Help me improve!

Hello everyone,

So, my recent harvest dried out on me a bit quicker than I would have liked on the cure >.< in total, I got 77 grams of one Dutch Passions Strawberry Cough plant under a Sun Blaze T5HO-48. Only seven of my eight bulbs in the fixture work, but the panel says its 432 watts of light. All white bulbs through the grow.

I ran FFoF soil in a five gallon bucket, and I used their trio pack (Big Bloom/Grow Big/Tigers Bloom) per the feeding schedule. Ill admit, I missed a feed here and there so I'm sure I can tighten down in that department. I topped and LST the plant to form a decent canopy, but eventually it became uneven once buds started putting on weight. I had to tie most of the stems up with yarn to keep them near the light.

With all that said, I have a few questions about what I can do better to get more per harvest.

1. Would learning to run hydro be worth the time to increase my harvest? Heard the quality is not as high there.
2. Nutrients and Medium - am I doing OK? Should I feed more, until I see burn? Or just follow the schedule?
3. 1g/w of light. Does that goal hold true to CFL fixtures?
4. Sativas or Indicas? This girl was a Sativa and took a lot longer to finish, may need to go the Indica route.
5. Light - if I kept an even canopy and somehow rigged it so my light was as close to it as possible, would the difference be noticeable?

I'm sure there are other things that I haven't touched on here that are important. Please help me improve, I want to get to that 1g/w goal

Oh, and this isn't for profit or anything at all. More of a personal growth kind of thing. I usually get kind of competitive when highs and lows that can be reached in any activity >.< Lots of yall's bud pr0n has made me jealous! lol

Thanks.

The only thing you can do is remember what you came out with using what you have. And try something different each grow. For instence. I know 7-800w of cfl with a 2 month veg is promising of 133g or more. So ill never go under that right.... So this second grow i started my seedling under 500w of cfl already and they love it. Its all about how much energy you can deposit into the plant without hurting her. And good tap water. Water 2wice a week a feed once and flush every 3weeks for cleaner medicine... Try to keep it simple and sweet. 19 days, 18, and 12.

You want to get to the one gram per watt ............. Big lights, big space , long veg , long spliff while topping the hell out of that fucker till you flip yo flower ..... Simple no ?

What color of white? It should be on the bulb, ####k, the color temperature in kelvin.

Veg under 6x 6500k bulbs + 2 2700-3500k bulbs
Flower under 5x 2700-3500k bulbs + 2 6500k bulbs + 1 UVB 10% bulb.

What are the dimension of the grow space? Just to see if you have lighting sized correctly. You should be in the 5000-7500 lumens per square foot range.

More light is your answer

nomofatum said:

What color of white? It should be on the bulb, ####k, the color temperature in kelvin.

Veg under 6x 6500k bulbs + 2 2700-3500k bulbs
Flower under 5x 2700-3500k bulbs + 2 6500k bulbs + 1 UVB 10% bulb.

What are the dimension of the grow space? Just to see if you have lighting sized correctly. You should be in the 5000-7500 lumens per square foot range.

Click to expand...

Bulbs are all 6500, I will order the rest here in a bit. You have any good leads on quality bulbs before I go to the interwebz?

The room is 4.5ft by 5.5ft and about 7 foot tall.

Rentaldog said:

Bulbs are all 6500, I will order the rest here in a bit. You have any good leads on quality bulbs before I go to the interwebz?

The room is 4.5ft by 5.5ft and about 7 foot tall.

Click to expand...

are you wanting cfls ?

Rentaldog said:

Bulbs are all 6500, I will order the rest here in a bit. You have any good leads on quality bulbs before I go to the interwebz?

The room is 4.5ft by 5.5ft and about 7 foot tall.

Click to expand...

Not much difference in tech between any of the florescent manufacturers. I just get the Sylvania or GE ones from local store because they are cheapest, same output as more expensive bulbs. You can get both 2700-3500k and 6500k at the lighting section of your local hardware store. UVB bulbs can be bought online or at the pet store, reptiles. Arcadia UVB light, or Zoomed 10% UVB or Exoterra 10% UVB bulbs. You get them in all forms of florescent. Also tanning bulbs too (what I use) but you have to make a special fixture for them, they are 6ft long, approx.

Thanks Ill be looking into those different bulbs here soon. Is the UVB for resin production? Ive read that around here before.

Rentaldog said:

Thanks Ill be looking into those different bulbs here soon. Is the UVB for resin production? Ive read that around here before.

Click to expand...

Yep.

You mind me asking what nutes yall use? Right now I use the FF trio, but I never once saw a hint of burn or anything from my girl. Do you guys usually dial in your plants and see how far you can take them, or do you always stick with the schedule?

Rentaldog said:

You mind me asking what nutes yall use? Right now I use the FF trio, but I never once saw a hint of burn or anything from my girl. Do you guys usually dial in your plants and see how far you can take them, or do you always stick with the schedule?

Click to expand...

I use Maxigro/Maxibloom mostly, but recently decided to give others a shot again. Of the three I'm running now, the clear winner is still Maxigro/Maxibloom.

I work my way up to 1400 PPM and stop early if the plant tells me to, then stick with that number. Everything I'm running now seems to take 1400 without issue, one strain just barely starts to burn at full 1400.

My opinion of the 3 I'm running now:
Best: Maxigro/bloom - 0 deficiencies, tallest healthiest plants
2nd Best Jacks Hydro: PH swing issues at first, but after corrected, no issues, only minor damage from PH swings
Dynagro: Wild PH swings for first 3 days, much more damage, moderate PH swings with top offs on new nutes. Resulted in less growth compared directly to Maxigro.

Dynagro and Maxigro are side by side with clones. Dynagro bottle had sediment and it was a bitch to get mixed back in.

Thanks nomofatum, I appreciate all the help. Ill start mixing in changes here and there on this next grow and see what works, really looking forward to getting things lined out Thinking about tossing in a tomato plant and some pepper bushes as well.

Between me and the family I should be able to cobble together some salsa in the next few months!

Weird thing is in the room where maxigro and dynagro are side by side i also have 2 plants in their own buckets (not shared res) that I have been topping off randomly with both maxigro and dynagro, they are the biggest and 3rd biggest of 21 plants. And I didn't see the PH swings or any deficiencies in them either.

Rentaldog said:

Thanks nomofatum, I appreciate all the help. Ill start mixing in changes here and there on this next grow and see what works, really looking forward to getting things lined out Thinking about tossing in a tomato plant and some pepper bushes as well.

Between me and the family I should be able to cobble together some salsa in the next few months!

Click to expand...

I was going to do that too, but decided the space was better used with weed, lol. Also the Ghost Pepper seeds never sprouted. I have to build another area soon for vegi garden seed starting though, also like to be a new veg space, lol.

nomofatum said:

I was going to do that too, but decided the space was better used with weed, lol. Also the Ghost Pepper seeds never sprouted. I have to build another area soon for vegi garden seed starting though, also like to be a new veg space, lol.

Click to expand...

Haha yea, it seems like once you start you want to take it as big as you can I know better than that, but maybe one day when this country gets its head on straight ill be able to go crazy! And ghost peppers xD im pretty sure one of those would kill me!

And thats neat that the combo nutrients are doing well on those two plants. I wonder if the maxigrow is keeping the dyna ph problems at bay?

Rentaldog said:

Haha yea, it seems like once you start you want to take it as big as you can I know better than that, but maybe one day when this country gets its head on straight ill be able to go crazy! And ghost peppers xD im pretty sure one of those would kill me!

And thats neat that the combo nutrients are doing well on those two plants. I wonder if the maxigrow is keeping the dyna ph problems at bay?

Click to expand...

I fear the Ghost Pepper as much as you, I wouldn't touch it without gloves and a gas mask, lol. I actually got gloves to handle the seeds. This is why I wanted to grow it, I doubt deer will go near anything sprayed with it. Want to hit the fruit trees, the vegi garden, and the hidden garden (first year outdoor.) If they do take a bite, I would love to get it on camera, I doubt I would see it happen twice from the same deer.

I think the PH swings may be why they are doing better. Because they are tempered by the less swingy Maxigro I think they actually help by pushing the PH up and down through each nutrient's best absorbsion range. Just a theory though.

Do you grow in soil? Been thinking about learning hydro and I have a simple DWC bucket setup I can use. Keeping the res under 80 is tough for me though, would probably have to put a small stand alone AC in the room to keep things cool. Is the increase in growth worth that?

Rentaldog said:

Do you grow in soil? Been thinking about learning hydro and I have a simple DWC bucket setup I can use. Keeping the res under 80 is tough for me though, would probably have to put a small stand alone AC in the room to keep things cool. Is the increase in growth worth that?

Click to expand...

It's worth it for multiple reasons. On medium or larger scale grows it ends up being much easier, imagine filling and moving 30+ pots of soil every 3 months. Much easier to drain and fill a hydro setup. Heat gets to be a problem more when you add a water pump (effectively a water heater at however many watts it uses) or put the air pump in a location that pumps hot air into the water.

Avoid heat issues by:
1. Use smaller or no recirculating water pumps, or have recirculating only run periodically.
2. Put air pump in location where it will pull the coolest air. (outside grow room if at all possible)
3. Place buckets on concrete floor directly
4. Reflective insulation on bucket.

If all else fails you have to add a chiller or other DIY variation.

I put my air pumps in the garage to pump cool winter air, but not the full icy cold of outside. I had to remove the insulation from my buckets, would get too cold, went down to 48 the first night.

You should try a DWC side by side with your soil, just 1 plant/bucket insulated with air pump outside grow area. It should be fine like that. I have an aquarium thermometer in each shared system for water temp, they are like $3 on ebay. Also give Maxigro/Maxibloom a try as your hydro nutrients. I have yet to find anything better or as good, and they are cheaper than most options per dose.

Thanks, ill probably give it a shot again and see if I can make it work this time lol. Ill definitely check out the Maxigro/bloom