First time grower needs help

[fannatic]

Hi,

First time grower here, no experience whatsoever.

I planted a few seeds some weeks ago and my plants are slowly progressing into something that is starting to look like weed Read a zillion tutorials before planting.

Currently I have 2 questions:

- What's wrong with the leaves in the first pic? The plant had stopped growing for a period of time and looked weak, then I transplanted it and gave it some fertilizer (NPK 6-4.5-5.5), which helped a lot with the growth. Then flushed it, and several days later gave another fertilizer (NPK 8-3-4). After another few days the leaves started showing some marks, as you can see in the pic. Is this nutrient burn? I have the same marks on both autoflowers and regular plants. Four plants total, all of them have the same kind of strange leaves, mostly at the bottom.

- Is the plant in the second picture in the flowering stage or not? I am not quite sure when to switch to flowering stage nutrients.

thanks!!

[Gingerbeard]

Howdy, fannatic. The plant in picture one shows leaf miners. They're insect larvae that burrow inside the leaves. They are non-insect specific (could be any of a number of insects). Check your plant and soil for insects.
The plant in picture two shows a plant in flowering stage. Nutrients should be added when you switch.

[Canuck147]

I agree with Gingerbeard - second pic must be your autoflower as she is shooting up pistils or preflowers. You would get a better assessment if you showed us pics of the whole plants..

[fannatic]

attached a few images of whole plants, as requested.

I assume it would be a good time to start feeding the autoflower with something like NPK 5-10-10 or 5-15-10, and continue giving the regular one NPK 10-5-5?

Is there anything I can do to get rid of leaf miners?

thanks!

[az2000]

I forgot to mention something. When I looked at that "bonsai" product you linked to, it appeared you're in Europe. I have read that Europe's NPK labels represent a percent of volume, not percent of weight. Everything in the US is percent of weight (even liquid products, which means you need to know the "liquid density" to calculate how much nutrient it has. I.e, how much the product weighs, and extrapolate from that 1ml = ?g. Pure water is 1ml=1g. But, fertilizer products can be lighter or heavier. It's probably not enough to matter. But, still.

Anyway, you should verify what the NPK labels in your country mean. I may heard wrong about Europe. I'd like to know what you learn about this topic.

[fannatic]

This year I experimented with 2 different soil formulas. One worked much better then the other. I am going to plant all new seeds using the "better" soil from now on.

Today I started sprouting 4 new seeds, all of the same kind.

I am going to make the following experiment:
- divide them in 2 groups of 2 plants each.
- water group 1 with regular tap water and use 1-1-1 fertilizer all the way till the end.
- water group 2 with ph-adjusted water and proper NPK ratios according to the tutorials I found online. Also measure PH of runaway water and try to make sure it stays somewhere around 6.

At the end of the experiment I will know if there is a significant difference between the 2 approaches.

Next year I will use the strategy that gave me better results this year and do other experiments. Each grow must give me some valuable information for the next grow, thats my logic so far

I plan to log everything I do from now on, because I forget things so quickly...

And I love this forum and your help is very much appreciated. I will try to find out about the NPK differences that you mentioned.

[az2000]

fannatic, since you posted a link (to the Bonzai fertilizer), I suppose it's safe for me to post a link to the "Product Mixer" spreadsheet I mentioned.

https://jmp.sh/b/H0tiju0cuJVZPXBM22xe

That's Jumpshare, a file-upload place. You can read the .PDF file which explains the spreadsheet. If you wish, you can download the spreadsheet. (It contains no macros. It does everything with cell formulas. You can disable macros in your spreadsheet software to be safe.). The other spreadsheet contains a couple dozen pre-defined products you can copy.

[Gingerbeard]

If the leaf miners are only on a few leaves, spend some time and find them. It's easy. Their mines start narrow and widen towards the end. If the larvae haven't already hatched, you can see a small black head to the mines. Give the black head a squeeze with your fingernail. If you're lucky you'll hear a, "Noooooooo…" and pop like a .22. My go-to spray is a combination of hydrogen peroxide, dish soap (Look for biodegradable. You might even have some under the sink.) baking soda, and water. Look for proportions online. I always add a little extra so wouldn't want to give you a bum recipe. You can soak the plants without worrying about using poison.
This is supposition on my part about what bugs you might have. If the bugs are in the soil, the larvae would be in the soil. Look for something flying or hopping around on the leaves. If it's growing outdoors, perhaps you have other plants to look at as well.

[fannatic]

OK, so I planted another 4 plants: 2x AutoBerry on Jul 13th, and 2x Sour Diesel on Jul 17th, both ordered from MSNL.

I divided them into 2 goups (A and B). Both groups consisted of one sour diesel and one auto berry.

The soil is the same for all 4 plants:
- 3 parts peat moss (says PH 5.5-6.5 on the package)
- 3 parts compost (package doesn't tell ph)
- 2 parts perlite
- 1 part vermiculite

I watered them all with PH adjusted water, around 6.5. Our tap water is around PH 7.5-8.0, so I add 2ml of vinegar into 1 liter of water. I bought a decent PH meter for around 50 Eur I didn't calibrate the meter, but I measured water that I know is PH 7.8, and the meter was almost accurate, showing PH 7.7.

First couple of weeks i gave them no nutrients at all, and didn't pour any water into the soil. I just lightly sprayed the leaves and soil with ph-adjusted water 1-2 times per day. During those 2 weeks, the plants looked healthy and grew fast.

After 2 weeks i watered the plants until I saw some runoff water for the first time. I gave group A only ph-adjusted water, and group B got a very light nutrient soliution of around 28ppm (NPK 5.6-2.8-2.9). Basically that was when the growth slowed down (of both fed and unfed plants). Both AutoBerries showed yellow tips on the bottom leaves, and tiny light dots on the upper leaves. Sour Diesels didn't have those signs, but slowed down growing as well.

At the end of week 3, the plants were still growing slow and didn't look too healthy overall. So I gave them a bit more fertilizer. I gave group A a solution of NPK 5.6-2.8-2.9 @1ml/L, which should be 113ppm, and the other 2 plants received NPK 3-3-3 @ 1.3ml/L, which should be 117PPM.

3 days later, the plants didn't look any healthier at all So I transplanted them into bigger pots. During my previous grow, I also had a similar slowdown after a few weeks, and transplanting helped a lot.

I don't use grow lights. The plants are sitting there by the window, and once the start smelling I will take them outside into the terrace.

My questions are:
- any ideas what is wrong with the white spots on the AutoBerry leaves?
- Is this rate of growth normal for autoflowering plants? Anything I can do to improve it? I have a feeling they could be doing much better, but I can't figure out the reasons for slow growth so far.

The grow diary is here:

https://growdiaries.com/diaries/36634-2nd-run

You can see white dots on AutoBerry very clearly in week 4 pics.

Thanks a lot for all the help that I am getting here!