Six lights for six plants. Organic No-Till 4400 watt indoor grow

kratos015

Well-Known Member
Day 25 of flower and I can't even believe how far they've come in such short time. To think I still have 31-38 days left has me foaming at the mouth right now.

I'm sold on this soil as well as the large no-till pot style, even if my yield suffers a bit because of the shortened veg time I know I'm going to be very impressed with the quality. Last organic soil I ran was Sub's recipe and the flavor was just unlike anything else, but I have a feeling this soil is going to produce even better results in terms of quality and yield.

I'm still pretty sold on the single light per plant method, but some strains will definitely require having more than a single plant under a light. So from this point forward, I'm going to be tweaking things to make it a single pot per light grow from now on. With this soil, bigger is better. In the future I'll be running 65-150 gallon pots depending on the wattage of the light as well as the strain. I'll also be switching to all 1000w lights as soon as I move out of here and upgrade everything. Their extra penetration power allows me to grow taller and wider canopies which will really help me increase yields.

I'll be eliminating my veg room entirely and starting my seeds and/or clones directly into the final containers. Once they get established and realize just how large their homes are, they should fill those pots quite nicely. Especially in conjunction with aloe and coconut water. I almost want to rip out one of the plants to see just how far the roots got, they got pretty damn big considering they only vegged 2 weeks in the shed. I'm joking of course :P

If I started clones/seedlings in the shed with everything dialed down to 50%, I have a feeling I'd end up pretty surprised with how quickly they would take to things. Considering the relationship the roots has with the soil, I want to avoid transplants entirely. By cutting the plant as close to the soil as possible, I have plenty of room from the soil to the top of the pot to top dress. When I'm ready to plant my seeds and/or clones, I won't even dig a single hole in the no-till pots. Instead, I'll top dress the pots and then plant the clones/seeds straight into that with some mycorrhizae. My thinking is that with organic soil, this is how you want to do things. After noticing the growth they were getting in the shed it hit me. The goal is to allow the plant to be as established as possible. If you establish a new plant into a 2-5g pot with organic soil and mycorrhizae, my thinking is what you just established for microbiology for that plant will be disturbed upon transplant. Furthermore, if these girls were rootbound or close to it, it's going to take them a while to realize they're in a larger pot and act accordingly. And of course, you'll need to add more mycorrhizae. But if you just top dress the pots and plant directly into that with your mycorrhizae, absolutely nothing gets disturbed. Since nothing in your soil is disturbed, your soil will be itching to form a bond with a new plant, so once your seedlings/clones hit that mycorrhizae it's pretty much over. You will have constant growth and things will never stop. I have a hunch that giving a clone/seedling it's own light as well as it's own enormous pot of no-till living organic soil, you should be able to grow some monsters if you supplement with enough CO2.

The thing to consider about SCROG is the #1 goal is to maximize the available amount of light we're receiving from our lights. A 1000w bulb will shine 2.5-3ft deep into a 4x4sqft canopy; so anything shorter than 2.5-3ft results in lost yields, anything taller results in more fluffy buds. Same applies with the square footage of the canopy, anything less than 4x4 results in lost yields and anything more will give us fluffier buds. So in order to maximize yields from whatever lights I am using, I have to grow the plants to the exact size of the cubic footprint said light puts out. Most sativa hybrids could potentially fill this entire cubic footprint with a single plant, however I'm finding that with indicas 4 per pot would probably be better. Some of my indica strains had no problem filling the screens, but they didn't grow upward nearly as much as the sativas (duh me). Had I grown 4 indicas in the same space, I would have filled the height of my canopy much more and thus increased my yields.

Live and learn, I did the best with what I have. This was my first time with this particular method of growing, my first time in a sealed room, and my first grow since 2014. Just goes to show that even with due diligence, there's still only so much dialing up you can do on paper without experience to fall back on.

Anyway, onto the garden :D

Amnesia Lemon

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Amnesia Haze

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Berry Bomb

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Jack Herer #1

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Purple Trainwreck

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Cluster Bomb (front), Jack Herer #2 (back left), Critical + 2.0 (back right)

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Jack Herer #1 and Amnesia Lemon

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Purple Trainwreck and Berry Bomb

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kratos015

Well-Known Member
love the setup and detail regarding the way you made certain decisions. Will continue to follow and look forward to more!
Why thank you! I'm doing my best and am quite excited for the results in terms of the quality. Organic meds have the absolute best flavor, hit surprisingly smooth with less cough than normal, and don't make your lungs/head feel like shit. Even the effects themselves feel more "clean". I don't know if it's just because I was smoking stuff that was grown in Sub's soil for over a year straight, but I definitely feel a difference.

I love how little I actually have to do with this method too. It's just watering for the most part with the occasional feeding and even rarer pruning. Very low maintenance for the most part :D


Wow the plants are coming around beautifully, Super Gardening my friend
Thanks a bunch my man! I've never had plants look this good and having people tell me I'm on the right track is always very motivating. I'm extremely curious to see what the end result is, especially since they only got 2 weeks veg in the final pots. This soil and CO2 is just nothing short of incredible.
 

Goaty

Member
Hey man - your journal literally inspired me to go get everything needed for CCs mix. I mainly grow outdoors in 1-200 gallon containers but I have a 10x10 tent in my garage all ready to fire - just need to add plants! I'm not very experienced indoors at all and am weary for doing more than 4x600 watts so I was planning on putting 4 plants in 30gal smart pots and SCROGing them very much like your setup. Two things: Is malted barley powder part of your mix? I've seen others talking about it and I'm not sure if/how essential it is to the mix. Also, I have some larger clones in 5 gal containers (1:1 Happy Frog and Malibu's potting mix + top dressing of cow manure, plant compost, worm castings, bio-live, rock dust and humic acid). These were backup cuttings for my outdoor season that were made too late and they are just kinda takin up space on my back porch. They are healthy but getting a little big to be put indoors. I topped them a couple times and they like to bend already (its a blue dream x bubbleicious). It's kind of a race against the clock now with letting the soil microbiology get established and transplanting these kind of big clones before they are too big to go inside. I can tie them down and screen them after transplant but I will be close to having a vertical space issue.

I know you've talked about how you would do larger containers and transplant right from clone to avoid disturbing the soil etc but I figure this to be a trial run. Plus these are the clones I have to work with. I would have PM'd you but as a newbie it hasnt been unlocked yet or something.

Any input or advice is appreciated my man. Again I can't say enough how much I've enjoyed reading your journal, the detail and process are awesome!

PS How long does it take for the clover to sprout??
 

kratos015

Well-Known Member
Not very experienced indoors as in you've never done it before or only once or twice kind of thing? Are your 600 watters hooded or open? The reason I ask is because controlling temps in a tent with more than one light can be a total pain in the ass. Before you do anything else, I'd recommend getting your tent all set up and let things run for a few minutes so you can get an idea of what your temps/humidity will be. If your temps and humidity aren't under constant control then an indoor venture could do more harm than good. My first indoor room wasn't insulated well enough and I was trying to cool 2000 watts with a 12,000 BTU A/C in a poorly insulated room. Needless to say things didn't work out too well for me and I barely pulled 2 pounds combined from the 2 lights, way not good! If you can maintain your temps and humidity then you should get great results in your tent with CC's mix, even better if you throw CO2 into the equation.

I do actually use Malted Barley Powder, I found some on Amazon and incorporated some of it into my soil when I mixed it and I also water with it every now and then. If I recall, MBP is used as a sprouted seed tea (SST). At first people were germinating Malted Barley seeds until they sprouted, throwing the sprouted seeds in a blender with some water, then watering with the strained liquid. This is known as a SST and pretty much any kind of seed can be used for a SST, some people use popcorn and even clover seedlings. However, most people seem to skip this process entirely by buying the Malted Barley that is already in powder form. Malted Barley/SST is used to provide enzymes and proteins to the microbes in our soils and I've seen it compared to a protein shake in terms of what it does for them. I've actually stopped using Malted Barley entirely though in favor of the Coconut Water. The Coconut Water gives the microbes the exact same enzymes and proteins that any SST will because Coconut Water is pretty much a SST in itself because a coconut is pretty much just an enormous seed if I'm not mistaken. Not only will the Coconut Water provide everything MBP/SSTs do, but it will also provide a little Cal/Mag boost, small amounts of Phosphorus and Potassium and most importantly cytokins which are responsible for explosive root and node growth and will even reduce the spacing of your nodes. You don't have to use coconut water by any means, but at $3 a bottle on average it is an absolute waste to go without it and I can't recommend the stuff enough. Definitely go with some coconut water instead of the MBP in my opinion, less work and more bang for your buck. I feed at 100ml per gallon of water for seedlings and the beginning of veg, during the last of my veg and the first half of flower I start increasing the dose to 200-500ml per gallon of water depending on the size of the plants. I feed with Coconut Water once a week every week until week 4 of flower and pretty much just go with water until the end at that point, using the Fish Hydrolysate on any of the girls that happen to need a little extra food.

How many clones do you have total? And how big are they in your 5 gallon pots? Depending on the amount of clones that you have and the sizes of them I'd recommend just keeping them put, but that depends entirely on how many you have. Since you're saying one pot per light, I'm guessing you only have 4 clones to work with? For the time being I'm going to assume you've got 4 clones and give my advice based on that. You can transplant the 5g pots to your 30g pots just fine, the reason I'm wanting to start them in the final pots because my thinking is that there will never be a delay in growth and the plant will therefor veg faster than if it were transplant, it will also establish itself better but you can totally transplant them and be just fine.

Will your 30g pots be filled with CCs mix or the same blend of Happy Frog/Malibu's mix? Either way, none of those mixes are "hot" so if time of an issue for you then you can actually transplant as soon as you've mixed the soil. The reason that soils like Subcool's supersoil have to sit for a month is so that the "hot" amendments like blood meal and alfalfa meal can decompose, they decompose so fast that it literally makes things hot and can fry your roots (composting temps can reach up to 190F!). However, nothing in CC's mix is "hot", so you can plant as soon as the soil is ready if you want. The reason people give it time is so the microbiology can be more established upon transplant, but if time is an issue for you then you can still transplant into CC's soil. The only downside of that is that your population of microbes won't be too large yet, but that won't really hurt anything by any means. My soil only sat in the pots for about a week before I transplanted, it really doesn't take too much time to get the microbes going, just keep things nice and moist and they'll do all the work. Look into Grower's Recharge to inoculate your soil with microbes so that things will get established faster.

Depending on the current sizes of your plants though, I'd recommend just keeping them in the 5 gallon pots. From the sounds of it, your plants might be too big to veg for any longer and if that's the case then getting a larger pot won't really do you much good if the roots can't fill it up. You might just be better off flowering them as soon as they get into your tent. I'm guessing your tent is 8ft tall? Your plant is a Blue Dream cross so I'm guessing she is going to stretch hard, I wouldn't get them taller than 2 ft in veg otherwise they'll get way too big. Blue Dream will easily triple in size come flower, so definitely make sure to consider that. Although if this is one of the strains you normally run outdoors I'm sure I don't have to tell you that :)

I'll need to know more about the clones to give you better advice. There are too many variables I don't know, but if you fill me in I'd be more than happy to help however I can. How tall are the clones? What's the square footage of the canopy on your clones? How many clones do you have total? How long do you think you can veg for? Are they all the BD x Bubblicious strain? Is your 10x10 tent 8 feet tall? You can definitely have yourself a very very successful trial run, I just want to know more so I can give the best advice possible.

As for the clover, it really doesn't take very long to sprout, you'll usually see sprouts within 3-4 days. I like to start them when I put new soil into a pot, they're great for the health of your soil and will even act as a canary in a coalmine if you will. I'd much rather have the clovers telling me they have a problem with my soil than my ladies! Once the clover is established you really don't have to do anything with it but leave it alone, eventually the plants you put into the pots will grow so tall that the canopy of the plant completely shades the clover. The clover will then die off and it will go from being a living mulch to a dead and decaying mulch, decomposing right back into your soil. Make sure to always have clovers going in between plants, I plant them before every transplant and after every harvest.

Hope I was able to help in some way and can help better if you give me a little more info, sorry about being so long winded :p
 

kratos015

Well-Known Member
Oh, I almost forgot to mention. Make absolutely sure that you're using some sort of Mycorrhizae every single transplant! I highly recommend VAM from Bio-AG over everything else. CC is the one who recommends it over all other mykos due to it having a better and wider variety of mycorrhizae. Make sure you cover the rootball as best as you can, and sprinkle some in and around the hole you're transplanting to. Do this every single time you transplant, no matter what.
 

Goaty

Member
First off thanks for the quick reply. Your plants look absolutely killer.

As for my indoor experience - I have 5 runs under my belt, usually going from cube to 3s or 5s. My 600s are hooded and all ducted with a large inline exhaust fan (dont know cfm but it pulls cool air from outside and comes ripping out exhaust) and I have an 8000 BTU AC and an Ideal-air 80 pint dehuey. I can keep the temps and humidity pretty dialed but the AC has to run nearly the whole time the lights are on. The tent it 7 feet tall

I was definitely considering setting up a CO2 generator because it is easier for me to keep temps around 80 and I am all for seeing how it goes.

I will definitely be incorporating coconut water into the watering regimen - sounds like an absolute must.

I have about 30 clones in 5s and the 4 i was going to pick were the smallest/bushiest of the batch. My greenhouse (not at my house) is jam packed right now and I have been anxious to get the lights back on. After reading your response it's now obvious you are right about them not being the best choice. Space is just my issue. Because I mainly grow outdoors I just planted a new batch of clones into 1gal pots (timed to go into 15-20 gals to flower after my first full term finishes- I squeeze a small outdoor 2nd crop in, gotta love SoCal!) so my backyard now has 2 tables of clones and 30 5gal pots with plants ranging from 2-3 feet each. I just really wanted to max out at least a few of the 5gal plants because I don't really have anywhere for them to go. Flowering in my backyard is not really an option because i supplement light to keep all cuttings in veg and for the obvious reason of smell.

I just mixed 15 cu feet of the following: 4 cu ft CSPM 1 cu ft biochar, 4 cu ft perlite 1 cu ft pumice, and for my compost/humus portion 1.5 cu ft composted cow shit 1.5 cu ft composted plant material and 2 cu ft homemade EWC. This was all trying to keep with the 1:1:1 ratio. I then added 1/2 cup/cu ft of Neem, Crab, Kelp, and Bio-Live and the breakdown of my 4 cups/cu ft of mineral was 2 cups Azomite, 1 cup Oyster, 1 cup Basalt per cu ft. This was all mixed and wet until damp then 25 gals placed in 4-30 gal smart pots. I sprinkled the top with clover seeds then watered a little more.

Apologies for being long winded, it seems I have come to the obvious conclusion that I will let the soil microbiology mature and transplant 4 of the newer clones from the 1gals into the new soil mix in a couple weeks. Train and SCROG. As for the 5 gal pots I'm going to try and just line them up outside the greenhouse and let them flower- no space for bigger containers and they'll most likely just flip once I remove them from the supplemental light.

When transplanting outdoors I use Great White for mykos and the other essentials etc. Do you know how that compares up to VAM? Thanks for taking the time to get back to me, i really appreciate it.
 

kratos015

Well-Known Member
It might be a worth while investment to look into a larger sized air conditioner if you're able to afford it. I'm sure your electric bills are pretty high up there if that A/C is running 24/7, but if you don't mind paying the bill and can maintain temps then that's the most important thing.

I can't recommend CO2 enough and don't believe these results would have been achievable without it. Just be sure to keep in mind that a generator will increase your temps quite a bit while it's on, and depending on how sealed your tent can get you may lose more CO2 than normal too. But if you can make it work despite those concerns then the results are well worth it.

Sounds like your soil is all good to go, looks absolutely perfect to me from what I can see. Hope you enjoyed mixing it as much as I did! :p Fortunately it'll just be top dresses from this point forward. Sounds like you're on the right track for sure from what I'm seeing.

About VAM, from how much CC was raving about it he was making it seem like using anything else is an absolute waste. But that's not to say that other brands won't work, just not as well I guess. That being said Great White is a pretty reputable brand and it quite a bit better than most of it's competition. VAM is just next level apparently.

Glad I could be of help to you my man and I hope you start a journal or something so I can keep track, would love to see how things turn out for sure! Glad I could be of service my man.
 

kratos015

Well-Known Member
Looking good.

Lost track of the your grow. Been busy. I usually am this time of year.
Hey man good to hear from you again, hope all is well. Had a feeling you probably got pretty busy this time of year with all that you got going on!


Nice setup.... Nice plants
Thanks a bunch for the kind words friend! Beyond excited to see what I end up getting.
 

ScrogOrDie

Member
Looking dank, man! I love how you used LST; it makes me want to start using pots again. I think you're gonna pull a heavy yield by the looks of it. Never tried no till, but I'm moving to Spain soon with a buddy of mine, and we're planning on doing outdoor runs, so we'll have to try it.
 

whitebb2727

Well-Known Member
Hey man good to hear from you again, hope all is well. Had a feeling you probably got pretty busy this time of year with all that you got going on!




Thanks a bunch for the kind words friend! Beyond excited to see what I end up getting.
Yea. Went on vacation with the kids and my mom. My mom fell and broke her shoulder and we are at the hospital this morning. They are putting pins in.

All is good just busy. Just thought I would stop in and say hi.
 

kratos015

Well-Known Member
Yea. Went on vacation with the kids and my mom. My mom fell and broke her shoulder and we are at the hospital this morning. They are putting pins in.

All is good just busy. Just thought I would stop in and say hi.
Yikes! Sorry to hear, must have been a nasty fall if it broke her damn shoulder! Hope she recovers in quick order. Glad you and your loved ones got to take a break and have some fun.

Haven't been seeing you much lately, but seeing as you've got a no-till farm going on I figured that was keeping you pretty damn busy in itself. Busy is always good though, glad you found the time to stop by and hope things are going well for you guys this year.


Looking dank, man! I love how you used LST; it makes me want to start using pots again. I think you're gonna pull a heavy yield by the looks of it. Never tried no till, but I'm moving to Spain soon with a buddy of mine, and we're planning on doing outdoor runs, so we'll have to try it.
Oh nice! My grandfather is from Spain, he says it's absolutely gorgeous out there and you can get some pretty damn nice places for $500-600/mo. Plus the food :D

Ever since I figured out how to properly train plants it's pretty much all I do now. Outdoors I only top once and don't do nearly as much training, but indoors it is absolutely mandatory if you want to get good yields. On top of that, with what electricity costs us it is even more crucial that we yield well enough to justify the expenses. I used to just top once and let them grow up, never using a screen. Yields were absolute garbage and I wasn't even able to hit .5gpw, however I should hit that at a bare minimum with the training and screens. With what I'm seeing right now, I don't really see myself growing any other way. Don't get me wrong, I'm always keeping my mind and my eyes open, but so far this is the absolute best compared to everything else I've tried.

Not sure if you're planning a grow journal for your outdoor journey, but if so I'd love to know about it so I can see how it goes!
 

kratos015

Well-Known Member
Day 29 will officially begin once the lights come on tonight and so far things are still looking good.

I'm already thinking about what I'll be doing for my next cycle and what I came up with is going to be absolutely game changing for me.

I am 100% convinced that this is one of the better methods of growing, it just needs quite a bit of tweaking and I think I've finally figured things out.

My original theory was that having a single large plant per light will give large yields, however I'm finding that it isn't so much the size of your plant per light that is important but rather the size of your pot/soil! The amount of plants that will get put in the soil will be entirely strain dependent.

I've been watering every single day since week 2 of flower and all of my plants are slightly larger in diameter than the pots are, those two things tell me that my pots are too small! Once I finish this cycle, I'll be converting all of my no-till pots to no-till raised beds. In order to maintain as much of my microbiology as possible though I'll be placing the pots in the newly built beds, cutting the pots so they can be removed without disturbing the soil, and surrounding it with more soil until the new beds are filled. Each 1000 watt light is going to have a 1.5ft tall raised bed that is 4ft wide and 4 feet long, should fit about 175-180 gallons of soil if my math is proper. The 600 watt lights will have 7ftx3ft beds that are 1.5 feet tall as well. Each 7x3 bed will have 2 600 watt lights covering it, after doing the math it turns out that 2 600w lights can provide 57 watts/sqft in a 7x3 area. Each 7x3 bed is going to have 3 plants in them and will have around 225 gallons of soil, they'll be my indica beds.

If you take a look at my 7x3 screens in this thread (namely the one with Purple Trainwreck and Berry Bomb) you'll notice what I have been, that I probably could have effectively squeezed another plant in between the two. If I had 3 indicas instead of 2, they would fill the screen faster.

I'm now realizing that it is crucial that your indica strains hit the screens before your sativa strains do. My indicas grew a foot more in stretch where as my sativas grew 2 feet, so if I want all of them to have roughly the same size canopy during flower then I need to make sure the indicas are nearly twice as tall as the sativas are when I flip to 12/12. Come 12/12, the 4x4 screens will be full but not growing upward, however the 3x7 screens will have already grown 6-12 inches above the screens. I'm aiming to have every single last part of my screens filled, with them getting 2.5-3.5 feet tall. That, combined with raised beds of living organic soil AND CO2 is going to be stupid and I'll be getting the maximum yields possible with that set up. I'll be going from 155 gallons of soil total to 800 gallons of soil.

So now I'm even more eager for harvest, not for the smoke but so I can get that going :p Based on what I've been seeing throughout this grow, I feel that the raised beds are the missing link that will turbo charge this set up and bring it to it's true potential. My thinking is that raised beds are the absolute best way to do living organic soil, either indoors or outdoors. Even people that are growing in tents can fit a raised bed in their tents no problem! I always thought what everyone else did, that you'd come into diminishing returns after a certain size pot. However, I did not expect my plants to get this large with only 2 weeks veg in them. They must be more full of roots than I thought, which has me thinking that even my 25-30 gallon pots were too small!

I can't even wait to get that going, it's going to be so exciting :D
 
Krat, thanks for all of your comments to help my (and my friends) grow.

I'm way disappointed in my Jack Herer's. I'm at about the same flower time as you after 4 weeks veg. and 3 1/2 weeks 12/12, but my plants have at best about a quarter of the bud sites at the canopy compared to your Jacks above and I'm only seeing just a hint of frosting with some brown pistils. I think I burned them somewhat when experimenting with the height of my new and unfamiliar Ceramic Halide light, less than a foot off the plant tops for a few weeks. I've since moved it up to a foot and a half, this probably explains the curling leaf tips of the plant tops.

I know 2 other big reasons for my poor performance. 1. I'm using 7 gal. smart pots. And 2. I had/have a very problematic aphid infestation due to vegging out of doors then bringing the plants inside. Never do that again! I noticed the aphids in the second week of veg, then got lady bugs in there last week (week 3). I was zooming in on a leaf section with my new hand held microscope when this huge green monster comes over the leaf seemingly right at my face!! After falling over backwards I realized the monster was really a 64th of an inch or so in size aphid.

We have a bunch of yellow spotted/stripped leaves with most of the leaf tips brown and curled, but I think the lady bugs have the momentum now and haven't seen an aphid in days. I only see some eggs (I guess) on the underside of some leaves now that I hope are dead. Live and learn I guess. And this is my first indoor soil grow, and practice make perfect.

I have a couple of questions for you. Help me understand how raised beds are an advantage for you. I thought the chief benefit of raised beds was getting oxygen to the roots (and I could easily be wrong about this), but you are currently using smart pots which also give the roots oxygen? My second question is about watering. I've been watering about a gallon of water in each 7 gal smart potted plants every 7 to 8 days, since I kept reading about how the biggest mistake new soil growers make is over-watering. You are watering every 2 or 3 days. I think the answer here may be due to (first, your growing and thriving healthy plants) your much hotter room temperatures. Remember my light is a very cool running 315 watt Ceramic Halide and you have 4 HPS', two 600 watt-ers and two 1,000 watt'ers. How do you judge by the soil or plant when it's time to water?
 

kratos015

Well-Known Member
Krat, thanks for all of your comments to help my (and my friends) grow.

I'm way disappointed in my Jack Herer's. I'm at about the same flower time as you after 4 weeks veg. and 3 1/2 weeks 12/12, but my plants have at best about a quarter of the bud sites at the canopy compared to your Jacks above and I'm only seeing just a hint of frosting with some brown pistils. I think I burned them somewhat when experimenting with the height of my new and unfamiliar Ceramic Halide light, less than a foot off the plant tops for a few weeks. I've since moved it up to a foot and a half, this probably explains the curling leaf tips of the plant tops.

I know 2 other big reasons for my poor performance. 1. I'm using 7 gal. smart pots. And 2. I had/have a very problematic aphid infestation due to vegging out of doors then bringing the plants inside. Never do that again! I noticed the aphids in the second week of veg, then got lady bugs in there last week (week 3). I was zooming in on a leaf section with my new hand held microscope when this huge green monster comes over the leaf seemingly right at my face!! After falling over backwards I realized the monster was really a 64th of an inch or so in size aphid.

We have a bunch of yellow spotted/stripped leaves with most of the leaf tips brown and curled, but I think the lady bugs have the momentum now and haven't seen an aphid in days. I only see some eggs (I guess) on the underside of some leaves now that I hope are dead. Live and learn I guess. And this is my first indoor soil grow, and practice make perfect.

I have a couple of questions for you. Help me understand how raised beds are an advantage for you. I thought the chief benefit of raised beds was getting oxygen to the roots (and I could easily be wrong about this), but you are currently using smart pots which also give the roots oxygen? My second question is about watering. I've been watering about a gallon of water in each 7 gal smart potted plants every 7 to 8 days, since I kept reading about how the biggest mistake new soil growers make is over-watering. You are watering every 2 or 3 days. I think the answer here may be due to (first, your growing and thriving healthy plants) your much hotter room temperatures. Remember my light is a very cool running 315 watt Ceramic Halide and you have 4 HPS', two 600 watt-ers and two 1,000 watt'ers. How do you judge by the soil or plant when it's time to water?
Well, this Friday I'll be approaching week 6 so it actually sounds like you're a good couple of weeks behind me if I'm not mistaken? But before I babble, I just want to say you're definitely not watering enough. You should hit them with water until you start seeing runoff, but do it in short bursts to give the water time to work its way down. First order of business every day at lights on is to do the finger test, usually the top inch or so will be dry so I know it's time to water. I just gently stick my finger into the pot (stopping if I meet the slightest resistance) and feel if things are moist or not. If dry, I water then, if still moist I wait another 3-4 hours. Lately they're always dry at lights on.

I water with a hose nozzle, circling around the container twice just fast enough to get the top layer moist, then I hit the middle a bit. I do this with every single plant, then I let the water do it's thing for a bit. I'll then go around and inspect the plants and the room to make sure everything is still in working order. After that, I hit all the girls with more water, let them rest again, and then water one last time if I don't see run off by then. Usually that does the trick. I've actually been watering every single day first thing at lights on since about week 2 of 12/12 I think?

But keep in mind, I'm also running CO2 though so I'm using more water than normal too. When the plants process more CO2 than normal, they also need more light, water, and nutrients than normal. My temps are at 81-82 with CO2, 77-78 without CO2 (tank ran out of propane :P) If your plants are root-bound (and in 7g I'm sure they are), they'll be soaking up water like nobodies business. Even as humans, if we were in constant 77-78 degree weather, we'd still dehydrate without water after a while. The cooler temps just mean we'd lose less water over time, but without proper hydration the temps are a moot point. Same thing with plants.

Some people will say that watering too much will "flush" the nutes in your soil but apparently this is a total fallacy. The nutes apparently become bonded to your soil (a result of the CEC I believe?) which means that you're gonna have a hard time flushing them out.

As for the amount of bud sites, you fed them coconut water in veg if I'm not mistaken yes? Regardless, the fact that you mention heat stress makes me think that could be why you don't have many bud sites. My plants were pretty much never stressed during the entire cycle thus far (Thank God! Aside from the one day with my A/C shutting down) and were fed coconut water once-twice a week. Did your problem with heat just recently become an issue or has it been an issue for the entire grow? Usually a lack of bud sites/long node spacing is a problem with temps. Either things got too hot too long or your day/night temps have more than a 15 degree difference.

Aside from the aphids you actually answered the questions to your problem quite nicely and I couldn't say it better myself. After this crop is done, top dress with crab, neem, and kelp meals and some EWC if you have it. Then plant some clover and let things chill for a week or two. The neem top dress will help prevent any new invaders and once the microbiology builds itself back up it'll start going to work on the remaining larvae/eggs..

However, as you said it does almost sound like the ladybugs have things under control. The reason I say this is because I've had the pleasure of dealing with root aphids before and believe me, if you had them you'd know. Only thing worse than those fuckers are spider mites and caterpillars.. ohhh how I fucking hate caterpillars. Anyway :P

The reason I think your aphid problem is dealt with is because your Jack seems to be having the same issues I'm having. In fact, I actually had the same thing happen with both my Jack Herer and Amnesia Lemon, the Lemon getting the worst of it. Exact same problems, curling leaves, dried/burned spots, yellowing leaves, smaller and more airy nugs than the other plants and so forth. I've got pretty much the same thing going on minus the aphids. The problem isn't so much the heat, but the watering. For the last two weeks or so I've noticed the symptoms get worse and worse and it only got better as I started watering more, seems I too was erring too much on the side of caution and trying not to over water. It was working just fine for my other plants, and still is, but the sativa dominant strains are hating me for it now.

I'll be switching to SIP (Self Irrigation Potting) or Blumats because of this exact reason. I'm just now realizing that I could never possibly be able to water any single plant perfectly, however with SIP/Blumats my plants would be able to stay perfectly moist the entire cycle. This would effectively eliminate any watering problems for sure. Aside from weak humidifiers that remains my grows biggest flaw is the watering.

As for your raised bed question. The reason for that is mainly because of the amount of soil you can fit in one of those bad boys. Take my 3.5x7 sqft screens, right now each light has a 25g pot in it for 50g total between the two. However, if I made a 1 ft tall 3.5x7sqft bed I could fit 24.5 cubic feet or just shy of 185g of living organic soil. I plant 3 seedlings in that single bed and they have 185g of soil to access as they see fit. I saw a journal on ICMag of someone doing this. He started off with 400 gallon pots and eventually went to raised beds because he was able to fill more soil in the same space. Every single last inch of the lights footprint had soil underneath it in his beds. The more room the roots have to grow, the more they will grow. He was rocking 4x8x3 beds I believe, each bed had 2 rows of 9 plants and 2k watts I believe. He was pulling 2.5lb+ per SE 1k light with his beds if I recall. I'd link it if I could find the damn thing :/ He was watering with blumats though, so perfect watering constantly.

My main hang up on it so far is the price of everything. The price of amendments for that much soil is pretty steep, so funds may hold me back from doing this for a while, but we'll see. I'm convinced that making beds the size of your light foot print will produce massive yields. The plant count can be entirely based on your style and/or plant limits, the main thing is having that huge mass of soil putting in the work. The only issue is space, most of us are in 7-8 ft tall ceilings and would have to grow shorter plants if we wanted 2-3ft high beds. If I am able to make beds, they'd be a foot tall at the highest.

However, the main reason raised beds are even a viable option for me is because of the amount of light I have as well as CO2. The growth I saw in the tent during veg was remarkable, I couldn't help but wonder how fast they'd veg out if they had their own light. So long as I keep the nutes coming and supplement with CO2 I think I'll be quite surprised with what they look like 8 weeks from seed.

Sorry for the delayed and lengthy response!

And I'm even more sorry for the lack of updates and pictures everyone! Life has been a bit hectic and unfortunately this gets put off more than I'd like :/ Here's a couple quick shots though.

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Krat, here a a couple of photos (and I don't mean to hijack your thread) to show what I'm saying about my Jack Herers and the funky poor growth, lack of frosting, leaf burn, and brown pistils. Can you offer any advise, I know there are a lot of variables between my light height, aphids infestation, smallish pots and so on.

In your opinion, is any of this nute related, or impossible to tell?
 

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kratos015

Well-Known Member
Hmm, it's kind of hard to say. Can't really see too much with the photos. You're still just approaching week 4 though yes?

I noticed the burned tips toward the tops of the plant, but not quite toward the bottom. If it were nute burn the burned tips would be scattered throughout the plant and not just on the top of it. If the bulk of your yellowing leaves also happens to be near the top of the plant and not the bottom then signs are pointing toward heat stress/over-saturation of light as opposed to nute burn.

Symptoms of light burn will often be quite similar to symptoms of nutrient deficiency and/or toxicity, however the symptoms will only be toward the tops of the plants if this is the case. To me, the problem has nothing to do with the nutrients but the light burn and under-watering. If the soil isn't evenly moist, microbes will start going dormant and when that happens things get out of whack pretty quickly. With the microbes going dormant, nothing is making your nutes readily available and furthermore nothing is regulating your pH. While it's true we use OSF or lime to buffer the pH of peat moss, the microbes will ultimately be what dictate your pH levels as they'll change the pH to suit their own needs as well as the needs of the plant(s). The underwatering will cause problems because of your microbes going dormant, causing pH problems as well as nutrients not being processed. I'm seeing a lot of red petioles on the leaves as well, which also makes me believe there is an issue with the pH being caused by the microbes going dormant.

The thing about organic soil is that you'll rarely have a problem with nutrients directly. The only reasons that living soil should ever show signs of nutrient issues in any way is because something is wrong with the soil microbiology itself and not the nutes. In some cases, the issue will be that all of the organic matter has been broken down leaving no source of nutrients for the microbes to process, but in most cases the issue is with bad watering or poor aeration.

Based on what I could see from the pictures you provided this should be a simple enough fix with time. First thing you have to do is make sure the light isn't too close to the canopy, using the hand test to confirm. Next, start watering your pots until you see run off. Remember to start small, watering in increments as opposed to an entire drench so you give the water enough time to work it's way down the pots. You'll also likely need to re-inoculate your soil, you'll need to brew yourself a tea of some sort or grab yourself some Grower's Recharge, doesn't really matter as they'll both re-inoculate the soil just the same. If you're going the tea route, a simple EWC+molasses tea will do the trick just fine. A top dress will work just the same, but it will take longer and since you're in flower and not veg I recommend using a tea or recharge as that will start going to work immediately. You could even brew a tea with fish hydrolysate and molasses too if you don't happen to have access to EWC or Recharge at the time. I'd personally recommend the Recharge, much easier to work with, less work involved, and a small jar will last you quite a while if it's stored properly.

Nothing to be too worried about though if you deal with it quickly enough, many microbes will actually just go dormant instead of completely dying off, so once you re-inoculate your soil those dormant microbes will become active again and go straight back to work. If you re-inoculate your soil and raise your lights up a tad then things should start improving within a few days. If I'm not mistaken, you're only in week 4 right now and things aren't really looking too bad from what I can tell. You definitely have signs of problems for sure, but they're easy enough to deal with fortunately.

Hoping for a speedy recovery!
 
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