3rd Year grower

Hi All

An introduction from me and my setup.

I'm in my flowering stage of my 4th grow and I seem to have got the hang of things. I use an NFT setup with a single 600w HPS and grow a maximum of 5 plants at a time from clones. Lost my 3rd grow to spidermite as I totally misdiagnosed the issue until it was to late and I was in week 3 of flower - the little buggers completely destroyed my crop. Suffered again in the early stages of my current grow but eliminated them very quickly with an industrial spray.

My current grow is quite a odd one since I can only presume I've 4 clones from one bread and 1 from another. One plant is twice the height of the others which has forced me to veg a little longer than I planned to get the other 4 upto a good height. The the tall plant I've had to bend all four main branches around half way down.

My usual yield from this setup is 14-16 Oz when dried off.

So that's me. Don't think I need any advice from the community yet, but am happy to share my experiences and details with anyone who wants to know.

Thanks, hope to speak to some of you soon.


ninebar

what did you use on the mites?

Hi Ninebar~you say you lost your 3rd grow to spidermites, how did the spidermites effect exactley those plants. I've got them also on my outdoor grow & I wonder if they are what makes the leaves feel dry & dirty? I wouldn't say they completely destroy the plant though, in fact we've harvested & while the buds are hanging you start noticing at the top along the string webs I assume the spiders are there also though I can't see them, any way I also assume that means for the most part I'm not smoking alot of them?!

I used a spay made up at my local hydroponic store (a strictly under the counter order). It requires mask, long sleeves and gloves and them immediate evacuation of the room. I can't for the life of me remember what is was called. Something '-tech'.

I was a one spray solution though - it permeates the leaves so it can be sprayed top side to get the buggers on the underside. If I can remember what it was called I'll let you know.

Well, they started showing the little white dots, looked a bit like little dots of paint had been flicked on them, at this point there was no visible sign as the mites themselves were to small to see. I kept pruning in the normal way and finally put them into flower (from 18/6 to 36hrs total dark then 12/12). The spots started to increase on the mid to lower leaves only but now on the underside small yellow/brown dots were visible (the mites) and some webbing was also visible. At this point I made some enquiries but as I was now three weeks into flower - I was limited on what I could use in terms of miticide. I acquired some Canna leaf spray which was supposed to gum up the mouths of the mites but it only seemed to feed them. At this point the budding sites were full of the long white hairs and the mites were very visible cralwing along the webs they had spun. I kept spraying and within a week - to my horror - I opened the tent to find an explosion of mites had occurred. The tops of every plant were covered with what looked like yellow balls of pure moving mites! It was disgusting!

At this point most of the leaves had died and I realised that I'd lost the battle. I sprayed the plants with Mr Muscle kitchen cleaner to kill the mites instantly and then cleared everything out. Disassembled and bleached everything which took a good few hours! I'll never fall foul of those little bugger again!

So in conclusion. the first sign of white spotted leaves in the mid/lower leaves (which is the first tell tale sign) get on it and don't delay. From reading up since, the evolution of these little mites is stagering. They can go from eggs to reproducing adults in nine days and the adults lay hundreds of eggs. 9 days later, the cycle starts again. They also become immune to your spray after only a few generations so if ou have to spray them more then two/three times you need to be looking for a different miticide!

Hope that helps anyone whos not suffered from these before!