A test in progress.... Miracle Grow soil vs. Fox Farms soil. Is MG really that bad?

Jack in the Bud

Jack in the Bud

Active Member
Thrips.... Two grows back I had my first experience with thrips. I wasn't paying close enough attention to the grow (plus I didn't know what damage from them looked like) and they got pretty well established before I got it figured out. They leave odd shaped white spots and trails on the leaf surfaces. With a 10x magnifier you can see black, pin point spots with in and around these white areas (their poo).

The thrips themselves are smaller than fungus gnats and dam near impossible to see with the un aided eye. So now any time I notice any silvery white spots or trails on leaf surfaces I get the 10x out and investigate closely. With 10x you can see the thrips themselves crawling around. I managed to get one killed and isolated to where I could cut that piece of leaf off and then look at it under my 60 to 100x scope.

garden 007a.jpg

I did quite a bit of on line research into them and discovered that there are numerous sub-species of them. From my reading and looking at the micro-photography pictues I found on line I believe what I had were avacado thrips. One of the contributing factors in my coming to this conclusion was that at the time I had been buying and bringing home avacados from WallyMart. Plus it was January and the out door temps where I live were seriously sub-zero at the time so I was pretty sure I hadn't brought them in from my local out door enviroment.

The lesson here is that you have to be dam careful about what you bring into your house. Any thing from produce you bring home from the grocery store, flowers from the florist to regular house plants you buy (or have others give you) can act as a vector to introduce harmful insects (or disease) in to your MJ grow.

I've made it a habit to do all my plant tending early in the morning while I'm still wearing the sweats I lounge around the house in (that never get worn out side the house). In other words, if you've just come home from the grocery store and put your fruit and veggie purchases a way (or been out side cutting grass or tending your out door garden, flower or herb beds in the summer) you don't wear those clothes (or shoes) into your grow space. I guess if you wanted to get overly paranoid about the whole thing optimally what you would do is shower first and then do your indoor MJ garden tending naked.

Jack
 
Jack in the Bud

Jack in the Bud

Active Member
jawbrodt,

Well I've got my gardening chores done for the day and my morning cookie has kicked in nicely. I'm feel'n a bit wordy so I hope you don't mind if I twist your ear a bit more.

Watering.....While it hasn't happened on all my plants, a couple of them have had a few of the lower (first to grow) leaves yellow, wilt and fall off the plant. This usually seems to happen with in a day or two of having watered. While it would be nice to know exactly what the cause of this is I'm not to concerned about it. Especially since all the foliage up where the buds are growing is looking extremely good. I think it may have something to do with the fact I've got my plants pretty close together and as they're now in the 2 to 3 foot tall stage not much light is getting down to them.

Another factor may be that because when I water I always do so until at least a pint runs out the bottom of the pot it may be that for the first day or two after watering the soil is too saturated and the plant drowns a little bit (roots aren't getting all the oxygen they need). One of the leading causes of people's regular house plants dying (or not thriving) is because they over water them and essientially drowned them out (I know I've killed my share of them that way).

What's happening to some of my MJ plants lower leaves is very similar to what happens to my regular house plants (spiders, aloe, wandering jew, etc.) if I over water them and keep them to wet.

I think some thing similar to this may be contributing to that one lower leaf yellowing you had on that one plant. Especially since you have such a small plant (who's watering needs aren't real great yet) in such a large container. Being as your plants have so much fresh soil aound them at this stage for the roots to grow out into and find nutrients in I just don't see how a nutrient deficency can be causing it.

I know one of my biggest mistakes in the past has been giving my plants to much extra nutrients to soon, getting the salts in the soil to build up, and then have them suffer down the line from a combination of fert burn and nute lock out.

How much to water (and how often) is a really tricky thing to find the best balance on. And I'm not sure I've got it all the way figured out yet myself. And there's just so many other factors effecting it that are particular to each indivual grow (and grower) that it can get really confusing real quick.

I don't like letting mine dry way out (like a lot of people recomend) before watering because MG potting soil tends to form super dry pockets down in the pot that won't easily re wet . You know you've got this condition going on when you water and it runs right out the bottom. The water should take 30 seconds or so to percolate down thru before it begins dripping out the bottom. If you don't get these dry pockets re wet the roots that are already in them will die and new roots won't want to grow out into them. Every now and then I get a couple containers that have dried out to far and the only way I've found to fix it is to set the plant in an inch or so of water for an hour or two and let it suck it up from the bottom.

I try like hell to avoid this happening (because it causes root damage) and is the main reason that when I do water I water until I've got good run off. The down side to that though is that for a day or two after watering the soil is a little to wet and the root system gets slightly drowned. Adding extra perlite/vermiculite helps with this (and is the reason I'm going to add more of it next time around). Of course the more perlite/vermiculite you add the faster the dry pockets will form so you have to water more often to avoid them. Personally I like my set up to be able to go with out me for at least 4 to 5 days at a time so I can travel around and go places.

I'm not saying that having those 4 plants in your experiment in those bigger sized containers while they're this small is a bad thing it's just that I think it may be working against you a little bit as far as keeping your soil moisture at an optimum level. But if I had to choose between my plants getting a little to much water or not quite enough I believe I'd choose slightly over watering them.

Jack
 
Canon

Canon

Well-Known Member
Hmmm, Just a thought.....
Have you tried adding Peroxide???? (assuming other things are reasonably close)
 
jawbrodt

jawbrodt

Well-Known Member
Canon said:
Hmmm, Just a thought.....
Have you tried adding Peroxide???? (assuming other things are reasonably close)
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I've thought about it before, and like the idea of the extra oxygen, but don't like the idea of the H2O2 harming the bacteria/microbes in my soil. IDK, maybe I'll experiment with it in the future, but for now, I can't make myself introduce that extra risk. After all, they're only 12 days old, right?(from being put in the soil) I'm going to try to be a little patient, before going to extremes.lol :wink:


@Jack In The Bud....

Yeah, watering is a tricky thing, especially when going big,(with pots) from the start. I have yet to give them a full watering, til the point of runoff, and probably won't, til they're another 2 weeks older.(That could vary. size is what's important, not age) I agree, dry spots are horrible for your plants, and I always put in the extra effort to make sure to moisten then, when watering. Like you, I water from the bottom, if I've let the soil get too dry, as well as from the top. Also, I water mine twice, if I suspect that I have let the soil dry too much. I use about 1/2 of what I would normally use, watering very evenly, then i leave for about 1/2 hour, come back, and give them the other half. That has been working very well. Normally, I only water from the bottom, if I happened to let them go til the point of drooping. Or, if I'm in a super-rush, and need to give them a quick liter, before I run out the door for the day. That's rare, but happens.lol Right now, at their current size, I'm focusing on keeping the entire medium evenly moistened. When I water them, they mainly get watered around the edges of the pots, probably 75/25, in relation to the center. It seems to be working well, but like you, I am still fine-tuning, as well. What I've found, if that if the outer roots are on dry soil, the plant growth slows to a crawl, even though there is plenty of moisture left in the center of the medium. That's why I've been focusing on keeping those areas damp. IMO, if the roots aren't spreading/growing into moist areas, the foliage isn't growing,(or growing very slowly) either. The plant sorta goes into a 'standby mode', waiting for the next 'rain', so to speak, then goes into another growth spurt. That's what I've been seeing, anyway. :) *heads off to grab another coffee*lol
 
mcpurple

mcpurple

Well-Known Member
jawbrodt said:
I've thought about it before, and like the idea of the extra oxygen, but don't like the idea of the H2O2 harming the bacteria/microbes in my soil. IDK, maybe I'll experiment with it in the future, but for now, I can't make myself introduce that extra risk. After all, they're only 12 days old, right?(from being put in the soil) I'm going to try to be a little patient, before going to extremes.lol :wink:

l
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dont do the peroxide. it will kill what is bad but will also kill the good like you said. leave h2o2 for soil
 
N!pples

N!pples

Active Member
mcpurple said:
dont do the peroxide. it will kill what is bad but will also kill the good like you said. leave h2o2 for soil
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I believe you mean "for Hydro"?!

Try Pyrethrum Bombs for your trips... They work great, organic and Usable during flowering!

Good luck!
 
mcpurple

mcpurple

Well-Known Member
N!pples said:
I believe you mean "for Hydro"?!

Try Pyrethrum Bombs for your trips... They work great, organic and Usable during flowering!

Good luck!
Click to expand...
yes yes i meant hydro i dont know why put soil my mind was sayin hydro and hands typing soil
 
Ryan123456

Ryan123456

Active Member
I should have done more research before I started growing...I am using MG and didn't even know there was any controversy with it! Darn
 
mcpurple

mcpurple

Well-Known Member
gumball said:
Well sorry to hear that McPurple. So then not permanent, just a couple years?
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ya just till i get off probation. i still have my medical card but my PO wont let me use so in 1-2 years i will be back smokin and growin. i miss growing just as much as smoking so next summer i am thinking of doing a small guerrilla grow just for fun cuz i love to grow it became my passion and always will be now.
if you guys want to know anymore PM me about it i really dont want to hijack this thread
 
stinkbudd1

stinkbudd1

Well-Known Member
I've seen a lot of threads on comparing all phases of cannabis growing styles and i think i like this one the best, HID's CFL'S - Organic or Advanced- flushing not flushing, topping not topping, all these are great questions but it all comes down to prefference only growing with what you are comfortable with..I've always used MG from the start nothing else and once i learned the limitations of it and what was needed to maximze its potential ive had nothing but success..Yes i have had a couple of Fungus GNAT problems ive ever had any thing major go wrong..But anyway thanks for the thread and the test run, i hope for the budget grower and others that are not on budget your test will save someone some hard to come by dollars!!! And heres a shot out to the lil huy GO MG win one for the gipp...lolPeace
 
jawbrodt

jawbrodt

Well-Known Member
^Thanks brother, glad you are enjoying it. Man, they're really taking off now, good for 1/2" a day, and still a really close race. IDK which brand is going to win, at this point, but I must say that the MG is certainly holding it's own, against the 'almighty' Fox Farms.lol

It's almost training time, too. Sweet. :cool:
 
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