What's wrong with this seedling?

[Wargul]

Fly spray them a few times over a week. Each water use 1ml neem to 1lt of water. If you have nats your soil is staying to wet for to long. Which will almost always mean you ph will be out.

Cheers Porky. I have some neem oil. I am in the process of drying them right out. I was pretty frugal with the water, or I thought I was, but evidence suggests not frugal enough. Right now I feel like hurling them in the bin - but that's gardening, sometimes rewarding, sometimes infuriating.

 

[afghan bob]

Hey buddy, maybe get some cheap yellow sticky traps
Bunnings or hydro shop got em
At least u'll see what ure dealing with and get rid of a few adult gnats while at it
As previously mentioned it;s the larva or baby bugs that cause most damage

 

[seeded]

Most commercial potting mixes are absolute garbage, even the expensive ones. They'll keep a plant alive for a month or so but then need fertilisation thereafter for normal plants while super fast growing plants like cannabis will chew through it like it's nothing. It's unfortunate but you essentially need to think of modern soil like you would a hydroponic medium because it's all gone to shit due to modern land care practices amounting to mining the soil for all it's worth and then hitting it with chemical ferts to make up for what they lack. Sure there may be some nutrients available and whatnot but when it's depleted you're going to have to feed them everything like you would in a hydro system to get the plants to grow to their full potential. It's likely what you experienced back in the day was good soil before the green revolution forced farming into the monster that it is today that kills all in it's wake and since a lot of soil is made from greenwaste that barely gets time to break down there's fuck all nutrients available from them too. It's probably why it feels so different for you today.

My advice would be to stop using those thrive nutes for foliar feeding and give it directly to the soil. Give it a full strength feed asap and then in around 4-5 days give the pot a decent drenching with tons of plain water and follow it up with another full strength feed. If I'm right about the soil being depleted the plants will take up everything they can to try and make up for what they both lack and need which could swing the ph way out of whack and leave locked out nutrients behind which will effect you with future watering/feeds. By flushing the soil out with a huge amount of water though you'll essentially reset it and the plants will be able to continue growing happily with a fresh batch of nutrients to work with. From there you should be able to get away with a weekly, maybe fortnightly feed and watering as needed. Chances are though for best results you're gonna have to flush it again in like 4-6 weeks just to make sure everything remains on point. I recommend checking the ph of the initial run off from the pot if you start seeing problems because seeing a decent swing will be your queue to hit that refresh button on them again.

For future grows I recommend fucking soil off and just going a 70/30 mix of coco to perlite, well that is unless you live in the ACT and are trying to do right by their silly laws that expect every mully to be grown in soil. The growth rates are better, yields are higher, plants are faster to show symptoms and faster to respond to treatment too. Everything about it is simply better and easier to control. Best of luck either way but and I hope you get a great harvest.

 

[Wargul]

Most commercial potting mixes are absolute garbage, even the expensive ones. They'll keep a plant alive for a month or so but then need fertilisation thereafter for normal plants while super fast growing plants like cannabis will chew through it like it's nothing. It's unfortunate but you essentially need to think of modern soil like you would a hydroponic medium because it's all gone to shit due to modern land care practices amounting to mining the soil for all it's worth and then hitting it with chemical ferts to make up for what they lack. Sure there may be some nutrients available and whatnot but when it's depleted you're going to have to feed them everything like you would in a hydro system to get the plants to grow to their full potential. It's likely what you experienced back in the day was good soil before the green revolution forced farming into the monster that it is today that kills all in it's wake and since a lot of soil is made from greenwaste that barely gets time to break down there's fuck all nutrients available from them too. It's probably why it feels so different for you today.

My advice would be to stop using those thrive nutes for foliar feeding and give it directly to the soil. Give it a full strength feed asap and then in around 4-5 days give the pot a decent drenching with tons of plain water and follow it up with another full strength feed. If I'm right about the soil being depleted the plants will take up everything they can to try and make up for what they both lack and need which could swing the ph way out of whack and leave locked out nutrients behind which will effect you with future watering/feeds. By flushing the soil out with a huge amount of water though you'll essentially reset it and the plants will be able to continue growing happily with a fresh batch of nutrients to work with. From there you should be able to get away with a weekly, maybe fortnightly feed and watering as needed. Chances are though for best results you're gonna have to flush it again in like 4-6 weeks just to make sure everything remains on point. I recommend checking the ph of the initial run off from the pot if you start seeing problems because seeing a decent swing will be your queue to hit that refresh button on them again.

For future grows I recommend fucking soil off and just going a 70/30 mix of coco to perlite, well that is unless you live in the ACT and are trying to do right by their silly laws that expect every mully to be grown in soil. The growth rates are better, yields are higher, plants are faster to show symptoms and faster to respond to treatment too. Everything about it is simply better and easier to control. Best of luck either way but and I hope you get a great harvest.

Thanks for your advice Seeded. One thing, a 70/30 coco perlite mix would mean going hydo, yes? I have no opposition to hydro but know nothing about it.

 

[Old fox]

Thanks for your advice Seeded. One thing, a 70/30 coco perlite mix would mean going hydo, yes? I have no opposition to hydro but know nothing about it.

"Cocoforcannabis" website will teach you everything about Coco. It's more work(watering daily and managing runoff) than soil, but plants grow noticeably faster during veg. You can set up pumps, timers, reservoir, etc to automate the process, but that needs more money and space. Many(most?) backyard Coco growers just water manually. Only necessary additions to growing in soil are a pH pen, EC pen + Coco specific nutes.

 

[Wargul]

"Cocoforcannabis" website will teach you everything about Coco. It's more work(watering daily and managing runoff) than soil, but plants grow noticeably faster during veg. You can set up pumps, timers, reservoir, etc to automate the process, but that needs more money and space. Many(most?) backyard Coco growers just water manually. Only necessary additions to growing in soil are a pH pen, EC pen + Coco specific nutes.

Cheers O'Fox. I'll have a look.

 

[seeded]

Thanks for your advice Seeded. One thing, a 70/30 coco perlite mix would mean going hydo, yes? I have no opposition to hydro but know nothing about it.

"Cocoforcannabis" website will teach you everything about Coco. It's more work(watering daily and managing runoff) than soil, but plants grow noticeably faster during veg. You can set up pumps, timers, reservoir, etc to automate the process, but that needs more money and space. Many(most?) backyard Coco growers just water manually. Only necessary additions to growing in soil are a pH pen, EC pen + Coco specific nutes.

Coco and perlite is 100% hydroponic so yeah you need a full nutrient designed specifically for it. It's not as complicated as old fox said either as you don't need to water daily, use timers, etc. Don't get me wrong some people do use it like that and get amazing results but I'm lazy as shit and always got great results watering every 3-4 days on average. Unlike the automated systems there's more room to fuck up doing it my way but i found a few things along the way through experimentation that make it dead simple.

The first and most important thing is that you can either start at the ideal pH range and move away from it or start off it and move towards it. This will rustle some jimmies because everyone is told 6.3pH is spot on for nutrient availability and what you should aim for with coco but it's simply wrong as it doesn't take nutrient use or how they concentrate as water is used over time time into consideration. The same is true when growing in any hydro system too and the mythical 5.8pH. You can either move away from it or towards it, stability though requires constant effort and simply isn't worth it imo even if you automate it.

While that chart isn't specific to coco it shows how certain nutrients are massively more available at different pH levels and how others are locked out if the pH were kept at those same ranges. What I found is that by working with the plants needs in flower for example where they need a massive amount of P and K compared to N that I should increase the pH to 6.8 when feeding them. What then happens is that P and K which increase pH get consumed (test this by adding canna's pk13/14 to water if you wanna confirm it for yourself) the pH naturally decreases and unlocks other nutrients bringing them into their full availability too. It proved so effective for me that there was no need for supplements like pk13/14 any more as the plants were getting their fill and then some though a little calmag never hurt. Interestingly in the seedling stage 6.8pH worked best and in vege 6.5pH.

Second was that coco likes getting a small feed every single time you water it. I would go 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 strength main feeds once a week depending on size and then 1/4 strength a few days later. It's not exactly needed but it does make a world of difference to how happy the plants are and happy plants give way better results.

Last is flushing. I used to flush the shit out of coco when I got it until it ran clean and all that did was wash the buffer away. I no longer do that and instead give it 1/4 strength nutes and pH adjust it to 6.8. This makes for the perfect starting point to grow in because from my experience that's what the seedlings like best and over time the pH will drop as nutrients build up. From there I would only flush 2 more times, mid flower and 10 days out from harvesting. The mid flower one was to remove anything that would build up in the coco and the finals flush to force the plant to use up the last of it's nutrients as it makes for a much nicer smoke. To be fair though I only vege for 2-3 weeks and then flower so if you go longer in vege you might need to flush again.

If you follow that advice twice a week you'll make up a batch of nutrients and twice over the life of the plants you'll pull them out to rinse the coco clean. It really doesn't get any easier and your results will be amazing especially for how little effort you need to put in.

 

[frankreynolds]

5.8 -6.2ph is the range you want for coco

If you are that worried add some fulvic acid to aid chelation, or a base nute that has it already. What I think your running into is nutrient antagonism might be from not watering the coco enough leading to high levels of certain minerals within coco causing the antagonism.

Also big thing in regards to watering frequencies is based on the size of the plant, size of the pot and enviorment there is no set amount

 

[Old fox]

Glad we've simplified this discussion thread for Wargul, who's currently learning(struggling?) to pop seeds .

 

[durban kid]

just to throw my two cents in use the kiss principle keep it simple stupid
adding this or flushing that is just asking for trouble if you ask me unless you are running true hydro or aeroponics, i did dwc bubbler once yes the growth was good but the maintenance needed was a killer, checking ph religiously adding missing elements so many different chemical to add or not it did my head, in now i just get a pot of plot and some of veggie mix from my local soil and sand bloke no exotic fertilizers just plain old sea sol and go go juice maybe some power feed if i have the money potash from the wood burner if needed and its all avail from bunnings shit i dont even check ph any more water every few days feed once a week and they grow if they are still around on the old oz stoners you can see some of the plants i was really late this year getting some going this year and i mean not going till feb i will put a pic up of the little ones later.
most of all think like this it is a weed it grows wild in lots of fucking inhospitable places in this world and i all kinds of shitty soil don't over complicate it the pics are my sativa favorite vanautu sativa and the indicas are u235 both seeds from afew years back this time they will stay in the pots they in till finish

 

[Wargul]

Glad we've simplified this discussion thread for Wargul, who's currently learning(struggling?) to pop seeds .

OF - I'm struggling to pop Mediseeds. I can pop the "bush seeds" I have no problems (all I have to do with them is poke em in some seed raising mix). But yes, my head was starting to creak and groan under the weight of discussion. I'll crack the indoor soil medium before branching out I think.

 

[Wargul]

just to throw my two cents in use the kiss principle keep it simple stupid
adding this or flushing that is just asking for trouble if you ask me unless you are running true hydro or aeroponics, i did dwc bubbler once yes the growth was good but the maintenance needed was a killer, checking ph religiously adding missing elements so many different chemical to add or not it did my head, in now i just get a pot of plot and some of veggie mix from my local soil and sand bloke no exotic fertilizers just plain old sea sol and go go juice maybe some power feed if i have the money potash from the wood burner if needed and its all avail from bunnings shit i dont even check ph any more water every few days feed once a week and they grow if they are still around on the old oz stoners you can see some of the plants i was really late this year getting some going this year and i mean not going till feb i will put a pic up of the little ones later.
most of all think like this it is a weed it grows wild in lots of fucking inhospitable places in this world and i all kinds of shitty soil don't over complicate it the pics are my sativa favorite vanautu sativa and the indicas are u235 both seeds from afew years back this time they will stay in the pots they in till finish

Yep, they seem to be weeds outdoors and turn into fancy arse plants when taken indoors. I'll get the hang of indoors soon enough - thanks.

 

[Wargul]

Gnats - update. Being a man who is prone to overkill, I have given both pots a drench of malathion. That will wipe out any larvae in the soil. It has a 14 day with-holding period so safe enough. These poor little blighters are a long way from harvest. I'll continue with less brutal methods, such as, neem oil in future. I'll topdress the pots with crushed granite, I have access to unlimited supply of that.

Next step - dry them out. I left them in the sun yesterday while I was at work. My wife felt sorry for them so gave them a watering. Didn't matter as I intended to drench them anyhow.