NooB Advice

You wont have to feed much with that mix. This is actually a great place to share a premix soil I will be trying on of these days. Mix it up and water it for 12 weeks, 4 weeks veg, 8 weeks bloom... no additional nutrition should be required: Credit to my buddy Blazeoneup on another site:


The soil mix consist of 1 bag of miracle grow organic + 1 bag of pro mix (or another intert medium .. peatmoss, coco, etc)+ 1 cup blood meal + 1 cup bone meal + 1/2 cup dolimite lime + 10-20% added chunky perlite.

He ran the same mix with FFOF instead of the MG and got good results but it was just a bit hot (slight tip burn on fans). I bet frog would do well.

doogleef said:

You wont have to feed much with that mix. This is actually a great place to share a premix soil I will be trying on of these days. Mix it up and water it for 12 weeks, 4 weeks veg, 8 weeks bloom... no additional nutrition should be required: Credit to my buddy Blazeoneup on another site:


The soil mix consist of 1 bag of miracle grow organic + 1 bag of pro mix (or another intert medium .. peatmoss, coco, etc)+ 1 cup blood meal + 1 cup bone meal + 1/2 cup dolimite lime + 10-20% added chunky perlite.

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Have you checked out the MOONSHINE MIX???

if you google it you see it come up on pretty much all the mj forums
a couple of threads here at RIU

it is basically mixing all of the FF soil products together

ok guys/gals here is a little reference for the ones that cant tell the difference between a male and female plant..

this is a female plant notice the tight bud spacing and the white pistes sticking out..



now this is a male/hermi notice the balls(pollen sacks) all over it ...they commonly look like grapes at the cola site and will look like testicles at other bud sites..




and this one is for riddle just to make him drool a little... this is a Moroccan kiff in her first day of flowering

hey all! i was wondering if my plants look like they are growing a little slow to you?
come check out my grow thread on the CFL forum.

Speaking of easy, available and cheap soil mixes, I've been getting really good responses from my young plants (aggressive growth, no burns, no curls.. just pure beauty) using this three-stage process of 1) starting seeds in a 40/40/20 mix of MG seed starter/ MG Organic / perlite - run that about 10 days in cups 2) upcan to 1 gallon pots of 40/40/10/10 MGO / MG regular pre-fert (3 month variety)/mushroom compost/perlite (less perlite this step, cuz the MG 3month has a fair bit in it already), run that another 2-3 weeks then 3) upcan to 3-gallon of straight MG pre-fert with about 10% mushroom compost and 1 tbsp/gallon dolomite. You can add the dolomite at step 2 also, but since they're not in there very long, I skipped it to no ill effect.

The MGO is a cooler soil, and takes the edge off the pre-ferted products, which are a little too hot for young plants. I know a lot of people do the same cutting FFOF with Light Warrior, which is cool too, at 5X the price, though. You may very well need to feed near the end of stage 2 to avoid N deficiency.

Last year, I ran everything tip to tail in 2gal pots of MG 3 month pre-fert. It worked okay, but there were early burn issues that the plants worked through but still, who wants that if you can avoid it?

riddleme said:

Definately need to have a bit of experience under your belt to mess with hot soil, but as always I love experimentin

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Yup.. that's exactly why I started cutting with seed starter and the MGO. They really take the edge off. The 3- and 6-month pre-ferted stuff is really hot for seedlings. When I first started, I thought it was "simpler" to just fill the pots right out of the bag. But, for all the stress it causes to watch your babies struggle thru it, I've decided it's simpler to cut that shit down, and transplant into a hotter medium later.

Trust me, noobs (and I'm still one too): take the trouble to cut these off-the-shelf soils like I described. It goes a whole lot smoother.

Kriegs said:

Yup.. that's exactly why I started cutting with seed starter and the MGO. They really take the edge off. The 3- and 6-month pre-ferted stuff is really hot for seedlings. When I first started, I thought it was "simpler" to just fill the pots right out of the bag. But, for all the stress it causes to watch your babies struggle thru it, I've decided it's simpler to cut that shit down, and transplant into a hotter medium later.

Trust me, noobs (and I'm still one too): take the trouble to cut these off-the-shelf soils like I described. It goes a whole lot smoother.

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yup.. i use coco and perlite.. loosen up the soil and light'n it up.. one of the las soils i used was sunshine mix.. and it was almost perfect, all u needed was a lil perlite.

TrynaGroSumShyt said:

yup.. i use coco and perlite.. loosen up the soil and light'n it up.. one of the las soils i used was sunshine mix.. and it was almost perfect, all u needed was a lil perlite.

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the one i truly love is from walmart its called professional blend its in a orange bag and it claims 9 months of fertilizer in it...insert gasp here... the thing is its all organic fertilizer..lol and for you new to growing people this means the nutrients aren't available right away they take time to get going on the plants
so for the first month on their starter pots they aren't getting hardly anything while in seedling stage then as they get transplanted the soil really gets revved up and they grow like *WEEDS* lol... but... weed being a very hungry plant the nutes start to die out of the soil about month 3 and you have to slowly come in with your own nutrients and start your feed then ..

one of my plants are showing some major heat stress (leaves curling under) but not turning black. the heat index in my box is at 79f right now and stays there.
should i be worried? its just on of them.

yone187 said:

one of my plants are showing some major heat stress (leaves curling under) but not turning black. the heat index in my box is at 79f right now and stays there.
should i be worried? its just on of them.

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for heat regulation place your hand at the top of your plant if its too hot for your hand its too hot for your plant .. move the light... also get more airflow working it will alleviate alot of heat stress too but your current temp shouldn't be doing that...possible nute problem i think... either that or airflow...

I think you have misdiagnosed the issue. 79 is fine. Sounds like a nute problem.

Wanted to say sorry for not being here as much these past few days, I have been working on a Postal 2 Mod (tired of waiting for postal 3, LOL)

Matilda is still alive and growing slowly, there is new growth but not what I would call actual veg growth? but there is also a new plant comming up on the edge of the pot, really curious as to what it is? (has cotyledons)

Want to thank the others that have answered questions while I've been gone!

what distance should you keep a 150W HPS from the top of the plant?

i have already heard that if its too hot for your hand then move it... but i dont think its hot even right up to it.... so just give me an aprox distance>>>>

150W? I'd say about 3-6". It's not nearly as important if you have close side reflective panels tho. Good luck.

Norm'l,

The hand test isn't always accurate though. When I switched from the 400w to the 600w on my grow I hung it about 4 inches higher (24") and it passed the hand test with flying colors, but I've still ended up moving it another 8 inches because my plants all started showing signs of heat stress within a few days. It's now hanging about 32" above the plants and I STILL have some leaves doing a curling act, but it doesn't feel warm at all. I don't think it's the overall temp under the lights thats the problem though, since it hasn't gotten over 85 since I adjusted the room fan and opened the window a bit further (most of the time its around 82 at the hottest points of the day and high 70s the rest of the light hours). These girls were vegged under a 400w MH bulb and I'm starting to think that some of the leaves just can't adapt to the higher intensity of the 600w hps bulb.

EdGreyfox said:

Norm'l,

The hand test isn't always accurate though. When I switched from the 400w to the 600w on my grow I hung it about 4 inches higher (24") and it passed the hand test with flying colors, but I've still ended up moving it another 8 inches because my plants all started showing signs of heat stress within a few days. It's now hanging about 32" above the plants and I STILL have some leaves doing a curling act, but it doesn't feel warm at all. I don't think it's the overall temp under the lights that's the problem though, since it hasn't gotten over 85 since I adjusted the room fan and opened the window a bit further (most of the time its around 82 at the hottest points of the day and high 70s the rest of the light hours). These girls were vegged under a 400w MH bulb and I'm starting to think that some of the leaves just can't adapt to the higher intensity of the 600w hps bulb.

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well the hand test isn't meant as a *Absolute* fix for all lighting its a starting point ...just like you did.. you set it up ..then you watched your plants ..and they *told* you they needed it farther away... this is what i mean when i tell people ..listen to your plants they will *tell* you what they need ..

Norm'l

You're right, but as I know from personal experience new growers tend to forget about the "see what your plants are telling you and then adjust" part unless constantly reminded. I shut my plants down for almost 10 days because I focused too much on the "do this" part of the advice when it came to spider mites and overlooked the fact that my plants weren't reacting well when it would have still been easy to correct.

Why I said earlier in this thread that a light meter was more important than a ph meter to a soil grower

actually I'd buy a light meter before buying the light