I May Have To Throw In The Towel

[yesum]

I use ffof with 30% added perlite, and 10% ewc for veg, then same soil with added Rainbow Mix for flower when I up pot. Nothing but water no added nutes.

I was using dunks, but not happy with results, and have been adding 1 tsp Bronner's Lavender Soap to 1 gallon water. I have seen less gnats for sure. I think you have to see dozens of flying gnats to have enough of the larvae eating your roots to matter.

 

[stihgnobevoli]

I think you have to see dozens of flying gnats to have enough of the larvae eating your roots to matter.

not so, i had fungus gnats larvae all in my soil, not one gnat was around. i transplanted a soil plant to a dwc and everytime i got the rootball wet (still had dirt around it) there would be larvae all in the res. drip down from the soil to the res. none of em ever grew up to be gnats, but they were there all the time. might still be one or two in there, haven't changed the res in almost 2 months. but that little plant in the middle in the picture is the one with the fungus gnats problem and it never really grew much taller than that the whole cycle. just stayed short with one bud cluster up top. the roots are currently still brown and very underdeveloped, in comparison the plant on the left side you cant see has healthy roots and is taking over the whole cab. same pure sativa as the one on the right but with more access to water and nutes than the soil plant.
12/12 straight from rooted clones both of em, i pinched the one in soil, the one in hydro got away from me so i just lst and supercrop the best to keep the leaves out of the bulb and the fan.

 

[jaykush]

smoke a bowl and relax man, let your current grow go through, give em some EWC slurry when the soil dries out some. in the mean time get everything ready for next time, and let the soil and the plant do all the hard work.

what soil do you have now again?

 

[VerdantGreen]

if all you can see is a couple of gnats then i doubt that they are your problem, although they do point to the soil being too wet...

perhaps a bagged soil like FF or a simple mix is what you want to get back on track.
ewc top dress or slurry is always a good start if and when things look less than perfect.

i think most of your problem this round was down to finicky/challenging genetics - but you'll still get some smoke out of those plants im sure

VG

 

[thing]

SSH is a journey. It definitely requires plenty of veg time and patience in flower. The thing I found with SSH is the more you forget about the bitch, the better she grows. A few of mine took so long that I just stuck them in the corner, giving them minimal food and letting them remain fairly dry a lot of the time, and they loved it. SSH nugs will surprise you, let me just say that lol. Mine were dense and earthy tasting, and the high is very well rounded, and lingers on much longer than most weed. In other words, video game weed.

If you like sativas and you want an easy, fast one.. I would recommend Jack the Ripper by Subcool. That shit was so easy to grow, and twinkled with trichomes. Tastes sour almost, and the second I whip those nugs out, people start sniffing like dogs. I will definitely be buying more seeds.

I was always told when in doubt, use this easy mix:

60% promix hp, 20% high quality worm castings, 20% perlite.
Mainly EWC tea through veg.
Any liquid bloom booster during flower.

I can't live without molasses though GL

 

[VerdantGreen]

not so, i had fungus gnats larvae all in my soil, not one gnat was around. i transplanted a soil plant to a dwc and everytime i got the rootball wet (still had dirt around it) there would be larvae all in the res. drip down from the soil to the res. none of em ever grew up to be gnats, but they were there all the time. might still be one or two in there, haven't changed the res in almost 2 months. but that little plant in the middle in the picture is the one with the fungus gnats problem and it never really grew much taller than that the whole cycle. just stayed short with one bud cluster up top. the roots are currently still brown and very underdeveloped, in comparison the plant on the left side you cant see has healthy roots and is taking over the whole cab. same pure sativa as the one on the right but with more access to water and nutes than the soil plant.
12/12 straight from rooted clones both of em, i pinched the one in soil, the one in hydro got away from me so i just lst and supercrop the best to keep the leaves out of the bulb and the fan.

sounds more like root aphids

 

[rrog]

Thanks for the continued dialog everyone. I made a slurry of EWC and less than 1 tsp of blood meal per pail. If N is the problem, that should do something. Might burn it a little, hope they don't hermie.

Right now I'm ready to see them through to the end or stop the process. Either way is good, so I'm chillin'. Oddly, the buds look bigger today, and there is some green in what I thought was yellow leaves yesterday. Might be my imagination.

 

[rrog]

smoke a bowl and relax man, let your current grow go through, give em some EWC slurry when the soil dries out some. in the mean time get everything ready for next time, and let the soil and the plant do all the hard work.

what soil do you have now again?

Like Verdant G said, I'll get some smoke from it, so what the hell. I still have supply from last years grow, so no risk of running out. I have nothing to loose.

Soil is rough and medium coco, conditioned. Large perlite, large vermiculite and humus. Then organic amendments blood and bone meal, etc.

 

[rrog]

SSH is a journey. It definitely requires plenty of veg time and patience in flower. The thing I found with SSH is the more you forget about the bitch, the better she grows. A few of mine took so long that I just stuck them in the corner, giving them minimal food and letting them remain fairly dry a lot of the time, and they loved it. SSH nugs will surprise you, let me just say that lol. Mine were dense and earthy tasting, and the high is very well rounded, and lingers on much longer than most weed. In other words, video game weed.

If you like sativas and you want an easy, fast one.. I would recommend Jack the Ripper by Subcool. That shit was so easy to grow, and twinkled with trichomes. Tastes sour almost, and the second I whip those nugs out, people start sniffing like dogs. I will definitely be buying more seeds.

I was always told when in doubt, use this easy mix:

60% promix hp, 20% high quality worm castings, 20% perlite.
Mainly EWC tea through veg.
Any liquid bloom booster during flower.

I can't live without molasses though GL

Very helpful post. Thank you. Soil formula seems simple enough. No other amendments other than EWC tea? I also go through a fair bit of molasses. I cook with it a lot also. I add Lacto-B per JayK's method. I give it to all my plants, recreational or not.

 

[pearlemae]

rrog Sorry to see your troubles. If you are producing your own soil where are the gnats coming from. I make my own medium for growing and never have gnats, but when I used a commercial medium always have gnats. I use a vacuum cleaner and suck them up.
I'm growing in coir, both fine and chunks, amended with perlite, vermiculite,Ewc,Blood meal, kelp meal, bat guano, dolomite lime, and of course the very much needed myco fungi and beneficials, I let it set for a few days after mixing and into the buckets. Using 6 in air stone in each bucket, pushing 3psi.
Water from the bottom in the side tube. I've had great success with the mix and have a great scrog coming to fruition. Let the girl go, us the EWC tea I actually put a table spoon of blood / gal. withe the EWC air stone it over night to get the bugs working and water away. It was your thread that started my growing this way two years ago been doing it the same way ever since. Here's a couple pics of the current.

 

[rrog]

Nice hearing from you, Pearl. Thanks for stopping in. That is some fantastic growing you have there. For sure.

I think my issues might be that I let the main 5 gal buckets percolate for 3 weeks before planting. I was worried about the mix being too hot. I may have simply allowed the N to be completely exhausted.

Some pretty compelling arguments about the root zone condition. When I moved the perlite away today to add a EWC slurry with a very little Blood Meal, I stuck my finger down into the soil maybe 3-4" and the soil was just barely moist. When I've mentioned the water layer and air stones, many people conclude that this will either over-saturate the soil with water or dry it out like a bone. Based on what I can see, neither is the case.

I will wait a few days and see what the EWC / N inoculation does. If nothing, I'll mosquito dunk the plants. While I build my own soil, the compost comes from a local organic outfit that bags really nice composted soil and the local 4-H Master Gardeners all have boners over this stuff. If I had any root eaters, I suppose that's the most logical route they would have taken. I would have thought I would see shriveling, withering stem / leaves but I don't. Just yellow leaves that otherwise look OK. They are firm, well attached to the stalk, etc. And they stay yellow for a long time. I have picked them off and only a few have actually died on the plant.

 

[mad librettist]

When I've mentioned the water layer and air stones, many people conclude that this will either over-saturate the soil with water or dry it out like a bone. Based on what I can see, neither is the case.

respectfully, I am seeing you struggle with this bubbling contraption when you could be kicking back and doing nothing while your plants do the work.

when you get bad results, try something else.

 

[rrog]

Hi Mad L. I don't disagree. I'm at where I'm at, though. I can't shut it down and would rather see it through. I don't see an airstone as an evil contraption. Last grow easily kicked the ass of the chem hydro with the same genetics.

I don't plan to pump air in my next grow. Not because of any problem with the bubbling, but at this point, I just don't see the need. I was infatuated with providing all that air to the micro-life, but I don't think it's necessary and I'd like to simplify. Like you and JayKush said, let the plant and the soil do the work.

So now I'm planning the next grow and looking for soil recommendations that don't require a commercial fert. I very much like building the soil with organic amendments and supplementing with teas.

 

[GoneRooty]

rrog, don't quit this cycle! Like everyone is saying, see it through get some smoke and prepare for the next run. There are tons of easy soil mix recipes on here. And I wouldn't worry about the mosquito dunks, it doesn't seem like you have a gnat problem at all, larva have to reach maturity to reproduce, they won't just stay larva. They will either grow to adulthood and reproduce or they will die off. If you've only found one gnat flying in like 5 weeks, it definitely is not a problem.
It sounds like the EWC teas and slurries are helping. I don't think it's your imagination that things are looking better, chances are they are looking better!

 

[VerdantGreen]

yeah ive had plenty o' gnats flying around on occasion but never found that they affected any mature plants or my yields

VG

 

[rrog]

I'm reading and finding that sudden wilting is a sign the plant is infected with gnats. That's the one part I don't have. Yellow leaves, yes, but they are definitely not wilting.

The N, on the other hand, seems very possible. I burned through the Bloodmeal in the three weeks prior to transplanting. I likely had low N during veg for the same reason. I mixed the soil and had moist soil working away for maybe two weeks while I farted around with seeds and seedlings. I can easily see how I had N deficiency in both the initial veg buckets as well as the flowering buckets.

 

[DARC MIND]

i have grown a few varieties of sativa's, every cycle for the last few years.pretty much casting/compost taking me all threw veg-mid flwr, nettle is foliared here and ther but i get burns if i push dilution...this is simple and works great on these light & hungry sativas.

i believe ther is unbalance with your ther soil and your concentration on N possibly unbalancing things even more. fact is, mg plays a important role in leaf color & N (as any other element)can be locked out by the overuse of other nutrients as many directly effect the availability of each other when growing w/ real soil and not a inert media monitors by a variety of neat gadgets.

http://www.apal.com.au/site/DefaultSite/filesystem/documents/APAL%20PLANT%20NUTRIENT%20INTERACTIONS%20July%2008.pdf
the chemical interaction in the soil are processed and more importantly balanced/cycled by the soil micro diversity, when growing with a ecological prospective.
adding bits of cal/mag,N and other elements will be process by some microbes but confinded to containers,thers still the potential to slowly cause unbalances(buildups/lock outs),hence the popular term diversity thrown around so much & less is best or the lovely "feed the soil" not the..

we aim to not throw any of these wonderful partners under the table for the cycling of these plant available nutrients, normally are heavily influanced by plant root exudes causing a boom & predationon of the beasties containing the richness of our (hopefully) though out,designed and cultured soil..
if your sats were using up all that N,tell me what did they use it for???

In short, in maintaining the soil-fertility chain, or in keeping up soil balance, watch the fertility chain as a whole. Don't emphasize some links to the neglect of others that are just as important. It is actually true that a soil is no stronger than its weakest fertility link. Keeping a balance in the fertility chain is practical agriculture at its best.
---------Joseph A. Cocannouer

also
EDTA_synthetic Chelates also causes build ups
may want to check if the cal/mag contains that
hth

 

[rrog]

Hey Darc, very cool of you to dig up that link.

I had a Zinc lockout last time due to unconditioned coco. This could be a similar imbalance, certainly. The CalMag+ is supposed to be organic, and I've been using it for quite a while, but who knows.

I have well water that I don't trust, so I RO the water, then add back with CalMag+. I only use what they recommend, 5ml per gal.

The coco thing is the biggest component I'd like to remove from the next soil grow.This stuff is the giant chunk block that you have to add water to and break apart. Not conditioned coco at all. Same with the less coarse Sunleaves Coir, I understand. I understand coco can be a great medium, but only if pre-conditioned.

To your point it's possible that the coco has remaining or excessive Cal or Mg, and you feel that may have locked up the N. Certainly possible. Thanks for that insight. I could run RO water with much less CalMag+ for a period.

 

[YobLamina]

I would give a read on the Organics for Begginers (stickie) thread and maybe use one of the soil mixes in there on your next run!

Good luck!

 

[jaykush]

from my experience sativas prefer well drained soils with a light clay content. lots of things like lavarock, coarse sand( not the fines), char sifted to 1/4 inch chunks, pumice, rice hulls, etc...add a good amount of compost, small amount of native soil and let it rest for a while. don't turn it, don't soak it, just leave it. if you use homemade castings, high chances are there will be some worms to help you out. if you keep it covered from light you'll notice when you take off the cover, the surface will be covered in a fine castings layer. the good stuff. ready for planting.