10 things i've learned from my second grow

Ten things I’ve learned from my second grow.

1. Plants do not need a lot of water….or at least as much as I feel the need to water them.

2. Giving them “dribbles” every day hinders root growth. Soak the soil when watering….yes, until I see some come out the bottom. Then write down when I watered them and force myself to wait at least 4-5 days before thinking about watering them again…..then wait a day or two more.

3. Skimping on buying quality soil will only end up in headaches. The $4 per container I saved amounted to $50 of fucking with my head.

4. Growing tall plants when I only have a 400 watt HPS is a waste of time. The bottom half of all my 36” plants are nothing more than pop-corn buds…even with a 4’ four-bulb T5 HO lighting up the bottom. Strongly consider some form of LST in the future.

5. Auto-flowering plants are not for me. I loved the idea of a bunch of quick plants but in the end, they don’t fit into my grow pattern of constantly having a bunch of photo-period plants growing at the same time.

6. Back to my 400 watt HPS…..two plants love flowering under the light, three plants ends up all of them fighting to get under the lamp. It can be done with three, and I’m sure I’ll do it again, but ideally two would be better.

7. I have to get a good fan and filter system. I’m sitting here two floors above my plants and can still smell them.

8. Plants that are in the 7-9[SUP]th[/SUP] week of flowering are very happy with extra doses of bloom nutes.

9. I have a very understanding wife. When, after years of trying, I finally talked her into letting me grow some weed, I told her that I’d only have two plants at a time. She walked into my grow room the other night and counted 10 plants in various stages of grow….she smiled and said “Only two plants huh”. Of course she was stoned on her ass from the last harvest.

10. The vast majority of posters on Roll It Up are truly here to help. “Trolls” need some sort of professional help.

nice man looks good there is a learning curve to growing good weed there is a isosceles triangle curve to growing great weed


a couple little things i wanted to interject, it seemed that your tall plant issue and your too many plants issue could be solved with the same solution- low stress training if you look at my grow you can see how i tied all my branches down to create an even canopy that way all the buds get light and trim off the way low ones so they don't hinder the upper buds starting at about week 2-3 of veg start by bending the entire plant over almost in half making all the lower branches to bend upwards to reach for light as the main stalk grows i just tie her down around the circumference of the pot

another point i wanted to make is small plants are nice but the bigger the plant the bigger the buds she will produce have you see some of the pics floating around of people growing these 5ft monsters pruning them to look that trees you can buy at home depot and the buds that these things produce are the size of a football!!

heres where sog comes into play you can stuff 5 plants under your 400w lst them so the light evenly covers them all

another idea iv been wanting to try i saw a interesting thread awhile back where some guy was growing a kinda half ass vert he built this set of stairs where he set his girls on, then hung the light at a angle so it was kinda a vert grow but kinda not..

My original thoughts on growing taller plants was that I had more vertical room than I did floor space. SCROG's and aggressive LST's take up more horizontal room than I have. I too have entertained a vertical grow, and may do so in the future.

My 400 watt HPS hangs only 10" or so above the top of my plants and this limits the amount of area it will cover effectively. Perhaps a better reflector would spread the light better for a wider range.....or if I get a much better ventilation system, I can entertain a 1000 watt lighting system that can be hung much higher above the plants and give me more of a lighting area. Right now I'm battling heat issues as my temps are just below the mid-80's and it's not even summer yet.

The next two plants I'm putting in 12/12 shortly have been slightly LST'ed to grow wider and less tall....in theory. They are both 17" tall at the moment and it won't be for another 10-14 days before they flip. Odds are that they too will be over 30" when they're done. Hopefully the LST I've done to them will correct some of the issues I've had this past grow.

i see what you mean but honestly a aggressive lst will take less room then just letting it grow when it grows naturally it tends to bush out like pic 3 5 and 6









this pic is right before flower see the plant on the right its a big plant about 2 1/2 to 3 ft tall but do you see how i have it tied down so it only grows around the circumference of the pot itselve so instead of taking a massive amount of room it only takes enough room to put the pot

Learning things is good. Listing them as rules may inhibit further wisdom being gained.

I will learn the correct way of LST and give it a good try.

I want to clarify something.....My idea this grow was to pretty much let the plants grow out naturally so I can see what they do on their own. Of the three plants, I only topped one, and did very little lollipopping. I let the plants tell me what leaves to take off (after they turned yellow), and my focus on myself was to make sure I didn't screw things up. I did some side-by-side comparisons between regular containers and smart-pots too, as I also wanted to see how much more yield topping a plant offered vs. non-topped.

My upcoming grows will indeed involved LSTing.....With the help of those on RIU I just have to learn the best way for me to do it.

Consider the 4-way LST method (see thread here on RIU). This prepares a nice plant structure for future growth.
I do this, then scrog. Primarily to manage plant height. But is it nice & efficient to have a good even canopy to max your light. I grow with a 400W.