• CD Moderators: someguyontheinternet
  • Cannabis Discussion Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules

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

^ different strains, even different phenotypes of the same strain, can have very different nutrient requirements. This is why people only grow clones of the same plant in recirculating systems using the same nutrient res, such as in NFT and other systems.

Leading on from the earlier discussion about lights, I want to say that even reputable manufacturers such as Phillips etc. have been known to overstate their lights' specifications. Colour temps, PAR values (parts of the spectrum the plants use, it stands for photosynthetically active radiation), lumen output and so on are often wrong. It's so bad I'm surprised Trading Standards haven't gotten involved. So, the moral of the story is that quite often you can't rely of manufacturers to give you accurate data for their lamps.

I am very interested in ceramic metal halide lamps. They apparently have a better output than normal MH lamps and last for longer. An engineer friend of mine has investigated the technology (whatever that involved!) and uses them himself. He has them shipped over from the US. I think they can be used with normal magnetic ballasts and they've been around for a number of years, so the technology is established. I think Phillips or Sylvannia make them, I'm not sure. I'd love to try them though.

edit:

Here's a post from 2008 so things might have moved on a bit:

Ceramic Metal Halide lamps are currently not available in sizes over 400 watts. Philips is working on it, however there is no ETA.

The CMH lamps 150w and lower should work with digital ballasts.

250w and 400w CMH lamps will NOT work with ANY digital ballast EXCEPT the ones SPECIFICALLY made to fire CMH lamps.

250w and 400w CMH lamps will work with most good quality 250w (ANSI S50) and 400w (ANSI S51) HPS ballasts.

How was CMH Invented.
its the Arc tube of HPS and the Gases of Metal halide Basically.. and it created something totally new..
theres a few reasons it hasn't come to our Market faster but thats great all the bugs are out..


Ceramic Metal Halide ( CMH ) competes and Whomps the EYE Hortilux Blue (MT400D/HOR/HTL - BLUE)
comparing the 400 horizontals.. as the vertical 400 and both vertical and horizontal 250 cmh has 20K hours 5k longer than 400 WOW!

.................................EYE-BLUE..........CMH
Ballast........................MH-Probe..........HPS (easy conversion for hps users)
Price .........................$90-100............50-70
Life............................12,000Hrs.........15,000Hrs
Initial Lumens...............29,000.............34,800
Mean Lumens ..............22,000.............29,600
Lumen maintenance.......64%................85%

Now when you take the last 4 lines and really look at that your actually getting Twice the lamp for half the cost..

not only do you get more initial and Mean lumen's a longer life and more usable life (IE 85%)
the CMH has higher Red to Blue ratio and thats what we WANT to promote better Flowering

CMH doesn't Throw Heat like MH or HPS especially MH
it just so happens the arc tube (from the HPS side of the lamp) Blocks and absorbs allot of that energy and instead of radiating it it holds it and releases almost all up.. * Ya cmh does still throw some heat but Nothing compared to Equal Wattage in MH or HPS..

The Philips Retro white is also open Fixture Rated the EYE Blue IS NOT>>
you need to follow those ratings on your lamps if it states Enclosed fixture you better use a fixture rated Enclosed.

now you say but neither have High lumen's like my HPS Extreme.
ya thats because if you notice the SPD on the HPS you will see they increse the Lumen rating by creating more Yellow Light But thats not what we want..
in short hps dumps about IMPHO 50% of its Total outputted energy where the plant cant absorb it. where as cmh when you compare its Whole output about 25% about wasted like HPS (that 50% and 25% is not fully wasted just 95% of it.. in that range
 
Last edited:
Kinda Curious, has anyone had pH problems with Tiger Bloom?
I used 1 tsp per gallon (it recommends two)
I made 2 gallons, used 2 tsp, and started trying to adjust my ph, It litterally took about 75-100 drops of base to bring it back to 5.9-6.0
Idk, I threw out the water ,used one half a teaspoon, and some grow big, and it was easier to adjust...


Also, I still have the tops of my plants yellowing, and its spreading down, but kinda slowly, I've added seaweed kelp to the soil for nitrogen recently before the last watering, and, Ive still been using a tsp or so of grow big, when they are almost 2 weeks flower.
Ive added Micro nutes,
I used catalyst , some meta-k
and they are still yellow
Ph is 6.0-6.7, my ppm is about 650-75.
 
Last edited:
prelude, you should have sprayed the leaves with micro nutes before adding it to the soil. By spraying the leaves you bypass any soil/lock out problems and put your finger on exactly what needs to be added in feedings. Based on the amount of stuff you've been watering with, I'm almost sure you have a salt or ph related lock out going on. IE you have enough nutrients in the soil, they just aren't being absorbed by the plants.
 
Soooo

About a week ago, I was trimming one of my babys of some dead leaves. While I'm doing this my gf decides its time for a blowjob....I didnt disagree, lol. So I put the plant down on a desk next to my bed...I finish up, look over, its on the FLOOR with its ROOTs out! I went from so happy to so sad in less than a second, I scoop it up gently and put it back in its pot.


How the roots came out, idk. Anyway i expected the plant to die, but it didnt. Then th next day Im at work and I tell my girl to please give the plant some molasses. I assumed she knew what to do since Ive told her A MILLION FUCKING TIMES...but, she dosent. She just pouured a huge glob on the soil. It started to get nutrient burn and I didnt know why till I went over how she feed it like a day later. I flushed it and now my plant is just in super shock, lmao.

It didnt die but do you think it will EVER go back to normal veg? I had another plant in shock and it never went back to normal even months later.
 
It'll take some time, but some plants do recover from shock, Ive dropped 2-3 plants, fell out of the pot , roots everywhere, put them back in the pot softly, gave some water, they took a week to start growing again, but it was slow, takes about a month to start growing like normal IME.
Some may not recover, just depends on the plant, just give it some TLC and dont let your girl touch your plants if she doesn't know what shes doing , Id be scared to give someone directions to feed my plants or do anything to them, if you haven't done it before, you're more than likely going to end up doing it wrong, or atleast thats been the case for me, 1st grow awful, 2nd grow, not going as bad , but definantly not anything special I can see yet.
Though I do have some Nice long 1/4-1/2 inch pistols on my Afghan Kush and my Healthy Northern Lights is really starting to bud, the G13 has a nice main cola starting , other than that, things have been moving pretty slow, wonder if its the temp drop, Its been below freezing outside, my digital thermostat in my closet reads 70-75 degrees, with a RH of 30% (roughly)
 
Kinda curious, Ive added alot of Nitrogen, the leaves still seem to be just straight yellow, no colored veins, Ive checked their run off, its about 600-700PPM, with a ph of 6.0-6.7, Whats wrong with em?

Yeah, it didn't get cold up until two days ago, should've been below freezing last month, lol, barely even happened at the end of this month, atleast the bugs are gone :D


-edit-
Well, The two plants doing the best are the ones in the biggest pots. (3gal), Im going to upsize the rest of them tomorrow before they start fully flowering, Is this okay to do about a week and a half or so into flower? I know I should have thought about it before, just didnt cross my mind, I could put two plants in a 5 gal , haha.idk, any advice?
 
Last edited:
^^sounds like the best plan of action. IMO you probably overfed. Did you do a foliage feed yet?
 
Kinda curious, Ive added alot of Nitrogen, the leaves still seem to be just straight yellow, no colored veins, Ive checked their run off, its about 600-700PPM, with a ph of 6.0-6.7, Whats wrong with em?

Yeah, it didn't get cold up until two days ago, should've been below freezing last month, lol, barely even happened at the end of this month, atleast the bugs are gone :D


-edit-
Well, The two plants doing the best are the ones in the biggest pots. (3gal), Im going to upsize the rest of them tomorrow before they start fully flowering, Is this okay to do about a week and a half or so into flower? I know I should have thought about it before, just didnt cross my mind, I could put two plants in a 5 gal , haha.idk, any advice?

Start watering with plain tapwater at room temp and feed foliarly through the leaves, like Mehm suggested. You're messing about too much with all these different products if you want my honest opinion.

Don't forget to use a Yucca extract containing water tension-reducing saponins with the foliar spray to avoid the liquid beading up and failing to get absorbed. Your regular grow/bloom nutrients will do.
 
I sprayed them with some micro nutes, but the plants are starting to have quite a few pistils, but they are still yellowing, is it still okay to spray them with that?

And I never over fed my plants, I was using 1/2 of what was suggested. Because for some reason Tiger Bloom seems to be straight acid when I combine it with my RO water I had to pour in 1/8th bottle of base just to get the pH back up to 5.5, (I threw that water out figured it'd kill the plants, that much base combined with the ACID tiger bloom.




Well, What should I be spraying the leaves with? Grow big? Cal mag? Nitrogen? Micro Nutes? Meta K?Big Bloom? Tiger bloom ,

-edit- (Didnt finish reading that post, guess Ill just try spraying some grow big/big bloom mix for the foliar, since it seems to be a bit if a nitrogen problem. and I haven't been using ALL of these products, I HAVE these products, I have used the micro nutes, yes, but not really much of any Catalyst or Meta K (Earth Juice so its called) I was told catalyst will help the plants uptake in nutrients. used it only once , just because I was trying to get my ppm to 700

this condition hasn't spread to my afghan kush, or my Big Northern Lights as of yet, but I do see some signs of them having a hard time finding nutes, should I flush with my RO water, which is 0-15ppm, or should I use my tap which come out at about 425-450ppm?
And if I did flush , what would be my next step? Letting them dry up? Adding nutes? Adding anything? what should I do.
I dont have much experience, and I know that you guys are probably irritated with my plant problems by now, lol, but I just wanna learn how to get this rolling so I can just , keep harvest after harvest and know what to do when something goes wrong.

I fixed all my problems from last grow, and now Im running into new ones, So, I really dont know how to fix it unless Im gonna do it by trial and error :/

Well, I've got the flu , time to go back to bed (I hate flu shots , guess I should've got one this year)

(yes , that is correct, we have alot of crap in the water here, hence why we bought an RO system, the schools send out letters ever year telling the kids to bring water bottles because they cant drink the schools water(from the faucets)
 
grape ape on the seventh
NSFW:
5157499310_2cb83ca6aa_z.jpg


grape ape today
NSFW:
5213734908_dbced9f638_z.jpg


the cold weather has made a difference

green crack on the seventh

NSFW:
5156897387_16a7822bbe.jpg


green crack today
NSFW:

5213734894_1189d64407_z.jpg

NSFW:

5213734902_e656a9c0b5_z.jpg

kings kush

prelude give those fuckers some big bloom iin the soil, that shit helps undo lockout and stabilizes the soil.
 
Big Bloom will help?

Hey Arob, do you use the FF line , or tried it before, have you had any problems with the Tiger Bloom to be Ridiculously acidic to the point its not worth using?

The bottle says 2-3 tsp per gallon.
I made 2 1/2 gallons, used 2 tsp, I checked the pH of my water which was 8.5 before using the tiger bloom, after adding the 2 tsp it was fucking below 4pH.
I had to use almost 1/4 a bottle of base to even bring it back up to 5.5 (threw out the water, idk wtf happened) but Tiger bloom seems to be like pure Acid , IME.

My larger plant are doing just fine,
My smaller plants are ALL starting to have the yellowing at the top...
I watched it happen, I tried adding nitrogen to fix it while it was happening, but that doesnt seem to fix it.

The way the plants went was weird, the top leaves started to go from a darker/healthier green. The plant that is now developing the same problem is starting to yellow , it seems like, its yellow an green stripes all down the leaf, (Not like prominent stripes, but, you can see it goes light green/darkgreen/light green/dark green/ all the way down the leaf, kind of odd. Idk, Im trying, Doubt Ill find out what it is before they die, or put out crappy buds, but , I'm trying.

Took Clones today , mostly of Afghan Kush, as that seems to be the strongest plant in the closet, I want to keep it.
I also cloned a northern lights off of the stronger of the two, Hopefully they make it, I wasn't very careful like I normally am doing the cloning, I was in a hurry. We will see how it goes, lemme check and see if I've got new pics.



-edit-


SadSd1.jpg

My sad Sour Diesel
SadSD.jpg

Dont know why everything else looks fine


AK2.jpg


lol my Afghan Kush, about half my size. starting to flower, has some very LONG hairs from the pistils, looks pretty,
 
Last edited:
bit of discusion above regarding foliar feeding, definately needed in the growth process but the common mistake is how much is enough, most people over do it.
i use the in-famous product liquidlight + penetrator from dutchmaster works a treat, in the growth period i use it once every three days, this personally helps me with yellowing of the leaves in particular at the tips of the leaves
 
(yes , that is correct, we have alot of crap in the water here, hence why we bought an RO system, the schools send out letters ever year telling the kids to bring water bottles because they cant drink the schools water(from the faucets)
It could be the water your using that's cuasing the lockout?

Maybe try flushing with bottled water bought from a store?

When these types of deficiencys show it's usually to do with either the pH of the water your using or the pH in the soil. If your positive the run off water is around 6.5 then im guessing your tap water has stuff in it which is fucking with your girls.

Also @ Mistee. Plant's will grow just as well without foliar feeds so their not nessecary. Ive never used a foilar feed before and have grown many healthy girls.
 
It could be the water your using that's cuasing the lockout?

Maybe try flushing with bottled water bought from a store?

When these types of deficiencys show it's usually to do with either the pH of the water your using or the pH in the soil. If your positive the run off water is around 6.5 then im guessing your tap water has stuff in it which is fucking with your girls.

Also @ Mistee. Plant's will grow just as well without foliar feeds so their not nessecary. Ive never used a foilar feed before and have grown many healthy girls.

Ohh yeah definately, i agree most foliar feeds are a crock of shite, ive just positive responses from this product in previous times.
but i have mates that turn out top notch product with absolutely no foliar at all.. i will admit i kinda like doing it, makes me feel all science like
 
Last edited:
Yeah I knew a fella down in SA who got some of that liquid lite as a freebie a few years ago when it first came out. I cant remember wheather he tryed it out or not. Would be nice to see how the product does outdoors for plant's in more shaded area's though.
 
There's nowt wrong with using foliar sprays to correct deficiencies. In fact, that's the quickest, most efficient way to deal with them. I also give my plants an occasional foliar seaweed extract and microbial sprays, such as AACTs or other microbial protection against disease.

However, sprays designed only to be used as foliar sprays which contain nutrients are a con. Normal feedig should be done through the roots. All they are is diluted nutrients.

I think people (not referring to anyone here) have a bad habit of overcomplicating things, and fucking up so that their end yield is lower than if they'd used the KISS principle. Growing plants doesn't have to be hard.
 
Last edited:
yes big bloom will help, it will also help buffer the tiger bloom.

you should be using it way more than the tiger bloom 0.01-0.3-0.7 VS 2-8-4.

TB is very acidic you might try using tap water so the end result is something with a more neutral PH;try putting BB and TB together and see if mixing TB with the BB does not have an effect to stabilize PH.
I doubt you have a shortage of nutes, this is a lockout due to PH or excess nutes.


QUIT FERTILIZING, i told you it wasn't a N def adding N is probably making things worse.

Have you been using big bloom? as directed? if your using TB already you should have already given them plenty of BB by now. its great stuff that helps regulate soil PH.

go easy on the TB as it says app rates that are pretty high on the bottle.

this is what i would do FLUSH, then give a 3 tbsp/gallon big bloom drenching to all plants. and do a foliar spray of some micronutes and see if that helps on a localized area and look for improvements to see if you can figure out exactly whats wrong. if the micronutes help spray everything down. you will still need to flush though because if the micronute foliar works that means you have locked out some micronute with either PH or excess ions so that will have to be rectified.

Also the pistills are the hairs you are talking about. they come out of the calyx.


i did some research look into some epsom salts for sulfur deficiency and an iron supplement, TB got iron though so probably not that.
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=11688

try a foliar spray with some epsom salts to see if it helps.
 
Last edited:
on foliar sprays...

Rain water has high levels of N. Perhaps consider if your strain is from a rainy climate (most likely is).

A weak mix of compost tea (for aerobes) and EM (for anaerobes) is a great foliar feed. Not only do these pro-biotics promote plant health, they put a "bio-shield" on the plants. Now fungus and bacterial infections can't get a foot hold. This makes them more resistant to insect attack as well. If you do develop mold, fungus, or rot, hit it with home made colloidal silver. This will kill everything and is totally non-toxic. See the thread in healthy living for more info on this compound.
 
Top