Grow Journal for my first two plants

[Trede]

Well, the complete flush seems to have agreed with the plants. After ~15 gallons of tap water, each plant got one last rinse with about a gallon of pure, pH corrected water. Once that had stopped dripping from the bottom of the pots, they were saturated with approx 1/4 dose of nutrients and drained of excess one last time. Soil pH is now 6.5 and here are fresh pics.

Edit: before I forget, while I was flushing the plants I noticed that both of them have bright white roots peeking out the bottom holes of their containers.

 

[Trede]

About to go out of town for a couple days and wanted to have before and after pics to track growth rate.

 

[Trede]

Back from our trip. Anyone have any insight into why the Jack has SOO much lower growth, while the Chem is looking a bit stretchy? I know they're different strains, and maybe it's just me, but I would value the opinions of the more experienced in this.

 

[pcduck]

Different strains different growth patterns. A grower would have to research into the strains' lineage to find which strain is causing what growth pattern. That is if all other grow parameters are the same.

Looking nice:aok:

 

[Trede]

Just got my 1000W ballast. T5, LEDs and CFLs are all out of the tent. Now it's just a 1000W MH for a bit, then on to the HPS. My only concern at this point is temperature. Within 30 minutes of the MH being on, the temp in the tent rose to 84F. Exhaust fan is now cranked to 100%, will monitor for a bit to see if temp comes down.

 

[Growdude]

84 at the top of your plants?
If so thats not that bad, try to keep it the max.

 

[Trede]

Yeah, temp stayed pretty stable for the hour or so I watched it before work. Did a bit more reading, and am much less worried about temp now, especially since mh trend to run warmer than hps. If all continues to go well, I might be switching them over to flower some time next week

 

[Trede]

Realized it had been a few days since I posted pics. I had to take the pics in a different location because the MH is too bright, just glitches my poor camera out. 86-88F in the tent all day, and the ladies apparently didn't mind it. Continuing to monitor, but I'm glad they'll be flowering soon so I can have the lights off during the day.

 

[trillions of atoms]

Looking good man, thg laid it out as well as others... Water works fine as a "flushing solution". Dude.... Don't buy into hype!


Your plants Will do better if you just stay on top of your pH and give them a proper nutrient spectrum throughout the grow instead of trying to buy bloom boosters and accelerators blah blah blah blah blah....

Master the growing part of it and then you can worry about increasing yield later down the road

 

[Trede]

Oh yeah, that's something else I should be putting in the journal...I did get a soil moisture/pH meter a little while ago. Soil pH has been very slowly creeping up as the soil dries, but it hasn't gone past 7 yet. When I water/feed (which I'll probably need to do today or tomorrow...they're thirstier now that they're warmer) I set the pH to about 6. The soil ends up reading out at about 6.5 and gradually climbing to 7 until I water again.

Still trying to decide how tall to let them get before I switch them to 12/12, if and how much I want to "prune" for light penetration...all that happy noise. I don't want to do anything TOO involved, but the Jack Herer plant (in the green pot) would probably benefit from a trim...

 

[trillions of atoms]

You need a quality ph meter and do ALOT more research.

The meter you have is junk.

 

[Trede]

Today is day 1 of flowering! Trimmed and took clones yesterday, stayed up until 5 to turn off the light and swap the bulb (on time 4pm to 4am to reduce heat issues). Just mixed the nutes and watered. I'll take pics after a bit, trying to make sure temp/RH are stable.

Also, the clones look good. They wilted a bit last night, but by the time I woke up they were perked right up!

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

Why did you flush your plants? Were you having problems with them?

 

[Dman1234]

You need a quality ph meter and do ALOT more research.

The meter you have is junk.

I have to agree, soil ph meters are useless.

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

Temps in the high 80s will affect growth. Do you have an air coolable hood? What size is your exhaust fan and how is your ventilation set up?

Throw that soil pH meter in the garbage--it is worse than useless because you believe that you are checking the soil pH, but they are so inaccurate that you cannot trust any readings you get from it. If you have a good soil mixture with lime in it, you should just be able to pH your nute solution and the water and not worry about the soil pH.

I personally wouldn't be for doing any trimming on those plants. They are not so large or overgrown that they need trimming.

 

[Trede]

The trimming was mostly to get clones, tbh. I flushed the soil a while ago to get rid of the MG nutes in the soil and have been using GH flora series since (at about half strength, following their schedule). I've been pHing the water as normal, just thought it was interesting that as the soil dried, the meter red higher.

The light is in a 6" diameter cool tube, and the exhaust fan is a ridiculous monstrosity that moves air fast enough to cave in the tent, even with all 3 passive flaps at the bottom open, so I have it turned down just below that point (for some reason I am under the impression that the plants would be unhappy living in a half vacuum..?). The temp in the tent is pretty stable at 84, humidity is around 20%.

Also, I don't think you can see it in these pics, but under the HID light some of the leaves have little tiny sparkles on them...and under my hand microscope they look like the kind of trichomes that don't have stems (just the heads). There aren't many of them, but is it normal for them to develop any this early? Are these something else entirely that will kill the plants? Wish I could take pictures of them, but my camera can't handle the HID light.

 

[Trede]

Unfortunately, even though they have the same everything, one of my plants is having issues. The lights are off right now, but I'll post pics when they come back up. My best guess is that for some reason it got over/under nuted. Lower leaves yellowing and spotty, some even turning completely yellow and getting brittle. I just think it's odd that the other plant is perfectly happy...been giving them ~1/2 to 2/3 strength nutes and they were both looking healthy until the other day. Before I do anything, I'll see if I get any advice from the pics.

 

[Trede]

As I mentioned before, the other plant looks perfectly healthy...I'll put up some pics of that one a bit later, for now just trying to figure out what to do to keep this one from getting worse

 

[lindseyj]

Looks good. If your marijuana plant has no problems or illnesses, than light is the biggest factor that affects how quickly your plant grows during the vegetative stage.

 

[Trede]

Well, apparently a couple of yellowing and/or spotty leaves aren't really slowing the chem down...she's like 2" taller than the Jack plant