Newbie Mistakes

This is my first grow and I am sure the pics will bare that out. I went into this with more desire than knowledge but i wont let that discourage me. I have learned a lot that I will take forward into my next grow. I didn't really know much about anything when it comes to feeding and watering, hell much of anything really. At this point just trying to get the girls to harvest best I can. Right now I think my issues come from lack of proper nutes in VEG stage and ph. I have used strictly RO water around 6.1-6.2 ph but all 4 plants have various soil composition so one will have higher ph and another low when reading drain ph. I have general hydro nutrient trio now and gathered ph and tds meters to better monitor water. My flowering box has 4 plants, the one in bottom left of pic is 2 weeks behind other 3 at about 5 1/2 weeks. You can see it looks better because I made corrections based on what I learned. The others are losing leaves from bottom up and some issues with spots on leaves that are likely ph related. They seem to be lolypopping themselves. I know the harvest may be light but anything i should change in the final weeks? My next grow will be in coco and building a COB light. I know the current 300w Mars is not sufficient and will likely replace the t5 in my veg box. All plants are from bagseed so genetics are unknown.

Most first grows dont make it this far, and it looks like if your genetics are good your gonna have plenty of potent bud at the end of this. I love the setup with the veg and flowering shit right there all packed together.

If theyre dropping yellowing leaves from the bottom before the last couple weeks then its probably nitrogen deficiency. A lot of people make the mistake of cutting off the nitrogen too early and using too much phosphorous early. The excess of phosphorous seems to cause some yellowing in the upper leaves (due to interference with iron and zinc i believe) and the lack of nitrogen causes the yellowing and dying of the older leaves.

And your plants have a way to go. Looks like theyre just about to really start packing on weight. Be patient!

Hey Cannn, thanks for the feedback. I am thinking the lack of sufficient N during VEG was my biggest mistake. The veg plant on the bottom was starting to yellow and lose leaves also but seems to have recovered and is doing great after upping the N. All 5 plants were started from seed around the last week of Oct. I am estimating about another 4 to 5 weeks you think it may be longer? Does the spotting on a few leaves look like bugs, that seemed to happen in the last week.

@CuriousFarmer420 Here are some books that may be useful to you. Right click and choose 'save as' to download them.Your grow is looking pretty good so far.
http://catnews.org/FREE Pot Books/

Thanks, I will check some of those guides out, looks like some real good info.

CuriousFarmer420 said:

Hey Cannn, thanks for the feedback. I am thinking the lack of sufficient N during VEG was my biggest mistake. The veg plant on the bottom was starting to yellow and lose leaves also but seems to have recovered and is doing great after upping the N. All 5 plants were started from seed around the last week of Oct. I am estimating about another 4 to 5 weeks you think it may be longer? Does the spotting on a few leaves look like bugs, that seemed to happen in the last week.

Click to expand...

Trying to guess weeks often leads ppl to harvest early. Id say if its at 5 weeks itll go to 10-12 but it could go longer or shorter. Every plant ive had has been different. Extremely sativa leaning plants ive heard of taking 16 weeks but longest ive had to go was 12.

The important thing is to understand signs of maturity.. youll want to do plenty of research into this, but dont trust everything you read. the most important aspect to harvest on is the trichomes as you may know. You want to get a good jewelers loupe or handheld or digital scope for looking at them closely. Early on theyll all be clear, as they most likely are now. Eventually theyll start clouding up an opaque milky color. When they get like this and are swollen up is when the trichomes are at peak thc. Soon after the majority is cloudy youll begin to see some turn amber and this is the sign in my garden that im approaching the harvest window. You want to make sure your checking trichomes on calyxes because the ones on leaves will amber on a lot of strains ive seen much earlier than the ones on the bud itself.

But, before you even look into all that you want to see that the bud looks ready. You want to see that all calyxs have swollen, pistils are receding and many have changed color, and youll get a really proud feeling when you look at it. Thats when you know its ready to start checking the trichomes lol

Most ive seen harvest between the first sign of amber and 30% amber

Oh and ive never gotten pests. Maybe should start a thread for that

Good info, I have been doing some reading on determining maturity, and the trichome color and clarity. Done a lot of reading on the overall grow process but I have stuck primarily to reading mostly about whatever stage it is in at the time to avoid input overload..lol. I think my main goal is to eliminate mistakes for future grows and some of the causes such as soil and lighting. It sounds like ph adjustments can be done quicker in coco vs soil, and with RO water I should have been using calmag early, I think my leaf spotting is a result of that or out of whack ph attributing to it. My faucet water is unusable at over 650ppm and ph closer to the 10.0 range.. I have a sump well in the grow area and samples of it run about 400ppm and ph of 7.1. Experimenting if I add nutes to that water it comes down to about 6.8 but again ppm is high at around 600+ RO water ends up around 5.8 after nutes, would it be best to stick to RO and add ph up to adjust after nutes? Would doing a flush with nutrient water at this point cause much stress if runoff ph is high or low and needs adjusted? I usually water just to point of runoff to keep RH under control and under 45%. Thanks for taking the time to respond and the good info.

Ive had success using half well water half distilled. I have a still and in my dwc setup the distilled alone was too unstable and the well water was too alkaline but the mixture of the 2 i found to be stable. Hard to really say whats in your water though. I would run two of the same type of clones someday side by side and use the well water in one ro in another. Maybe even have a third for the tap. If things go south with one youll be able to see which to switch to. Some wells water can be very good for plants and others not so much


And your right it may have been calcium def ^

My well water is very high in iron and I live surrounded by farm fields so actually above EPA levels of ppm to be safe for humans. I did have that same thought to use well water on one, water from sump on another mainly because there is an endless supply right there by my plants. Since those can vary so much and water softener drains salt to the sump I am better with RO it would seem. Tried mixing tap and RO and that helps but getting exact mixure can be tough since tap is 9+ ph and nearly 700ppm.