First time grower (go figure) looking for tips on the basics

RO = reverse osmosis, water that has been purified by running through a RO filter. Not as pure as distilled water but very close. My city has these water machines everywhere that you fill up a 5 gal water bottle for a dollar. Many growers buy a RO filter and use it at home to make their own from tap water.

2 ways to lollipop, wait til before flowering and then remove everything on the bottom half of the plant is the traditional way What I prefer to do is remove the branches as they grow in, why bother letting the lower branches grow big just to cut them off later? Seems like a huge waste of plant resources doing it that way. Better to cut them off as soon as you can.

On this plant, I removed lower branches as soon as they came in for the first 10 nodes, then I let 5 or 6 sets of branches (all at the top) grow in before flowering, making a monster bud tree.

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@Hellraiser that is beautiful… love the shape to it! I see some people do a very heavy trimming of leaves during flower… besides the lollipop, what are your opinions on it?

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Depends on grow style. With my usual crowded 4 topped plants method, it is necessary to do a heavy defol otherwise the upper leaves shade too many bud sites. With a less crowded grow style, like the bud tree, such a heavy defol is not needed and was not done. The more crowded the plants are, the more beneficial the heavy defol is.

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@Hellraiser so I’ve read on a few other threads people having trouble dialing in the floranova nutes (plants either look hungry or notice some burn). With that being I said I know I read on one of your
Journals that you use Advanced Nutrients line but what in specific combination do you use?

Also what type of fox farm soil do you use (there’s a lot of different types out there)

Thanks in advance :grin:

I mostly used Happy Frog potting soil (moved on to coco now) and the Advanced Nutrients Connoisseur line with all supplements except Bud Factor X. I followed the nutrient calculator on Advanced Nutrients website at the grand master level for Connoisseur Grow and Connoisseur Bloom, it lists all the combinations they want you to use. I have since moved on the Jacks 321, but was very happy with Advanced Nutrients.

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Hi there @Mouthbreather, hope you don’t mind me jumping in. I started my first grow around the same time you did. Luckily, so far so good (mostly) on my 3 photos—AK47, bubblegum and white widow. All in FF soil (started with Happy Frog then moved to 75-25 mix of Ocean Forest/HF.

I’ve had a bit of yellowing and taco-ing leaves lately and wasn’t sure if it was lights, moisture, ph or nutrients. It’s hard for us newbies to know which issues will work themselves out and which ones require action, but one lesson I learned is to change only one variable (lighting, nutes, ph, etc) at a time, otherwise you won’t know what the real cause is.

I’ve found this thread to be really helpful to figure out what is normal vs ideal vs problematic:

Can’t advise you on the leaf discoloration—I’ve had some but it seems to resolve as leaves mature— but seems you’re in good hands with @Hellraiser and @scorpion.

I’ve tended to overthink every day of planning and growing, some of the veterans have to remind me to just enjoy the grow even if it isn’t textbook. It seems most plants are pretty resilient as long as we get the basics right.

I look forward to watching your grow, keep at it!

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@Naptown

Thanks for the input! And happy to hear your grow is going well… I’ve had to face some (pests, nute deficiencies) wish I would’ve done more research before just jumping in. But on the plus side I’m learning an insane amount of info and working through the problems hands on creates a different level of knowledge then just reading. I’m going to check out your journal :grin:

Well currently the power is out in the entire area… hopefully this changes soon. @Hellraiser I did as you recommended with the heavier hand on nutes and water. The color is really coming back to the two plants but as I said earlier almost looked like a bit of nute burn. I will share a picture in the upcoming week.

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So power is back on after about 24 hrs of being out, hopefully there is no serious effect to the plants. This is an update after increasing the feeding and increasing the water to a gallon per plant…

The girls are starting to look better then they were but as you can see there is some nute burn going on. Having a tough time dialing in the nutes. Recommended strength is a bit too strong, when I dial back they’re left looking hungry.

@Hellraiser @SKORPION I noticed some odd looking brown spots that are popping up just on one plant. Any idea what this could be? Deficiency? Disease?

Also is there any preventative I can start now for mites? I’ve done outdoors a few times here and have been plagued by spider mites

Also did some trimming of the lower branches which is shown in the last picture… not sure if i took off too much / too little

The brown spots looks like typical calcium deficiency, need calmag or more of it.

I spray my plants with a neem oil mix for pest prevention in veg every 2 weeks, works for most pests, all I ever see is occasional fungus gnats. I don’t spray plants in flowering unless absolutely necessary.

Looks fine for now, probably want to take some more off before flowering.

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@Hellraiser so I ran into another issue… seems like I’m pretty good at that. Besides the on going nute issue (I purchased a few other products in the Floranova line to aaa
supplement the current nutes I’m using, waiting on those to ship).

I noticed my top canopy is yellowing, bud production has slowed/haulted. I flipped to 12/12 on 10/27 and I feel like these girls are big time behind in bud production?

The top canopy is yellowing but below that is a nice color green. I also noticed the newest leaves are all twisted. Below are some pics. Any recommendations?

I appreciate all the help this far.

At first I thought my light was too close to the plants and raised them, they’re at 18”

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There’s something keeping your plants from flowering, should have big buds by now, looks they started flowering and then went back into veg, need to check timers, equipment and power strips in tent with indicator leds on them (tape them over), light getting into tent during dark hours, etc…

Having light too close can definitely cause the yellowness in the canopy but a separate issue from the lack of bud growth.

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@Hellraiser well you were right, when the power outage happened the timer switched to full time power… can’t believe I didn’t catch this sooner.

Are they ruined at this point? Where do I go from here? :sleepy:

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Not ruined, you just super-cropped them, get them back to 12/12 light schedule and they’ll go back to flowering, just lost some time but will probably get a little bigger yield from it.

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@Hellraiser phew… that’s good news. Little confused, by putting them back in veg I super cropped them? Or I should super crop them going forward?

One form of super cropping is revegging flowering plants and then flowering them, the growth will be a bit different but in a good way.

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@Hellraiser so the plants are producing buds again. I’m still struggling with deficiencies… I believe cal/mag/iron. I’ve read that Epsom salts are great to use for these.

How do I apply Epsom salts? Can I use at the same time as calmag or should I cut that out? Do Epsom salts help with iron?

Can I use Epsom salts that I find from a drug store?

Sorry for the 100 questions just trying to figure out how to get these girls healthy

Epson salt is great at supplying magnesium which looks like what your plant needs. Can just mix with water at 1 tablespoon per gal. Adding calmag would add even more magnesium and calcium, maybe too much, unless you see brown spots on leaves (calcium problem) then I’d just go with the epsom salt for now. Any non-scented epsom salt would be fine and should be available at drug stores.

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I fed plants on Saturday (12/26) test ppm in (900) and ppm out (1400) realized I had an issue since I never feed anything over 900 ppm thus far. I also measured ph out and it was 5.2… I don’t understand why this is because I always ph everything in at 6.2-6.5.

Today I did a heavy flush of all plants. I watered with plain water at ph 6.5. Measured run off of all plants at 6.3 then stopped flushing (~300 ppm)

Hopefully this will help my nute deficiency issues.