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

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Heres two pics, doesnt really show any of the light bleaching or spots im speaking of , which is why I didnt post one to begin with because my phone camera sucks...

I dont get how it can be over fertilization if Im watering with nutes only once a week , at 1/8-1/4 of the recommended nutes.

Now, My stems are thickening up quite a bit , but there is some purple-ing of the stems(slightly)

and all the leaves that are falling off are yellowed, moist, Bright purple/red stems.

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got a pic of the whole.
still crappy, but I tried
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Well, can I just leave the fan there to help a tiny little bit more? otherwise It'd just be sitting there, what else could I use it for? 8inch intake hole? ahh? lol

and the ppm of my water is .1, or 1, I forget which, but I do have a Reverse Osmosis system put out about 7.5 as it is drinkining water, I bring it down to about 6.3-6.9 each time.
 
Yeah, probably lock-up, do you know what your ppm's of the water is after you make up the nutes? Do you check your PH and PPM's after you add nutes to the water and adjust accordingly? I'm not aware of your methods so I gotta ask. Your water at 7.5 ppm before adding nutes is fine...RO's rock! I want one myself. Also, if you are seeing leaf drop, could be a sign of over-watering..do you water from the bottom?..highly suggested if you don't. Your tips looked curled and burnt...signs of ph fluctuation and over fertilizing. Flush her real real good. Every two watering's w/ nutes, use plain clean water. Just some suggestions, and there could be stuff i'm missing..
 
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Prelude, it's not that your over-fertilizing at one sitting, but it is a build-up over time, if the plant isn't able to use it up, it locks out, then the soil becomes toxic. You gotta flush every third watering and check your ph and ppm's every time after you make up a batch, make sure your not skyhigh on the ppm's, that chem stuff is pretty hardcore. Usually July & August is a good month to actually take off from growing. Those are good months to use flourescent strips and CFL's, start seedlings or have clones to work with and get them ready during those months, then come Sept, put in the big light and start hitting them babies, veg for 2-3 weeks and flip it. So many problems in the summer month's between pests and disease.
 
Prelude if I were you I would disregard mr. muncheez's advice as quite a lot of it is either false or ill advised. You're in compost so you don't need a pH or TDS meter. You can't measure the TDS/EC of an organic nutrient anyway, so this advice is obviously incorrect for organic nutrients anyway.

You certainly don't need your water to be reverse osmosis filtered! As long as your tap water isn't rediculously hard you won't run into any problems whatsoever. Millions and millions of people use tapwater with excellent results. Tapwater contains many trace minerals which RO filters completely strip out. If you want to get rid of chlorine vigorously stir it for 10-15 mins or let it sit for 24 hours with an airstone, although, as countless farmers and gardeners will tell you, this is not necessary to get excellent results.

mr muncheez gave a very long list of nutrients and additives, many of which are geared towards hydroponics, which you are not even in. All you need is an organic nutrient for flowering if you're using a fully fertilized compost. That's it. Anything else is not necessary at all and will not give you any more yield if you're environment etc. is not dialled in.

You don't need a grow chart to follow like mr muncheez said. You need to read your plant to see whether it is need of feeding or if it's had too much (e.g. nute burn). That's a far better technique than following some chart made by a manufacturer which are notoriously unreliable anyway. Each strain has differing requirements anyway, making it useless in some cases.
You don't need to flush every third watering - this is rubbish. If you're using organic nutrients in compost you NEVER need to flush and if you're using chemical salt fertilizers you rarely need to flush. Only with severe burning and certainly not 'every third watering'.

Here's a post by Oldtimer1 who has such a good rep on a numberous cannabis boards on flushing with respect to flushing with organics (I can't rememer if you're using mineral salt fertilizers or organic ones):

You can't wash the nutrient reserves from soil, soil based composts or composts except for the immediate soluble salts.

You can,t flush nutrients from plants, you can starve them by just watering them.

My advise if you are using an organic compost, is to alter your feed and reduce the amount towards the end of flowering.

At the peak of blooming you would probably be using 1ml of grow and 3ml of bloom per litre of water. At about the end of week 6 change to some thing like 2ml gr and 2ml bl then 2ml gr 1ml bl then to the end 2 ml gr. This helps maintain the plants healthy right to the end of its life. This gives but that burns sweetly without the acrid taste produced by an excess of phosphorus.

You don't have to worry about the excess of nutrients in when growing with organic nutrients in the same way as you do with chemical fertilisers.

Prelude, you simply need to back off on the nutrients until the burning subsides. You are overfeeding them. Try and get the feeding sorted since issues like this will really affect your end yield and the quality of the final smoke.

Well done so far. On your first grow you'll always run into problems like this. Once you get the hang of it you should run into problems only rarely and even then you'll have the tools and knowledge to deal with them effectively. Just beware of harmful advice that some people give. Unfortunately there are a lot of growers that claim to have been growing for x number of years and to have so much experience when in fact if you analyse their advice much of it is counterproductive or downright harmful to the health of your plants. I would recommend going to a proper growing site like UK420 if you are interested in taking up growing as a serious long term hobby. Poor advice doesn't last long on sites like UK420 (well, UK420 in particular actually).
 
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well, first off, I didn't read all these pages, and I said im not aware of his methods, but from looking at the plant, it's in rough shape. I did see that he is using somthing that is 30-10-10, that doesn't appear to be organic nutes to me, seems to me like he is using chemicals and by looking at those (burnt to a crisp leaf tips) something isn't right. HOW can you tell him he never needs to flush, that is ill advised, if you like smoking stuff that turns into charcoal..more power to ya. YOU should definately flush atleast the last 2 weeks before harvest. Read any HT mag or any grow book will tell you that. Just because he uses compost, how can you tell him he shouldn't be measuring the water that he is feeding his plant? That is ill advised. You should always know exactly what the water is (ph and ppm's). I will post pictures one of these days, not really my favorite thing to do, but I must be doing something right..thats all i'm saying.
 
^ You can't tell if a plant is being fed mineral salt fertilizers just by looking at it, especially in this case! Of course you can burn plants with organic nutrients - I've seen it plenty of times mate. Please don't tell me to read up on growing when you're giving poor advice.

You don't need to flush at the end of an organic grow in compost. Only if you're in hydroponics or using mineral salt fertilizers in compost (and if you're doing this you may as well be growing hydroponically anyway).

You don't need to measure pH or TDS if you're using organic nutrients in soil. Farmers and gardeners have gotten excellent results for decades without doing this! Somehow I think you believe cannabis is some special plant that needs different treatment from any other normal plant!

Perhaps you should stop getting your info from dodgy grow magazines?
 
OH and yes tap water is good in the beginning when watering clones or seedlings cause it has some trace minerals that they can use. IN MY CASE, my tap water has a ppm reading of 434 right out the tap..so when I used to use it, I had stressed out plants that would lock-out nutes. Think about it...if i am starting at 434, by the time I would add nutes, my ppm's were over 1000!!! That is way to high especially when plants are young, they can't handle the levels, they can only use so much and then they lock-out and you start getting salt build-up in the soil.

Also, the nutes I use are Humbolt County's line and they are not geared toward Hydro, they can be used for both, the company does make an Organic 3 part system that is geared toward hydro and the Humbolt honey is for hydro, I use Honey ES in the late flowering stage because it is packed w/ carbs and sugar and helps the buds swell. It like us humans drinking gatorade, and the stuff works great. I am using B'Cuzz coco and Organic Roots as medium and it rocks!!! $30 a bag and $25 a bag respectively, I just mix them together.
 
Listen, I'm not here to argue, perhaps I should have read more into this thread to get more info about what he is doing. I never said by looking at a plant you can tell if it's organic or chemical nutes, I just read one of his posts where he listed 30-10-10. Everyone has their own way of doing things and many different ways have very good results. Let's leave it at that. I was just trying to help this kid, cause his plant could be much healthier...hopefully you agree with me on that.
 
OH and yes tap water is good in the beginning when watering clones or seedlings cause it has some trace minerals that they can use. IN MY CASE, my tap water has a ppm reading of 434 right out the tap..so when I used to use it, I had stressed out plants that would lock-out nutes. Think about it...if i am starting at 434, by the time I would add nutes, my ppm's were over 1000!!! That is way to high especially when plants are young, they can't handle the levels, they can only use so much and then they lock-out and you start getting salt build-up in the soil.

I and many people have used tapwater with an EC of 0.8 (close to a ppm reading of 434 on my meter, unless this means something different on your meter) with no problems. I think the stressed out plants were the result of your poor growing techniques in all liklihood. Anyway, I said you didn't need RO unless your tapwater is extremely hard.

Listen, I'm not here to argue, perhaps I should have read more into this thread to get more info about what he is doing. I never said by looking at a plant you can tell if it's organic or chemical nutes, I just read one of his posts where he listed 30-10-10. Everyone has their own way of doing things and many different ways have very good results. Let's leave it at that. I was just trying to help this kid, cause his plant could be much healthier...hopefully you agree with me on that.

Fair enough mate. I'm not trying to have a go at you. I just took issue with some of the points you made. We can agree to disagree. No hard feelings.
 
By the way, I'd like to add that I myself do actually use an RO meter so I'm not saying don't use one. However, I don't use it because I expect any more yield. I use it simply for convenience - it takes the headache out of adjusting pH in hydroponics (not soil/compost) because quite often, depending on the application and nutrients added, the pH is in the desired range once the nutrient solution is added which means no harmful pH down has to be added at all. However, I like to add an amount of tapwater (usually 1/4 of the total volume of the RO water so 1L tapwater: 3L RO water) to the RO water to add trace elements and I always select soft water versions of any nutrients I buy. I use the Lucas formula which consists of GHE Floramicro and Florabloom in NFT and a ventura top fed recirculating Aquafarm using fytocell.

However in compost I use plain tapwater with my organic nutrients with no flushing and read the signs of the plant to detect over or under feeding and I get excellent lush growth without needing any meters whatsoever. I know that it works and works very well from personal experience primarily rather than what I've read (even though what I read backs up my own findings).
 
Yes I have very hard water, it's aweful. We don't use it for drinking either. I have a poland spring acct and have home delivery. But I buy purified water for growing. My water is horrible, my plants use to lock-out and have curled leaves, burnt tips etc..very similar to what this one looks like. I would like to purchase an RO system so I don't have to keep buying water.
I used to pack a bowl and few hits later it turns into charcoal, this is when I used to not flush. Last year I completely changed my ways, started buying water...bought ph & ppm pens and it made a HUGE difference. I keep the water at 6.5-6.7 and my ppm's are usually 500-900 depending on what week I am in during veg...later weeks of flowering I up to to 1200-1500. My babies now stay nice and green throughout their whole lives til the end when they turn all kinds of cool colors ;).
 
OH, using tds/ph pens DOES NOT amount to more yeild..is that what you thought I was saying? I just think you get healthier plants by measuring and making sure the water isn't out of wack after the nutes are added. It does depend on what nutes you use of course, there are a MILLION different kinds out there it's mind-boggling.
 
I got mine quite cheaply (it cost just shy of £80) since it has a lower flow rate than more expensive models and it works very well for my needs. It takes a bit of work to connect it to the mains water pipe using a washing machine connector so be prepared for it to be a bit awkward. I put it under the kitchen sink connected to the same pipe the washing machine is connected to. I'm going to install a Y-connector so that I can use the washing machine at the same time as the RO water. Once I've done this it'll be a perfect setup.

Remember to flush your RO filter every few weeks so that you extend the working life of the RO filter. Also if your water supply has some particulate matter you might want to invest in a rudimentary pre-filter to remove the particles in the water to extend the life significantly.
 
OH, using tds/ph pens DOES NOT amount to more yeild..is that what you thought I was saying? I just think you get healthier plants by measuring and making sure the water isn't out of wack after the nutes are added. It does depend on what nutes you use of course, there are a MILLION different kinds out there it's mind-boggling.

No I thought you were suggesting you use these meters in soil when using organic nutrients. I would only recommend using them in with chemical salt fertilizers. Luckily with organic nutrients it's not necessary and doesn't work since the organic substances don't increase the conductivity of the water. Only ionic mineral substances that dissociate in solution do this. With soil you don't need to measure pH since the medium buffers the pH without needing any intervention regardless of whether mineral salts or organic nutrients are used. I'm not sure why someone would want to use chemical salt fertilizers in a potting compost anyway though.
 
The Hydro-Logic small boy supposedly is easier to install, it accepts a garden hose attatchment, so basically I can get a Y connector, split off the cold water from the Laundry room and run it where I need to and just connect it to the RO system. It's something I am thinking about. It would be well worth the investment, I think they cost about $180.
 
What I had to do (since I couldn't just hook it up using the connector I got with the RO filter) is buy a separate blue washing machine hose which I connected to the cold mains water pipe the washing machine itself is normally connected to. I then fed this through to the area under the sink where the RO filter is through a hold I cut in the side partition separating the area under the sink from the area where the washing machine is. I then connected the other end of the blue washing machine hose to a brass threaded garden tap I screwed onto this partition on the side under the sink so that I could screw the threaded connector on the RO filter to the garden tap. This way all I'd have to do is use the garden tap to get the water flowing from the mains to the RO filter. However, I have to swap the blue washing machine hose I use with the RO filter with the other blue washing machine hose I actually use with my washing machine whenever I need to use the RO filter - this is why I plan to use a Y-connector so I can use the washing machine and the RO filter at the same time which would be much easier as the washing machine is very heavy and difficult to move.

Unfortunately as you can see it's a bit awkward but once you sort it out it's very easy to get your RO water.

EDIT: I also wanted to say that it's possible to fit a float switch so that the RO filter dispenses out 21 litres of RO water and whenever this is used for your grow it just automatically dispenses a further 21 litres. This means you don't have to worry about leaving the RO filter running and slowly flooding the place if you forget about it or fall asleep (happened to me a few times!).
 
Cool, sounds like your all your set after you get the Y connector. My washing machine isn't anywhere near my kitchen sink..haha. I am going to buy an RO system that I can just mount somewhere near my laundry room and use a garden hose attatchment, that's probably the easiest for me. Those Y connectors have shut-off valves I believe so when I need to fill a few jugs of RO water, I would just turn that side on going to the RO and let her rip!
 
Make sure you use the threaded plastic connector to connect the RO filter to the cold water mains pipe (not the hot one!) rather than the metal tapping part that bores into the pipe so you can tap the pipe to get water to your RO filter directly rather than screwing anything on. The metal tapping part is a good idea in theory on paper but in practice if you get it wrong you'll destroy the pipe and make a complete mess of it, spraying water everywhere. The threaded plastic connector works very well but make sure you screw it on tightly, but not too tightly otherwise you'll destroy the thread! You can get replacement parts for very little cost or free from the manufacturer (if you destroy them in the process of fitting the RO filter since the parts are shoddy, which they are on most RO filters even if the RO filter itself is of a high quality) then just tell the manufacturer that it didn't come with the part you're after and they'll send it to you for free! I don't see this as morally reprehensible since it's so easy to damage the parts with them being so low quality, so they should replace them for free anyway IMO!

Calcium will lower the Ph of your soil

Wrong way round mate. It tends to raise the pH.
 
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