First time Ever Grow Hydro

OldLuck said:

Ok guys, my 2 girls are slowly starting to look better. My shorter plant still have a lot of cotton balls instead of buds. Some of the buds on my tall plant are filling out pretty good. I think they both have a long way to go if they are 8 week plants. I think my liquid karma went bad, I store my nutes in a cabinet in a room that doesn't go below 35 degrees. May that is a bit to cold for the nutes. Now my res is back to clear and my ph and ppm's are still very stable. I hope the fan leaves open back up this week. The roots in the bottom of the tray still look pretty dark from feeding in that coffee like solution but they are getting a little lighter every feeding now. Let me know guys what you think.

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They aren't in too bad of shape. The abundance of N is something you need to address before next grow. What flowering nute are you using? Maybe your using additives that are boosting N as a side effect? A consequence of over N is dark green leaves, the clawed down leaves and worst of all, it retards bud growth. You want enough N to keep the plant green but not so much that it becomes essentially a poison to the flowers.

If you look back on page 14 you will see the nutes I'm using. I don't think I can use the CSN17 bloom and cal/mag together. Thanks for the time someguy!

Yes I think N is the culprit, you should cut N completely out of the feed starting now and let the leaves lose some of that intense green. Use fertilzers with only P and K for the rest of the grow

I was thinking same thing pickle.

Your not as bad off as you think. They dont look that bad, sounds like these guys have some good advise good luck to you!

They have always taken better pixs then what they really look like to me. If that makes any sense. lol I hope next week I have a better report. How did your buds turn out?

OldLuck said:

They have always taken better pixs then what they really look like to me. If that makes any sense. lol I hope next week I have a better report. How did your buds turn out?

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pretty nice got them hanging up. smoked a sample that i quick dried and it was great. really crazy head high then turned into a serious couch lock. cant wait to smoke them after they dry and cure the proper way!!!!!

Do these nugs look small to you guys? Is this what you call underdeveloped buds? Is this something I can fix and how? The more I look at my girls the more I think I should be doing something. I have never seen them so sad.

Im tuned in bro, just waiting to see your harvest. the leaves do look greener than ive ever seen them at this stage of flowering. probably the N levels from what ive been looking up. looks like your getting quite a few amber hairs. you said originally that you would quit about now at 10-15%? still want to? keep it up a few more weeks, looks good.

Is amber hairs a bad thing? The hairs are way longer then the buds and on my other plant it is the opposite.

kinda hard to tell by the pics, but if she's sativa dominant, they take longer to flower, and the over feeding of N. to much nitrogen can delay flowering...lookin good though other then that. cut N out completely for sure.

My cal/mag has n in it.

you would be wasting your money putting dry ice in there already there to small save that till the end of veg and do something other then dry ice its very expensive. try getting a propane lantern and setting it on low works great way cheaper.

what are you talking about?

That the plants are to small for co2 already, and that it would be a waste of money being dry ice melts fast and is expensive.ive used it before and it was costly. And i was explaining to him a little coleman propane lantern turned on low is way cheaper and produces co2 also. sorry just smoked new buds i picked the other day when i wrote that earlier still high no just as high. lol

shufflebotlmfao said:

great advice
seedlings or clones dont need much light for 4 weeks
most of the action is in the roots not much going on up top then when roots establish they will rocket up in size

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Thats wrong. My babies were born under a.400watt mh and only 10inches from the bulb.. Look at my signature

Old Luck they are definately small buds and the amber hairs either mean its reaching maturity or it was burnt. sorry i havent been following you the whole time but i have skimmed through your journal and i am pretty sure i know whats going on. i have been doing hydro for about 7 yrs now and i have come to learn that you need to address a problem as soon as you pick it up. in the pix i did see i saw yellow tips which is usually do to a ph issue. Ph is the most important thing and can lock your plant up beyond saving at this point. since you sticking to a nutrient schedule there is little you can do because the nutrients and their calenders are set up to trick the plant to produce in a certain time frame and turning back is not worth it. i have been down this road and its just more of a headache. did you use any type of foliar spray throughout the process?

I think Old luck has already decided not to use the dry ice anymore.

Yea I'm really seeing what your talking about Oldluck, those nugs do look small

Its hard to see such small nugs when you look around and all the other plants at this stage have much larger buds

At this point I think its safe to say you can't expect a huge harvest off those plants, but the buds that are there will get bigger still. The question is why are the buds small?

How much light are you using? maybe they needed more light? how much air are they getting? maybe they werent getting enough CO2 to thrive. Maybe nutrients were the reason for this, less N and more PK surely would have helped
Hopefully you will know how to better the next grow so that you have plants covered with bud

I think the most obvious reason that the plants have a small amount of bud is that there are not enough budsites, the internodes stretched too far, which to me indicates low lighting. If you had 4 times as many nodes you would likely have almost 4 times as much bud on the plants, but keeping the internodes short is a difficult task, and requires alot of light.
I don't think those are Sativas, so I think you'll be harvesting in 3 weeks, judging by the reddening hairs.

Your still going to get a good pile of weed at the end though, so don't be too sad

One thing I tried that was surprisingly effective in gettting bigger buds was how I handled the end of the grow and harvest. I flushed for the last week and a half of the grow (fan leaves were yellowing a good bit at the end), then the second to the last day I deprived them of all water, then the last day I cut off the lights and left them in the dark for three whole days without disturbing them. Bud production takes place during the dark cycle, so those last three days in the dark, the buds swelled up considerably from still being attached to their roots, but they were partially dried when I cut them down (from no water). Looking close at the buds afterward, they actually looked "frothed up" almost foamy, but nice and firm. Most noticeable was how little the buds seemed to shrink from drying, compared to my other grows. You might try this. It may help you with a little extra weight in the end.

I've used this method leaving them in the dark for up to five days - but, that was too long. After five days, the plants were well along their way to being dry and the leaves that needed to be trimmed off the buds had shriveled and pulled up to the buds so close that trimming them was more difficult and time consuming. Three days in the dark, rather than five, seems to work better for that reason. At three days, the plants are still easily trimmed up.

Looking forward to hearing what kind of yield you get!

(btw, flood and drain hydroponics system)

For your next grow try using Humbolt County"Bushmaster" Nutes. it slow vertical growth and influences shorter bushier plants with more compact bud surfaces.