Don't know where I'm going wrong - HIGH RES PICS!

All photos were taken at the same time.. some just look different cause of Photoshop/lighting.

First time grow. I have 4 lamps. 2 overhead, and 1 on each side of the plant. These are kept on 24/7.

Two overhead lamps are 1 6500k Daylight CFL each.
Two side lamps are 1 6500K Daylight CFL AND 1 2700K Soft White each (y-splitter).

I'm using Miracle Grow Liquid All Purpose Plant Food at 1/4 strength. I water when the top soil is dry or just barely damp.. usually every 2 days.. until the water comes out the bottom of the pot. http://www.melevsreef.com/pics/food/miracle_grow.jpg

I am not aware of my PH of my soil or my water.

I have a fan blowing on the plant 24/7 and the closet sliding doors are open about 1 ft on each side, so airflow shouldn't be a problem. My room doesn't get very much fresh air though.. maybe thats a problem?

The temperature is around 75F - 85F. More often the 80's.

Plant is.. heck I dunno.. 6 weeks old? Over 1 foot tall. I've transplanted it 2x now.. every time it has been INCREDIBLY rootbound. The most recent time (a few days ago) I chopped off some of the roots because it was just so bad. You couldn't even see the soil at the bottom portion! I also loosened the roots up during the transplant. But the transplants seem to be irrelivant.

Here are some photos.. I don't know if its a male or female as I haven't switched to 18/6 yet.. but maybe someone can guess? I also think the main thick stem looks really weird.. like it has deep lines running down it.

I had some spider lines (not webs) but after a quick wash of the plant and a capture of a small spider (not a spider mite), it seems to be gone. That was about 1 week ago. I sprayed the plant with "Garden Safe Fruit & Vegetable Insect Killer" from Wal-Mart a few days ago.

Any help is much appreciated! I wish I knew why the leaves at the bottom keep dying. The top looks GREAT. I've already removed 6-8 leaves from the bottom, including the first 2 special ones.. they died. Feel free to use the photos however you wish.

First there is no way that plant was ever rootbound. Its a term thrown around way to much here on RIU.

This pic is the beginning of root bound. And this plant still has a ways to go till its fully rootbound. That tight ball of roots would be all the way thru the pot. No soil would be able to be removed from the ball and you could knock some out with the root ball. No joke.




Your issue appears to be overwatering and ph lockout. You ned to get aph tester and ph your water. You nede to also get a soil moisture meter



This meter will terach you when to water. Push in in all the way and water when it says dry. Its that simple. No overwatering. I would watder with the same amount of water as the container size. I use 1 gallon grow bags so I water with 1 gallons of water.

Now your ph is all out of whack. You need to ph your water whn you water your plant. Imporper ph will lock out your nutes. You need to first flush the plant with proper phed water. Geta cheap ph test kit from lowes when you get the soil moisture meter. they both mad cheap, and ph to bewteen 6 and 7. Flush with 2 times the container size. Let it get dry, use the meter it coudl take 3 to 5 days to be properly dry after each watering.

Once it needs to be watered again go ahead an feed them the 1/4th strength nutes again. Feed once a week and atleast every other water. Never feed back to back. Make sure you ph your water after you add the nutes. Nutes can drop the ph of your water big time locking out those nutes your are feeding.

This is a proper fed and watered plant. This is one of my clones I just put in my flower room




That should get you back on track. I would also suggest you add some more lighting as well. That never hurts.

Good Luck

Thanks for your reply.. very helpful!

I will be buying a ph test kit (range from 6.0 to 7.5 I believe, I assume thats ok?) and a soil moisture meter very soon, and will post the PH of the water, neutrient-mixed water, and the runoff then.

I'm a little confused on the watering.. you say to water with the capacity of the pot.. e.g. 1 gallon pot, 1 gallon of water. That seems incredibly excessive, as probably 1/4 of that would result in water coming out the bottom of the pot (aka completely soaked soil). Maybe I'm misunderstanding?

I flushed my plant soil last night with about a gallon of water straight from the faucet and let it fill up, then drain out the bottom of the pot. So it wasn't PHed, but at least I hope I got rid of all the Miracle Grow and (I've heard) salts that are left behind. The thing I noticed is the runoff had been orangish brownish, but after flushing it came out pretty clear. I dunno if its just the soil (transplanted about a week ago and added more soil) that made the color, or if thats a sign of something, so I thought I'd mention it.

Today the plant seems to be a little greener. I know thats kind of funny since 1 day shouldn't make a noticable difference. The top of the plant looks amazing, and the bottom isn't getting any worse it seems. I'm leaving the half-dead bottom leaves on until they're entirely crispy, cause I'm assuming that they're still contributing somehow by either absorbing the remaining excess Miracle Grow, or providing the upper leaves with food (since the leaves store the food).

I've noticed my upper leaves are V shaped.. not curled under.. but like if you split it in half down the little stem in the leaf.. the top leaves resemble a V. Hope that made sense. I don't know what that means? My GUESS says it could mean too much light and they're "closing up" so they don't see too much light? Kind of like sunglasses. I doubt I have too much light (is that even possible??) though.

My plant doesn't look like yours.. yours are much darker and appear to have more of that thick "coating" which I guess is resin or something?

Thanks for all the help! It's amazing how much there is to learn!

OK I don't know if others will agree, but I have been growing off and on for 8 years both indoors and out. I will say never use miracle grow, imo it is complete garbage. Go to a hydroponic store or go online and order some good organic nutrients. Your lighting sounds good, but I personally have found lights 24/7 to stress plants, try going to a 18/6 schedule or even a 16/8 schedule, I find the latter to be best. Another thing, empty a gallon milk jug and poor tap water in it, then leave it out for a few days before watering so the chlorine will leave it. Always allow the soil to dry completly at least half your index fingers length down in the dirt before watering. I personally find one 5 gal pot per plant to be perfect for growing, I start all my plants that way so I can avoid having to transplant.

No tis no excessive watering. You want the water to run out the bottom. helps pus out some salts and makes sure the whole medium is moist. I showed you my plant. That is how its supposed to look. That dark color is not resin. That is trichomes. Thye do not grow till the flower start.

What you see is a happy, gealthy, fed plant. You need good nutes and proper ph. You need proper wateringf schedule like I explained. I gave you a b lue print to have healthy plant. My pics are evidence of that blue print.

Follow what I wrote and you will have a healthy plant. Your plant is clearly defiecint in nutes and over watered looking. Fix your ph, nutes and watering and your plant will be heatlhy like mine

Not saying your advice is wrong or anything like that, just adding my experience so far.

My two Miracle -Gro 24/7 Plants are doing good.

Just getting ready to flower.

There is a Miracle-Gro thread if you do a search.And the people posting on there seem to be doing OK.

Of course that does not mean it is ideal.

I started with Miracle-Gro before I found this forum and I will probably try something better next time, but for a first timer I'm happy so far.

I did the 5 gal. also to avoid transplants and maybe that helped.

On http://gro4me.com they recommend 24/7 because it cuts down on the number of days for flowering, that is why I did it.


Good advice on watering, I had some issues with over-watering at least once.

SatansGift said:

OK I don't know if others will agree, but I have been growing off and on for 8 years both indoors and out. I will say never use miracle grow, imo it is complete garbage. Go to a hydroponic store or go online and order some good organic nutrients. Your lighting sounds good, but I personally have found lights 24/7 to stress plants, try going to a 18/6 schedule or even a 16/8 schedule, I find the latter to be best. Another thing, empty a gallon milk jug and poor tap water in it, then leave it out for a few days before watering so the chlorine will leave it. Always allow the soil to dry completly at least half your index fingers length down in the dirt before watering. I personally find one 5 gal pot per plant to be perfect for growing, I start all my plants that way so I can avoid having to transplant.

Click to expand...

Seriously to say that Miracle Gro does not work is just dumb.

Millions of people around the world use it with tremendous success, using it on any kind of plant out there. So to say it does not work on MJ is absurd. I am not saying that it is the best thing for your plants but it is better than using nothing at all.

Some of these Nutrients especially made for Indoor/ Hydroponics applications are just WAAAAAY to expensive and they do not work well enough to validate the price tag. I use the products from Techniflora called BC Grow, BC Boost, and BC Flower. They are a good price and work as advertised. Fox Farm nutes are decent too and are not outrageously expensive.

Also, DO NOT stick to a specific watering schedule. Plants need different ammounts of water at different times of the growing cycle. By watering the plants the same ammount every time for the whole process you will end up adding too much water sometimes and not enough at other times. It's all about consistancy

Like SatansGift said, check the soil to see if it needs it.

I havent grown MJ with MG yet, because i have too many supplements stacked up in my closet id rather use.. maybe i will one day. i seen a post a while back supported newbie use of MG, and it really made sense. Its got a 3 month supply of nutes, and all u need to do is add ph'd water, the entire grow. eleminating a more tedious task of nutes scheduling, mixing, adjusting rates blah blah. so honestly in a lot of circumstances MG makes perfect sense. where people go wrong with MG is adding other NPK booster, and not monitering there ph.
and by the way, i think that lowes tester for ph will get u by for a while, but so u can actually get an accurate reading ur gonna have to buy a digital ph meter. I used i vial test for the first month of veg, it said i was running tap around 7. i had several problems with yellowing, browing and such, and i bought a digital hanna ph meter. I said my tap is 8.9....maybe im color blind when it comes to rainbow selections from the ph vial kits, i dont know, but you'll be pleased to be within .01 of accuracy. also stay lower than 7.5, with that MG id say 6.5

You also want to get that fan pointed away from your plants for a while. Continuous airflow over the leaves from a close fan will dry them out like nothing else. Point it at the lights or straight up, if possible.

Miracle Grow is a pretty harsh chemical fertilizer. It will definately grow your MJ, just don't use it every time you water. When you can, get a nice organic grow fertilizer and try that out. When you get off the Miracle Grow, thoroughly flush your plant to get as much buildup out of the roots as you can.

The lines running up and down the stem are normal - they aren't supposed to be perfectly round. In fact your stems look nice and purple. Do you know the strain?

Sorry, I think I misread the thread.

I thought he was using Miracle-Gro potting soil, not fertilizer.

Dats wut i thought

My little ph test kit (the manual vial way) is saying about 7.4 to 7.6 PH. It might be even higher, because the instructions said if its "off the charts" it will show as the highest or lowest on the color card. What should it be? I know tilemaster says 6.5.. just thought I'd get some more opinions? I think I read 6.8 somewhere but I don't know?

My next grow will hopefully be using Fox Farm soil and nutes, as that seems to be what everyone else uses. I just haven't gotten around to hitting up a hydro store yet.

About the 5 gallon from the beginning idea... you mean your like 2 inch baby plant was in a 5 gallon pot? Doesn't all the water immediately go to the bottom, and those little tiny roots can't reach all the way to the bottom right away.. so how does that work?

I'm curious why 24/7 during veg would make flowering quicker. I guess its like speeding up the plants metabolism, so when it kicks in to flowering, its already going full-speed ahead like a train? lol

I haven't watered now in like 3 days and my soil is still damp about 1 inch down. I think I'm going to really let it dry out good and water every 3-4 days. I'm going to go water, water, water+nutes and repeat.. so it should be every 9-12 days that my plant gets the Miracle Grow (at 1/4 strength).

DownOnWax.. the part about not sticking to a specific watering schedule.. at the end of your post you said its all about consistancy. So I'm a little lost?

Davalaban.. I now have the fan on my new digital timer. I bought it for when I go in to flowering.. really nice for $15 at Wal-Mart. Anyway, I have it go 4 hours on, 4 hours off, then repeat. Does that sound good or should I not have the fan pointed at it at all? I read its good to strengthen the stems. Mine are fine, but I thought it couldn't hurt. If the fan is doing more harm than good, I'm happy to reposition it to where it doesn't blow directly at the plant. And my next grow will be using whatever the local Hydro shop sells.. probably Fox Farm soil and nutes. And thanks for the reassurance on the lines/purple stem. I don't know the strain. I smoked some pretty good chronic and found 2 or 3 seeds. I only got 1 to grow. Speaking of which.. does this mean its a hermaphordite? I mean I thought chronic didn't have seeds? I thought only cheap MEC weed (the shitty stuff) had seeds.

And to clear up some confusion over the Miracle Grow... I am using the liquid nutes AND soil. When I first started I was using a totally different type of soil, but in my most recent transplant I had to use some miracle grow soil. So its confusing.. the soil is like 70% of a brand I dont recall, and 30% miracle grow.

Whew, long post. Hopefully I answered everyones questions, and can get the same in return. Everyones help is MUCH appreciated!

The 24/7 was recommended to shorten the veg time.

Just takes less time to get to the flowering stage.

At least that is what the http://gro4me.com step-by-step grow guide recommended.

As far as watering in a 5 gal. pot.

I just watered around the base of the plant. I think you might have it confused with that water-to-pot size ratio that someone else posted.

My Miracle Gro soil is the moisture control with 3 months of food in the soil.

I didn't need to water as much or added food during veg state.

My buddy is opening a Hydrostore in May, so that will probably be my next gro.

Just set up my 12/12 lights and timer and blocked out all the light.

Can't wait, just hope at least 1 of the 2 plants are female. Didn't have anyplace to sex them, so it's a crapshoot.

Good luck

6.5 or little lower even...my nutes lower it bout .3 ...but 6.2 is fine. you wanna be right around middle 6's for soil. lower for hydro, aeroponics, or dwc. i have been runnin 24 7 like u for veg, i feel better than 18/6 as far as results ive seen. although i read in a study that wuz posted in a thread that 20 / 4 is the best way to veg, in studies, final yield wuz higher from this veg routine. im surely gonna get around to tryiin it.