round two. my second grow.

Thirsty plants will droop hot plants the leafs will curl. It could also be cause by too much nitrogen.

Just read through your grow man...the mercury bit is kinda what caught my attention. IMO I wouldnt cut anything, in short, a plant wouldnt grow it if it didnt need it, I mean why would it waste energy. Also, leaves contain stomata, which are capable of regulating temperature of each individual leaf...when a leaf becomes inefficient, the plant will decide for itself to kill it off or not, then it will suck out all the nutes and shit from the leaf that it previously invested to grow the leaf...so I wouldn't cut leaves off. "lollipoping' or whatever is a little different tho, which is pretty much the opposite of what I just said, and you want to remove lower, tiny budsites that will later amount to "popcorn buds" (there are lots of threads out there about the method if you google it). Also, how big was the CFL you broke...if it was just a 26 watter then I wouldnt worry bout it. I did a paper about mercury in fish as part of my undergrad reserch and, in short, theres alot more mercury out in the enviornment vs. what is released from a single broken 26watt CFL...here's something I found intesting, "The startling conclusion of the paper is that in a worse case scenario—you break a CFL in a closed, unventilated room; you vacuum the carpet, throwing mercury into the air; you set the vacuum in a corner; and then sit in the room breathing for eight hours—the amount of mercury exposure is about equivalent to the exposure you’d get from eating a can of Albacore tuna." so yea...I wouldnt worry, I also read a paper from another study, and it said that the mercury realsed is measured in nanograms per meter squareed (ng/m3), which is insanely small. It also stated that nerological damage was only possible through long term, repeated exsposure to methylated-mercury...like when people used to play with it cause it was cool to hold a liquid metal (lower melting point that body temp)...anyways, thats all just my 2-shits...good luck with the rest of your grow, PEACE!

Lower growth is older and is not going to get as much light, thinning out some of the inner leafs helps to get more light into the plant and to the stems and leafs. More leafs is not always better but less leafs is not as well you find a balance. Thinning out the plant also helps with air flower threw the plant and thus cooling the plant. Lower buds will not get nearly as much light as upper one and that is why they stay all tiny. Cutting them off in the first weeks of flower prevents those buds from growing down low. This bud to be is not lost the plant just send the energy that was going to that bud site up the next higher bud site. So in short you will have less smaller lower buds and larger top buds. Lollipopping is pretty much exactly what you would be doing.

well I went ahead and did a bit of lollipopping, I took off a few lower budsites that had started, and I pulled out a good bit of dead fan leaves on the inside of the plant. I've almost got a tunnel going right through it now lol if you look in the right direction its almost like that redwood in cali that you can drive through.

@bhandari1: thanks man, that gives me a bit of reassurance. I do a lot of work in a local chemical plant, so I figure I've probably exposed myself to a shit load worse things in the air than a tiny bit of mercury....

I actually broke 3 bulbs total, 2 40w and one 23w.... however, only 1 of them got on or near my plants when it broke, and I washed her off good since then and the room was well ventilated.... like 400cfm's ventilated. and actually I did vacuum the glass up, but how else do you get glass out of carpet.....

Photo update:

both ladies in the tub freshly watered/fed


and back under the lights



heres some buds at ~30 days into flower




those are the bigger of the two plants, she's real fat and her leaves are dark green and real wide. I'm thinking some kind of indica maybe?

this is the small one, she's much lighter in color and her leaves are much skinnier.

also, can anyone give some advice as to the big ones health? seems like the leaves are curling and some of them are getting yellow but not at the tips like normal burn. you can see it a bit in the top picture if you look at the top left area of the big plant.

that big dark green one if it were mine id assume it has more water than it needs and take out some of those leaves.

I let it go at least 2 sometimes 3 days between waters, it's in a 3 gal pot... I don't think she's overwatered. they're curling in and down. not sure of my issue.

Check the pH of the runoff when you water the larger one next time...the really dark green and curling, along with the flatening of the petiole can also be an indicator of a pH issue...usually easy to fix, but you deffinitely wanna check it to make sure your in the nuetral range...PEACE and Good Luck!

yeah I was thinking it had to be pH, it's like the only thing I have no clue about. I don't have a pH tester, guess I have to buy one now.

edit: so I'm looking at test kits, meters, etc... it seems like unless I spend a good bit of cash, a meter is junk.

so if I get a test kit, do I just water normally and test the runoff? then add up or down to water accordingly?

OK! so I just realized this isn't really a CFL grow any more, but I'm not making a new thread.... oh well...

anyway, I got my pH meter, soil on the little one tested at 5.5, the big bitch tested at 5.0... I'm thinking it might be lower than that cause I read that this meter doesn't do alkaline soil so well anywhere below 5.0... what can I add to raise that pH up to a more desirable level???

I've switched back to just plain old tap water no distilling cause the dudes over in the plant problems forum said I was depriving them of Ca and Mg by doing that.... hopefully that clears up the spotting and new growth yellowing.

I also added some side lighting, I just felt like the 400 doesn't have a huge footprint, and with how fat my girls are, the outskirts of the plant weren't getting enough light IMO. so I put 2x 42w CFL's on each side, 6500k.

my buds are starting to fill in quite nicely too. heres some porn...



one of the tops is going to be huge, here it is by itself and next to a half gallon jug for scale.




sorry about bad pics, taken with a shitty phone and a shaky hand lol

^ you mean those buds don't look very big for 30 days? lol I know, I'm thinking this is going to be a 75-90 day flower. I re-vegged them, and they're sorta sick... not optimal grow conditions... probably slowing down the process a bit. but I'm determined to finish them out.

stick with it buddy! im interested to see the results

buds are getting fatter now...




and a teensy bit frosty, nothing amazing, but it's starting.




and this is still happening. it's only on one top this bad, but one other top has it slightly. still hoping switching back to plain ol tap water is going to sort things out.




thanks for checking it out. any comments or criticism welcomed!

another mini update.

pics were taken at the beginning of wk 7 flower.

getting frosty and a bit stinky.





all three the big bitch... little one is getting fatter too but not a whole lot of trichs on her.

the tops are still yellowing and the dark brown spots have not gotten any better, dunno what's up with her.

just a tiny pic update. they're nothing special but I want to keep a record. this is the beginning of week 8 of flower. not the best pics but something.





I ran 3 full gallons of water through this one yesterday, hoping it cleaned the soil out good. might do it again in a few days to be sure.

at this point I've pretty much given up on making this plant any better, I'm just going to water it once every 3 or 4 days from here on out... maybe put some molasses in with the water a few times.

welp, said fuckit and chopped the big bitch tonight. she probably could've gone another week or so but I'm tired of waiting for this round to finish. the little girl will probably go this weekend or early next week.

got 8 nice sized tops... hoping for 1.25 to 1.5 oz dry weight. we'll see in a week.

heres some pics of the girl right before chopping.

Thats a fat little lady there. Way to go!