First grow going so/so - Second grow questions!

ogg130

Member
Hi! I have a couple questions to help make my second grow go better than my first - this community has been super helpful so far so i thought id try again...

But first, the background...

I've had a few successful grows years ago using soil, and single bottle synthetic nutes long ago with a janky setup and HPS lights. I decided to get back into growing and went with a pretty nice 10x5 AC infinity / LED setup.

I wanted to go organic and chose what I am finding out to be a pretty silly/difficult/expensive/noob route -> Roots Organics bottled nutes and FFOF with a lil perlite mixed in.

I'm 6-7 weeks into flower into my first grow and things are definitely not as solid as they were with my janky setup. Very light green leaves, purpling top fan leaves which I'm not sure is genetics, seems like buds might be small(although frosty/smelly af and still growing maybe), and a lot of browning on edges on two plants. I might have been dumb and used RO without calmag, I never needed to use calmag with synthetics but since i've added some in at week 5 and did a good flush at week 6, things might have slowed down in terms of deteriation and problems and theyre starting to look a lil better.

Since getting back into things I found a really cool hydro store locally and the owners been awesome with info... My second grow is going to be Build-A-Soil 3.0. He mentioned that it can go as-is through flower without anything but water, and I he told me how to kick it up a notch by in various ways: try terp tea for veg and bloom, periodic growers recharge water hits, use mycorrhizae when transplanting as I pot up, fish shit in all watering, nitrogen foliar in veg (since blue dream love nitro), worms,, worm castings... A lot of nice ways to ensure super duper buds.

I love this plan, but I forgot to ask a couple questions:

Q1) Does living soil need to stay moist all the time? With this grow, I water using the typical lift the pot method, or when a moisture meter is in the red. Do I need to change my habits for living soil and not allow a slight dryout?

Q2) I see hay in pictures of pots. Why? Is it used with soil or is that a coco thing?

Thank you for any advice!
 
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Jylhavuori

Active Member
Yes, keep the soil moist. Dry soil puts beneficial microbes dormant and they reactivate a bit slow.

Mulch is used to prevent surface evaporation in breathing mediums. Many folks use small greens instead.
 

ogg130

Member
Here's pictures of grow number one so far at 6.5ish weeks in flower
 

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ogg130

Member
One of them looks too deficient (4th pic)
2/6 are more beaten down like that, unsure if the others are ok or bad at this point in the game, buds seem kinda small from others pictures but maybe i just need some more time. Unsure about purple, some say purple can happen with blue dream but dunno. Not sure where seed came from, got these as clones
 

ogg130

Member
The purple looks like phosphorus deficiency but I don't think that's your only issue.
Yeah things are just not good lol, I think the second grow with the proposed setup should be easier/less problematic. Definitely made some mistakes here.
 

Johnny15

Member
Yeah things are just not good lol, I think the second grow with the proposed setup should be easier/less problematic.
I'd give them some of the synthetic flower nutes you used last time. It won't kill all the microbes if you don't go crazy.
 
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