I need help. 2 Weeks and just minimum Growth. Here's my Pictures, Setup, and Soil. Any help is much appreciated

Hi all! Hope everyone is doing well and being safe. I have 4 Auto’s. 2 Northern Lights, 1 Blueberry, and 1 Amensia Haze. They’re all growing at the same rate. I see new leaves forming, but the growth is REALLY slow compared to others I’ve seen to be 2 weeks after pushing through the dirt. I’ve got a 32"x32"x63" Grow Tent. 4" Fan Filer Ventilation Kit with a LED 300W Grow Light. I’ll post as many pictures as I can. Temp and Humidity seems to fluctuate a bit. Right now it’s 67 degrees F, with a 54% Humidity. Grow Tent is located in an unfinished basement. Soil is Natures Care Organin and Natural Potting mix with Root-trients. I’ve got them under a 24hr light schedule. Just the past 4 days I’ve been trying to spray the walls of the tent with water to add more humidity. But something isn’t right. Any help/advice is greatly needed as I would love to save and grow my babies to the max. Thank you in advance!

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I bought the same mixpac and my Northern Lights looks just like yours at 2+ weeks. But the Blueberry and Amnesia Haze are doing great, growing very fast and at 2 days the am haze was already way past how yours look. I don’t know why but you aren’t the only one getting very small stunted plants. Seems more common than it used to be.

One thing, you should try to get the temp up if you can. 67F is too cool for lights on time. Also, you’ll hear plenty of opinions on it, but I don’t like doing 24 hours of light. I do 18/6 or 20/4 for autos and it works really well for me. My plants love it around 77F lights on and 68F lights off. Towards the middle and end of flower I go down to 73F lights on and 63F lights off.

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Just from the pictures I would be looking at the light.

@BlacknIrish
My guess is your girls are having issues from the miracle grow. It’s not good for cannabis. You should try happy frog or ocean forest.

I could be wrong though because there are a few different kinds of miracle grow. That said, at least every week we have someone on the forum with stunted seedlings done in miracle grow.

Happy growing!

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I see a few things:

Your soil is not bad but is not built around growing cannabis. It is very likely this soil is out of the proper PH range for cannabis (tomatoes are the closest analog) and this will only get worse with time.

Environmentals are off: as stated 67F is too low. You need your plants to be in an environment that YOU would be comfortable in. This amounts to a nominal 78F as ideal.

Your light is inadequate to grow more than one plant. Light is the engine that drives all biological processes so with inadequate light, liquid uptake is reduced, ability to manage nutrients is reduced etc with low yields.

Seedlings (which those are) need nearly 100% humidity and the best way is to dome the plants. A clear Solo cup, cut down water bottle, 2 liter soda bottle etc work just fine.

I see nothing about monitoring and controlling PH and TDS. This is essential to keeping things in the nominal range. A decent PH meter will be the most used tool you have. Do NOT buy one of those 3-in-1 meters; they are essentially useless. Apera makes a decent PH meter and TDS meters are $15 or so.

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Hey thank for the response. Yeah this is our first grow, so this is all news to us. I would’ve thought Auto flowers was much easier to grow. But we’ll see.

Hey Cap_Ron thank you for the reply. Let me ask you, how are you able to control your temps so easily? Ours is in our basement and the temps vary. And we don’t feel that we have enough room to put any type of heater in there. Thoughts?

It is funny how when this was illegal growing was simple. Start a seed, plant it in the woods, and come back in the fall and harvest. Now we are allowed to grow and seeds won’t start, soil isn’t good enough, lights aren’t right and it became difficult to get any amount of harvest. I’m ready to go back to planting outside like the old days.

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Hey Joey, thank you for the response. That could be the case. I may try what Cap_Ron suggested with the 18/6 or 20/4 and see how it does.

Hey VTGrow thank you for the response. I didn’t even notice that it is a Miracle Grow brand at the top. I tried my best to avoid Miracle Grow from reading before going to purchase. And the first thing on my mind was to get something as natural and organic as possible. And didn’t notice it was a Miracle Grow brand until you said something. Wow. I will look into the Happy Frog. You’re the second person I’ve heard say that. Let me ask you; do you think it’s too late to get Happy Frog and have the seedlings transferred over without disrupting them?

I don’t believe it’s too late but it’s a 50/50chance

The reason I say that is the plant is already stressed and transplanting again would be another stress. However if it does and thrives you would have a very resilient plant

Hey Myfriendis410, thank you for your reply. I was hoping not to have to get involved with dealing with PH when we purchased these autoflowers. Which is why I tried to keep it as close to just organic and all natural as possible. Like anything, learning and becoming knowledgeable is key to growing in the right direction. I need to familiarize myself with this PH thing for soil. I definitely see the importance.

As for the temps, how in the world do you control your temperature? Thank you for the advice on the dome for the plants, that will probably be the first I take. And let me ask you, in a small 3’x3’ grow tent, should I be using a bigger or more powerful light? Or do I need to increase the amount of lights in there?

I’m not familiar with what the PH should be. I’m not sure if it’s like keeping the PH correct in a pool or if they’re on the same level. And I’m not familiar with the term TDS. I’m assuming when planting, the soil needs to be a certain PH and also when watering the temp should be luke warm and the PH must be correct in the water as well?

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Hey BlacknIrish, I use small 700 watt oil filled heaters. They work great, and they’re only about 40 bucks on Amazon. I took a pic of one next to a 5 gallon jug so you could see how small they are. Always keep a fan blowing on it in a tent or closet to prevent hot spots and excessive heat to the plants closest to it. It’s operated by a day/night temperature controller also from Amazon. I use Vicks cool mist humidifiers during the hot months, and Vicks warm mist humidifiers when it’s cooler, and you can get both at any Walmart or from Amazon. You can get an Inkbird humidity controller on Amazon as well, and I got a 70 pint dehumidifier for the room at Home Depot. I’ll post pics of the control areas for my closet and one of my tents so you will recognize the items when you search for them on Amazon. Oh yeah, I use AC Infinity exhaust fans, I like the flexibility they give with the digital controllers.

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This is a worthwhile goal and there are some others doing the same: search for ‘living soil’ on the forum. @MidwestGuy, @Covertgrower you’re good all around; who’s some organic growers?

I am currently growing one plant in a 2 X 4 X 5 tent in the garage in SoCal. I have a variety of strategies MacGyver’d in there to manage temps. First off I HATE paying to heat the space. Second; I have high efficiency lights that don’t generate a huge amount of heat. Third; I can see freezing temps of 80F in any given week. So it’s an evolving thing lol. I have an inline 4" for refresh air, a 6" exhaust on a thermostat to vent the warm headspace above a preset temp, I have a 300 watt aquarium heater in a 5 gallon bucket of water with the lid on and set at 85F to provide a warm thermal mass in the grow space. Last, I have a big dehumidifier in the space to manage humidity prior to harvest (this is a big deal to avoid bud rot).

Cannabis metabolizes ‘mobile’ nutrients: you’ll see the N, P, and K ratios on fertilizers for example. These are the 3 ‘base’ nutrients needed to grow cannabis and they happen to be soluble in water at different PH’s. They overlap at somewhere between 5.5 and 6.8 PH. In soil that is refined to 6.3 to 6.8 PH and is the issue you will have with your existing soil mix. A small dose of dolomite lime top-dressed into your soil will help to ‘buffer’ the PH into the range of cannabis. But don’t do anything until you have a PH meter and can perform some diagnostics.

Total Dissolved Solids, expressed as US PPM (one scale) UK/Canada PPM (a different scale) and EC (short for ‘electrical conductivity’)

A very valuable tool to determine the salt concentration of a soil, or nutrient solution. Along with PH you can manage the variables to keep your plants in the middle of nominal values.

More than likely you will need a better light. Fortunately plants need a fraction of the light needed to properly flower-off a plant. Strongly suggest you use this time to get smart on lighting technology. Some climates you may want something like Light-emitting ceramic (LEC) for the additional heat generated. In other climates LED’s would be a better choice, and new latest generation lights are superior to anything except sunlight. Look at Horticulture lighting Group. In a 3 X 3 you would need to of their 260’s. They are NOT cheap but can run half the power of the Amazon lights (blurple).

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Can’t think of anyone else and I’m pretty much a straight HF guy with few amendments.

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@Mrcrabs as well as a few others just having a moment of forgetfulness.

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@Skydiver is another one.

The MG being used is what I used for seedlings last grow with no issues at all. There’s no time released nutes in it and best I remember the nutrients in it were good numbers for seedlings.