Live Canna

Finally got to the pics this morning, and posting now  

Tent is the flowering section, open section is veg.

Light wise you will see the new one with lenses over vs the old. Both fantastic lights and the new on is only marginally better than the old. I have had some proper results from the first light already. They both cover 80x80 in flower I believe. As the square side of that tent is 90x90 this will be perfect  

The 3 competition seeds are in the dome. They will break surface either today or tomorrow by the looks of it   Looking forward to it.

6 hours ago, CreX said:

is it just me? i have a desire to check my competition out and see whats cracking!! what tech are you running indoor man? best of luck in the grow off!!

Hehe its not just you   I have been looking around also  But work has been rather manic again as usual. Need to do some more snooping   Best of luck to you too though bud!! 

Been meaning to do a write up and was waiting for the lovely ladies to show their face   But lets add some info so long as that should be soon anyway  

So for this grow off I will be making use of my veg and flower area. I currently have plants in both as I only just got the second light. I will be flipping the flower tent in the next 1-2 weeks. I will have to kind of see how it goes, as both are in my garage and I only have one tent. i.e. I have built a DIY area for the veg area (pics to come later). I am a bit concerned over temps, as the nights have already been cold. But if the ladies can hold it out, I may keep them where they are and then move them to the flower area when I flip. If not I will swop plants around. In my flower tent I currently have 2 x RQS Sherbet Queens and a lucky packet seed.

Gear:

Lights - Making use of Phoenix Sky SA's Sunplus 200 which pumps out 240w. I have one for each area, but the newer version with 3000k and 5000k ( I think) and the lenses is in the flowering tent.
Soil - I am using a custom blend of coco and other items. Screenshot attached should clarify that goodness   Its my first (/2nd) time running this soil (besides the grow currently on the go, but that is not done yet, so who knows).
Nutes - Biobizz Grow and Bloom nutes. I will most likely be making use of some teas and other items, but I will mention as I go.
PH and water - I usually ph between 5.8 - 6.2 or there about. Water wise I am using RO water from the store.
Other - Running a variety of fans, extractor as well as a VARIETY of sonoff switches which basically allows me to control everything on the light, extraction, fans, humidifier etc side. as well as checking temps and humidity. Heat wise, last winter it got really cold, but I had an average light and no tent. My hope this year is that it is enough with the new items. I will be moving the driver into the tent (currently outside to help with summer temps). Won't make a massive difference, but it is 'free' heat. If it is not enough, I will hang the bar heater again like I did last year and run it on a cycle.
Pots - I will be using some smaller plastic pots to start and then into 10 freedom farm fabric pots. Most likely going to flower them in there. But if they grow like crazy, then into the 20l freedom farm fabric pots before the flip to flower.

I am sure I have missed some critical details, so I will fill in as I go. For now, I popped the seeds in water on Sunday afternoon, and planted them in rockwool cubes on Monday afternoon. Put those in a dome under the veg light with a heat mat under. The bottom of the rockwool is sitting at  20-25 depending on the time of day, so should be good there. Once they pop I will be giving them a day or less and then going straight into their first pots.

I will add some pics tonight after lights on  

3 hours ago, DamDave said:

Good luck bud.

Sent from my LM-X210(G) using Tapatalk
 

Thanks bud, same to you!

Welcome to my grow diary   Dare I say this competition should be interesting 

Seeds in water and to be planted out later today. Loved seeing the dark colours on the seed, very different to what I have usually seen 

Good luck to all taking part 

On 5/8/2021 at 9:17 AM, The_StonedTrooper said:

From what I understand the pressed one, or one that needs to rehydrate, is at a bad pH and also contains parts or salts possibly, that you dont want.

Many people recommend the ready to use coco and not the blocks, and I can agree with that, especially cheap blocks.

I've had far better luck using ready use myself. 

Yeah, just takes too much time to wash through everything. And the water wastage is a lot too and a cost.

On 5/8/2021 at 12:17 PM, Twix Aphen said:

@Live Canna thanks for the tip. I'm down in the Cape Town area and the only time I used Lucerne it came in a big bale for horses. We put it into the compost pile and it made it really heat up. It's good to know that you can also use it indoors too. 

@The_StonedTrooperthe bricks I buy are supposed to be Pre washed and buffered but the EC starts off at 2.2 and it's only after soaking and rinsing it out twice that I bring it down to 0.7 

Its a lot of effort it takes a long time to get it ready to use.

 

100%. Seems to be a worthwhile add from what I read.

Agreed, too much effort for me  And thats why I just buy the bags.

3 minutes ago, Twix Aphen said:

@Live CannaThey are looking much better now. Was it Atami Coco that you used? I have used their blue bag and it was really good quality. I've had lots of problems with using the bricks though and it takes a lot of water to get it ready to use.

How much alfalfa do you mix in and where do you get the it from?

Thanks. Yeah I think that was the one. Looks like it anyways. I have heard a lot of people complain about the bricks, hence I rather pay for the sorted stuff. The next one I was going to try was this: https://www.futurama.co.za/freedom-farms-coco-perlite-50-50-growing-medium-30l?gclid=Cj0KCQjwytOEBhD5ARIsANnRjVjcOWELxoW7JP-G3BE0z__NBJms4fGDPlpvlx6SUuP_Y68UcTF2aT8aAhq0EALw_wcB as it seemed a lot cheaper. But if you work this up to 50l (as this bag is only 30, and the atami is 50) then it comes out at like R266. So not that much cheaper.

I mixed in around 100g for the 80-90l of soil I made. See my post a bit further up. I have highlighted a vertical column with my final mix, alfalfa included). I got the one made by 'Organics Matters'. And I managed to get it at a store in greenside, JHB. Where are you based? I am sure a bunch of other stores will stock it.

Just now, Twix Aphen said:

I only asked because I used the 50 litre bricks and the salts need rinsing out and then the Coco has to be dried before blending in the rest of the mix.

How are the plants looking this week?

Yeah i read a lot about using the blocks and rinsing. Seems there are varying theories there too. I also figured buying the "pre-prepped" one is less effort and not that much more expensive? But I am not 100% sure.

Just posted and update above  They looking much better. Green and growing

One week later, three waterings with a bit more nutes than usual and they are looking a lot greener, bushier and happier. Growth has also returned.  Thanks peeps. That will teach me to ignore my plants for work

On 5/2/2021 at 10:34 AM, Twix Aphen said:

Good morning, I use a lot of the same ingredients as you. I didn't add any frass, fulvic or alfalfa meal though.

I have a couple of questions. What sort of Coco did you use and did you rinse the salts out of it? how did you buffer it?

I bought coco that was already 'ready to use' as far as I understood it. One of them orange bags I think of coco with perlite. I'll look for the slip. So no rinsing or anything. The fulvic, alfalfa and frass are apparently all very good add ons. Not expensive really, except for the fulvic, but you use so little.

22 hours ago, Pants said:

Hehe, I got pants but society recons shirts are also needed.

Darn society 

On 5/3/2021 at 1:02 PM, Pants said:

Ready, set...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Someone cocked that up, thats a Tshirt's'sss's'ss not a panses   

21 hours ago, Live Canna said:

Hey guys, sorry been manic at work and then away over the weekend. Playing catch up today, so I will sort out payment and order by tomorrow latest I reckon.

Thanks

Right, paid and sorted. Lets get this show on the road 

3 minutes ago, ORGANinc. said:

Having something like this is definitely the best way to approach it bud, nice planning. It doesn't look like a heavily amended mix, but it does look to have quite a few moving parts when talking about fertility. I'm definitely not an expert, but having many sources of dense nutrient transfer is very tricky and almost never works.

Thanks bud. Yeah, I like to have numbers and planning behind things as much as I can for stuff like this. Not sure why I didn't fill in the perlite field, but I obviously added there too  Its the first soil I mixed myself, so will see what happens.

13 hours ago, Marzcanna said:

I know things can really stack up at the end of the day. I was buying things on a month to month bases

100%  It does get a lot.

2 hours ago, ORGANinc. said:

Hey bud! I can almost certainly say your compost teas are the problem, I wouldn't do more than 1 Cup per 5 Gal, and I don't do compost teas anymore, also many times commercial compost hasn't fully been assimilated, leaving much free nitrogen around and that can have adverse affects on your plans, more like a fertilizer than a inoculant.

Just keep that in-mind if increasing your feed. Then another thing I read is that you have amendments in your soil that you have added? Also very important considering you are adding more in the system, details for those amendments are critical?  

 

Thanks, I will keep that in mind, but I only fed them one compost tea before I left, and they were already in this state, so I don't think that is the case here. In the past grows I have had, I did a lot of compost teas in the same method and never had an issue. I am becoming more aware of the compost I buy though, as I have found a lot of pests in recent ones "I believe at least". I will attach a screenshot of the contents of my soil, the highlighted column to the right of the black line is what I used at the end of the day.

1 hour ago, SkunkPharm said:

Those plants looks like they are over watered. Your roots need some oxygen. It also looks like they were in a small pot for to long.  You need to dry the pots out and the plants need about a week to recover.

Yup, overwatered and under nuted.

1 hour ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

You got a EC pen? 

get some clean water, test the EC, make sure you got 0.0 or 0.1 EC. water plants slowly till first bit of runoff, test EC of runoff. this will clearly tell you if it's over fed or under fed.

next is ph, if ph is out (which can happen in organic situations) your plant will also show signs of deficiency. 

if EC too high, flush with low EC water and keep testing runoff till desired value.

got a ph pen? 

get clean water, test ph, make sure it's between 5.8 and 6.2 (for soil). water slowly till first runoff. test runoff. this will show you ph of soil.

if ph is out, get water to right ph and keep flushing and testing runoff till ph is at desired value. 

from there, start over with nutes. begin at 1ml/L and work your way up.

less is more especially cause organic growing makes use of slow release nutes so you can give too much real quik. don't let the "it's organic you can do what you want" catch phase get you. 

organic can be more full of shit than people make it out to be

Thanks bud, sadly no EC pen, but some solid advice here. Maybe EC pen should be my next purchase over soil PH. Because as you say, I can test run off. Just always more of a mission. Haha I must agree, I also feel that some days organic can be more work.

50 minutes ago, ORGANinc. said:

Does not look like there is much perlite/aeration come to think of it. Compaction could be making the issues worse.

There is quite a bit. I think I started these guys way back in FF soil, and then I transplanted to my soil. I will attach a screenshot of the contents of my soil, the highlighted column to the right of the black line is what I used at the end of the day.

Thanks for all the help peeps. I will report back as they 'hopefully' recover and let you all know what I did and what happened  

12 minutes ago, Marzcanna said:

I would also invest on a PH and TDS pen. TDS not so much for soil, but its always good to know your EC/PPM when you run into issues. All the best with your grow.

Thanks man  Yeah always been keen to get the TDS pen also. But first on the wish list is a proper soil ph pen (blue lab)   I love having numbers and stats, PH, TDS, EC, PPM anything  Just a pity they are all so expensive (or at least the proper ones. 

3 minutes ago, Marzcanna said:

Pump it up a bit, 6.5 -6.7, and as mentioned above use a cal-mag, although i don't see any signs of a immobile nute  deficiencies yet, with LEDS there's now studies that LEDs effect calcium, so it is advisable to supplement it regardless, Im gona go out on a huge guess and say due to the low ph levels your plants isn't able to uptake the nutes efficiently, by the looks im going out on a guess again and say that it looks like a lack of nitrogen. But thats just a guess will have to read through the rest of the replies

Thanks appreciate it and the insight. I am going to get out of my rut first and give my plants some love before changing bigger things like PH. I had no issues on previous runs, so as said I think this is purely me and the lack of attention I gave them, or more so shitty attention  But thanks, will definitely consider that as another step to take. I may actually try that PH range with my custom soil (which I think is here too), can't remember what I planted where, I will need to check. But for FF the recommendation from them is within my range. It didn't give me any troubles, but who knows

26 minutes ago, Marzcanna said:

Diffinatly looks like a mobile deficiency, what's your PH reading?

I don't have a soil PH meter that is reliable. Could check run off I guess. Watering PH as per above messages 5.8-6.2

4 minutes ago, PsyCLown said:

1ml/L is quite low, I'd say 2ml to 3ml/L, although those plants seem to be on the smaller side and are not happy so perhaps  2.5ml/l and bump up to 3ml/l once they are recovered. I assume those are 20L pots?

 

You could even do a foliar feed, cannot remember if its Grow or Fish Mix which is recommended for the foliar.

Feeding with just plain water is fine if you are in a pinch, but long term it is a no no! If life is busy, give the plants a little bit of water to keep them alive and prevent them from drooping (perhaps 1L per pot) and then later that day or the next day do a proper feed with the usual 2L to 3L of feed per 20L pot.

 

As mentioned, it is important to properly water your medium to prevent it from drying out too much - which would affect the microbes but more importantly will make it difficult to rehydrate the soil properly again. Even with coco, which is much better at absorbing liquid compared to soil, it can be a slow and difficult process to fully saturate the medium again and prevent the feed from finding channels and running through the medium as opposed to wetting the entire medium.

 

Overwatering is a thing, but IMO seldom happens. If anything I feel most growers end up underwatering as they get scared off by people on forums always telling them to not overwater. Don't water your plants if the top of the soil is still wet basically, unless you know what you are doing, and you should be fine.

Thanks, I will up the nutes a bit on the feed tonight then and see how it goes. Yeah 20l on the big ones and a 10 at the front as she was popped later. Will end all in a 20 most likely. Thanks for the advice re foliar, I will look that up. I do do that with my teas always (more as a guard as I have heard that is good for pests).

Yeah agreed, and sadly only I am at fault there   The plan was always to feed properly the next day/night...but the day never came

I definitely overwatered in the beginning when I was learning (well...learning much bigger chunks, now its the small bits that kill me ). But yeah, I see that as a common thread of advice. I think my "assumption" of my horrible watering scheme these last weeks makes sense.

Improvements coming!!  

11 minutes ago, Bos said:

If I may ask as well, how did the transplant go? Sometimes you get the plant into the new pot with almost zero disturbance(best case), sometimes it goes rough and the roots take a knock.(bad stunting) My plants usually perk up after a week or 2.

With AACT's you need plenty air and movement. One fishtank pump might be too little. Tried it and it didnt work, I now run a dual air pump and fountain pump together(for air and agitation) in a 25lt bucket for only 18-24hrs, longer than that I get funky smells, the good aerobic bacteria deplete the food supply and die off, then the anearobic bacteria take over.

Not saying that is what happened but there may be a risk.

Thanks Bos, some nice points there. Agreed, I could do with more aeration and water flow/agitation also. Will need to invest some more there.

Transplant wise it worked out fine. In actual fact the smallest plant was the "worst" as the roots were not holding the medium fully yet, but she perked up and barely flinched. Rest I think had more issues with what was there already.

37 minutes ago, Prom said:

Give them a 2ml/l feeding once decent dry. then stick to your feeding cycle. You might want to add a shot of calmag (if you use nitrate based, only 1ml Grow per liter) or epsom salt. Will take 2 weeks to bounce back. As they are in a bad state, take your time to check how wet they are before you feed.. they use less now, as they stopped growing. The small one and the left one should easy come back.. the right, not doing to well. Root system is weak, is very yellow already.

Is like in real life.. if you don't give your lady enough attention, she comes over and kicks you in the nuts 

 

Thanks, will definitely give that a go. I have epsom salts here, so will give that a go on the next feed.

33 minutes ago, 420SA said:

Be careful of not wetting all your soil each watering. You don't want your soil to dry out completely in between waterings/feeds. It prevents the uptake of nutrients and reduces your micro life

FF soil is quite airy if I'm not mistaken so don't be afraid of getting it too wet during a watering. You actually want some runoff to ensure thorough "wetting" IMO, unless you water your plants very slowly... drippers are a different story.

When did you transplant into those pots? If they haven't been in that soil for long I can't see how a lack of feeding would lead to your plants looking the way they do at the moment. They would still look decent, even with very little feeding. 

Quoting FF's website below

"The nutrients in the soil should be adequate for approximately 2-6 weeks before additional nutrient applications are required."

So this still points to a lockout issue for me, either due to PH, lack of thorough wetting, or perhaps your teas.  Your watering PH sounds fine though so let's maybe look at your compost teas. How are you making them and do you smell the teas before giving to your plants? What kind air pump you using for how much water?

100%, I have also always been of the opinion not to let it dry completely, much more vital for organic I find where you are trying to nurture the microbes.

So yeah I do use a sprayer and water very slowly and properly. I think this is really just due to neglect and over watering, but watering less often. With having skipped nutes a lot, I think that is why it ended up like this. In hindsight now re your query on the transplant, it was about a week ago. And they were looking bad before already (work has been bad for a while  ) so yeah. The 2 main ones here were actually an experiment for a mini seedling area I was running under a floodlight. I gave them even less attention before hand as I was finishing off my main grow. So my thoughts are this problem has been there a while, I have just not had the time/put in the effort.

Teas - Happy to learn more there, so what I do is, I use the above ingredients. Usually use around 3-5 litres depending on the qty of plants I want to water. I use a small air pump from the pet shop (all I could afford at that point), but it makes about half of the surface water churn with bubbles. I do smell them before hand, don't ask me what it smelt like now as I forgot. Although I must say they always smelt earthy. Then I used BioBizz Grow in there at some point and the smell was more "off" to me, so I stopped doing that.

2 minutes ago, Prom said:

1ml/l with every feeding?

Well...  Normally yes...not when work is crazy. I left a lot of them out and just gave PH'd water. So...I think there is definitely a nugget there in terms of where I went wrong   I need to give them more love.

I was worried it may have been overfeeding now, so I am glad I checked, thanks all!

Hey peeps, thanks for the rapid response.

I agree with you all  ....been reading finally now that I had a gap, and also feel like I am overwatering and not feeding enough. I also thought deficient at first, that is why I made a quick tea before I went away.

In all honesty, work has just been really bad, so I have neglected them. If I try to remember correctly, I think this meant I was watering less often, but a lot more....so overwatering and with gaps in between where I did not have time. So I think they lost nutes in between, got over watered and also nutes washed out maybe. Bad grower, bad!!  ....I will try and get back on track this week. The small Sherbet queen is definitely looking the best so far.

Nutes: So I am feeding BioBizz Grow (and later bloom) at the recommended 1ml per 1l of water. Using RO water and PH to 5.8-6.2.

Teas: (I know they are probably not grand, but still learning on that front. I put a good tablespoon or 2 for feed, 1-2 cups of different compost of what I have on hand. And then 1-2 cups of worm castings. I also sometimes add kelp flakes (a lot more recently). I do not typically PH my teas, but feed as is.

I do let the pots dry. I usually don't water with lots of run off, if any, so the trays/bowls are more there to catch a few drops and keep things organized.

Its odd how you can have great grows, and then the next one falls off the rails...although I definitely believe this is 100% my fault and work/busy related 

Hey guys, sorry been manic at work and then away over the weekend. Playing catch up today, so I will sort out payment and order by tomorrow latest I reckon.

Thanks

Hey All,

So I have 3 plants in my main tent at the moment and they all seem to be showing similar issues (although the one not as bad). I had this issue on the previous grow on one plant, but I am just not 100% sure what this is. Leaves seem to burn and yellow, and curl...its been multiple signs. On the previous run I was hit with Thrips and Fungus gnats, but this seems to me to be more of a nute problem?

I am growing indoor, organic (Freedom Farm soils, and recently on the repot some of my own organic soil I made from a base of coco and then added a bunch of items). Bio Bizz nutes with compost teas when I get around to it. I usually ph my watering to 5.8-6.2 as per FF and BioBizz, but with my soil mix have basically aimed for the same.

I did recently re pot the RQS Sherbet queen (big one and the small one) and the lucky packet seed I have got (other big more sativa like plant on the back left).

Leaves seem to vary in colour from top top bottom. I was also away for a few days, but I gave them a nice compost tea before I left.

The prdominent issue I had before and I feel am still seeing, is that some areas/blotches of a leaf would burn and die. Normally on the sides of the leaf.

Thanks for any help in advance.

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