Hey man!
I’d hate for you to feel lonely or left out so I will keep you some company
I managed to stumble upon your profile through another thread about mr. canuks grow method. Saw you were attempting the same and Planned on documenting your grow. Checked out your thread and you started your grow from seed in October just like I did! Read your entire thread and your plants seem to have been doing a lot better than mine!
I germinated 2 seeds and they started out with a reeeeeally slow start. After a month they looked like they were maybe 2 weeks old. Very slow and stunted growth.
Mistake #1:
TLDR: leaving cover on tap water while trying to dechlorinate because cats.
I had made a 5gal batch of dechlorinated tap water but messed up and it likely wasn’t dechlorinated...I have a cat and a kitten so I covered the bucket so they didn’t mess around with the water. I have a couple pumps running in the water to help evaporate the chlorine as well as for bubble teas. There was a small gap where the hoses were running out, but I have a feeling that perhaps a lot of the chlorine was staying in the bucket. Now I do not cover the bucket for the initial 24h out of tap
Mistake #2:
TLDR: mixed molasses and seaweed to 5 gal batch, ph’d initially before first use but not again for subsequent uses.
After I made this batch of 5gal I ph’d it somewhere between 6.5-6.8 like he said in his older videos (in a newer one he actually said 6.0-6.5 and after watching so many of his vids saying 6.5-6.8 I was shocked!! In his must current vids he switched to a Gaia green living soil blend) I then added organic molasses and seaweed extract to the water. The next time I watered I figured I had already ph’d it, so I’m good to go! I kept watering from the same batch without rechecking the ph. Big issue when you add the molasses and seaweed extract!! It got more and more acidic every day. And when they are seedling they don’t feed very much so I had that water for quite a while. Not only was the pH an issue I feel like the bacteria was also bad for the microbial life in the coco since it sat around for so long. After I ran out of that batch I made another one, kept the cover off but I mixed the solution again and started phing with every watering. Once that batch was gone I started to only mix what I was using with molasses and seaweed that way my water remained slightly basic until I added the molasses and seaweed extract at which point it would go slightly acidic (usually around 5.8-6.0 range). Then I’d ph it up to 6.5-6.8 and water my plants. This seemed to help as the solution was fresher and didn’t give bacteria time to fester. Also I used the ph the entire bucket then take whatever I needed. I feel like that was a waste of ph adjuster and likely adding more unnecessary crap into the water. Now I take what I need and then ph that. Much easier to adjust with lesser quantities
Mistake #3:
TLDR: Plants in pool of water runoff
Not elevating my pots out of their tray enough. I bought one nice elevated tray that allows water to drip down into a pan below. I also bought a bunch of cheap plastic pans with several feet that are hollow for water collection. I used the nice tray/pan for when they were in smaller pots but once I transplanted into 5gal pots I put them on the cheap Walmart ones because they couldn’t both fit on the nice tray I have. Problem is that when there was a lot of run off the water would pool in the tray and the plants were sitting in the water until it evaporated as the hollow feet were not near enough to maintain the runoff. So I put one plant on the nice tray/pan and as for the other I took one shitty Walmart pan and I cut grooves in all of the feet then I put that on top of another pan so that the water would drip into the top pan and then subsequently drip down into the pan below leaving the top pan relatively try. Having. The pots sit water I feel is definitely not healthy for the roots, potentially even salt buildup? I actually just did this recently so I am hoping that things will help change things.
Mistake #4
I was scared of over watering cause you hear so much about it. But since I am growing in coco I feel like perhaps I wasn’t watering enough, I would wait until the first few inches were dry. After reading more about coco it seems like you should water more often. I am now watering daily or every other day, I only let the top of the coco dry out a bit.
So back to a month old from seed and growth was slowly chugging along and I eventually managed to get it going a bit. I had some twisty leaves which after googling made me think about ph problems. this is what made me realize mistake #2. I checked my ph of my batch of water with molasses and seaweed and the ph was in the 4’s. fixed that and growth seemed to increase slightly. I was still having. Problems though so I did some more looking around and the closest thing I could find was a magnesium deficiency. So I went out and bought some Epsom salts and sure enough that seemed to improve it. Finally my plant was seeming to be like all those grow videos I was watching. Daily visible growth, yes!!
Once that seemed fixed I ran into some phosphorous problems which I am currently dealing with (purpleish stems and yellowing of leaves eventually turning brown in big blotches). This could have came from waiting too long to top dress again as I waited a month maybe a few days more to top dress a second time. I also added some bat guano (mineralized phosphate) for a higher phosphorous content as both my girls were clearly needing it! This was actually only a few days ago so I’m hoping this will get better, they haven’t gotten much worse yet at least!!
I would love to have these girls in flower but I have been struggling with health and I want them to be healthy before I put them into flower andddd I also am leaving on vacation from feb 25 to March 3 and I need to find someone to take care of my baby’s while I’m away!! I figure it would be easier for someone with even less knowledge than me to watch them in veg than flower ya know?!
Sorry for the long response! Hope you’re not feeling lonely any more
