Hypo Hippy's first indoor grow

[Hypo Hippy]

Thanks for the inputs guys.

TS....to answer your question, I don't know. The lime was added just last week when we put the plants in 5 gal buckets, the leaf curling was first noticed on Feb 12.

Here is a shot of Lucille with the first early signs of the leaf edges curling down Feb 12

Here is a pic of Gladys that shows the first signs of her chlorosis (yellowing) her leaf curling didn't show up for another couple of days. Also on 12 Feb. I am convinced her chlorosis is due to a vascular problem from a stem break as a seedling....I have stated this many times in earlier posts, but know many people don't like to go back and read 13 pages of stuff...apologies to you that do.

After serious brain-storming we are thinking about a heavy flush and switching back to store-bought distilled water since the first signs of this "problem" started about 4-6 days after we switched to the Brita filtered tap water. Don't know if it is a coincidence, but makes you go "hmmmm." I have difficulty believing we have a toxicity problem as light as we have gone on nutes, but won't hurt to put the water to 'em. Our pHs have been running fairly decent the whole grow and since the lime is looking real good. Our temps have been pretty consistent both day/night, but if anything may run a little low on the night temps....we will fix that. The leaves don't show any of the classic signs of a single textbook nutrient deficiency. Oh well, we will see how they respond to the clear water.....lots of it!!!!! Thanks guys

 

[Closet Kine]

Good choice going back to distilled water. I'm doing the same as switching to tap water nearly killed my plants. Turns out my tap water has an extremely high amount of calcium and that said calcium was locking out magnesium. My leaves were turning up and had brown spots on the edges. I switched to RO water that I bought at wally world MJ supply. It's carbon, RO, and UV filtered for $.27 per gallon if you supply the container. This will have to do until I get the funds for my own RO filter. My plants seem to be doing better, hopefully yours will do the same.

 

[3lions]

5 gallon buckets. wow , you are going to grow these twenty feet high?

I know the American gallon is slightly different, they are a bit strange in those ways over there ;-) but cannot be that much difference! Id be sticking to around 2 gallon pots man which will make things easier to control if nothing else. It will mean also that you are wasting a lot of nutes, perhaps part of the problem. who knows

 

[3lions]

Good choice going back to distilled water. I'm doing the same as switching to tap water nearly killed my plants. Turns out my tap water has an extremely high amount of calcium and that said calcium was locking out magnesium. My leaves were turning up and had brown spots on the edges. I switched to RO water that I bought at wally world MJ supply. It's carbon, RO, and UV filtered for $.27 per gallon if you supply the container. This will have to do until I get the funds for my own RO filter. My plants seem to be doing better, hopefully yours will do the same.

Distilled water in essence is just boiled water to burn off the calcium, hence the scale in the bottom of kettles etc

 

[Hypo Hippy]

ClosetK and ThreeL.....I appreciate y'all stopping in. Yeah, after many days of scratching my head and trying to do some CSI work it seems that the water (even though I drink Brita-filtered water everyday and know without a doubt that it certainly removes the chlorine...at least the chlorine taste) has to at least be considered a possible problem here. At the very least it won't hurt anything but my wallet....lol.

Lions...with only two plants left and the fact that the roots of all of our plants were coming out of the holes of our 3gal pots the switch to 5 gals was a no-brainer. It will give them that much more room to stretch out and go to town. All in all, our plants are still doing pretty good. We are just not happy with the claw look and want to make sure we are keeping them at their prime. Thanks guys

 

[3lions]

Yes deffo check that water, the filtering is a bit irellavant

"with only two plants left and the fact that the roots of all of our plants were coming out of the holes of our 3gal pots the switch to 5 gals was a no-brainer"

How much is a gallon there? Here it is 8 pints, so 4 litres. The biggest pots I have seen people grow huge plants in here is 3 gallon, 12l.

Im amazed if the roots are 'rootlocked', they can continue to grow but that isnt what it is about, there are misconceptions about this. I have seen fully grown plants with tiny roots that are grown in 1l pots. The roots are there to search for food, if they are getting enough food with correct feeding it doesnt matter if the roots are tiny in reality. In fact a tight ball of roots equates to great tight nugs.

Try a search for "cannabis pot size versus plant size"

It will not hurt to grow in huge pots my freind I am just trying to explain the misconceptions and show that it can be a massive waste of resources and make the job a lot more difficult to control

 

[Be Irie]

Wow, 20 ft plants in five gallon buckets........ What am I doing wrong, mine only stay between 4-5 ft and the buckets are filled with roots. Look at the footprint of a 3 gal and a 5 gal, you will see there is not much of a difference... You don't use much more nutes, no added problems A healthy root system will out grow and give you a much better final product then a root bound plant could even get close to... I can tell when my plants need to be transplanted because they stop growing, then I wait a week or so to let them get nice and balled up, then transplant. Within a day or two after transplant they take off, this happens. We aren't saying that you can't grow a monster plant in a gallon container, but everything about it will suffer....It's never fun transplanting a five foot plant because you decided to cheap out on two gallons of soil.... this I know from experience....

 

[Bandit420]

Wow, 20 ft plants in five gallon buckets........ What am I doing wrong, mine only stay between 4-5 ft and the buckets are filled with roots. Look at the footprint of a 3 gal and a 5 gal, you will see there is not much of a difference... You don't use much more nutes, no added problems A healthy root system will out grow and give you a much better final product then a root bound plant could even get close to... I can tell when my plants need to be transplanted because they stop growing, then I wait a week or so to let them get nice and balled up, then transplant. Within a day or two after transplant they take off, this happens. We aren't saying that you can't grow a monster plant in a gallon container, but everything about it will suffer....It's never fun transplanting a five foot plant because you decided to cheap out on two gallons of soil.... this I know from experience....

I agree 100%. I also like using the larger container to help insulate the root ball during the warm season. Too many benefits to be had from too big of a container than fight the uphill battle with one that is too small.
If I grew a 20 foot tall plant, I would probably want a hollowed out VW Beetle to use as the pot!

 

[3lions]

"Wow, 20 ft plants in five gallon buckets........"

lol, well these are outside/patio plants that are more like trees for sure.= tho ok, not quite 20 feet haha

"What am I doing wrong, mine only stay between 4-5 ft and the buckets are filled with roots"

Well of course most of us grow to the confines of space as oppose to letting them be as big as is possible, I certainly didnt say you were doing wrong amigo, just saying most of us in small spaces do not need to use these huge pots, if they are fed properly they do not need huge roots either. Also I know some people actually shave off half the roots during the grow whilst others buy more nutes to actually kill off half of them.

"You don't use much more nutes"

You do in reality because obviously a 5 gallon pot will require 5 times as much watering, soil and nutrients than a 1 gallon pot

A healthy root system will out grow and give you a much better final product then a root bound plant could even get close to...

Again, a healthy root system does not need to be huge, it just needs to be healthy.

Anyway, last thing I wanted to do was be contradictiry, Im just saying it isnt necasary in most indoor grows and it is easier to manage smaller pots and thought I let peopel look into that a bit more if they wish



"f I grew a 20 foot tall plant, I would probably want a hollowed out VW Beetle to use as the pot!"

 

[Woodsman]

I've used planters on my outdoors grows that are huge. I try to grab them before my wife puts her flowers or vegetables in them. I've never measured pots before. I guess they may say on the bottom although I never looked. LOL Looking at them now I would think some of them are in the 10 -20 gallon range (not positive). I'd check now, but they are filled with last seasons soil. LOL, I have to roll some of the plants when I need to move or reposition them. I also top the plants in veg at the third or fourth node so I end up with a bush and not a tree. I couldn't imagine using tiny pots outdoors. This season I plan on more variety (more plants I hope) so I may have to go a little smaller to avoid having a forest or paying for a divorce. Five gallon is nothing for indoor unless like me, you are 'space restricted'.

 

[Be Irie]

OK 3lions, lets see a pic of these monsters in one gallon pots, then point me to the biggest plants here that are in three gallon pots.... your right a nice root system leads to healthier plants as we are here growing our meds, seems like that makes sense... Quality over quantity any day... To each his own, it's not everyday that I hear someone giving out advice to grow root bound plants, usually its the other way around.

 

[Hypo Hippy]

Hey guys....sorry I have been offline all day. Been out working for the man! Looks like I missed out on some of the fun. I appreciated and welcome everyone's advice and opinions. That being said, I am also pretty opinionated myself unfortunately. I am an avid bonsai enthusiast and have been so for over 27 years. I can assure you I am very aware of what can be done with small containers and plants that grow very large. I have a japanese maple that is 16 years old that is only 2.8 feet tall. It is that short due to a combination of small pot size, root pruning and judicious shoot/branch pruning. Is it true that big plants can be grown in small containers? No doubt. But like others here point out, it is a no-brainer (to me at least) to grow in a 5 gal pot vs a 3 gal pot. There is only one drawback from switching to the five gal pot....vertical space. Like Irie said the footprint is almost exactly the same. I am not limited vertically so it was a complete no-brainer....wish every decision I had to make was this easy. Be good folks.....or for pete's sake don't get caught. Oh by the way. We flushed with plain pH buffered water then watered with cal/mag water. The plants looked better this afternoon. Let's hope this trend continues. Thanks for all the reads/comments.....keep 'em coming.

 

[Grower5280]

Yeah, after thinking about your response to the water and using filterred water, I figured that was the issue, it's like RO water and you remove some things that are good. Cal Mag takes a cpl days to show, but you will notice the turnaround.

 

[Hypo Hippy]

Plants seem to be responding well to the flush and the dose of cal/mag. Nothing drastic, but definitely look better and perkier.....new growth seems like it is less claw-like. Hope this is the beginning of the end of that particular trait. Pistils are jumping out all over the place. Hope y'all are having a great weekend..........

 

[3lions]

Great news!

 

[Woodsman]

Have a great weekend buddy and I'm very happy for you that the grow is coming along fine now!

 

[Hypo Hippy]

Wood....let's not jump to conclusions..lol. We are going to go ahead and drop the flush bomb on their asses tomorrow. After looking at them, they seem to have improved somewhat with the mini-flush and the cal/mag, but in order to completely wipe the slate clean and start with something we know is free of pretty much anything that could be causing this problem we are gonna put the clean, clear, pH-adjusted water to them and start everything over again after this protocol. Hopefully it will fix it once and for all. Peace out.

 

[Woodsman]

Wood....let's not jump to conclusions..lol. We are going to go ahead and drop the flush bomb on their asses tomorrow. After looking at them, they seem to have improved somewhat with the mini-flush and the cal/mag, but in order to completely wipe the slate clean and start with something we know is free of pretty much anything that could be causing this problem we are gonna put the clean, clear, pH-adjusted water to them and start everything over again after this protocol. Hopefully it will fix it once and for all. Peace out.

sorry if I jumped the gun a little on ya! I'm sure though that you will be free sailing after the big flush.

 

[Hypo Hippy]

Yeah I hope so....it certainly can't hurt. I will keep y'all updated on their progress. Thanks.

 

[Hypo Hippy]

Ok guys....we put the flush to 'em today BIG TIME! Each plant got 12 gals of pH balanced water and flushed and flushed and FLUSHED! The last 5 gals or so came out clear as drinking water. Hopefully all the Poisons have been leached out of these be-autches. Gonna let them dry out for 2-3 days and hit them with some half nutes and a little epsom salts and see how they respond to this regimen. Thanks to everyone for their help/advice on this problem of ours. Special thanks to SouthernWeed as he has been invaluable in helping us out on the side. As an aside, the plants seem to be doing well after the flush...just look a little yellow around the gills. I think they are definitely looking forward to something besides clear water. Hoping by the end of this week they are looking less curled and alot greener. Peace out!