Need help setting up room

Mothers are a waste of time for a small space. Just buy seeds, they are $7 each for really great ones!

Ok. I'm just learning as I go, I liked the idea of having solid female clones whenever.
I did order some seeds from attitde of diff. Strain.
I heard soil was best for beginners so I'm trying to go a step at a time.
Now that they are 5 weeks and in bigger pots I'm gonna look for a thread with nutrient suggestions for vegging them.
If I could get clones around 6 weeks that would be awesome. Hopefully I didn't shock em too much changing pots but should be ok. I'm at work so we will see later today how they did.
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So i did the transplant into Promix soil and bigger pots (around 2 gallon i think) they are pots with plenty of holes in the bottom. The promix said you can use it directly and thats what i did. I added some veg. nutes and some fertilizer to help with the transplant shock.
After doing the transplant and watering them i noticed the soil took up quite a bit of water and there wasnt any draining going on thru the bottom. I have heard that its good to have good drainage for flushing etc. I am not seeing any going on here... maybe its just because the soil was new and so dry. OR maybe i packed it into tight ? nonetheless i would love to hear from the soil growers. I probably should have added some more perlite or done a hempy bucket style or something.. like i said i am just learning!!!
Before the transplant that plants looked pretty good, now after some are looking pretty bad. I have a few issues going on... some of the leaves are looking droopy (over watering) and some leaves are curling up.. also notices a little bit of leave burn... and even some black areas on a couple leaves. That being said, some plants look great and some look like they are gonna die
here are SOME pictures of the issues... they are of 3 plants i beleive and the pics are taken 2 days apart, you can see the label. and what is going on with that one real bushy plant ? i need some help guys.. some direction.. i dont want to do anything drastic. I waited 4 days until soil was a bit dryer and just watered with a bunch of plain water to help neutralize the nutes and pH. look forward to hearing from you guys.. Thanks and enjoy!

If it isnt draining, it means your roots will be submerged in water at the bottoms of the pots, and will subsuquently be "drowning" because they have no oxygen. I know *nothing* about soil, but the plants look like they are being overwatered a ton right now. They dont look like they are in transplant shock as much as overwatered a ton. That leads me to *think* that it is drainage as the issue. However, confirm with some soil guys first.

Why not hold the plant upside down and see if water comes out of the pot? The plant wont fall out, just hold it by its stem too and keep your hand over the pot so the soil doesnt fly out.

and what's with the Hydroton and soil? They dont mix, soil or hydroton. Its not soilponics lol........

hey always like to help a newbie,, look forget the ebb and flow crap go with something even a beginner cant stuff, go with coco from your local herdware pick one that doesnt have any water saving crystals or slow release nutes and pick one that dosent look dusty, wash it thoroughly then pour through water tthats ph adjusted. run a feed to waste system and monitor your waste fool proof.

look soil comes with too many unknowns and to use a soil mix successfully you need to bake it, its messy and you need a combination of ingredients to the drainage right through the whole grow, keep it simple cocco.

cerealkilla said:

hey always like to help a newbie,, look forget the ebb and flow crap go with something even a beginner cant stuff, go with coco from your local herdware pick one that doesnt have any water saving crystals or slow release nutes and pick one that dosent look dusty, wash it thoroughly then pour through water tthats ph adjusted. run a feed to waste system and monitor your waste fool proof.

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He's looking for advice for what is having problems with, not on an entirely new system that will cost him a bunch of money.

Thanks for the suggestions. I put the light up higher and did water with only plain water and will continue to do that for the next 2-3 weeks like you said.

With the soil, i am noticing it is not draining out of the bottom and i heard that the roots can rot if there is water sitting in the bottom of the pot. I turned the put even upside down and no water came out. I think the soil is just very well saturated... what does this mean ? is this normal for soil grows? the promix did say it was ready to use right out of the bag... I like the coco idea more and more... wondering if i could RETRANSPLANT THESE ??? or just deal with it for the time being...

I am not worried as much as i was before ... the plants are looking a little bit better and are growing which is nice. When i was turning the pots upside down I already noticed the roots were poking out of the bottom of the pots! IN 3 DAYS! wow that's crazy.. well it is to me anyways.

I want to do your suggestions of perhaps using the super thrive and i was thinking of using Cal-Mag in the next watering.... Any thoughts. ? the leaves curling up are really concerning me... I thought also the fan might be blowing too hard on the leaves and could be adding the shock... so i'm turning the fan off for at least a day ?

hopefully with moving the light up, setting it on the 600w setting instead of 1000w, using some cal-mag, and turning the fan off (or decreasing its intensity) will help alleviate the problem of leaves curling up... THANKS again guys, I'll keep working hard, monitoring and posting updates.. I'm having lots of fun actually

Research kitty! those hyrdotron were just a couple pellets i threw on top so i could distinguish one different strain i had! lol

YEAH i have read a lot on the coco love the idea of it draining all way through into a waste reservoir ... Is this similar to the Hempy Bucket system ?
I am going to be doing that from now on after i get a good mother going.. I am just learning and will get better and better.

so i finally bought a digital moisture meter and a digital pH soil meter.

The pH of the all the soil varies from 6.0-6.5

The moisture meter is very good, the deeper you put the probe the higher the moisture reading... so there is definitely moisture sitting at the bottom of the pot. I still cant believe the roots are poking out of the holes in the bottom of the pots only 4 days after transplant out of party cups, simply amazing.

The leaves are still curling upwards and i am noticing it a bit more, they are mostly on the higher leaves... new growth looks good tho, color looks good.

I also bought some Cal-Mag supp. and superthrive. I added those at full strength and watered the plants. The moisture meter is showing 8.0-9.9 now because they are fully watered. On the chart, i am going to use tomatoes as the guidline to follow (is that a good comparison plant ?). For tomatoes it says do not water unless the meter is showing 3-4 or lower.. so i will follow that. I'll keep you guys updated on if this does anything, OH and i also raised the light up even more to about 28 inches....
It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the moisture meter to go from 9 to 3-4... i will follow that from now on... unless anyone has any other suggestions. I'll post pics in a week or so

Ok guys time for another update with some pictures. I am on day 44 since sprouting. I haven't watered my plants since 6 days ago... the water meter is still showing 5-6 when i poke in the probe all the way. It says to water tomatoes when you get to 3-4 so I will probably wait a day or 2. I was wondering since i used fertilizer, superthrive, cal-mag last time... what should i water with this time ? I am thinking just plain water since i was having some problems with my leaves.... You guys look at the pics and please let me know what you think.

There are 2 plants that are really lagging behind... they are growing waaay slower than the others... should i yank these? or what would you guys do with these 2 buggers?

Also, being at day 44 i think i am about 16 days away from being able to determine sex or clone these guys?

My pH of soil is 6-6.5... I have some pH down so what should i have the water set at before watering these guys ? any suggestions. Other than that, everything is going well... the leaves curling up is still concerning me but new growth looks good... i am keeping the light about 24-26" away for now..

The bigger plants are now 8-10" tall..... (plants 5 and 7 are the scraggly stunted looking ones)

I also got my hands on some Attitude fem. seeds. I have a bag of 5 (indoor nirvana mix) and one fem. seed of Kannabia La Blanca... i dont know anything about them... but i have germed them and put 3 in soil and 3 in coco and will start my second batch and look to not make the same mistakes i did on the first batch.

Comments, suggestions are welcomed! thanks guys.

Looks like heat stress. What's the reflective stuff in the pics?

hornedfrog2000 said:

Looks like heat stress. What's the reflective stuff in the pics?

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The reflective stuff is mylar paper. I figured heat stress too because the light isn't in a cool tube... that's why i raised it up to 24-26 inches and am leaving it there for now.... The temperature gauge by the plants does only say 70F and it stays there consistently. I did have a heat duct in there that was blowing pretty much on the plants? could that cause the heat stress? or maybe the heat from the vent is really dry air and that's not good also? i dunno

I'm not sure, but the "tacoing" of the leaves points to heat I believe.