New to Coco, first grow in about 10 years

Hey, just thought I'd share my work-in-progress:

I grew for about 5 years under a couple of 400w switchables, in soil for a while then in perlite/vermiculite hempys. I decided to make the transition to Coco for my recent reboot. This time around, I'm sticking with the hempys (3.5 gallons), but changing up the medium. House and Garden Coco with no perlite mixed in, but two inches of extra coarse at the bottom of each bucket

I started a handful of seeds about 6-7 weeks ago. Cinderella XX (fem C99) by Brothers Grimm, Blue Dream by Humboldt Seed, and Seedsman freebies of Alaskan Purple and White Widow. A few weeks later I procured some clones of Alaskan Thunderfuck and Mendo Purps.

They're under five (for now) 600 watt quantum boards

Here are my results so far:





The first photo is Alaskan Thunderfuck, growing from clone. They're all doing ok. Signs of minor calcium deficiency, not too bad. Second shot is all of the stuff I started from seed, plus the Mendo Purps. The Mendo looks fine, most of the C99 is good except for a more advanced Ca def on one , the Widow is fine, Alaskan Purple is nice...and the Blue Dream looks like ass. Some of it is ok but I have half a tray which is struggling:







This blue dream is throwing me for a loop. I've mostly stuck with a ph of 5.8, but it was showing mg def for the first few weeks. So I upped the pH to 6.3 and all but one of them liked it better. Stuck with it, then I start seeing some zinc def. So I start foliar feeding with ferti lome, everything gets greener, and next I'm getting calcium crunchies and one of them starts clawing up. I have an indica pheno which is on death's door from the calcium def.

And yet I can't seem to fix it. I've grown multiple strains plenty of times, never had a group of plants which are so heterogeneous in their reactions to the feeding regimen.

If anybody has any advice for this newbie, it'd be greatly appreciated. The rest of the details are:

Tap water which sits in an uncovered barrel for a day prior to mixing, pH 7.8 out of the faucet (I've never had problems before with the city water); House and Garden A+B, lately about 10ml/gal; CalMag, about 2 ml/gal;; Silica, about 1ml/gal.; 75° lights on, 65° lights off, 60-70% humidity

The highest ppm they ever received was 1200--everybody looked kinda hungry after dealing with some transplant shock. They loved it, tips pointed down after a day so I backed off to about 800-900 and most of them have been doing sun salutations ever since.

SpaceIsThePlace said:

This blue dream is throwing me for a loop. I've mostly stuck with a ph of 5.8, but it was showing mg def for the first few weeks. So I upped the pH to 6.3 and all but one of them liked it better. Stuck with it, then I start seeing some zinc def. So I start foliar feeding with ferti lome, everything gets greener, and next I'm getting calcium crunchies and one of them starts clawing up. I have an indica pheno which is on death's door from the calcium def.

And yet I can't seem to fix it. I've grown multiple strains plenty of times, never had a group of plants which are so heterogeneous in their reactions to the feeding regimen.

If anybody has any advice for this newbie, it'd be greatly appreciated. The rest of the details are:

Tap water which sits in an uncovered barrel for a day prior to mixing, pH 7.8 out of the faucet (I've never had problems before with the city water); House and Garden A+B, lately about 10ml/gal; CalMag, about 2 ml/gal;; Silica, about 1ml/gal.; 75° lights on, 65° lights off, 60-70% humidity

The highest ppm they ever received was 1200--everybody looked kinda hungry after dealing with some transplant shock. They loved it, tips pointed down after a day so I backed off to about 800-900 and most of them have been doing sun salutations ever since.

Click to expand...

Hey man, first of all that's looking great. Great job
To be honest I dont see much wrong from a distance. Great garden and a few annoying plants. A few spots here and there.
I would be cautious with that "pick the deficient element" game when it comes to a medium like coco. it's not 'as hydroponic' as perlite or water culture.

All the way to 2.4 EC & changing PH sounds familiar, I did that too running into similar problems with seedlings. Mine looked more deficient and stunted though, maybe I am just going to be preaching to the choir here.


One thing that alerts me is that you say you had these problems in the first few weeks. Are the plants doing better now?A bit better, I assume. Because they look good.
Did you use coco from a bag? Was it buffered? or did you use bricks.

You may know this. but even the buffered coco steals a load of positively charged elements from your nutrient solution. You can think of the coco as negatively charged material. In the coco is naturally occuring K+ and Na+ (cations) which is replaced with Ca++ and Mg++ (stronger cations) during feeding. With washing & buffering, excess salt (Na) and some K is washed out and later replaced (buffered) with calcium. the buffering process is done with calcium nitrate which "ensures a good start" for most plants

When I start a coco pot, buffered or not, I have to run at least the pot volume of solution through it. (Unbuffered bricks require different treatment and possibly more waste water)

Lets say you put them in a 1gal pot and water that bitch in. You may start seeing runoff from 0.5 gallon. Now, if you check that early runoff, 90% chance it is around 0.8 or 0.9 initially. A lot of shit seems to get eaten by the coco. Everybody's problematic elements in the first few weeks of usage are cations. (Ca, Mg, K)

To satisfy the medium, use at least 100-125% of the pot volume on the first watering and catch the latest runoff. Even then, if your input is 1.6 the drain water will be 1.5. Just my experience.

I wont pretend to know what the hell goes on there. all I know is it can be a huge problem for fresh coco. If you don't do it properly the problem seems to solve itself after a few weeks of watering (and probably ca/mg additions from the grower). By then you'll have tried so many methods on different plants that you don't know what works anymore.

The manufacturers say you can take it out the bag, water it and start a plant. but I'll be damned if that's true.

Perlite having a CEC of almost 0 doesn't act like that. Vermiculite has a high CEC but there is only 25% in the mix. So you are kinda coming from a place where you can basically just throw in 1.2 EC A&B until it reaches the drain hole and watch them thrive.

Are we looking at roughly 100 gallons of coco here? That's about 125 gallons for just the first watering.
(For me anyway, maybe I just suck)

Did the cotyledons of seedlings turn yellow early? How about those first true leaves? Marginal or interveinal chlorosis and necrosis after the 3rd or 4th node develops? <-- if yes, 1000% guarantee those pots didn't have enough water run thru them.

This thread contains awesome information about it:
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=278914

Hmm, just my 2 cents, maybe I am totally wrong

edit: most people agree cal mag is good,, you can use Hydrobuddy to calculate out your exact ppms if you are interested. You can input your tap water analysis in that program and figure out a formulation. I add magnesium nitrate only - my tap is 60 mg/l Ca and high it locks out K and Mg according to mulder's chart and the online bro science. I don't know if it's true but it seems plausible. For bloom you can probably replace it with mag sulfate but I haven't tested if that precipitates over time in the reservoir.

I was seeing all kinds of funky growth and what looked like deficiencies in my coco grows until i upped the runoff and watered more frequently.

i am seeing some downward curling on some of your leaves. thats a big indicator of over feeding. you my be feeding the correct amount but if you arent giving enough runoff or keeping them wet enough they will spike EC in the media like crazy! i was feeding 1.4 ish once a day every day and within a little while my runoff hit 3.0 before i realized what was going on.

i now recycle my runoff by hand with a shop vac every damn day for this grow until it's finished and i build runoff tables. my suggestion would be to either raise the pots so you can water heavy to runoff, or set them up to water less but more often. either way a cheap drip system on a timer is a life saver!

the biggest thing i have learned as of late is its safer to do lower feed less often. you can run high feed but you absolutely have to check your runoff every other day at least. your ppms are way too high in my opinion. i was doing the same shit. overfeeding leads to toxicity, which presents as deficiency in its early onset.

as far as your ph is concerned, i was told by the big boys that lower ph in veg is preferable(5.8 ish) and higher for flower(6.1-6.2 ish)

hopefully that helps some. when in doubt, flush it out. keep a log of input and runoff and you will figure it out real quick

SuperBadGrower said:

One thing that alerts me is that you say you had these problems in the first few weeks. Are the plants doing better now?A bit better, I assume. Because they look good.
Did you use coco from a bag? Was it buffered? or did you use bricks...

Are we looking at roughly 100 gallons of coco here? That's about 125 gallons for just the first watering.
(For me anyway, maybe I just suck)

Did the cotyledons of seedlings turn yellow early? How about those first true leaves? Marginal or interveinal chlorosis and necrosis after the 3rd or 4th node develops? <-- if yes, 1000% guarantee those pots didn't have enough water run thru them.

Click to expand...

That's about 150 gallons of bagged, buffered coco there. I was going to go back to the perlite/vermiculite for my first time back--with the intention of transitioning to coco after getting back into the rhythm. But my local hydro guy--who I trust and have been going to for years for my more obscure organic amendments in the outdoor veggie garden--insisted that I didn't need to do a pre-rinse. Anyhow, I went coco from the start, listened to him about the no-rinse and everything has been fine except for half of my blue dreams. It could have been one poorly rinsed (by the manufacturer) bag of coco. Those BD seedlings were in the same end of the propagation tray, they were probably transplanted into the same bag of coco.

I didn't actually have too many issues early on. There was only one finicky plant as a seedling, everything else looked great, and it's probably because when I started them I actually did pre-rinse with ph'd water. But pre-rinsing 3-4 gallons of medium is one thing; 150 gallons is another.

SuperBadGrower said:

This thread contains awesome information about it:
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=278914

Hmm, just my 2 cents, maybe I am totally wrong

edit: most people agree cal mag is good,, you can use Hydrobuddy to calculate out your exact ppms if you are interested. You can input your tap water analysis in that program and figure out a formulation.

Click to expand...

Imma check that out. My city has a yearly detailed water analysis online. I'll input the numbers and get a customized plan.

Thanks!

Desert Hydro said:

I was seeing all kinds of funky growth and what looked like deficiencies in my coco grows until i upped the runoff and watered more frequently.

i am seeing some downward curling on some of your leaves. thats a big indicator of over feeding. you my be feeding the correct amount but if you arent giving enough runoff or keeping them wet enough they will spike EC in the media like crazy! i was feeding 1.4 ish once a day every day and within a little while my runoff hit 3.0 before i realized what was going on.

i now recycle my runoff by hand with a shop vac every damn day for this grow until it's finished and i build runoff tables. my suggestion would be to either raise the pots so you can water heavy to runoff, or set them up to water less but more often. either way a cheap drip system on a timer is a life saver!

the biggest thing i have learned as of late is its safer to do lower feed less often. you can run high feed but you absolutely have to check your runoff every other day at least. your ppms are way too high in my opinion. i was doing the same shit. overfeeding leads to toxicity, which presents as deficiency in its early onset.

as far as your ph is concerned, i was told by the big boys that lower ph in veg is preferable(5.8 ish) and higher for flower(6.1-6.2 ish)

hopefully that helps some. when in doubt, flush it out. keep a log of input and runoff and you will figure it out real quick

Click to expand...

I suspect you're right about the watering frequency. But as for the runoff, they've been getting plenty since they got over their transplant shock. Here's what happened: I let them get too big in their tiny seedling pots because the main room wasn't yet move-in ready. In order to keep them from getting root bound, I put a bed of coco under the pots in the propagation trays and let the roots wander, knowing some of them weren't going to make it through the holes when I transplanted.

So for the first week, they just got frequent waterings of a small quantity of weak solution. They still looked droopy and overwatered when I started giving them some heavier feedings, but I expected they were just about recovered and I was right. After about 24 hrs of the first full feeding, they perked up. I gradually increased until the leaf tips pointed slightly up and I saw the shade of green I wanted to see. I then maintained this until a couple of them started to point down, and I backed off. Right now they are all just about perfect. (Those pics with the downward leaf curl are all from one tray.) Like I said, tips ever so slightly pointed up. Straight out, at worst...

...Except for four plants. Four out of fifty-two. The first photo is more than half of the garden, and they're pretty uniform. That's the ATF. As of my last watering, the water in the res was .6, vs. an input of 1.6. so, they're eating what I'm feeding them. (Yes, I said res--these are hempies.) I'm watering every other day to a 50% runoff. Up until the last feeding, I'd been watering every third day.

You're probably right about the quantity of water, though. I'm going to start giving them a little bit more, slightly weaker solution starting now. You say you're recycling your runoff? How's that working out? I might be interested in checking that out.

Actually, you may be right about the frequency of watering as well. But if I'm going to water every day, why the fuck did I put them in hempies?

I should probably read up on coco in hempies specifically.

As for the problem children, I've flushed, I've foliar fed and they don't look quite as bad as they did a couple of days ago, but I'm still not happy with their progress. The rest of these girls are about ready to be put into flower, I'm probably going to have to hold the sick ones back.

Thanks for the reply! I'll check out your other threads; I want to see your runoff recycling!

SpaceIsThePlace said:

But my local hydro guy--who I trust and have been going to for years for my more obscure organic amendments in the outdoor veggie garden--insisted that I didn't need to do a pre-rinse.

Click to expand...

he's right technically I think, all the bag coco I have tried has been well rinsed and low EC (without a rinse it would be hella salty). However the "element stealing" from the nutrient solution I described always has happened. I talked with a coco manufacturer about it once and they confirmed it was about the CEC, noting that those cations locked in the coco may not be as easily accessed by the plant.

SpaceIsThePlace said:

I didn't actually have too many issues early on. There was only one finicky plant as a seedling, everything else looked great, and it's probably because when I started them I actually did pre-rinse with ph'd water.

Click to expand...

Hmm, could be! My experience is, when clones or established plants go into coco, it doesn't really matter a whole lot if you use a lot of water. I also don't like to waste, and use as little as possible at those times. I saw most of those nutrient issues I described with seeds, and early yellowing/stunting was definitely among the signs so I would withdraw most of my 'diagnosis' hehe.

SpaceIsThePlace said:

But pre-rinsing 3-4 gallons of medium is one thing; 150 gallons is another.

Click to expand...

Yep

SpaceIsThePlace said:

Imma check that out. My city has a yearly detailed water analysis online. I'll input the numbers and get a customized plan.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

That stuff is great to know always,very informative, you learn a lot along the way (and I still know nothing)


If nothing was problematic at first I would sooner chalk it up to the seeds than the medium. I can't get anything "too wet" with normal pots, but with hempy, definitely. Maybe that batch of seeds doesn't like standing in water. I have a kush plant that likes to be dry. Unlikely for a blue dream kind of plant though, lol.

SuperBadGrower said:

Hmm, could be! My experience is, when clones or established plants go into coco, it doesn't really matter a whole lot if you use a lot of water. I also don't like to waste, and use as little as possible at those times. I saw most of those nutrient issues I described with seeds, and early yellowing/stunting was definitely among the signs so I would withdraw most of my 'diagnosis' hehe.

Click to expand...

I'm the same way with the water usage whenever I can get away with it. Anyhow, I'm going to nurse these problem plants back to health and flower them, even if late. For all I know, one of them is the rockstar pheno.

Of course, they're probably all dudes.

Are you using H&G A B or H&G cocos A B?

bigpeter said:

Are you using H&G A B or H&G cocos A B?

Click to expand...

Its the coco A&B.

Desert Hydro said:

I was seeing all kinds of funky growth and what looked like deficiencies in my coco grows until i upped the runoff and watered more frequently.

i am seeing some downward curling on some of your leaves. thats a big indicator of over feeding. you my be feeding the correct amount but if you arent giving enough runoff or keeping them wet enough they will spike EC in the media like crazy! i was feeding 1.4 ish once a day every day and within a little while my runoff hit 3.0 before i realized what was going on.

i now recycle my runoff by hand with a shop vac every damn day for this grow until it's finished and i build runoff tables. my suggestion would be to either raise the pots so you can water heavy to runoff, or set them up to water less but more often. either way a cheap drip system on a timer is a life saver!

the biggest thing i have learned as of late is its safer to do lower feed less often. you can run high feed but you absolutely have to check your runoff every other day at least. your ppms are way too high in my opinion. i was doing the same shit. overfeeding leads to toxicity, which presents as deficiency in its early onset.

as far as your ph is concerned, i was told by the big boys that lower ph in veg is preferable(5.8 ish) and higher for flower(6.1-6.2 ish)

hopefully that helps some. when in doubt, flush it out. keep a log of input and runoff and you will figure it out real quick

Click to expand...

feed EC will be dependant on ambient temps and VPD, this is your first variable. higher temps, lower feed EC.

feed every other day or further apart, if using RO keep water only days below .6

this knowledge will help you guys with run off or not.

hello

SuperBadGrower said:

So you are kinda coming from a place where you can basically just throw in 1.2 EC A&B until it reaches the drain hole and watch them thrive.

Are we looking at roughly 100 gallons of coco here? That's about 125 gallons for just the first watering.
(For me anyway, maybe I just suck)

Did the cotyledons of seedlings turn yellow early? How about those first true leaves? Marginal or interveinal chlorosis and necrosis after the 3rd or 4th node develops? <-- if yes, 1000% guarantee those pots didn't have enough water run thru them.

Click to expand...

edited the quote
but this is the answer you need and is correct
follow this quote above up and succeed

Lyfespan said:

feed EC will be dependant on ambient temps and VPD, this is your first variable. higher temps, lower feed EC.

feed every other day or further apart, if using RO keep water only days below .6

this knowledge will help you guys with run off or not.

Click to expand...

this is wrong

only thing i add
2.4 ec is super extra hyper high

the rest
follow superbadgrower and deserthydro advice
best wish of luck to you

imakandi said:

hello




edited the quote
but this is the answer you need and is correct
follow this quote above up and succeed



this is wrong

only thing i add
2.4 ec is super extra hyper high

the rest
follow superbadgrower and deserthydro advice
best wish of luck to you

Click to expand...

im not wrong, you need to learn to read


if ambient temps are high, you will want to lower your EC. watering fresh water EOD or more is always recommended

oh and btw 2.4 is not a high EC if conditions are correct for it

You need to be using RO when in coco. Hope that helps peace.

Lyfespan said:

im not wrong, you need to learn to read


if ambient temps are high, you will want to lower your EC. watering fresh water EOD or more is always recommended

oh and btw 2.4 is not a high EC if conditions are correct for it

Click to expand...

so arrogant
your statement is obviously wrong
and you put it twice
maybe plant physiology is different over there

this is why i do not intervene in these threads
too many minds above written and proven science

AmericanFarmer said:

You need to be using RO when in coco. Hope that helps peace.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't turn my nose up at an RO filter, but do I "need to be using RO water"?

Well, this...



...was done with tap water, so no. I don't need to use it. Good tap water is ok.

imakandi said:

so arrogant
your statement is obviously wrong
and you put it twice
maybe plant physiology is different over there

this is why i do not intervene in these threads
too many minds above written and proven science

Click to expand...

dont mix up confidence and arrogance tiger, been doing this quite awhile with the help of so many. working 300+ plants in a room, i have seen most issues and worked through them successfully.

if you would care to sight where im wrong, ill gladly check it out

AmericanFarmer said:

You need to be using RO when in coco. Hope that helps peace.

Click to expand...

Bullshit.



Beautiful plants.

mean mr.mustard said:

Beautiful plants.

Click to expand...

Thanks, man. They are some of the better looking plants I've produced.

Well, the room is coming along nicely. Still a bunch of infrastructure to get together, though. I'm watering by hand via a 900 gph submersible pump with a garden wand and removing my runoff with a shop vac. This is too much work. I should have devised a drip system from the start rather than scheduling it for grow #2. Too late now. Even with the idle hours that come with pandemic life, I don't have time to put one together: I can't design and build a time saving watering system because I'm too busy watering! I'm in the middle of well two of flower and I haven't yet finished building my trellises.

One thing's for sure: you learn a lot when you up-size your grow by a factor of eight.

A couple of shots from the past month:

Just over two weeks ago, defoliation and super-crop before and after




Last week, day 8 of flower: a little more b&d on the taller ladies, the room with all its lights/most of it's wall fans installed.



I'd intended to take another pic today but I forgot, now the lights are off. The stretch is about two thirds complete. It's exciting seeing all those bud-sites. Oh, and of the ten regular seeds I planted, I got zero males. The fuck: I thought I was going to have a little more room to spread out, but it was not meant to be.

Wish me luck. This is more Manuel labor than I had expected.

Well, off to bed. Gotta get up and build those trellises.

Thought I'd add an update on how this grow went. I didn't really take too many pics, since I was so busy I didn't think I'd post anything at all.

Here's the row of Alaskan Thunderfuck the day before the chop:



Probably hard to see, but it had some crazy foxtailing from the H&G shooting powder I used as directed in week six. I only used it in week six, rather than six, seven and eight because I didn't dig what it was doing to the colas. Coincidentally(?), I had some late-cycle hermies on four different phenos, including an ATF, which was supposedly growing with perfect stability for over fifteen years by the grower who provided me with the clones. Either that stuff shocked my plants or a spike in co2 stressed them because I had no light leaks and my temps, humidity and vpd were completely dialed in. Not using that shit again, needless to say.
Oh well, live and learn. Most of the tops are solid and seedless and the yield was great, so not bad for a first time back.

The yield:



Just under 20lb of trimmed bud--popcorn only semi--trimmed but not separated because I was originally thinking the whole damn haul was gonna wind up going through the hash bags. I'm guessing there's about 7-10lb of marketable flower there plus maybe a pound of hash.

I have a question for any of you more experienced growers out there. I think I know the answer but I'll run it by you all anyway:

It is regarding this (apologies for the shitty photo):



So these plants for the second round are kinda fucked up. I didn't plan a proper veg room when I did my build. I have a 4x4 tent, intended for mothers, and enough space for a 3x4 tent for seedlings and clones. Long story short, I let them get too tall, leggy, light deprived because of it, pretty root-bound, etc. I should have taken a single clone of each pheno before flower, decided which looked like they might be keepers around the end of flower and made multiple copies for round two, then made a final decision on the winners (the future mothers) after the smoke report. I'm the mean time, I'd have healthy, seemingly solid genetics right now, and I could be gearing up for another flower in two weeks or less. Instead I have to decide whether or not to try and save these lanky-ass plants by cutting them even further down than I already did (they'd be 26" right now high in their final buckets and I have low ceilings.) Or lose some time and start fresh with cuttings which are rooting as I write this. Not sure I want to waste the effort transplanting these if they aren't going to thrive, or are ultimately going to be too tall simply by virtue of the time it takes to recover from being chopped down so far. As it is, the much of the now-top growth is pretty yellow from light deprivation.

What would you do, scrap these and lose two to four weeks or nurse them back to health and hope that they can be kept short enough for my room?

Thanks!

So the shooting powder is PK isn't it? Phosphorous and potassium. No real need for it, base nutrient would have seen you fine. Really PK is just to tweak and make something good even better. Because that's the type of negative reaction you can get if the genetics are sensitive etc I wouldn't just give something a big shot of PK first round. Try it in a subsequent round so you can see any positive difference.

So the pic is of clones you took from flower last round?
I would tie them down, and set em off. They will be awesome and you will be happy you did. Big root mass means big colas. They should be ready to flip in a week or so. The color will come right back. Don't hack them, just tie them down.
Your grow looks awesome btw!