First time idiot

[Jcragor]

Hey everybody, so I’m doing my first grow and have probably messed it up already. I am growing grandaddy purple auto flowers. I have 4 solo cups, 2 with soil and 2 with coco coir.

The 2 soil are in fox farms happy frog. They’re probably around 3 inches tall and seem relatively healthy. It’s been about 20 days since they came out of the ground and unfortunately(?) seem to already be flowering and I haven’t transplanted yet. I’m unsure what my game plan should be at this point. Im assuming I need to transplant still so they don’t become root bound in the cups but I would imagine I should have already done it, and not sure about stressing the plants. Also, I have general hydroponics 3 part and wondering if/how much I should add.

The bigger issue is the coco coir plants. I think the odds are good that they’re too far gone at this point but I’d appreciate some opinions. I made the fatal mistake of making decisions with chat gpt, and before I got the general hydroponics, trying to use the nutrients I already had that the guy threw in when I bought the tent(per chat gpt I was using jacks clone formula(15-6-17 I believe)). Obviously that didn’t work well and beyond the plants being stunted the entirety of their time, within the last 4 or 5 days their leaves have been very dramatically drooping and and the first sets of true leaves look horrific(probably at least partially because I turned the light on too high and likely burned them pretty good). One of them has a lot of purple stem going on also. I’m looking for A)a game plan to salvage them B) a complete guide with coco coir so I can start them off better next time( I’ve done a fair amount of research but everything is very piecemeal and it’d be great to find a guide that has all the info I need)

As far as other parameters, the temp inside the tent is generally around 77F(with a seedling mat under them set at 78), was in the 70s for humidity while they were young and then moved down to around 60 now. I had the light (sf4000) set about 18 inches above them, started out at 25%, and they got leggy so I moved it up to 40, and then probably about 7 days ago moved it up to about 60%(I know, bad idea) which has probably contributed to the problems I’m having. I’ve included pictures. The big ones are the soil ones, and the ones on deaths door are the coco ones of course. Thanks in advance. If there’s any info that would help figure this out, let me know, I’ve got more info but didn’t want to completely inundate and scare off anyone who might be able to help.

 

[golfnrl]

Hello Jcragor You've got a lot going on there. But you're at the right place. Go to the GH web site and download their flora series feed chart. Use it at half strength. Your nutrients can be used for both the soil plants and the coco plants. You need to transplant the soil plants asap. Go over to growweedeasy.com and type anything you want to know. The search function gives you a google type response. It's awesome. I typed in how to transplant and got this link. There are others that came up as well. It will guide you through the transplant. https://www.growweedeasy.com/transplant

For the coco plants, same thing, transplant asap. Start the GH nutrients at the frequency recommended in the feed chart but use half strength. https://www.growweedeasy.com/best-coco-nutrients-cannabis
Set your light 24" above the plants at 50% (SF says 40 -60 %).

Do these things, give it a couple of days and you should see some improvement.

Check out this link. It is the page at GWE that has all of the tutorials on the web site. Give it a look for guidance on how to start out better. https://www.growweedeasy.com/the-basics

 

[ductwizard2]

whats up Jcragor, you're far ahead of where i was on my 1st grow. listen to what these guys say and READ everything you can. one thing i'm not understanding is why your plants wud be flowering at 20 days old

 

[Jcragor]

Thanks a million man! I changed the light settings to what you said, and I’ve been reading quite a bit. One thing though, I searched on it but didn’t find anything. Is it possible/advisable for me to transplant the coco coir plants into a pot that’s soil? I feel like the coco plants are likely goners and I have not figured out how to get them to grow in coco really at all at this point, so I’m a little hesitant to wash and buffer a bunch of coco just to put half dead seedlings in. If I just put them in fabric pots with soil is it possible for that to work alright? Or are there problems with that I’m not aware of?

 

[Jcragor]

Yeah I’m plowing through articles now, definitely learning a lot. And yeah it’s a bit confusing to me as well why they would be flowering. I’ve read that it can be a result of stress, which would make more sense with the coco plants, but there’s probably plenty of stress in causing that I’m not even aware of realistically.

 

[Orggrwr]

I don't grow in coco but I've heard the site "coco for cannabis " recommend by several who do. In my opinion new growers should start with photoperiod plants as they are much more forgiving and you control the plants instead of the other way around. I know a lot of seed sites market autos as easy for new growers but it's a disservice to newbies in my opinion.

 

[Ckbrew]

I don't grow in soil so I will leave that to others. As far as the coco is concerned, did you get bricks of coco and rehydrate, wash, and buffer them? Imo such a process is a PITA and not worth my time and effort. I use Mother earth coco/p 70/30. For your nutes, there should be a schedule on the bottles of how much to use. I formulate on 50% of what is recommended for the life cycle of the plant. Look up and use the coco nutrient schedule on the GWE site. I did not see a mention of cal-mag in your grow. That is essential. Coco has chelation sites that bind ca+ and mg+ which means that you need to saturate the sites before planting, and continue cal-mag use during the grow cycle. For coco prep ONLY, use 10ml/gallon with ME coco. 30ml/gallon with bricks, saturate the coco then let drain. Your plants look cal-mag starved. I also did not see any mention of pH adjustment. That is critical in a coco grow. If the pH is not correct, the other nutes will not work correctly. I shoot for 5.8 most of the time. Imo coco is the easiest way to grow because it is inert and all the nutes are controlled by the grower. Hats off to the soil growers, but for me coco is the way to go. Read up on the nute schedule, make a spread sheet for what formula to use during what week, keep notes, and carry on. Do not trash those coco plants. Tune up the nute formula and grow them out. Nothing replaces practical experience.

 

[Ckbrew]

And I will agree that photos are best for beginners.

 

[Jcragor]

If I’m being truthful this is technically my second grow. I destroyed the blue dream photos while they were still seedlings, and now I’m doing the granddaddy purple auto flowers that I got for free with those ones. I would’ve preferred photos but I figured these would be reasonable practice before I order some more photo seeds

 

[Jcragor]

Yep, got bricks, washed, filtered out coco peat and buffered them twice, 12 hour soak for each and mixed with 30% perlite. After doing that, I definitely agree, doesn’t seem worth the time. As far as calmag, I think that’s partially why one of them is doing so poorly, the first watering I just gave it Ph balanced water with no calmag, which I guess can wash away the nutrients and kind of goof things up from there on out. Since then I was giving 125 ppm of calimagic, and more recently upped it to 200 ppm. The most recent watering(before I posted here) I gave them 50% nutes for the transition to flower stage, and surprisingly this is the first time I’ve given them nutes which they didn’t get real pissed off about it. Thankfully at least I knew to Ph balance the water, so they haven’t had to contend with that at least. I didn’t trash them, but I did transplant them into soil in 5 gallon cloth bags(which might’ve been a mistake, you tell me, but I just wasn’t up for doing all the coco stuff for sick plants, especially when I’ve been so bad at growing with coco so far). I’ll definitely do some coco the next time I try, but for now I feel like I’ve messed these babies up enough, and hopefully the soil will workout alright and be a little more stable for them.

 

[Jcragor]

Thanks, I’ll definitely check that out before my next grow!

 

[Ckbrew]

The bricks need to be rinsed with water several times to remove sea salt and sand. The salt will really mess them up if not removed. Transition to flower sage? There must be a missing time gap here. To me coco/p is just easy and that is the only way to do it. See https://forum.growweedeasy.com/foru...late-and-lazy-grow-with-slurilope-and-friends post #14 for 19 day old plants in a good coco/p grow. Are you adjusting the pH after adding nutes?

 

[Jcragor]

Yeah I rinsed it off thoroughly in a colander, then let it soak in water so the peat would drop to the bottom and the fibers floated to the top. Scooped the fibers, soaked them in the calmag solution for 12 hours. I think I rinsed them again at this point before soaking it in the calmag for another 12 but I’m honestly having a hard time remembering. The “transition to flower phase” was a category in one of the charts I saw for the nutrients I’m using. I’d imagine it wasn’t the chart in the bottle or you’d recognize it, but I can’t honestly remember what site it was on. My autoflowers have started flowering pretty early, seemingly because of stress, so that seemed like the right category to use at this point. And yeah, I am. I think that’s one of the few things I’ve done right, I add the calmag first then nutrients and then adjust the Ph. Agh, forgot to add that I’ve been using distilled water for watering btw.

 

[golfnrl]

Ckbrew is spot on.
Distilled and RO water is clean water. There isn't anything in there for the salts in your nutrients to bind to. I learned this lesson the hard way. Condition your starting water with cal/mag to .4 EC then add your nutrients. .4 is the goldilocks zone. If you condition your water this way you probably won't need to add any more cal/mag outside of this process.

 

[Ckbrew]

Distilled and RO water are not good for hydro unless you are starting with very hard water and need to dilute it down. Also an unnessicary expense. Just use tap water unless there is a problem with it. In general if you can drink it, ok to use on plants. You should be able to get a water report if you have public water supply. if on a well reports aren't very expensive. I never bother with EC readings. Just mix your nutes per the GWE schedule. I mix in the order cal-mag, micro, grow, bloom, pH (if needed) That will have to be titrated but once you find it the correction it should hold close to steady dosing.

 

[Jcragor]

Thanks for all the advice guys, I ended up transplanting them all into 5 gallon fabric pots with soil. I think the problem was also that they were a bit root bound(outside of watering issues , light burn, and probably improper nutrition) and then I tried everything but repotting them to fix the issue which probably didn’t help. Thankfully, the repotting didn’t seem to cause much stress at all, and they’ve all perked up considerably since repotting. It’s funny how I could completely overlook the obvious solution there, but I guess that’s probably how it goes for a bit in the beginning(ha and probably much past the beginning as well). Put in half strength nutrients at kind of a low amount of water to see how quickly they’d drink it up, took about a day til the top inch was dry so I upped the amount quite a bit and waiting to see how they react to that. I was checking the ppm as I added the calmag and floratrio, and I noticed the flora micro adds considerably more ppm than anything else at seemingly the same amount. I ended up at about 740ppm with 150ppm of calimagic first, and the half dose of the floratrio after, starting with micro, then the other two. Does that sound about right? I was just surprised how much the micro added and wanted to make sure I didn’t accidentally slip too much in so at least I’ll have an idea of my plants react poorly to this watering

 

[Jcragor]

So I put some restraints on one plant to try out LST, starter probably about a few days ago. It is in flowering, so I’ve read it isn’t necessarily advised but since mine started flowering so early I decided to try it anyways. The buds seem to be growing more on the trained one than the other, but the leaves are changing color. Bottom is getting some small yellow spots, and the top has gotten pretty dark green. Just wondering if I should adjust, just take off the restraints entirely or leave it alone. I’ve got a pic but somehow I’m not seeing how to post it in a comment.

 

[Jcragor]

These are the most recent pics with the LST, and leaf discoloration