small harvests

Hey guys, I've been growing for a few years, have encountered and overcome lots of problems, and finally getting good results, but.... Small harvests!!

My plants (Purple Kush) are super happy, week 6, no signs of deficiencies, Temp is under 80F, seems like good air flow, using Floranova Bloom at 10 mL/gallon, pH'd to 6.5, 1000W HPS, 3 gallon pots, 4 weeks veg. Last harvest was under 1/2 lb per light, this one is looking the same. I got healthy clones from friends who are getting 1 lb per light with this strain. I am topping to get multiple stems and removing large upper fan leaves to expose lower buds to light, and removing some lower bud sites (plants don't all get the same treatment).

Quite a lot of the buds have strange formation, a bit stringy looking with misshapen leaves. I haven't seen any pics online looking the same, I will try to post some tonight. Last harvest, things looked great until around this time and then the buds started looking strange and didn't form the nice big colas you look for.

The one issue I am looking at is hard well water. It comes out of the tap at around 300 ppm. Could this result in small bud growth?

I am looking at an RO filter, but I don't know that the readings are high enough to justify this, especially with no sign of nutrient imbalances. Veg growth is great, no issues there.

Other thing is that I have a brutal success rate with cloning, which did improve somewhat (from maybe 10% to 25% success rate) when I switched to bottled water. I understand cloning and have good results previously, but can't figure this one out either.

This is driving me crazy!! Thanks for any help...

No.. It's your pots. 3 Gallon pots will only allow for so much total growth. Combine that with training/toping where you are adding more colas, and the nugs will be smaller.. If you only had one top(no training, fiming, toping).. you would likely get one large cola.

Try increasing your pots to 10 gallons. Then continue with everything else as you are now. Well, if you aren't using a bulking supplement near the end, try that too. There's generally two kinds, one is a bulking agent, the other tends to increase crystals & terpine production. The latter is usually a form of sugar (molasses, etc)

Will know more when you post pics.

OK thanks, yes my friends do grow in 10 gallon pots. I do have some Big Bud and Overdrive I am using for this one.

Do you think a shorter veg time would help?

That said, I kinda figured the total production would be based more off the amount of light than the amount of soil. As long as they were getting enough food and water ( they need it every two days), I didn't give the soil volume that much importance.

Kush in my experience is really sensitive to Nitrogen around it's root system and something I don't see anyone else mention is Kush seems to be really efficient at gather Nitrogen. Nitrogen will hurt yields in exactly the way you described. So it's my conclusion that your well water has Nitrogen in it. Regarding planter size I doubt you are using up your entire planter you can dig up the root ball after harvest to see if it used all of the soil.

Thinking about it any containment from the well could be a culprit with a sensitive strain

Hm interesting, the Floranova Bloom has a fair bit of N in it, 4-8-7. I was surprised, but it has really good reviews, so I wasn't worried about it.

The leaves are really green and never show any sign of yellowing.

I don't agree with using 10 gallon pots indoors. That's a lot more than you need unless you want to grow plants that are the size of small trees, and that's self defeating with an indoor grow. In my nearly 3 decades of growing (mostly indoor) I have found that 5 gallon pots are plenty for a plant that isn't going to be in the container for more than 3 months. However, if I grow a strain that takes 10+ weeks to flower I have used 10 gallon containers that were 75% full of dirt and got better yields than with the same strain in a 5 gal. Not a lot better, but enough to make it worth using a bigger container.

I've found that when folks use a big enough container, feed/water the plants appropriately and don't get the yield they expect it's often because they didn't let the plants veg long enough. Once the plant starts flowering the roots stop growing in pretty short order. If you put a clone in a 5 gallon container it's best to let it veg for a full month. If the clone is already root bound in a 1 gallon container when it's transplanted you can shorten the time to maybe 3 weeks instead of a month. This is assuming an 18/6 veg cycle. I have made this mistake before and flowered too quickly. When the plant was done and I dumped the dirt in my backyard I noticed that the roots only ate up maybe 75% of the available space in the container. And yes, the yield wasn't what it should be. Big root mass = big yield assuming that the size of the container is sufficient.

If you absolutely MUST use a 10 gallon container I would let the plant veg for a loooooooooooooooooooooong time or you might find that your yield won't increase all that much. Most growers are not that patient.

I would only use a 3 gallon pot in a SCROG setup with plants that don't get much over 2' in height. Plants in 3 gallon containers are also a lot more labor intensive because they have to be watered more often. In 5 gal the plants can typically go 2-4 days between waterings depending on plant size and grow room temps. With 3 gal it's more like 1-2 days. If you're only growing a few plants that's one thing, but if you have 15-18 like I typically do the workload increases by a lot. I keep my moms in 3 gal, but that's it.

Cool, thanks for your experiences.

I guess the big question I have is about the hard water thing. Is 300 ppm too high? I am looking at buying one soon to help my current crop, but it is $600, I really don't want to drop that if I don't have to. Any thoughts?

It seems to me that 300 ppm is on the high side, but not drastically so. I would love to hear experience with results before and after installing an RO filter. Anyone??

Bigger roots, bigger fruits

As for cloning, check out that chapter in the tutorial in my signature.

Size of pots indoors completely depends on your grow space, and how many plants you are growing. For people limited to 3-4 plants.. you may as well grow in the biggest pots possible for your grow space. If you top, and train enough your plant won't become a tree. More like a bush.