well, it might be nute burn, I havent given nutes for about 5 days, problem is still persisting, Ive just been giving water....Newer leaves are starting to turn bright green/yellowish and starting to have burnt tips as well...Lower shade leaves are turning completely yellow , (with brown burned edges) and then just fall off the plant...)
Really don't know what to do here.

Im wondering if I should just throw this plant into flower , get what I can out of it, and start a new one...
(still have 5 Northern Lights(Femmed) seeds left, and 10 Skunk X Haze seeds left (not fem))

That's the wrong kinda attitude to be using mate.

What if your next plant does the same thing?

You need to fix this problem, and learn from it so you can put that knowledge to use in the future if this happens again.

Check your pH and let us know what it's at.

 

[Arobskittle]

nitrogen is the biggest mobile element meaning it can travel anywhere on the plant.
Usually the def will start on the lower to middle part of the plant, and then will usually happen to older leaves first. Then the deficiency will work its way up the plant. Your plant can be green on top, then yellowing on the lower leaves when the deficiency is starting out. Yield will be greatly reduced without good amounts of nitrogen in your plants. Sometimes in bad cases the leaves will turn a purplish color along with the yellowing.

Unlike a magnesium deficiency, nitrogen def will start from the tips and work its way back to the leaf node. Nitrogen and magnesium get confused. The best way to tell them apart is, nitrogen deficiency starts around the tips and works its way to the back of the leaves, where a magnesium deficiency will cover the entire outer part of the leave and make the entire leaves yellow leaving the veins to stay green. If your plants are having a slow growth rate and have yellowing of the leaves, then most likely it’s a nitrogen deficiency.
Or n???

key shit right here to help you tell the difference.

 

[Outta Pocket]

That's the wrong kinda attitude to be using mate.

What if your next plant does the same thing?

You need to fix this problem, and learn from it so you can put that knowledge to use in the future if this happens again.

Check your pH and let us know what it's at.

Take Wise's SIMPLE yet wise advice! Check pH and proceed accordingly, or else you are operating on informed guesses...

The easiest solution may be to flush...

 

[Prelude2TragedyII]

Ive been checking ph, watering with a 6.5-6.7 average.

Might be making a come back who knows, lol, tied down some of the soon to be 'branches'
With BRIGHT pipe cleaners woo.

As for the problem, well, I flushed 3-4 days ago, watered with new nutes 2 days ago, and this is how the plant looks as of, 30 minutes ago....Planning on watering with no nutes the next two waterings.
Temps are around 82-86., around the same temp when lights are off too ( dont know if thats a bad thing or not)
Anywho, hoping to get this problem straightened out, keep it going for another 2 - 3 weeks and flower.

 

[subopm420]

I am trying your 18/6 in my cab cuz temps are a bit more than I want. Six days from seed two out of three have come up. The third was the slowest germinating, so I am thinking its just going to be a runt.

1 Ice femmed, 2 Mandala Safari Mix

soil mix: organic bag soil as the base, kelp meal, some coffee, Dolemite Lime, little bit of Alaska All Purpose, and some BS molasses. I wanted to add some compost but it isnt ready yet. I will probably top dress with it though. I also bought a bag of guinea pig pellets to add and make teas with. Should be interesting... I am goin for like total organic in a cab type deal. Wish me luck

 

[w01fg4ng]

^ That sounds like a nice set up man. One of my last grows was all organic; I had a lot of fun with it and the flower taste is amazing.

btw, what do you use coffee for (besides drinking ) ?

 

[subopm420]

N, and it helps the soil go through a range of pH, Like the gamut from somewhat acidic to around 7. The Dolemite Lime will help buffer it, as well as the beneficial bacteria who excrete bio slime (cant remember the name of it) that is neutral to buffer themselves, and so the soil also. Basically it provides a good food for the living soil.

All this is modeled after another grower, one who has many man years of experience. He is strictly organic, makes all his own soils and fertilizers. He uses coffee (both grounds and brewed) to amend his soils and teas; in juxtaposition to the rest of the crowd, he has actually done something with it and has had pretty respectable results. Basically I like coffee and have allot of it, so why not?

I'll try and find a more satisfactory answer if ou want.

 

[Prelude2TragedyII]

Sounds like a nice mix, Ive heard of quite a few people using recycled coffee grinds.
Ive never used it, and I didn't really know what it was even used for , but yeah, all organic seems to produce a completely different taste IMO.

Got any pics?

 

[subopm420]

I might start a log over at icmag if you want my username PM me

 

[w01fg4ng]

N, and it helps the soil go through a range of pH, Like the gamut from somewhat acidic to around 7. The Dolemite Lime will help buffer it, as well as the beneficial bacteria who excrete bio slime (cant remember the name of it) that is neutral to buffer themselves, and so the soil also. Basically it provides a good food for the living soil.

All this is modeled after another grower, one who has many man years of experience. He is strictly organic, makes all his own soils and fertilizers. He uses coffee (both grounds and brewed) to amend his soils and teas; in juxtaposition to the rest of the crowd, he has actually done something with it and has had pretty respectable results. Basically I like coffee and have allot of it, so why not?

I'll try and find a more satisfactory answer if ou want.

Cool, that makes sense. I just looked it up myself after reading this, and found that coffee has a 20:1 ratio of carbon to nitrogen, so it's actually fairly rich. Sounds like a great idea.....would you use something else during flower to get the P and K?

 

[Prelude2TragedyII]

Just figured Id update, Stopped the burning from progressing (for the most part I believe)
The new growth seems has burned tips and doesnt seem to be progressing further than that, the old shade leaves that were completely yellow and dead.
I was going to cut them off of the plant, but right when I touched them, they just, fell off.

Now Im kinda curious, on all of the leaves I took off, (which were all completely dead) On the bottom of the stem (underneath the leaf), I could see brown circles, spots. I KNOW there are NO bugs that are attacking the plant.

Anyone know what those little spots were?
Underneath the leaf, on the center stem,(not the veins) , it had little tiny brown spots, maybe half a millimeter to a full millimeter.

Im wondering if there is a bacteria/mold/fungus?
I would think that it would take over the entire plant if that was the case...Idk...
Anyways...Guess we will see in a few days if the dying has stopped. lol...

Coffee!!!

 

[Artificial Emotion]

The comment about the perlite is the first comment ive ever come across over the 4 years of browsing cannabis sites.

Nearly every grower I know uses perlite, or something similar that is good for drainage.

So if everyone does it must be right? Come on, it's not done in the mainstream horticultural world is it? What's so special about cannabis? Go to UK420 and start reading OT1's posts. He's a legend.

Here is one of his posts:

Where the myth about needing 30 to 70% perlite in compost an an ideal medium for growing cannabis came from:-

In the early days of cannabis growing in the states, the heads growing indoors did not have a clue about gardening or horticulture at all. They wanted to grow plants like outdoors, big plants, so they would use a big pot 10 to 50 gallons fill it with a couple of bags of Schultz container compost, water, sow a few seeds.

Now we all know what happens to 10 gallons of saturated compost in an enclosed container, with no roots to pump the water out and just a little surface evaporation, within a couple of weeks the whole mess goes anaerobic and sour. To compound the problem, the surface dries so they keep watering the seedlings that in turn get sicker and sicker as root fungus get a grip in what is now an ideal environment for it.

Did they look at what the plant industry did? No they were growing cannabis they had to resolve the problem, they stuck with big pots. One method was to fill the pot and just use a tiny amount of water around the seed. Of course this meant watering several times a day as the surrounding compost sucked up the water. Then they tried adding more and more drainage! Grit, sharp sand and finally perlite. Until the 10 gallon pot was only holding 3 or 4 gallons of compost and the rest was inert filler ie they were nearly growing with just water and nutrients. They never learnt about standard potting on techniques or considered them irrelevant or too time consuming.

Even today 40 years on, where large pots and huge plants are no longer the thing. Then the firm belief was that for optimum yield you should not grow more than one cannabis plant under a 1kw light, no one even thinks about that now, its laughable.

Yet we still see people adding large amounts of inert perlite and vermiculite to compost. It just goes to show what a tough plant cannabis is, as it often survives and crops despite the things that are done to it. Its not done any where else in the horticultural industry. So why oh why, when its a completely groundless bit of nonsense does it still hang on in the cannabis world.

Using perlite to aerate your medium is pointless at best, counterproductive at worst. If you're going to continue doing it like a sheep just because everyone else is, well good luck, 'cause you're gonna need it. If it's the first time you've read this 4 years of reading cannabis sites, find different websites to read.

Prelude, like I said before, you do not need to measure soil pH. Firstly, you're meter won't be able to give you an accurate reading in the first place and secondly, compost buffers the pH. If you're going to be messing around with pH adding coffee grounds etc this will cause nutrient lockout and all other sorts of problems.

 

[Prelude2TragedyII]

lol, I think it grows either way, just fine.

 

[Artificial Emotion]

I am trying your 18/6 in my cab cuz temps are a bit more than I want. Six days from seed two out of three have come up. The third was the slowest germinating, so I am thinking its just going to be a runt.

1 Ice femmed, 2 Mandala Safari Mix

soil mix: organic bag soil as the base, kelp meal, some coffee, Dolemite Lime, little bit of Alaska All Purpose, and some BS molasses. I wanted to add some compost but it isnt ready yet. I will probably top dress with it though. I also bought a bag of guinea pig pellets to add and make teas with. Should be interesting... I am goin for like total organic in a cab type deal. Wish me luck

Why add coffee, an acid and dolomite lime, a base?

Are you talking about garden compost from a compost heap? If so, this should not be used with your potting compost as you will introduce pests. It's structure also does not lend itself to container gardening.

Oh and to the people (in general) adding fertilizers (be it base or normal feeds) to multipurpose/normal garden compost in veg, stop. You are not supposed to add nutrients until flower!

 

[Artificial Emotion]

lol, I think it grows either way, just fine.

So? What's the point in adding it? Why not add a bit of pizza if it grows? You don't because it's pointless and even counterproductive.

The point of the post was to get people to stop this pointless, counterproductive practise.

Like crocking at the bottom of the pot, it shouldn't be done!

Prelude are you using mineral salt fertlizer? If so, stop and flush to get rid of salts in the medium and then continue to water with plain water. The nutrient burn (which is what you have) will go eventually. I'm not sure why you are continuining to fertilize a burnt plant, unless I'm mistaken.

For the record I have grown in soil and I haven't had any deficiencies or burning problems or anything. I hit 1.3 grams per watt, which seems very difficult for a lot of people to achieve. Most can't even hit 1g/W. I'm in NFT and passive coco hydro at the moment.

 

[subopm420]

I think I will be experimenting with different teas and concoctions. I have some kelp meal, guinea pig pellets, and black strap molasses. I also have some Alaska all purpose dry fertilizer; primarily hydrolyzed fish, bone and blood meal, i think some shellfish meal...

Kelp meal is a good source of K, also there is some in coffee. Molasses has some P, but I think I may need another source.

If I were able to use my compost I would probably not add much beyond the odd nettle tea and molasses tea, maybe some flowering teas or top dressings when I turn the lights.

Dolemite is hardly a base, its pH is almost neutral but it will bring acidic soils up to 7. That means if I want to use acidic nutrients I can, because it has a buffer; I know organic soil can buffer itself through aerobic bacteria but its nice to have backup in my limited gardening space. You said it yourself, there is no need for huge plants and lights, we can grow indoors and maximize our yields with smaller plants under less light by fine tuning our practices. Because this is the case we need to mimic mother nature as much as possible, while still providing optimal growing environment. Hemp likes somewhat rock/sandy soil, therefore a certain amount of inorganic hard material is needed. The soil can only process so much nutrients, and likewise the plant can only uptake so many. While to much perlite is most definitely a bad thing, some is not. Even some perlite in a hot compost bin is beneficial. It helps keep aerobic bacteria alive and prevents anaerobic decomposition.

Now, if you wanted to get people to stop using perlite just start talking about the huge carbon footprint left from the energy used in the expansion process. Or the fact that it really isn't a sustainable resource; it has to be mined from areas of high volcanic activity and ten shipped to processing plants. Really just the opposite direction most of the organic community is try to go. This will be my last bag, but you can bet your ass I will find something to replace it. I am thinking rice husks.

Stop talking shit about Americans.

If you're going to be messing around with pH adding coffee grounds etc this will cause nutrient lockout and all other sorts of problems.

No... It wont. But it will provide all kinds of trace nutrients and boost microbe activity in my soil, further buffering pH and providing nutrients to plants through a medium with a varying pH, slowly climbing, as to allow maximum uptake for every nutrient at its optimal pH. Or maybe I am just experimenting, have allot of coffee and such lying around.

Are you talking about garden compost from a compost heap? If so, this should not be used with your potting compost as you will introduce pests. It's structure also does not lend itself to container gardening.

lol

 

[subopm420]

I think mid veg I will make a rough topdressing of banana peels, kelp meal, coffee grounds and rice. That should compost nicely and provide all the P I will need in flower.

 

[w01fg4ng]

Now Im kinda curious, on all of the leaves I took off, (which were all completely dead) On the bottom of the stem (underneath the leaf), I could see brown circles, spots. I KNOW there are NO bugs that are attacking the plant.

Anyone know what those little spots were?
Underneath the leaf, on the center stem,(not the veins) , it had little tiny brown spots, maybe half a millimeter to a full millimeter.

sounds like another nutrient issue prelude....can't say which nute it is off the top of my head though...

Come on, it's not done in the mainstream horticultural world is it?

Actually, yes it is. Perlite is used in a wide array of mediums and plants. You might want to try actually going to a "mainstream" nursery someday before spouting your mouth off about what some random ass guy said on the internet. Have you even seen a nursery with your own two eyes? "OT1" from UK40 is not respected or even known on this website. It sounds like the only sheep in here is you. GTFO with that shit.

Why add coffee, an acid and dolomite lime, a base?

subopm420 just told you why. Are you even reading this thread?

You are not supposed to add nutrients until flower!

It's becoming more obvious with every post that you have no idea what you are talking about.

I think I will be experimenting with different teas and concoctions. I have some kelp meal, guinea pig pellets, and black strap molasses. I also have some Alaska all purpose dry fertilizer; primarily hydrolyzed fish, bone and blood meal, i think some shellfish meal...

Kelp meal is a good source of K, also there is some in coffee. Molasses has some P, but I think I may need another source.

If I were able to use my compost I would probably not add much beyond the odd nettle tea and molasses tea, maybe some flowering teas or top dressings when I turn the lights.

Dolemite is hardly a base, its pH is almost neutral but it will bring acidic soils up to 7. That means if I want to use acidic nutrients I can, because it has a buffer; I know organic soil can buffer itself through aerobic bacteria but its nice to have backup in my limited gardening space. You said it yourself, there is no need for huge plants and lights, we can grow indoors and maximize our yields with smaller plants under less light by fine tuning our practices. Because this is the case we need to mimic mother nature as much as possible, while still providing optimal growing environment. Hemp likes somewhat rock/sandy soil, therefore a certain amount of inorganic hard material is needed. The soil can only process so much nutrients, and likewise the plant can only uptake so many. While to much perlite is most definitely a bad thing, some is not. Even some perlite in a hot compost bin is beneficial. It helps keep aerobic bacteria alive and prevents anaerobic decomposition.

Now, if you wanted to get people to stop using perlite just start talking about the huge carbon footprint left from the energy used in the expansion process. Or the fact that it really isn't a sustainable resource; it has to be mined from areas of high volcanic activity and ten shipped to processing plants. Really just the opposite direction most of the organic community is try to go. This will be my last bag, but you can bet your ass I will find something to replace it. I am thinking rice husks.

Thank you for this well informed message opm.

 

[Artificial Emotion]

wo1, you're an idiot. I hold my hands up and say I made a mistake with the dolomiite lime. I for some reason got confused between dolomite and normal lime (they are different). That said, there's no point in adding the coffee when dolomite is added. If the medium is slightly acidic and dolomite lime is being added to buffer the pH up if acids are added or the soil starts to go sour (that means acidic if you're tiny mind didn't know), then ADDING another acid is hardly going to achieve anything. Why add the dolomite to buffer acids if you're going to go and add an acid when a low pH is the exact thing you are trying to counteract and avoid?

You obviously know nothing about horticulture. You think that since perlite is sold in garden centres they add it to potting compost for plants other than seedlings? Why don't you fucking do some reading? I've already given the reason why it is pointless. I have never seen a general purpose potting compost sold in mainstream garden centres that has perlite added. I wonder why?! Perlite is used for sowing and cutting composts etc. God people can be so dogged with their ignorant beliefs.

Multipurpose potting composts already have base fertilizers added to them. If you are using the standard potting up procedure (you probably don't even know what that is mind you, given how ignorant you are), you would realize adding fertilizer until the last potting up is done (before 12/12) is pointless since it is already provided by the compost. Two weeks after the last potting up base fertilizers run out as they are used by the plant and so then, during flower, bloom fertilizer needs to be added. How did I manage to avoid any nutrient deficiencies whatsoever when I didn't add any fertilzers whatsoever during the vegetative period whilst achieving over a gram per watt? Gee, must be magic, hey?

By the way, OT1 has been gardening for longer than you have been alive and is a legend on multiple cannabis cultivation forums. He is widely known in the cannabis community and even helped to design the Plant Magic Plus Oldtimer organic nutrient range. Have you anything like that on your resume?

I wouldn't even be surprised if you've never even grown cannabis, you fool.