Nutes & trimming questions...

[Carlo]

In my pursuit of growing denser & more potent buds, I'm trying to make improvements.

1) I only use fox farms products, soil, nutes, & additives. I've never used any other brand. However, I tend to nute on the lighter side. That is, I tend to give lighter dosages & only start using the nutes after about week 3 or 4......Should I nute with heavier dosages & start sooner? What about using molasses? I saw something like Humboldt molasses. What about using something other than fox farms for nutes, soil, additives, etc.?

2) I've noticed in photos that most growers tend to trim off the bottom 1/3 of the plant. I don't. I do trim off the dying water leaves. Should I begin trimming the bottom 1/3 of plant? I generally don't get much bud from that area from past grows anyways......Also, some plants have pretty large & healthy water leaves that seem to block light from better reaching the bottom of the plants. However, I don't trim those off....Should I?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[PuffinNugs]

the only thing i use is the Humboldt Nutrients (hxxp://humboldtnutrients.com/) lineup and additives. i love the stuff. they also make good soil i hear, going to try it out on my next grow its called Humboldt Mix

im on the oneness program to be exact but theres a couple other great programs of thiers also to use.

i normally end up trimming the lower 3 nodes myself, sometimes less. they never really grow like the upper ones and waste energy imo. they also are good for clones if you feel like cloning.

 

[Hushpuppy]

Optimizing your grow is not something that any one person can tell you what to do that is the optimizing tool. It really is something that you have to work and experiment with over several grows.

There are the basics for supplying the plants' needs as best as possible: maximum light for a given area in the best spectrum for the photo-cycle, properly PH ballanced water and nutrients. Proper amount of air ventilation for maintaining temperatures and CO2 levels.

But then the real optimizing comes into play when you learn how much nutrients the plant strain prefers, how large a plant strain "likes" to grow, and even how much light or temps the plant prefers. These things, these more subtle excentricities of a plant or plant strain take several repeated grows to learn. Once you grow one line out to harvest, you will learn a lot of little things about the plants. what they like and don't like, and you adjust that on the next grow. And after the next grow you will have learned more about the plant such as which training method, if any, will produce better, bigger, or more buds. Or if the plant yeilds better as a taller, thinner plant or as a shorter, bushier plant. At the end of each grow, you will have learned a little more about your plant, and if you make adjustments each time, you will see the results improve.

The best advice for optimizing your grow, I guess, would be to always keep notes on everything you do with your grow for looking back on them for the next grow. Don't try to make changes too fast during a grow. Stick to one method for the entire grow to prove whether it truelly works. Don't make wholesale changes to your grow unless you have proven that the whole setup is flawed, as often multiple problems within a grow could be solved with a few minor changes rather than completely changing to another system setup. Don't try to work with more than 2 strains in one grow until you get good and familiar with your growing style. Remember that every setup is unique to that person and their environment, what might work for them may not work for you even if your setups are very similar

 

[Roddy]

Molasses won't be much help (if any) for you, you're killing all the stuff that would benefit from the molasses with the FF nutes...imho!!

 

[Carlo]

Thanks for the feedback & I think that your right, in that I need to concentrate on a strain or two and learn how to grow that specific strain....With the ease of ordering from Attitude, and the freebies they give, I've kind of have been like a kid in a candy store trying all the candy but not really enjoying a specific one...I ordered seeds this March 2, to celebrate Attitudes birthdate, and I was given 7 free seeds of various quality strains to try!! I only ordered from the pick & mix, Purple Wreck, LSD, and Pineapple Express, but it comes with 7 extra feminized seeds, most of which I'm been curious on trying to grow(OG Kush #18; MK-Age; White Widow, etc.)....That being said, I'm going to concentrate on growing those 3 strains that I bought & just save the rest of the seeds...Package should arrive within next few days.

 

[Carlo]

As for using molasses, I'm not sure what you meant by my nutes are killing all of the stuff molasses would feed....what does that mean? What is being killled? Nutes shouldn't be used, if molasses is being used?

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

Chemical nutrients can kill the microbes in the soil, thereby making anything like molasses that takes microbes to break down useless.

 

[Locked]

I think a lot of peeps don't understand that molasses shld really be used in Organic soil grows. It feeds the micro herd....Chem nutes wind up killing off any beneficial micro so there is nothing to feed. Basically you feed the soil in Organic not the plant. Jmo

 

[Roddy]

:yeahthat:

 

[Hushpuppy]

I agree Hammy; I think many people don't know or understand the basic chemistry behind horticulture at the soil level. The thing that is most important to know is that plants can't digest nutrients like animals do, so all of the nutrients have to be chelated(fancy word for digested and broken down and made available to the plant).

In nature, all of the elemental and organic nutrients that come from rock-minerals and "composted" organic matter are broken down and made available to the plants roots by micro-organisms in the soil. These microbes decompose the dead matter on the forest floor while other microbes deep in the soil break down rocks into basic minerals. At the same time there are other microbes in the soil that literally live in a symbiotic relationship with plants. These microbes carry the basic nutrients to the roots and trade with the roots for the carbohydrates that they need to live.

In this manner, the plants get the "chelated" nutrients that they need. When you pour molasses into the soil, you are giving the microbes raw carbs that supercharge them and cause them to reproduce and increase the ranks of "chelation workers".

On the other hand, scientists today have found methods for "artificially" chelating all of the nutrients that plants need, and have bottled these "nutes" to sell to the public. These nutes work very well for feeding the plants what they need without having to inlist the help of microbes and wait for them to make the nutrients available to the plants. The one drawback is that the commercial chelation process involves certain chemicals and an overall environment that is hostile to the microbes that "organic" and general growers like to use.

So really any of the additives that add carbs to the soil only serve the microbes in the soil and not the plant.
There are some that are supposed to give raw carbs that the plants can absorb and use but I don't know enough about them to say if they are truely good or bad.

So, if you want to use the natural, organic method, then you need to focus on supplying all of the soil ammendments when setting up the soil before starting the grow, then add microbes to that and focus efforts on feeding them rather than the plant itself. If you don't want to go that route or you have already set up everything without taking all of that into consideration, then you would be best to stick with chemical nutes, at least for this go around. And study up on the organic setup for the next round.