Really need some help

Avering · Apr 8, 2020

I have been moving around these two plants that I started in cups and decided to transplant a few days in straight into 5 gal fabric pots with fox farm happy frog. Boy was that a mistake (overpotting).. I've been trying to water them right and give them the right amount of light but they are growing slow and one is looking very stressed. I am starting to think I may not have given them enough time to dry in between waterings. I have been watering once a day and sometimes twice thinking they wanted more.. Also, the plants are showing some yellowing so i guess with the watering nutrients were washed away. I have an HLG 260 about 42 inches from the plants, giving them around 9k to 10k lux and the ones in the back are recieving 6 to 7k lux (I put the painting behind them to make it darker) but they have not sprouted yet (just threw those in last night and the night before) could someone please guide me through this? I do not want to give up on them.. these are x3 Fugue State Autos from Mephisto and the one skinny plant is an Amnesia from Dinafem.. I'm wondering, is there a level I can put all of the plants at? I constantly am moving them around thinking I can find a better position for them.. I don't want them to burn, but they are taking so long to dry.. the RH has remained in the middle 60s and the temps have remained near 75 fahrenheit /24 celcius.. keeping them like this for now and hoping the seeds in the back come out today..thank you.. another thing worth noting is the pictures show the soil looking bone dry on top but it is very moist when i put my finger in it near the plants.

Cillit_Bang · Apr 8, 2020

Hey! I’ll try and help you the very best I can. I’m not expert, but I do grow autos. Don’t feel disheartened if this is your first grow and whatever happens don’t give up. Don’t let doubts crop up, you’ve got this! You’ve got all the right building blocks for a great grow! You’ve covered quite a few points in your post so I’m going to sub categorise them all for you with responses. Sorry if this is long and I really hope it helps.

Potting & Transplanting;

Firstly, was with regards to transplanting autoflowering plants, there’s very mixed feedback regarding whether or not this is a sensible thing to do. Some argue it shocks then, stuns growth and should only be grown in the same pot from seed to harvest. Others argue that by transplanting , it gives the plant a boost which helps growth. Personally I would always just grow in the same pot from seed to harvest and the reason for this is because it CAN shock the plant for up to 7 days, which is not what you want considering most autos only go for 60-90 days. You want them to have the best chance to grow to their full potential. It’s done now though, and you’ve put it in an ideal size pot, 5 gal will be plenty big enough! They’re not over potted, the roots will spread and the plant will grow.

Watering, nutrients and lights;

Watering them twice a day will cause big problems. I’d stop doing that straight away if you want your plants to stand a fighting chance. Normally soil can hold water for days. I normally go 3-4 day’s at a time without any water - and that’s with a massive HPS light set up I’ve got. I normally do 2 waters in a 7 day period. The general rule of thumb which I always like to do is stick my finger in to the first knuckle. If it’s moist still, I leave it. If it’s dry, I water it. If in doubt you can get a really cheap soil moisture tester, which is digital and costs probably less than a packet of cigarettes. Takes the guess work out.

I can’t see any signs of yellow leaves in the pics, but maybe I’m not looking close enough. With autos I’d start feeding nutrients at end of week 1 into week 2.

your lights are LED. I just sat and smoked a joint and did some research on your lights. Good choice! The manufacturers guidelines for that model light is to keep the light 16inches from the tops of the plants at all times. This will not cause any damage to the plants. 42inches is quite far away and you risk the plants stretching up for the light which could cause issues if the stem isn’t strong enough. Use the rollers which I assumed came with the light; and get the light lowered a bit.

you also don’t need that picture there, I’m a bit confused why you’ve done that considering there’s reflective material behind it which would be beneficial to your plant?

hope this helped. Always free to help if you need it!

Avering · Apr 8, 2020

Hey, thank you for your response! Do you put your fingers in very far from the stem of the plant? And I am beginning to think that I did put the plants way too far.. they are not growing whatsoever. Lol

Avering · Apr 8, 2020

Cillit_Bang said:
Hey! I’ll try and help you the very best I can. I’m not expert, but I do grow autos. Don’t feel disheartened if this is your first grow and whatever happens don’t give up. Don’t let doubts crop up, you’ve got this! You’ve got all the right building blocks for a great grow! You’ve covered quite a few points in your post so I’m going to sub categorise them all for you with responses. Sorry if this is long and I really hope it helps.

Potting & Transplanting;

Firstly, was with regards to transplanting autoflowering plants, there’s very mixed feedback regarding whether or not this is a sensible thing to do. Some argue it shocks then, stuns growth and should only be grown in the same pot from seed to harvest. Others argue that by transplanting , it gives the plant a boost which helps growth. Personally I would always just grow in the same pot from seed to harvest and the reason for this is because it CAN shock the plant for up to 7 days, which is not what you want considering most autos only go for 60-90 days. You want them to have the best chance to grow to their full potential. It’s done now though, and you’ve put it in an ideal size pot, 5 gal will be plenty big enough! They’re not over potted, the roots will spread and the plant will grow.

Watering, nutrients and lights;

Watering them twice a day will cause big problems. I’d stop doing that straight away if you want your plants to stand a fighting chance. Normally soil can hold water for days. I normally go 3-4 day’s at a time without any water - and that’s with a massive HPS light set up I’ve got. I normally do 2 waters in a 7 day period. The general rule of thumb which I always like to do is stick my finger in to the first knuckle. If it’s moist still, I leave it. If it’s dry, I water it. If in doubt you can get a really cheap soil moisture tester, which is digital and costs probably less than a packet of cigarettes. Takes the guess work out.

I can’t see any signs of yellow leaves in the pics, but maybe I’m not looking close enough. With autos I’d start feeding nutrients at end of week 1 into week 2.

your lights are LED. I just sat and smoked a joint and did some research on your lights. Good choice! The manufacturers guidelines for that model light is to keep the light 16inches from the tops of the plants at all times. This will not cause any damage to the plants. 42inches is quite far away and you risk the plants stretching up for the light which could cause issues if the stem isn’t strong enough. Use the rollers which I assumed came with the light; and get the light lowered a bit.

you also don’t need that picture there, I’m a bit confused why you’ve done that considering there’s reflective material behind it which would be beneficial to your plant?

hope this helped. Always free to help if you need it!

Also, I had placed the picture there to dim the lights.. but i think I will take it off and put the lights nice and close..

Cillit_Bang · Apr 8, 2020

Avering said:
Hey, thank you for your response! Do you put your fingers in very far from the stem of the plant? And I am beginning to think that I did put the plants way too far.. they are not growing whatsoever. Lol

yeh when they were seedlings I would put my finger into the soil about an inch away from the stem as I was only giving small amounts of water initially. I watered them right at the stem, until they got bigger. Testing somewhere else in the pot would have drawn inconsistencies as it would have been dryer than the area I’d watered closest to the stem.

give it ago lowering the light - it won’t cause any issues and can only be more beneficial to your plant. You might see a growth spurt. Depending on when you transplanted them id give them a day or two to recover. Longer potentially - up to 7 day’s as I mentioned.

Avering · Apr 8, 2020

Cillit_Bang said:
yeh when they were seedlings I would put my finger into the soil about an inch away from the stem as I was only giving small amounts of water initially. I watered them right at the stem, until they got bigger. Testing somewhere else in the pot would have drawn inconsistencies as it would have been dryer than the area I’d watered closest to the stem.

give it ago lowering the light - it won’t cause any issues and can only be more beneficial to your plant. You might see a growth spurt. Depending on when you transplanted them id give them a day or two to recover. Longer potentially - up to 7 day’s as I mentioned.

Thank you so much, I didn't want to put my finger too deep inside the soil as to not bother the roots, but I will give lowering the lighta and removing the pictures a go. I also was scared to give too much light as i was going off of these lux guidelines I found but they must be off because I didnt use them my last grow ( which i had to abandon) and the plants were receiving a lot of light and growing very fast. Do you water til run off?

Cillit_Bang · Apr 8, 2020

Avering said:
Thank you so much, I didn't want to put my finger too deep inside the soil as to not bother the roots, but I will give lowering the lighta and removing the pictures a go. I also was scared to give too much light as i was going off of these lux guidelines I found but they must be off because I didnt use them my last grow ( which i had to abandon) and the plants were receiving a lot of light and growing very fast. Do you water til run off?

it’s fine, an inch in wont hurt them or the roots. I’ve put some pics below, just bare in mind of course my stem is obviously a lot bigger than yours but where I’m pointing for reference was where I tested when they were seedlings. Now, I just test anywhere in the pot as the roots would have expanded to all corners of the pot. At first when they were seedlings I didn’t water till run off. I only started doing that 3 weeks into the grow and this was just because I didn’t want to over water the newly developed roots - but I kept increasing the amount of water I gave them from day 1.

GBAUTO · Apr 8, 2020

I'm not ordinarily a soil grower, so take my experience with a grain of salt.
When you make a huge step in pot volume, it's very difficult to manage soil moisture because there isn't root mass throughout the soil. It's just in a small area centered in a sea of unused soil.
I'd try to repot into a smaller container and let the root mass develop and then up-pot.

Avering · Apr 9, 2020

Cool, I just put my fingers in the soil about an inch from the atem and to my first knuckle.. both were quite moist one is a bit more dry than the other.. I plan on watering them both tommorow

Cillit_Bang said:
it’s fine, an inch in wont hurt them or the roots. I’ve put some pics below, just bare in mind of course my stem is obviously a lot bigger than yours but where I’m pointing for reference was where I tested when they were seedlings. Now, I just test anywhere in the pot as the roots would have expanded to all corners of the pot. At first when they were seedlings I didn’t water till run off. I only started doing that 3 weeks into the grow and this was just because I didn’t want to over water the newly developed roots - but I kept increasing the amount of water I gave them from day 1.

View attachment 4527815

Thanks, I had gotten carried away and watered them both til a bit of runoff cause I felt like they were very dry, but I'm hoping this won't slow them down, it was very little runoff, but then again, the plants are quite small, i forgot that i buried one of them afew days into the grow so she is extra lanky and was falling over.. so i will leave these lights on as they just came on an hour ago they are getting about 28k lux and the other is at 20k i believe.. the light is low at about 16 inches

Avering · Apr 10, 2020

Cillit_Bang said:
it’s fine, an inch in wont hurt them or the roots. I’ve put some pics below, just bare in mind of course my stem is obviously a lot bigger than yours but where I’m pointing for reference was where I tested when they were seedlings. Now, I just test anywhere in the pot as the roots would have expanded to all corners of the pot. At first when they were seedlings I didn’t water till run off. I only started doing that 3 weeks into the grow and this was just because I didn’t want to over water the newly developed roots - but I kept increasing the amount of water I gave them from day 1.

View attachment 4527815

Hey! I messed up and watered a lot, also foliar sprayed with a quarter tsp of grow big.. and now my plants have some nute burn..put a fan underneath to prevent root rot hopefully .. cause one was very overwatered.. is there any changes i can make to the environement to help these babies out? Both are burnt

Thank you!

Really need some help

Avering

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Cillit_Bang

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Avering

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Avering

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Cillit_Bang

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Avering

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Cillit_Bang

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GBAUTO

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Avering

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Avering

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