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

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I have never checked ph levels and generally expect 4-5 ounces of dried bud per cutting, once they have been vegging to 24inches tall...

If the plant is the right size for the pot, you shouldn't need to water them more than once every 2-3 days, as long as you give em enough
 
Chronic..what kind of nutes are you using? I am using the Humboldt line and if I don't check the PH, there are times I would have fed my plants with 4.5ph water. The Flavorful (humic acid derivative) drops the PH drastically. The Favorful is important because it helps the plant uptake the nutrients faster, but like I said, it drops the PH drastically. I always add my nutes, then check the PH. What I have found though, if I start w/ purified store bought water..the PPM's read 000 and the PH is about 7 or just a tad over and if I only use the 3 part grow, micro, bloom, plus hygrozyme and maybe the Ginormous bloom additive if im flowering, the PH will be within range, but instead of just being in range, which may differ watering to watering. I like to keep the ph at pretty much the same level to avoid PH fluctuation. IMO checking and dialing in the PH is more important then ppms, cause if you really wanted to, you can go off a feeding chart and figure a round about number as far as ppm's go, but one thing that can definitely mess up a plant is giving them water when the PH is out of wack.
 
I am pretty much finished feeding them anyway (approaching the last 3 weeks) I might do one more conservative feeding, then it's plain water here til harvest. I usually flush the first week with the Humboldt Honey Organic..it's just Pure Cane Sugar and really helps with resin production. I've stayed pretty conservative this cycle, they didn't get too many nutrient feedings, and they look so much healthier than in the past. With that, you do sacrifice a bit of yield though, because the buds aren't pumped with nutes, but I have a good feeling it's going to burn so much smoother and be so much tastier than ever before :) I CAN'T WAIT!! hehe.
 
Well, I ended up getting two large plastic bin containers, got home, washed them, and set the plants in them.

Watered all of the plants from the bottom (its been about 10 min so far, gonna just pour all the extra water over the clones as the Northern lights really didnt HAVE to have a watering tonight, just figured getting them all on the same water scheduel would be nice, Ill try to take a pic soon...

Northern Lights is getting pretty tall.
The top of the plant is looking pretty lanky,
some of the larger fan leaves are just drooping down and have some purple in the very center of the stems (is this due to stress or cold? as its been about 70-75 degrees in my Veg room(lights on), 63-70 lights off.

Im wondering if I should put a stake in there and tie the Northern lights to it..or just let them blow in the wind, get little breaks in the stem, and become stronger...idk.
 
There is some good LED discussion floating around the boards. What are everyone's thoughts on this?

I'm talking grams per watt used.

The LEDs have a huge lead as far as replacing bulbs, heat, and space between the bulb and plant. All of these seem like important factors for long term efficiency.
 
think it will be 3-7 years before they have anything worthwhile.

I haven't personally used any, but from what I've read, they don't seem too 'perfected' yet.
Though they are getting better.

And grams compared to hps or what?
 
I almost bought one of those UFO LED's, but IDK, I wouldn't rely soley on LED's just yet. Something like the UFO may be good for extra light in some of the areas of the grow space that may not be receiving as much light as the prime spots. Also, the LED set-ups are quite expensive still, and I don't know that they are that much more cost effective in relation to their initial purchase price.
 
there's quite a few videos on youtube comparing various lighting conditions LED seem to be OK for Vegging but fall short on flowering however still produce more bud per watt, seems a mixture of HPS/MH and LED won't hurt tho, but the best LEDs are very expensive.

Nutewise I don't want to advertise but my mate uses various fertilisers by the same company that are based on organic seaweed extracts, he's tried various pot specific stuff sold online and in specialist shops but it doesn't seem to make any difference
 
30 posts until this thread gets closed. Prelude, open the new one at any time, same name, PM me the link, and I will archive this one.
 
So what happens after it gets archived? Do we still have access to this thread and all of it's contents, but just can no longer post in it, or is this thread going to be gone forever lol? Will we still be able to access our posts and edit them? I just don't know if I want the pictures I posted hanging out in cyberspace forever..never know what may happen. Even though it's for medicinal reasons, I don't need some overzealous DEA agent trying to track me down and harass me...or am I just being paranoid LOL, before I joined this site, I have never ever posted pictures of my garden on the internet...
 
Mehm said:
Manufacturers of LED are claiming that the extra cost is paid back in a year of operating in terms of saved electricity and bulb purchases... LumiGrow seems to have a heads up on the market. I've heard that the UFOs aren't very good. Here is a good thread on cannabisculture http://forums.cannabisculture.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1597327#Post1597327
Click to expand...

Sorry that's wrong. LEDs are a complete joke and time and time again they pale in comparison to HPS. They're for the High Times readers who have more money to piss away than sense. Fair enough, if you want a pretty set of lights in your grow room for bragging rights, they're okay, but for real growing, they're inadequate. I've noticed a lot of people claiming how effective LED lights are in certain american forums (not that I have anything against americans lol) but on the main british forum used by thousands and thousands of users, there has never ever been even one successful grow. The only person who stuck through the whole grow using LEDs said they were shit and ended up going back to HIDs in the end anyway!

This isn't aimed at you, but it always surprises me what people will believe on Youtube! Just because some manufacturer has done a grow (or hired someone to/given them free stuff to)use/using HIDs and then switched the light to LEDs at the end to make it look like the whole thing was successfully done under LEDs doesn't make them effective. AFAIK even CFLs do a better job than LEDs!

If they were to produce an LED that was a about 5cm in length and gave off as much useful light as a measly 250 watt HPS and as efficiently it really would be an achievement. It still wouldn't be worth buying though as it would be incredibly expensive. LEDs do NOT give off less heat than HID lights, this is myth that I hear time and time again. Heat isn't such a bad thing with HPS lights anyway like people would believe, since moving the plants further away gives a much larger footprint (inverse square law) which they need anyway and penetrates the leaves etc much more, giving better growth, especially with cannabis plants much taller than the lettuce LED grow lights was designed to grow. Diffused sources of light such as from LEDs up close to the plants are blocked by the first set of leaves it hits.

If it were me, I would stick with a tried and tested technology (HIDs) that's been around for 50 odd years and has been developed constantly in this time, instead of a new gimmick (LED grow lights, not the LED itself) designed to suck your money from you.

Don't be a sucker. I could probably do a better grow than with the latest fancy LED grow light on the market just by using half a dozen 10p CFLs from the local supermarket!

Sorry if this offends anyone but I'd rather just say it than pussy foot around the issue. It's better if I just say it how it is.
 
^^^ I completely agree! I highly doubt I would be seeing the same results if I was using LED's. I am pretty happy with how they are turning out...3 more weeks YAY!! I can never bring myself to change over to LED's..no freakin way. Although, someone posted a link to a guy who did a complete side by side comparison and honestly, the LED's performed much better than I thought, but those 2 units he is using are so damn expensive, I just don't see the benefit. HID all the way!!!
 
^ I'm glad you do :) When they, at best, perform as well as a 10p CFL the argument that they save costs down the line at some point goes out the window.

....

One thing about pH in soil. This is based on my experience of growing, anecdotes and confirmation on my course (started a part time different Bsc in horticulture this September). You don't need to measure the pH of your water, nutrient solution when using soil. This is because the soil buffers the pH. This is different for hydroponics e.g. coir, rockwool etc. since there isn't this buffering capacity in an inert medium and the pH needs to be adjusted to prevent lockout. With organic nutrient in soil you can't and shouldn't measure the EC. With chemical nutrients you can measure the EC, but I've never ever found I need to. If the plant is showing that it's hungry e.g. yellowing of leaves etc. I will up the dose of the nutrient. If there's burn, which there hardly ever is, I back off on the nutrient and use plain tapwater. Again, no pH adjustment is needed.

If you don't believe me, that's okay, but I suggest you prove it to yourself. Go to the nursery and buy some cheap tomato seeds. Plant it in some decent multipurpost potting compost and feed it with water. Two weeks after your last pot up, start to feed it the bloom nutrients it requires (do one organic, one synthetic mineral salt fertilizer) without any pH adjustment or EC monitoring and you will see what I mean (the reason no grow nutrient is needed is because unless a 'lightmix' otherwise known as a sowing/cutting compost is used, there are already base fertilizers present and you can have an all green grow without any grow nutes). Cannabis is not all that dissimilar to other plants, in fact it's very much the same as tomato plants in many ways. See gardening texts written by botanists, horticultural scienstists who are respected and you'll see that they are able to produce extremely high yielding plants with no EC, pH pens or RO machines whatsoever.
 
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Well, I can't completely agree on this, only because I have seen first hand my plants show their displeasure with a low ph water. Once I adjust back up to 6.7 the leaf tips straighten back out again. Also, if the ph is out of wack, it causes
the plants to lock-out nutes. Maybe this isn't the case with straight organic medium + organic nutes, but I am not using organics. I have checked ph after adding my nutes and I've seen the numbers go as low as 4.2, now if I gave
that to my plants, surely they wouldn't be happy with me.

Edited-fixed spacing, posted w/ cellphone earlier.

Let me clarify something. The 3 part-Humboldt nutes I use appear to be PH balanced, if I only add those 3, the PH will fall somewhere around 6.5-6.6, which I can live with, but once the additives like Flavorful (which is Humic acid), the PH falls drastically and needs to be adjusted. The Humboldt Roots does this as well. Also, ever since I started paying attention to PH and PPM's and using clean purified water, is when I noticed I had much healthier plants, as well as using a good medium. I used to use cheap coco and would just add nutes to my tap water without ever adjusting or checking anything and I would run into problems (lock-out, burnt leaf tips, slowed growth and less than impressive buds). With the way my last harvest turned out, and the way this one is turning out, I am not going to change anything I am doing at this moment.
 
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My Reverse Osmosis System Pumps Out water just about 7.8-8.0 pH, now, I have tried growing twice before.
I never adjusted pH in a serious way, I nuted the same amount I do now, and,
It makes a HUGE difference for me.
My plants always seemed to have Something wrong with them when I was watering them with straight R.O. water.
Now that I've started adjusting the pH to 6.4-6.7, the plants seem to look much much healthier, and seem to grow VERY quickly..

But I could be wrong, there could be alot of different reasons my plants are growing quicker, I got better ventalations, temps dropped from 84 to 73, I seem to be doing something right this time around though, lets just hope that continues through flowering.

Working on it Chainer , been helping my family trim 4 lbs, dear god, Im so sick of weed....haha. Snip snip snip, oh , scissors are to sticky to use, have to clean them...I've watched so many buckets of fan leaves be thrown in the trash...


(And by the way , I have grown with CFLs, an they do a pretty damn good job for flowering if you know how to do it, I just dont trust LEDs., For the price, and how new they are , and from the pics I've seen, they do okay vegging, but flowering, looks so small)
 
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Glad to hear it Prelude!

I hope you guys are saving those close trich covered leaves LOL. I saved my close leaves from 2 cycles and made bubble hash, I wound up w/ a 17.8g chunk of yummy honey colored hash that I am still smokin off of...stuff knocks your socks off!!

With that much bud, you guys can make a freakin shit load of bubble hash.
 
We keep the loose buds on bottom, and the trich covered leaves and use em for butter/edibles. , the big giant fan leaves, go in the trash, and there were a ton, lots of Outdoor plants are being harvest atm. Ah I love California and being legal :D
 
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