Awesome looking plant. Outmotherfrickinstanding 
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Makes amazing hash, since there’s so many trichs, even the leaves and stems are covered in trichs, why she’s so sticky I imagine.
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Woulda loved to have had on of those, for sure
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Pests
We all hate pests (bugs). Over the 30 years or so of indoor growing I’ve seen a good bit of them. Have had spider mites a few times, thrips a few times, powdery mildew once, and fungus gnats more times than I can remember. Hell, I have fungus gnats right now and they are the only real bugs I’ve had in over a decade. At least fungus gnats are easy to get rid of.
Prevention
The best way not to get pets is through prevention. Worst time to get bugs is in the middle of flowering because it sucks to have to spray your buds with anything made to kill bugs. So it’s best to make sure your plants don’t have any bugs when they go into flowering by doing lots of prevention while in veg.
I spray my non-flowering plants with a Neem oil product every couple weeks as a preventative measure. Some people go even further and use multiple products along with Neem, like Azamax and Spinosad, and rotate them every week. If you get a lot of bugs, that is something you should consider.
So even with preventative measures in place I still got fungus gnats. Well, those measures have kept out or killed off spider mites, thrips, and who knows what else. But can’t do much to prevent fungus gnats, one follows you in, then 1 makes 20 and 20 makes 400, yeah don’t let it get out of control. It’s rained more than usual here, thus a fungus gnat explosion outdoors, literally clouds of them out there. So it did not take long to notice a couple fungus gnats in my room where the tents are. So, found the mosquito bits and put on top of soil so when you water, it gets applied to your soil which will kill the larvae. But the adults are walking around on the soil, yeah hate seeing that so I get some diatomaceous earth and apply to top of soil so they won’t be walking around long.
Famers never take a day off
As indoor farmers, we must check our crops everyday, there are no days off, no vacations, cows need to be milked and plants need to get watered and fed and checked. Every day, you should be checking on your plants, look closely at the leaves for any damage, look for any signs of bugs, anything moving in the soil. Finding a bug problem early is much better than finding it late. This also gives you a chance to check if watering is needed.
I like nothing better than to come home from work, load up a pipe and spend 30 minutes checking on my plants, every day.
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Great stuff. We need pinned posts for stuff like this.
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I’m about to do the first application of neem oil to the sprouts and clones. You can buy a ready to use product or buy neem oil and mix it yourself, 5 ml neem oil to 1 liter/quart of water, add some drops of dishwashing soap. I have a ready to use product here that I will be using:
Turn off your lights when applying or apply at end of light cycle. I usually just turn my light off for a couple/few hours to let it dry up before turning the light back on. I also turn off all my fans for a while (like an hour) but I turn my fans back on before the light, to help dry the plants off.
Don’t spray your plants with lights on.
Shake your container very well (neem oil doesn’t like to mix or stay mixed) then just spray the hell out of your plants, get all sides, tops of leaves, bottoms of leaves, everywhere. The neem oil will not hurt your plants if mixed properly so apply liberally. Then let it get soaked in by the plant for an hour or 2, then I like to give them a little shake to get some excess off and turn on the fans to help them dry out, an hour or 2 later turn the light back on.
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Don’t spray neem oil on your buds, only use in veg or before buds form.
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Very detailed right from the get go! That cherry ice cream looks amazing!!! Mind if I tag along? I’m sure I can learn a few things.
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Welcome aboard and come along for the ride.
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Keep track of your watering, nutes, and other events.
Ever wonder, did I water them yesterday or the day before? Did I fert last watering? How much nutes did I use? Stop wondering and keep track, either on a spreadsheet, or an app, a notebook, or a paper on a clipboard attached to your tent, whatever works for you. Also lets you plan your watering and feeding, you’ll know when you’re watering again as the patterns show every 3 or 4 days or whatever. Put enough info so you know what, when, and how much. Also helpful to keep track of events, when you flipped lights to 12/12, notes to yourself about nute adjustments, flowering period adjustments you should make, when planted seeds, when clones were started…
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@Hellraiser, I noticed a lot of your post are about growing the same strain on your grows. Any feedback for us growing different strains at the same time? All female non autos for me.
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@zee, I like to grow similar plants together so they will be about the same size and height and give me a relatively even canopy of tops. Growing vastly different strains at the same time, while good for variety, can give you a mix of short ones and tall ones and goodbye even canopy. So the short ones will be further away from the light (listen to the song The Trees by Rush).
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Yeah that works, used a calendar like that for many years.
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Watering
Seems like an easy thing, water when the plants need it, yet watering is one of the biggest challenges to new growers.
Only water when the soil is dry. Never water moist soil. A couple ways to determine if your soil is dry, pick up the pot, if it’s heavy, it’s full of water, if it’s really light, it’s dry. Water is heavy, 8.34 pounds a gallon. Get a feel for how light the pot is before you water the first time, this is how light it should be when you water it. Pick up your pot after you’ve watered and feel how heavy it is.
Marijuana plants like wet/dry cycles, also referred to as the flood/drought watering method. Water fully til there is a little runoff then let it dry out and repeat as needed.
In some cases you may not to able to use this method, if you have a small plant in a big pot for example, like say a sprout in a 5 gal pot, flooding the pot is not going to work as it will take weeks to dry and your sprout will be suffering from over-watering and may even damp off or get root rot and die due to staying wet for too long.
In that case you should give small enough amounts of water that will dry up within a few days. This is why I don’t do small plants in big pots, start in a small pot where you can flood/drought without issue and move up to bigger pots as your plants get bigger. this is the way for fast plant growth. Will cover transplanting in more detail in a latter post.
Over watering
One of the biggest problems I see with new growers is over watering. Over watering occurs when plants are watered too often (or too much in a small plant/big pot situation). In a proper size container for the plant, you can’t really over water by giving too much water at once. When using a good potting soil like Happy Frog and pots with proper drainage, the soil is only going to hold on to so much water and the excess will drain off (don’t let your pots sit in that excess water as it will eventually absorb too much water, empty your trays after watering).
My large plants in 7 gal fabric pots will only hold on to about a gallon of water, the rest will drain off. I could give it 2 gallons of water and 1 gal will drain off, I could give them 10 gals of water and 9 gals are going to drain off. As long as the drained off water is removed, it doesn’t matter how much water I give them at once, it will not cause an over water problem. This is why flushes don’t create an over watering problem. What will cause an over watering problem is if I water them again before the soil has dried out. Watering too soon/too often causes over watering.
My plants are droopy
The #1 sign that you are over watering is droopy plants. A tiny bit of droop at lights on and lights off times can be normal but if droop persists for an hour or more before or after lights on/off or if droopy all the time - most likely your plants have been over watered. How do you fix it? Stop watering and let your soil dry up before watering again. If your plants are droopy and you usually water every 3 days, push that to 5 days and let them dry up more before watering, just watch them, droop is not as bad as they look when they hit the “really need water now or I’m going to die” look, which is completely limp leaves, looks way worse than the droop.
Don’t buy the “They look droopy cause the lights just came on”. Over watered plants will typically look the most droopy at lights on and lights off times, they may perk up some during the middle of the light cycle but will droop a good while after lights come on and before lights go off.
My light just turned on in my flowering tent, those of you familiar with HPS lights would know the light just came on because it hasn’t gone yellow yet, takes a minute or 2 for that to happen, let’s take a look
No droop here at lights on since they are not over watered.
My over watering story
Yes, even an experienced grower like me can over water. I recently over watered the plants in the flowering tent, same ones above in the picture, they did recover quickly. After moving my girls from the veg tent to the flowering tent and setting them up on the screen. I continued the watering at every 3 days and they were fine for a week (a couple waterings). But then I noticed a little droop, the droop lasted a couple hours after lights came on, then they perked up for most of the 12 hour light cycle and then started drooping an hour or 2 before lights out. I recognized it as over watering but my mind kept trying to think of other reasons they might be drooping, just pruned a lot, change of light spectrum (from MH to HPS), etc… I tried to convince myself that it was not over watering. The plants being SCROGed now, you can’t pick up the pots, and even digging my finger down a few inches wasn’t telling the whole story in the big 7 gallon fabric pot. But after arguing with myself breifly, I accepted that they were being over watered. The change of light schedule from 18/6 to 12/12 (and less vegetation from the pruning, trimming, and defoliation) was enough change that the plants were no longer drinking up all the water in 3 days as they did in veg. So when day 3 came, no water, just watched the plants to make sure they didn’t go limp (dying from thirst mode), then day 4, no water, just watched them, didn’t go limp, hell they started losing the droop already, day 5 droop mostly gone and soil was dry, watered the plants fully, droop did not return. Over watering problem solved.
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@Hellraiser can you talk us through the pot sizes you use and when you typically change them?
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This might be a bit much to ask because you are not there yet but how do you apply your mykos? I mixed it with my soil before putting my seeds in. Hope that is correct. Thanks.
@Capt.Cola, some people do that and lots of good soils has myco mixed in so can’t be a bad thing, some people put a little pocket of myco under the seed for the root to grow through. I don’t know if there is really a wrong way to use myco. I only use myco when I transplant, but I’m considering using it with my seeds in the future.
So I get the new pot ready and fill mostly with soil and then use the old cup or pot to make an hole/impression in the new soil of the perfect size, then I apply the myco around inside the hole so the roots will make good contact with it, take plant out of old container and place in the hole, fill with more soil as needed and water fully til some runoff.
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