2 months old and not doing well

B

Becca

Active Member
Hi!

please bear with me this is only my second post (my first one being when i just put this message in the wrong place ) lol

okay, where to start. I am a recently widowed 30something from seattle.
Always wanted to try to grow since am not doing anything else at the moment. Since i dont have a lot of hobbies i decided to try to create a nice setup. so i got a darkroom grow tent and a 600w hps/mh with an air cooled lamp. ( i think thats the right term)
i read about growing hempy style and people said it was a good way for beginners, so off i went.
used a few bagseeds and then also some from a seedshop started them in jiffypellets and now they are in 2l bottles in a mix of perlite and vermiculite (about 4:1) anyway, they have never looked healthy to me and since i am not much of a gardener anyway, this isnt too surprising.
right now i am watering every 3-4 days. i give them a flush every 3rd watering or so (meaning just h20 until its coming out the drain hole)
the other waterings i give about a halfcup of water w/ nutes
(am using 10ml gh bloom and 5ml gh micro pergallon.)
what else?
The temp has been pretty constant in the 76-78 range.
right now the tallest one is about 22 inches from the light the shortest is prob 27 inches or so.
they are on a 21/3 schedule
I started this all about the 9th of September.
i dont know anyone in real life to come over and show me what to do so am hoping for maybe some advice :smile:
i hope the pics show my problem areas. i.e. disclored leaves and the underneath vegetation browining off and dying :sad:

thanks

becca
 
pamaris

pamaris

Well-Known Member
Well I think the more experienced people will come along and tell you to check your pH. I think it should be about 6-ish for hempy buckets? It can wreak absolute havoc if your pH isn't right.

I think those things should be monsters by now.

One thing- if you are not flowering you don't need to use the flowering nutes. Also, when you start a grow, you're not supposed to feed for 3-4 weeks (though maybe that's just a soil rule). (I don't know if maybe you started feeding too much too early).

I am also a 30something female who is very new to this. I started with soil though. If I were you I'd chuck it all in and start over with soil and an "easy" strain. I got an amazing yield in 8 weeks off of some Lowryder #2 plants in a soil called Batmix- with Biobizz nutes. They took a lot of newbie abuse and still performed. I am no gardener either but I've done a lot of reading and am pretty happy with the results. I have a couple of different strains now, but still moderately successful.

Wish I could be more help... check your pH, buy a good grow book and possibly start over with soil would be my advice.
 
ODGROP

ODGROP

Well-Known Member
I agree you need to check the PH of the water and balance it, I don't know much about hydro but I think most of the peeps get their water down to about 5.8-6.1. You should also stop using the bloom fert until you flower, I also agree that you should have gone with soil, it is much more user friendly and simple for the most part.
 
jats

jats

Well-Known Member
Hello Becca....I think you can still save them by flushing with a 6/6.5 ph'd water..do you have a ph meter?? you can get one from the hydro shop or online if thats where you shop...also some ph up and some down.....if you are using a shop you can ask them for advice((just tell them you are growing tomatoes))...and they will tell you how to use your stuff...it does look like nute burn to me,,,flushing will help and maybe some hyrogen peroxide((3/4 drops in 8 litres water)) to help unlock the roots...
BUT I am no expert and I grow in soil myself to keep it simple...
Good Luck with that....I'm keen to know how you go
 
VictorVIcious

VictorVIcious

Well-Known Member
Becca said:
Hi!

please bear with me this is only my second post (my first one being when i just put this message in the wrong place ) lol
Click to expand...
That is really quite alright, I posted my first Journal in the wrong place.

okay, where to start. I am a recently widowed 30something from seattle.
Always wanted to try to grow since am not doing anything else at the moment. Since i dont have a lot of hobbies i decided to try to create a nice setup. so i got a darkroom grow tent and a 600w hps/mh with an air cooled lamp. ( i think thats the right term)
i read about growing hempy style and people said it was a good way for beginners, so off i went.
Click to expand...
That all sounds good.

used a few bagseeds and then also some from a seedshop started them in jiffypellets and now they are in 2l bottles in a mix of perlite and vermiculite (about 4:1) anyway, they have never looked healthy to me and since i am not much of a gardener anyway, this isnt too surprising.
Click to expand...
Ok, can we start at the jiffy pellet, do you have any pictures of them then? What were you doing with watering, nutes and ph back then? I had really good results with the jiffy pellets when I used them. I did not overwater them?

right now i am watering every 3-4 days. i give them a flush every 3rd watering or so (meaning just h20 until its coming out the drain hole)
the other waterings i give about a halfcup of water w/ nutes
(am using 10ml gh bloom and 5ml gh micro pergallon.)
Click to expand...
Well.....not really, you don't flush with plain water, you should flush with water @ 1/4 strength nute solution that is ph'd for your medium after the nutes have been added. The way the experts explain it, and I am not one of those, you kinda fool your plants with the 1/4 strength, into thinkng they are going to get full nutes and they will release what they have, if you use just plain water they lock the nutes in, they won't give up what they have cause you didn't give em ne more. Your plants look kinda burnt to me, like they needed to be flushed some time ago. I have not done hempy, there are a couple of hempy expert here, and a few others that have done hempy, one of them would have to look at your nute amounts they sound low to me, and there is that question about using bloom if you are not on 12/12.

what else?
The temp has been pretty constant in the 76-78 range.
right now the tallest one is about 22 inches from the light the shortest is prob 27 inches or so.
Click to expand...
well... that could be a part of the problem as well. You should be able to put an air cooled 600watt light within 8" from the top of your plants.

they are on a 21/3 schedule
I started this all about the 9th of September.
i dont know anyone in real life to come over and show me what to do so am hoping for maybe some advice :smile:
Click to expand...
21/3 18/6 24/0, they are all vegging light schedule, higher nitrogen and the brown spots on you leaves has me thinking your using the wrong nutes, too few nutes, and you have the light too far away from your plants.

i hope the pics show my problem areas. i.e. disclored leaves and the underneath vegetation browining off and dying :sad:

thanks

becca
Click to expand...
There are several plant expert here that will be able to give you a better diagnosis. After 2 years of doing this, I would say it would be faster and give you better result to start over, make a few adjustments in your room and methods.
Since new seedlings don't need all that much room for a couple weeks, use these to experiment. Flush them properly, wait a day or two, 1/4 strength vegging nutes, no adverse affects (Plants are doing as well or better) bump it up to half strength, until you are at full strength.
Then we can practice taking some clones, we won't want to save these plants for mothers, so we can just flower them, start vegging our new seeds, and get ready to learn how to identify the sex of the first set of plants.
This would be about a four week process. And if our clones make it we will know thier sex in a couple of weeks, we can pick a few mothers out of those, we will be way ahead of the curve, we can experiment.:blsmoke:
 
Thcofgreen

Thcofgreen

Well-Known Member
you can save yourself a lot of trouble by putting those girls in some quality soil, something like Fox Farm Ocean Forest would be great. Fox Farm is already Ph balanced so you should be good to go. I'm not saying you shouldnt keep an eye on the ph just because you are using Fox Farm, just saying it should solve a lot of your problems. Plus it has nutes in the soil that last up to 90 days which will be plenty for for veg.
 
G

GreenBuds

Well-Known Member
I have been trying the Hempy bucket thing the last couple of grows. I've had plants that looked like yours. I've been a soil grower all my life and always had trouble with the hempy's. I switched to all perlite because I found the vermiculite breaks down too easily and winds up looking like mud at the bottom of your reservoir. I believe there could be too strong of a concentration of nutes at the bottom mixed in with the broken down vermiculite. I was also using tap water which was very hard with a ph of 9. I now buy RO water which has a ph of 5. I mix the RO and tap water to get a ph between 5.5-6. You really need a ph meter or some way to measure ph. I bought the ph strips because I didn't want to pay a couple hundred bucks and they work fine. I also found that the reservoir hole occasionally gets plugged up which will waterlog the media. I actually made mine bigger. From 3/8" to 3/4" in a 2 gallon bucket and it works better. I've had to transplant a few young sick looking plants back to soil and they recovered nicely. If worst comes to worse and your plants don't recover, I would transplant back to some good soil. For me I think I will also stick to soil.
 
M

misk

Active Member
good soil with a bit of vermiculite and perlite is much better than the mixture you are using
aslo easy on all the nutes and makes sure you have fresh air ventilation you must have done somthing very wrong because with that room they should be booming after two months
VENTILATION!!!! the room temperature means nothing unless you have a constant air flow while the light is on
and the light cycle you are on ive nver heard of try 18/6
and i would also reccomend starting over to save time
 
Florida Girl

Florida Girl

Well-Known Member
OMG... Hempy is EASY! Like everything else you just need to know what you are doing first.

I use 80% Perlite 20% Coco.

PERLITE - Rinse it REALLY WELL before you use it. Gets the dust and residue off.

HOLE - 1" in diameter (5 gal. bucket). Go to home depot and get a roll of window screen. You cut a 4" patch and glue or tape it over the hole. Keeps the medium from falling out.

PH - Keep it between 5.7 - 6.0

PPM - Seedlings <= 300; Veg <=600; Flower <=1200 (<= means ... less then or equal to). At each stage start at the low number and work your way up slowly. You have to know the PPM... even though it's a passive hydro method, it is still hydro and you must know the PPM. If you don't know it and are using tap water you could very well have problems waiting to happen. My water reading from the County says my water out of the tap has 130ppm Sodium ... this is lethal to plants (I found out the hard way). Anyway... know your PPM and if you don't then buy a RO machine or distilled bottled water from WalMart... it's like 79 cents a gallon.

AIR TEMP - Try to get it at 75 F.... but definitely Keep it UNDER 85 F

WATER TEMP - Water going in needs to be BELOW 70 F. Warm water going in promotes root rot. Don't guesstimate it... get a thermometer and get an accurate temp. I water with 65 F water.... the runoff come out around 69 F.


EASY as pie! I love the hempy method. Very Low maintenance. On my next grow I'm going to experiment with putting airstones in the bottoms of the hempy buckets. I read somewhere about someone who did this and did not see any difference in the yeild....but I want to see for myself :mrgreen:
 
B

Becca

Active Member
hi and thank you all so much for your advice. I didnt mention that i have only used distilled bottled water for the entire grow. i also rinsed the perlite off first. my first thought was that it was prob the nutes but the formula i used came from a hempy master: azgrow. guess im just not sure whether to scrap them or try to salvage them. if only all my weeds were so hard to grow :)
anyway, thanks again for your help
 
VictorVIcious

VictorVIcious

Well-Known Member
Becca said:
hi and thank you all so much for your advice. I didnt mention that i have only used distilled bottled water for the entire grow. i also rinsed the perlite off first. my first thought was that it was prob the nutes but the formula i used came from a hempy master: azgrow. guess im just not sure whether to scrap them or try to salvage them. if only all my weeds were so hard to grow :)
anyway, thanks again for your help
Click to expand...
Az is one of the ones I wold have recommended. What does he have to say about the shape you plants are in now?? Distilled water is usually ph7 VV
 
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