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

jawbrodt

Well-Known Member
Sorry I was an asshole guys.

Eh, no biggie, bro. We're guys, most of us are assholes, from time to time. That's just the way we are. I'm usually an asshole for the first hour of every day, til I get enough coffee in me. :lol: No worries, it's all good. :joint:
 
Thanks guys. Moving on...

Jaw I aerated like you recommended. They were a little bit happier this morning. Transplanting for sure this weekend!
 

Kaptain Kron

Well-Known Member
I should have taken pictures before I chopped the bitch up, but I lay down my girls all the time by tying the top down with string, I'm finishing my last full fluro grow, so I always did that so the whole plant would get light, and doing so always produced several main colas. Its not like supercropping AT ALL, thats where you take a flowering plant and force it back into veg, which kills the bud it was making, but after about a month of nothing it starts branching like something from a horror flick, only its a good thing...Not like topping either, because your not cutting anything off, though I did that on accident, it has three main colas. The one I just layed down I think had around 7. I chopped her because I sampled it and realized I hate the way Full Moon taste. It has a perfumy taste that I could probably grow to like, but it also has this strong piney note I just can't stand. Not to mention I was already getting to the point of hating long flowering times, hence why next grow I'm trying out full indica's... :twisted: Yea, sorry for the rambling, off to nap now, hope that helped some...
Sorry to get off topic but i have to say something about this because i can't have people thinking thats really what super cropping is. Unfortunately you are wrong sir, Super cropping is done in veg and usually up to about the third week of flower, this is because you reach a point of diminishing returns of the HST of pinching the shit out of your branches, they have to come back up after you pinch them and they start having trouble doing that the longer into flower you go because the plant starts concentrating less on regen of vegetative growth than of growth of the nugs. It does NOT most definately DOES NOT kill the buds off in any way shape or form. All you do when you pinch like that is effect the same thing as doing an LST except for the bennefit of where u pinched u get a fat knuckle that helps support the branches and buds more than if you had just tied the plant up with LST As for the branching effect you can get that with LST as well your just exposing lower nodes to more extreme amounts of light which makes them think they are top branches.

Generally supercropping and LST are very close with very few differences with basically the same end result. It comes down more to personal preference than anything i dont like staking and tieing shit up so i just pinch my shit and in 1-3 days the branch has curved back up to light with multiple new heads started for colas and much stronger stem. Probably the best way to do it would be to do a combined method of both that way you get the advantage of the stronger stem with the sustained bending of tieing the plant up into the shape you want/need it to be

anyways sorry bout the rant back to the subject, of mg vs the FF

My last grow i had a PK in a 3 gallon pot in a tree that i watered with 2 gallons of water a week. It started indoors at the homis house and he put it in a half gallon pot after the clone rooted with FFOF. Once root bound in that pot i put it into the three gallon with MG potting soil, it was 1.5ft tall maybe a bit taller when it started to flower went about two weeks into flower with no nuts added then i started to add sensi part a and b and bud candy thats it. worked great i cant really comment on final product as cali heatwave started her herming and i had to pull her down.

MG worked fine for me had a SUPER fat root ball on mine so *shrugs*
 

Kaptain Kron

Well-Known Member
thank you kind sir i just dont want any more confusion on that subject as it is already murky and confusing as hell with LST HST FIM SC all the good stuff lol makes the head spin if your not careful... or wait maybe its the krack herer i just toked out the bong lol
 

RavenMochi

Well-Known Member
Kaptain, their was an entire thread done on it that said the contrary, which is where I got my info, my deepest apologies. They were suggesting around 21 days into flowering forcing back into veg which creates massive branching, but the buds that were originally forming when doing that do in fact die off, as has been confirmed by darkdestruction (he's apparently been doing it for sometime...)
 

Canon

Well-Known Member
Kaptain, their was an entire thread done on it that said the contrary, which is where I got my info, my deepest apologies. They were suggesting around 21 days into flowering forcing back into veg which creates massive branching, but the buds that were originally forming when doing that do in fact die off, as has been confirmed by darkdestruction (he's apparently been doing it for sometime...)
What you describe is correct, BUT, it's not called Super Cropping.
Probably a official name for it,,, I just refer to it as throwing back to veg.
 

RavenMochi

Well-Known Member
†L† yea I dug back to find the thread I was referencing, my bad, they called it monster cropping....honest mistake....why don't they ever give these tech normal names...like "reveg" or something simple?
 

Canon

Well-Known Member
†L† yea I dug back to find the thread I was referencing, my bad, they called it monster cropping....honest mistake....why don't they ever give these tech normal names...like "reveg" or something simple?
I know. Some I've been doing for years. Never heard it called anything specific until I got on the internet about them.
Always referred to them a (like you said) Re-Veg, snipping, bending, topping, pruning, etc. :-P :weed:
 

Kaptain Kron

Well-Known Member
yeah what you are referring to is just someones dumb idea in my opinion to try and get more yeild off their first crop why do that you can really only reveg a plant once after that its played out. So why send your plant back into veg state when you could harvest most of the nug on a first harvest and then reveg it, you end up with more bud that way. Yes when you say crazy branching occurs and you get massive yield that is all true. But i prefer to harvest twice instead of just purposely making it so i can only harvest once and that one harvest wont add up to what i would have gotten off of the plant twice.

crap im hijacking my bad imma shut my mouth now
 

RavenMochi

Well-Known Member
†LOL† We're waiting on updated anyways... Actually, Kron, I think your missing a valuable alternative use to that method, for me, it seems like a good way to make a mother. Rather than do it 21 days into flowering, wait till she's done, and just like nature, give it another spring then keep her in veg from then on to clone from it. I know they say the clones aren't as potent, but I've never heard that from anyone thats made practice of it, they've always said it came out the same, just more to clone. But as far as using it as a method to harvest, I do have to agree with you, namely because you've already spent however long you chose on veg, then another 21 days into flowering, then when you throw it back to veg I understand it doesn't do shit for a month, thats a full month you've wasted, then however long you want to give it after that month to actually do the mad branching, probably another month, when you start flowering again, your like 3 months in the hole. If your were playing with full indica's, you would have already cropped the first harvest, and be halfway done with your second and thats just when you started flowering the monster, thats not even including the extra 2 months still left in flowering.
†L† Sorry Jaw....we're just waiting on you...
oh,and whats this about testing the mg nutes next? :blsmoke: which ones? Seriously, after that, find like maybe 2 more experiments involving mg and something else, then compile all four and write a book about it and publish it. Put it in your sig, bet you people would buy it...(hell, I'd buy a copy)
 

Jack in the Bud

Active Member
Mr. jaw,

I was wondering if I could get you to elaborate on your "ph" testing program. Do you have a soil ph test meter? And if so, which make/model?

As your grow has progressed have you noticed any tendencies for your MG potting mix to get either more alkaline or more acidic? And what ph range would you prefer it to be in?

Right now the only ph testing I can do is with a basic aquarium testing kit. And since that depends on a color comparison to a chart I think that for accuracies sake that's pretty much limited to testing clear water. Pretty much anything you add to the water when you want to feed (ferts/nutes, molasses, etc.) gives it a color change which I think would throw off the accuracy of this kind of ph testing. And since the run off from when you water with these things isn't usually very clear I can't see it being very accurate for checking the ph of that either.

I'm at day 110 of a grow in standard MG potting mix (that's had around 10 to 15% extra perlite and vermiculite added to it). I know the rain water I'm using has a ph of 6.8. Yesterday when watering a plant with some of this "straight" rain water (nothing else added to it) I noticed that the run off out of the bottom of the pot was extremely clear so I decided to test it with my aquarium ph test kit. It tested at 7.0.

I've heard that MG potting soil was extremely good at buffering ph and not letting it swing to far either way from 7.0 and this seems to bear that out. On the other hand from my reading it seems that maybe a slightly more acidic soil ph (say down around 6.5) might be a better ph enviroment for cannabis to grow in because it would facilitate nutrient up take and help avoid the "locking out" of some things.

What are your thoughts in this area?

Jack
 

RavenMochi

Well-Known Member
:| †about a 10 second pause...† yea. What he said.
†LOL† sorry, baked. This is extremely valuable info as while I start them in MG organic when they're babies, but then get transferred to reg mg potting mix, nothing else except molasses in my water, and I've never not a once done any kind of ph testing. Obviously, when I do test my water won't match your 6.8 rain water, I have no idea what the tap is here, but I've been fortunate enough that my babies have liked it. Gotta love blind luck and mg... :blsmoke:
 

jawbrodt

Well-Known Member
Mr. jaw,

I was wondering if I could get you to elaborate on your "ph" testing program. Do you have a soil ph test meter? And if so, which make/model?

As your grow has progressed have you noticed any tendencies for your MG potting mix to get either more alkaline or more acidic? And what ph range would you prefer it to be in?

Right now the only ph testing I can do is with a basic aquarium testing kit. And since that depends on a color comparison to a chart I think that for accuracies sake that's pretty much limited to testing clear water. Pretty much anything you add to the water when you want to feed (ferts/nutes, molasses, etc.) gives it a color change which I think would throw off the accuracy of this kind of ph testing. And since the run off from when you water with these things isn't usually very clear I can't see it being very accurate for checking the ph of that either.

I'm at day 110 of a grow in standard MG potting mix (that's had around 10 to 15% extra perlite and vermiculite added to it). I know the rain water I'm using has a ph of 6.8. Yesterday when watering a plant with some of this "straight" rain water (nothing else added to it) I noticed that the run off out of the bottom of the pot was extremely clear so I decided to test it with my aquarium ph test kit. It tested at 7.0.

I've heard that MG potting soil was extremely good at buffering ph and not letting it swing to far either way from 7.0 and this seems to bear that out. On the other hand from my reading it seems that maybe a slightly more acidic soil ph (say down around 6.5) might be a better ph enviroment for cannabis to grow in because it would facilitate nutrient up take and help avoid the "locking out" of some things.

What are your thoughts in this area?

Jack
Hey Jack, good to see ya. PH? Well, like you, I have 6.8 water(35 PPM from the tap) to work with, which is very convenient. I've looked at lots of PH charts, and many have slight differences, but nothing major. It does appear that you want to be between 6.0 and 7.0, if you don't wanna run into problems, but other than that, there's no real answer, as to what 'perfect PH' is, IMO. After looking at all those charts, I've found that 6.8 is the PH that the big three(NPK), become most available at, with magnesium and calcium, still available, but to a lesser degree. The other micros are at no disadvantage, at 6.8. At any rate, none of them are close to being locked, which to me, is most important. What I like to do, is to keep everything at 6.8,(soil too) for the most part, with an occasional 6.5-6.6 feeding, every month or so. That's something I've been playing with, in an attempt to keep Mg and Ca levels 'up to par' within the plants. Actually, it probably has no effect at all, but I do it anyway, just because.lol

I think that what many people don't realize, is that soil PH never stays perfectly constant. It fluctuates up and down, as it goes from dry to wet, continuously. I have one of those cheap probe-type meters(with the pencil-sized probe, not the really skinny ones), and rarely use it anymore. I checked the plants in the grow, a few days ago, and found them all to be 6.9-7.0. They had just been watered heavily, after being quite dry, which to me, indicates an approximate PH, of the soil when it's dry/near dryness.(because it hasn't been wet long enough to start drifting towards the acidic range) That pretty much reassures me that I don't have to worry about low, or high, PH. The PH will drop some, as the soil stays wet for the next couple days, and my assumption, is that it likely drops to a range where Mg and Ca become more available, making up for that possible deficiency. So, if my untested logic is correct, I'm getting the best of both worlds...maximum macro-nute absorbtion when they're first fed, followed by excellent absorbtion of Ca and Mg, after the PH has had time to drop, over the next day or two. At all points, all nutes are available, as well. I also use Calmag with every feeding, as re-assurance, just in case my logic is flawed, and so far, so good.lol Also, I believe that in the absolute center of the pot, the PH is always lower than what your runoff, or PH meter will tell you, which is another reason I choose 6.8. It's 6.8 going in, making for excellent macro absorbtion, then buffered down, crossing all the ranges of maximum absorption, yet still tending to keep PH from dropping lower. That's the main reason I don't go with 6.5, as most do. I don't wanna risk the PH dropping too low, too soon, making for problems in late flowering. That is another total untested theory, btw, but so far, so good. I'm by no means a pro, and am still tweaking and testing things, but so far, I've found 6.8 to be the best choice, for me.

Also, I just went back to MG soil, and from what I remember, it always tended to hold close to 7.0. My FF OF holds at about the same, maybe .1 or .2 lower, but generally, the same. So far, neither has given any problems. I prefer it that high, because from what I've seen, once a soil starts going acidic, it tends to keep on dropping, right outta the useful range. I'll stick with 6.8, til further testing has been done(by me.lol)

I use one of the cheap meters off Ebay, and it does the trick, just fine for soil. If I went hydro, i'd invest in a better one, because PH is alot more unforgiving, in hydro, vs. soil. Sure, the cheapo meter might not be super-accurate, but, it's well with .2 or so, which is plenty for me. Actually, I've recorded all the "PH Up requirements"(I use an insulin syringe to measure the stuff, exactly, while mixing 2-liter bottles, at a time) for all my different fert mixes, so that I know how much to add, without even using a meter. I double-check things, once or twice, during a grow, but that's it. At 6.8, I know that if I'm off a little, when mixing, it's still in a desirable range, and as long as my tapwater doesn't change, PH isn't an issue anymore. I also started top-dressing with lime, at the first week of 12/12, This is my first time for that, so can't give much opinion, other than that it's been trouble-free, and have only 3 weeks left. :)

Okay, I'm beat, and off to bed. I'll come back tomorrow and see what I forgot to mention, or correct any stupidity that I might've divulged.lol :wink:
 

tyke1973

Well-Known Member
Dude why are you wasteing your time and risking possible prosecution by doing this grow, we all know that mj has it's place in growing but just not cannabis cultivation there is far to many chemicle baddies in there for any serious grower to even consider useing.I personaly think that ff/bio bizz are thr only two soil's that are any good all though i have mixed my own to great success,But by the time you have bought all the stuff that is in bio bizz it work's out cheaper to get b/bizz or fox farm.If you want to experiment by grafting more than one strain on to a main mother or even re generate a plant back into veg after flowering it.Both method's will be far more beneficial to yr growing armer..........tyke````````
 

RavenMochi

Well-Known Member
Dude why are you wasteing your time and risking possible prosecution by doing this grow, we all know that mj has it's place in growing but just not cannabis cultivation there is far to many chemicle baddies in there for any serious grower to even consider useing.I personaly think that ff/bio bizz are thr only two soil's that are any good all though i have mixed my own to great success,But by the time you have bought all the stuff that is in bio bizz it work's out cheaper to get b/bizz or fox farm.If you want to experiment by grafting more than one strain on to a main mother or even re generate a plant back into veg after flowering it.Both method's will be far more beneficial to yr growing armer..........tyke````````
†LHFAO† I knew it, I knew it couldn't be helped. Without any facts, test, or basis of reason a ff user wouldn't accept the fact that mg outperformed ff. As far as "chemical baddies" people have been growing food in mg for years with no ill effect, why all of a sudden in mj is it going to kill me again? Accept it tyke, mg outperformed your precious fox farm. :shock:
 

Kaptain Kron

Well-Known Member
†LOL† We're waiting on updated anyways... Actually, Kron, I think your missing a valuable alternative use to that method, for me, it seems like a good way to make a mother. Rather than do it 21 days into flowering, wait till she's done, and just like nature, give it another spring then keep her in veg from then on to clone from it. I know they say the clones aren't as potent, but I've never heard that from anyone thats made practice of it, they've always said it came out the same, just more to clone. But as far as using it as a method to harvest, I do have to agree with you, namely because you've already spent however long you chose on veg, then another 21 days into flowering, then when you throw it back to veg I understand it doesn't do shit for a month, thats a full month you've wasted, then however long you want to give it after that month to actually do the mad branching, probably another month, when you start flowering again, your like 3 months in the hole. If your were playing with full indica's, you would have already cropped the first harvest, and be halfway done with your second and thats just when you started flowering the monster, thats not even including the extra 2 months still left in flowering.
†L† Sorry Jaw....we're just waiting on you...
oh,and whats this about testing the mg nutes next? :blsmoke: which ones? Seriously, after that, find like maybe 2 more experiments involving mg and something else, then compile all four and write a book about it and publish it. Put it in your sig, bet you people would buy it...(hell, I'd buy a copy)
I agree with you on that one usually ill take a harvest off of it and re veg and then mother it for a while and then flower it again lol makes it super beast specially if your outside and you have a lot of room to play with

FF obviously got pwnt i dont understand how people cant look at the facts too. I use fox farms still got some bags of it that i will use but its expensive by comparison so well we all know whats coming shortly lol just gotta use up what i got
 
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