First attempt.....suggestions?

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bud88

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Hello everyone, this is my first post on here and I could use some advice.
First off let me say that this is also my first attempt at growing and I made the mistake of putting two plants in each pot...big no no right? they were growing like crazy until we had two straight days of heavy rain here in New England(grow is 4 plants outdoors, seeds from a friends outdoor crop from a few years ago. I am guessing that they received too much water for one and now they may not have enough room in the pots to continue to thrive. The plants are almost 7 wks old in veg cycle...they are getting as much sun as I can give them....

should I consider trying to move one plant out of each pot into their own? I am concerned that they wont survive the replanting at this stage?

I have other questions but figure I will tackle this issue first....

thanks to everyone in advance!!

View attachment babies.jpg
 
I can take more pictures if necessary..........also, my first thought was to just let them be and wait to see their sex because I may have males that will have to go which would solve the issue.....
 
Welcome to "The Passion" Bud88. First I would say good job on them so far. As far as growing multiple plants together as you have, it is not good to do that simply because MJ is a high energy plant that will compete with its brothers and sisters for the light. What you end up with is one plant that is stronger and bigger than the other and it strangles out the smaller plant. However, the fight also weakens the larger plant so that it doesn't do as good as it could.

However, that is not devastating and an end all situation. You should not try to separate them at this point because the roots quickly entangle when grown together, and that would damage them severely when you try to tear them apart. You are better off to just let them grow as they are. I personally would top them so that they don't get quite as tall but then again I prefer shorter plants (topping is not necessary). But once they reach sexual maturity and you are able to tell if they are male or female, then you can kill the weaker one if both are female, or kill the male by just snipping it off at the soil level. Just continue to feed them good AFTER you have made the "cull".

I believe you said that you are growing them outside, I hope they are not too smelly as that can draw unwanted attention. Not sure what could be chewing on the leaves but that looks more like animal than bug chewing. If it continues, get some (5-6)halapenos that are very ffresh and boil them in a small amount of water with a couple drops of dish soap until they have turned to mush. Remove the water to a spray bottle and spray that on the vegging plants to prevent most critters from chewing on them.

So what soil are you using for the kids? Are you actively feeding them anything?
 
Soil is fox farm that I got from my buddy, added some organic potting soil to what was in the pots and mixed thoroughly....fertilizer....I was going to use Fox Farm products but when I went to the grow store they were out of them for soil and wouldnt get a new shipment for a week and I was already late fertilizing so the guy at the grow store asked me a few questions and then said to use Medi-One 4-3-3. I am on a budget at the moment but once I switch my luck inside I will use what the experienced growers here recommend.

The guy at the grow store recommended the Medi-One because of my budget and said i can use this throughout the grow instead of having to purchase separate nutrients.....I assume that going this way will not produce the results of using different nutrients at different stages but seeing as the seeds came from my friend and I dont know how many if any females I will end up with I went this route.....

I did top these earlier in their growth but havent in two weeks.....do you suggest I top again?

thanks on the heads up on the critters!!!! My friend who grows in the woods went to check his the other day and the critters did all 16 plants in!!

how much smell will I get once they start to bloom? right now its just a little when we have a breeze....my neighbors on both sides of me are cool so I am not too worried.......
 
i have read different thinks on different sites....what do you recommend for watering cycles as well as feeding schedules?

The babies arent as green as they were earlier?? concern?
 
i have not grown outside since i was a kid back in the early 80's but it looks like your plants are happy. keep reading and you will get a better feel for how your plants are coming along. all i can say is that home grown if you listen to folks with experience will blow away any thing you have bought from a non-grower. great hobby and i think i read you are in massachusetts so you might want to look into getting your doctors recommendation to make it 'legal'. it is pricey but the folks that are doing the recommendations are pretty helpful as far as letting you know what qualifies. and a lot qualifies... like almost anything... then you can grow 10 or 12 plants and have 10 oz's on hand. too much for normal humans to smoke anyway. good luck, bud!
 
The soil and nutrients are fine for now. I haven't heard of the nutrients that you have but they should do ok for vegging.

With growing MJ, it is a little different than growing anything else as MJ is a high energy plant that has very specific needs for getting optimal growth and yield. Growing outside is quite different than growing inside and my experience is with inside growing. I would suspect that your friend lost his to deer as they will eat young MJ plants. The pepper juice should help prevent that though ffor you. I would apply it every week or after a rain.

I saw that you have them in buckets, You may already know this but you want excellent drainage in those buckets so that there is no water standing in the bottoms of them or the plants will quickly drown from a lack of oxygen at the roots. That may be why they don't look as happy since the rain. Also, for plants grown in pots, you will need to get some dolomite lime to add to the soil if you haven't done so already. It is best to do it before you set your plants so that the lime is equally dispersed throughout the soil.

The lack of lime in the natural soil may also be the reason for the plant looking more pale. The lime helps to balance the pH of the soil to around 6.7 while supplying much needed Calcium and Magnesium for the plants to stay strong and green. You can still add it to the top of the soil, called "top dressing" (you may already know this). I would say to add about 1/4 cup of lime to the top of the soil and then use a fork or stick to mix it into the soil some so that it can dissolve into the soil when you water them. You don't want to add too much at a time as it can burn the plants in higher concentrations, so you will have to go back over time and add more.

I would recommend that you buy a TDS meter when you get a chance as they are handy to have when you do your own feeding of the plants. Or you can stick to "organic feeding" if you don't want to do the chemical feeding and having to monitor the pH and TDS. The TDS is the amount or concentration of chemicals in a solution. In the US it is typically measured in "parts-per-million" but you can also use the European measure of EC (electrical conductivity). The pH is very important for growing MJ, but is not as critical when growing with "organics" as you involve other things like lime and microbes which maintain the pH and do the feeding of the plants for you.
 
I am sure others will pipe in with information that I have forgot to mention but for watering plants in pots of soil, it is very important to work out a wet/dry cycle as MJ needs a lot of oxygen in the soil. What most people do is either stick their finger down into the soil and feel the amount of moisture and water when it begins to "feel" dry, or they pick up the pot when they know it is dry and then after watering so that they are able to tell by the weight of it. Eventually, iff you grow long enough, you will learn to recognize when the plants are thirsty and/or hungry just by the way they look. People will say "MJ will tell you what it wants and when". That is true but it takes a while of growing to learn the language. :)
 
Hushpuppy has it covered, everything I was going to write has been said. You are in very good hands here Bud.
 
you guys rock!!! the plants are in 4 gallon pots with multiple drains at the base....when watered the water runs out and i assume that is what i want? i had slight down curling of some leaves which i thought was from too much watering.....
do you all suggest I switch from the MEDI-ONE 4-3-3 to something else for flowering?providing I dont end up with all males...lol...that would suck!
 
I like to have my plants on those plastic plant saucers. i water till it runs out into the saucer. The plants always drink up what is left fairly quickly. If there is water in the saucer after 30 minutes, toss it out. I never have to do that.

If you already have that then use it. I am not familiar with that. I just googled it and it sounds fabulous... So yay!. Enjoy this grow...it is a great hobby or obsession.
 
I read somewhere that you should err on the side of caution and go with half of the recommended amounts of fertilizer? Whats everyones opinion? I have been going a little light with the fertilizer so far and figure I should start seeing some signs of the bloom beginning in about 2 1/2 weeks or so.

If it says 30ml/gallon during flowering should I go for it?

or cut that back?
 
you should really get yourself a ph and ec meters that way you can be sure everything is right where it needs to be
 
im sure there are a million places to purchase these at all different prices.....

what do I really need? With and without bells and whistles....lol
 
i bought a tds meter(like an ec meter) but wound up not even using it. i think they are more important for hydroponics. i made mistakes. like over feeding and under feeding. i am not sure about outside but i know i had better results when i built up from about 1/4 of the recommended dose of nutes to occasionally full strength. outside they may need more if the rain/soil isn't providing what they need. like rosebud said, it is an obsession. enjoy the heck out of it. post pics and ask questions. start a journal and ask people for input. listen to the people who have journals that show plants that look awesome. there is more than one way to grow great weed so some advice may be contradictory but both may be true under certain conditions. i look forward to growing vicariously through you for a while as i am flush with weed and can't justify to my wife another crop for a while...
 
oh and when people tell you you have a couple more weeks until harvest, listen. i harvested too early on too many plants and paid the price in terms of potentcy, flavor and yield.
 
my favorite

hxxps://www.getbluelab.com/ph-pen
 

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