Keffka's Stonington Soil, Bag Seed, 2022 Setup Indoor Grow

Keffka said:
No worries, something I read on this site sat with me well.. any time I think my plants need something I try to move at the speed they would move as opposed to myself.. I’m in soil so I can afford a little extra forgetfulness now and then lol

My next issue is figuring out what’s holding me back from being able to blast my plants with more light.. according to my meter I’m at 475-500.. I should be able to push that further but I’m missing something. I may not be providing enough nutrients.. I’ve only ever used the organic plant food from Coast of Maine.. I have a separate grow going with advanced nutrients micro grow bloom im growing to see if there’s a difference in what they can take.
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Interesting experiment!
Keffka said:
Her cousins trying to get as big as possible before the room gets flipped to flower.. in the first image on the left you can see a fan leaf rolled up on itself. Originally I broke the branch on the end and both leaves wilted.. after I taped it up they started raising back up, but the leaf has yet to unfold. Will that leaf ever come back or is it forever done?

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I don't know about the leaf.
 
StoneOtter said:
Interesting experiment!

I don't know about the leaf.
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I was talking out the light absorption issue and I believe the mag deficiency is going to be why I can’t hit it with more light. Mag is essential to light absorption so it stands to reason if I’m deficient in mag my plant won’t be able to take higher levels of light. We’ll see how it plays out.

This site is awesome for this kind of stuff! It’s so helpful being able to bounce ideas off of people with experience.
 
rigidigital said:
Interesting LST there, with the cord & the stakes In ‘the female’ pic. That’s just one plant in the pot, right?

interested to hear more about this LST method.
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Yeah just one plant.

Lol so, like pretty much everything else, I thought I understood what I was doing until I started doing it. Originally I was going to mainline the plant, and somewhere along the way got manifold topping confused with mainline topping.. after I realized I mainfold topped it I decided to take the term manifold really literally lol. So I tied my ends down to create a long horizontal main branch like this:
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That main branch is almost completely flat from one end to the other with only a very minor curve up right at both ends. This is part of me misunderstanding the growth. I was under the impression I was supposed to keep the branches as flat as possible until after the first or second node on the 8 colas, thus creating a stronger base for the colas as they then begin their ascent toward the light. So in order to do that I put the bamboo stakes around the plant, (I figured I could also use them to support the colas as they mature) then took rubber wire and wrapped it around the bamboo to keep all of the colas flat until after their second node. After the second node I let them begin growing up toward the light. If you look in the picture I attached you can see the rubber is running in a sort of square keeping all of the colas flat until after their second node (except the ends.. the ends got their first node) As I did this I also began bending each cola out so that it would grow into its own little space where it would have plenty of its own light and airflow. Any colas that went higher than the other just got bent back a little more until it was all fully even across the top. It’s not picture perfect but it’s actually doing exactly what I thought it would so I’m in the ballpark, probably by the concession stands lol.

I’ve created more work for myself and this grow has been vegging much longer than necessary but I’ve learned a lot. I went through a lot of tutorials, and videos about mainlining and manifolding but no matter what, my plants never looked quite like what I was seeing so I just took the concept of what I was doing or thought I was doing and tried to cobble together a way to do it.

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Made a disappointing discovery today. Fungus gnats. They came from the soil I bought from the store, which is disappointing because I really liked the store and it was close by. I’ve got a fan going on the soil of the female and moved the yellow sticky traps near her.

Unfortunately, I still have about 1.25 cubic feet worth of the soil and I’m too cheap to just toss it so I picked up BTi to inoculate the unused soil in my bin so I don’t lose the beneficial bacteria and can keep using the soil. We’ll see how it goes. The gnats in the soil of the plant hopefully should be easier to handle since it’s only a 3 gallon.
 
Keffka said:
Made a disappointing discovery today. Fungus gnats. They came from the soil I bought from the store, which is disappointing because I really liked the store and it was close by. I’ve got a fan going on the soil of the female and moved the yellow sticky traps near her.

Unfortunately, I still have about 1.25 cubic feet worth of the soil and I’m too cheap to just toss it so I picked up BTi to inoculate the unused soil in my bin so I don’t lose the beneficial bacteria and can keep using the soil. We’ll see how it goes. The gnats in the soil of the plant hopefully should be easier to handle since it’s only a 3 gallon.
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Those two things work wonders Keffka. Nice choices!
 
The color of the growth looks really vibrant and interesting to me.. I am wondering what I’m seeing in the third picture. You can see yellow speckling occurring. I may have to actually specifically address the mag deficiency, giving the plant food at least a week though unless anything drastic changes

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If it continues the spots look like a calcium issue developing. Check the new growth when you want to see if something you did makes a difference. New growth should be perfect. Light green for a short time then over to a nice green through the entire leaf.
 
I have bred so many seedlings and taken them to veg now that it’s become easier to spot the males while they’re still seedlings. Some make it much easier than others to tell lol still am surprised a little some times but overall I’ve got about an 80% success rate identifying males by growth alone.. only in my grow room though.. outside grows are a bit more difficult for me for some reason

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Hello mate :ciao: fungus gnats are probably the most common pest in Coco and soil, good shout on the BTI for the rest of the bag also diatomaceous earth or a product called gnat nix will help remedy the problem and plenty of yellow sticky tarps too. You could try letting the substrate dry out completely to before the next watering to try and force them to leave as they like the top soil to be warm and moist for breeding.

Hope this is helpful :thumb: Much love :circle-of-love:
 
Gandalfthewhite said:
Hello mate :ciao: fungus gnats are probably the most common pest in Coco and soil, good shout on the BTI for the rest of the bag also diatomaceous earth or a product called gnat nix will help remedy the problem and plenty of yellow sticky tarps too. You could try letting the substrate dry out completely to before the next watering to try and force them to leave as they like the top soil to be warm and moist for breeding.

Hope this is helpful :thumb: Much love :circle-of-love:
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Would you stop purchasing your medium from a store if that’s where you got the gnats, or is that something I’m going to run into no matter what trying to buy organic soil? I really like the store and the people, plus it’s a small business I’d like to support but I don’t know if this is an indication of their shortcomings or it’s just something you’re gonna deal with regardless
 
Keffka said:
I checked my cities water analysis today because all of my plants seem to be showing mag deficiencies repeatedly. I see no note of calcium or magnesium in my water. Is there something im overlooking?

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In the UK they will only show heavy metal and fluoride contamination which is the same by the looks of it. Most good nutrients should have enough but since I've been using LED I have definitely used more. Also pH has a big part to play in availability for the ladies.
Keffka said:
Would you stop purchasing your medium from a store if that’s where you got the gnats, or is that something I’m going to run into no matter what trying to buy organic soil? I really like the store and the people, plus it’s a small business I’d like to support but I don’t know if this is an indication of their shortcomings or it’s just something you’re gonna deal with regardless
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I would still shop there mate :thumb: Unfortunately all soil bags have breathing holes and whether the gnats were in the soil from manufacturing or entered at the store it's a problem that you are going to stumble upon here and there. I have had fungus gnats a few times using different soils from different stores and also they have entered the tent and made themselves at home. Fungus gnats only eat dead root material so they are not going to be a big issue just an annoyance especially in flower when they stick to the trichs :green_heart:
 
Gandalfthewhite said:
In the UK they will only show heavy metal and fluoride contamination which is the same by the looks of it. Most good nutrients should have enough but since I've been using LED I have definitely used more. Also pH has a big part to play in availability for the ladies.

I would still shop there mate :thumb: Unfortunately all soil bags have breathing holes and whether the gnats were in the soil from manufacturing or entered at the store it's a problem that you are going to stumble upon here and there. I have had fungus gnats a few times using different soils from different stores and also they have entered the tent and made themselves at home. Fungus gnats only eat dead root material so they are not going to be a big issue just an annoyance especially in flower when they stick to the trichs :green_heart:
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Awesome.. thank you for the speedy responses. I don’t use liquid nutrients, just dry fertilizers from the same line as my soil, but I think I’m going to have to get some calmag in the mix if I keep having these issues. I’m gonna pickup some epsom salt today to see if I can get away with just that before using the calmag.

It’s definitely the LED because when I was growing this very same female outside she wasn’t showing any deficiencies at all. I had one plant show a nitrogen deficiency (almost as soon as it left seedling stage) outside but that was easily fixed. Once I moved indoors to the LED is when these deficiencies really started.
 
Ok so I got frustrated and scoured the internet for grows with my soil.. I found a thread where quite a few different people were running into the same issues. Calmag deficiencies and fungus gnats. Overall nice results though all around.. That’s way too easy to remedy and if those are going to be my biggest battles then I’ll take it.
 
Here are the seedlings.. placed in a glass of tap water mixed with rhizotonic for 12 hours in the dark and warm, then planted in CoM seedling starter mix. They were born on 26/27 Aug. One has gone into a one gallon and the other 3 are being prepped... what’s interesting is they’re also showing deficiencies but im using ph perfect micro, grow, bloom, on them and they’re still showing deficient.. possibly even light burn even though they’re almost 6 feet from the light lol.. had some slight canoeing going on

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