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[MEGA] Every Year's Community Growing advice, tips, tricks, & experiences

Please read if your planning on a soil grow!!

Here are the bags of medium that I have been raving about. I highly recommend this stuff. The money spent is well worth it. Your plants will love this stuff. I mix one bag of each and then add a half of bag of perlite. I purchased one of those big Tuff Boxes from Home Depot and I mix all the medium in that...Simple!

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The Roots Organic looks like a nice mix, judging by the ingredients, such as rock phosphate.

If you're going for a pure coco mix I would recommend trying the new Vitalink coco mix that has course coco chunks added for improved drainage and aeration. You can also add it yourself by buying the coco chunks separately.

Don't forget to dust the potting hole with a mycorrhizal fungi mixture.
 
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mycorrhizal fungi mixture---- what is that? What's it purpose and where do I find it haha? Just a brief description will do..thank you! When u say "dust the potting hole"..do u mean the hole I make to place the plant in? Would I just mix some of that stuff in each container or literally just the small hole that I place the rootball into
 
I assume you start off in small pots first, or perhaps Root Riots or some other type of plug? If so, when you make the hole into which you transplant it, you should dust the benficial fungi into it, the most popular of which are trichoderma and mycorrhizal fungi. Mycorrhizal amongst other things, functions by facilitating phosphorus uptake through structures that go into the roots. In fact, all plants growing in soil outside rely on mycorrhizae fungi to take up phosphorus and thrive. The list of benefits are endless but you'll see more vigorous growth and it's not just a gimmick. I'm not aware of what's available in the US to be honest, but you want a mixture containing multiple species of fungi and bacteria. It works best in a compost containing some loam, worm casts or other organic matter, but does work in coco coir.
 
Cool..thx AE..I gotta look at my nutes to see if any of it contains that..the small can of Humboldt Roots I have says right on it.."Highly Active Shake Gently"...its really good stuff and is used until the 2nd week of flowering..I do not think it has the fungi you speak of though..I'll have to look further into it, thanks for the info though!
 
Here's a quick pic of a few of the plants I just took. The growth rate is phenominal.

Check the before and after. This is only after several days of growth.
 
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Very nice..lookin real healthy..I gotta ask tho..you said you get 300g per plant in a prevoius post..are u talking about this current set-up or outdoors? That is a huge yield inside if that's the case..whew!
 
^ In a soil crop, yes I have done. That was done through scrogging a couple of plants under one single light. I think the key to higher yields in general is to do as little as possible to your plants (avoiding adding many additives). For some reason the KISS priciple really works when growing.

I've learnt the hard way that most people kill with kindness when growing.

I just got a new Budbox utility shelf which I'm going to use as a scrog screen. It will fit in my DR120 tent.

edit: I also forgot to say that the growth rate should increase and keep increasing since at the moment I haven't put the spreader matt down and only have the pump on twice per day since I want to sex them before allowing the roots to be put down permanently onto the table. Once this is done it should be like switching on the turbo charger.
 
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Well, Put in my HPS bulb today, even though all but two plants are over 10 inches, so, I say its go time, Sour Diesel and Purple Kush JUST started to actually develop new branches and what not, so I figure it can still grow 60 days or more flowering
(I like my trichs amber, I don't like them cloudy-clear, I like a late cloudy-mostly amber couch lock harvest :D )
 
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Figured since only two plants are under 10 inches, Ill Flower them, I have them all at the same level,
I have the temps in the closet about 70-75 degrees.
60 -70 when lights out.
Going to start 12/12 tonight.
Put the HPS in.

Not sure why , but , Ive been still experiencing the yellowing of the lower leaves spreading up the plant very quickly and its spreading to the larger plants. Im wondering whats going on.
Ive started hitting them harder with nutes as I was told, Was doing 1tsp per 2 liters, now doing 3tsp per 3 liters(or 1tsp1liter, whatever)Thats about 3.5 tsp per gallon, around there, Id think, and thats what it says to feed, every other feeding, should I do this every other feeding , or less often than that? I know everyone always says to go light on feeding but maybe these plants are hungry? idk, any help is useful
 
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Artificial Emotion said:
A combination of MH and HPS does work better over MH or HPS alone. The MH light doesn't need to be below though. Two lights at the top will work just as well, especially if you sog or scrog. The larger of the two lights should generally be the HPS though. So, for example, if you have two lights, one a 600W light and the other a 400W light, the 600W one should be the HPS and the 400W one should be the MH light. This works better in larger tents obviously and means you don't have to change the lights in veg and flowering.

Part of the reason it works so well is because of the overlap (see diagram). Plants in this region work very well indeed, although all parts get some overlap, despite what the diagram suggests.
Click to expand...

thanks for the diagram...
my ''friend'' only tends too use 400w HID lamps due to the hot nature of 600w + lamps, and in australias climate its vital to keep things as cool as possible.
if started from seed swim, uses a 130w CFL lamp untill a minimum of 4 inches tall. then he switches too a 400w MH, once turned 2 x 400w HPS.
i must look at trying one MH + HPS, i see you can buy MH conversion globes, which run of hps ballasts.

do u think once the plant has started flowering you should start it forming with 2 x HPS globes and in the final three weeks have an overlap of 1 x hps and 1 x MH... or have an overlap the whole 8-9 weeks??
 
^ firstly don't use 'swim', it offers no legal protection, especially when you've quoted 'friend' in quotation marks! ;)

I would have one HPS and one MH throughout from start to finish. Also, you don't need to have the seedlings under the CFL until 4 inches tall. Only use it for the first week after the seeds pop, especially since you're subsequently going to be using only a 400W MH.

Also, consider looking into an air cooled hood. I personally just use one 1kW light in a DR120 tent. I wouldn't bother using two personally. Only if I were growing commercially in a bigger space.

By the way, I really wouldn't worry about getting caught. The chances of you getting caught are next to nill. Just don't go admitting to growing hundreds of plants or posting photos of you with your face shown and your plants. Use common sense and you'll be fine, trust me.
 
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That Roots organic is the same stuff Subcool uses for his plant's and highly recommends it, so you know it's gonna good stuff . I wish we had it over here in Aus :(
 
If I were growing in compost as opposed to straight coco I would buy it if I could. However, personally I wouldn't dilute the main ingredients with extra coco.

However, luckily we have some other composts which will perform as well as it does in all honesty.

I seriously doubt they would be able to call it organic over here in the UK as it has peat moss in it. Unfortunately they can get away with calling just about anything organic in the US, although that's not to say Roots Organic is bad in any way.
 
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Yeah, I meant every other watering, so, Give all of them that much every watering or just the ones showing signs of yellowing from the bottom up.
 
You want to use the least amount of feed possible whilst keeping the plants green and healthy looking. So, do what you were doing before with the healthy plants whilst feeding every watering with the deficient plants. You could lower the dose and feed every watering with the healthy plants if you want. Personally I feed every watering when in compost/soil media since with big pots there's such a long time between waterings that if I were to wait every other watering, it would complicate things.

Have you heard of a wet/dry cycle? You need the compost to dry out inbetween waterings but not so much the plants wilt. This is important as the plants need oxygen in the root zone and if you're not letting it dry out, they'll suffocate.

The only additives I would recommend you use are a Yucca extract (surfactant) and seaweed extract. The seaweed extract will help get rid of many nutrient deficiencies since it's rich in trace nutrients. It also acts as a root stimulant.

At the very most I would say you could use a dedicated root stim, such as Regen-a-root or rhizotonic, although you probably wouldn't get any benefit at this stage in your growing career (no offence, of course - it's just that you really need quite a lot of experience in order to benefit from additives like this when there are more fundamental factors affecting your plant health you can improve on).
 
Also, I wanted to add, if you're using organic nutrients in compost (using otherwise is madness in my opinion, since if you're using chemical salt fertilisers you may as well move over to a purely passive hydroponic system such as coco or fytocell since the growth rate will be faster and higher yields are easier to attain), don't use humic or fulvic acid. This will alter the cation exchange capacity of the medium, making it more akin to growing hydro weed. In other words, you'll lose the benefit of the sweet, pure organic taste and it will taste more harsh in flavour. I think this really only should be used with hydroponic systems. For example, in my NFT system I am able to reduce nutrient requirements by a whopping 40% with the use of humic/fulvic acid (particularly higher in fulvic acid) and beneficial hydro fungi.

If you're compost is sufficientlyactive biologically and everything else in your grow is dialled in with your environment perfect, your yields will start to approach that of a hydro system. This is why actively aerated compost teas are so damn effective in improving plant health. The microorganisms help convert the natural organic nutrients into ionic mineral salts soluble in water that can readily be taken up by the roots (similar to hydroponic nutrients, except closer to the ideal than synthetic nutrient formulae produced by manufacturers). This is why a healthy microherd present in the compost will improve your yield, since it actively converts the organic nutrients into a form the plant can absorb through the roots in the same way hydroponic nutrients are.

I have some AACT recipes developed by the scientist, Dr. Elaine Ingham, who is a pioneer in AACT research. I actually purchased a really good 5 gallon small scale brewer from them with data to prove it's capable of producing an active tea, unlike most other brewers on the market that are more or less useless. Making AACTs is a science, not an art, and so the ingredients used to make the tea should not be thrown together haphazardly like most cannabis growers do and call a compost tea. I've got a few good empirically tested AACT recipes designed by Ingham and published in one of her publications, the Compost Tea Brewing Manual (expensive to buy!!). If anyone's interested I can share it with you if you like.
 
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