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First Time Grower:Living in a country without weed tailored products..HELP PLEASE!:)

maxbaker

New member
Hello fellow Ents,

I am a new grower living in a country where I can't access any of the weed tailored products. This has made my research considerably more difficult and so I have desperately come to you guys for much needed advice!

I am planning on growing one plant indoors in a 2m (h) x 1m x 1m closet under 250 watt MH and HPS system.

Medium: Soil (40%), perlite (30%), peatmoss (10%), and compost (20%)
I know everyone has their preference but any advice soil ratios would be great. My compost only tells me 70% Vegetable waste, 20% Animal waste, 10% Humic acid

The country I live in has good fertile soil because of its rivers so i will use it as my base.

As such I will not use any fertilizer in the beginning and only begin to add after 2 weeks. Is there a way of knowing when to begin to use fertilizers or is it only through signs of deficiencies?

As for the fertilizers I only have access to standard gardening products and ratios. The best i could find for veg stage is 13/4/5. All the other products have nearly equal ratios of NPK.
I have done some research on making my own NPK ratios and it seems like there was a lot to watch out for.


There are products here that contain individual or separate mixes such as 38% potassium (k2O5) and 5% phosphorus (P2O5); could i mix these with another fertilizer to get the desired ratio or should i use it alone?

I was able to get general hydroponics Bio Boosters: Bio Roots and Bio Bloom. Any advice on whats the best way to use these with my set-up?


Seeds: I have a variety of seeds and was thinking of starting with an indica since the plants are usually shorter. But any advice on why i should use another one is more than welcome:

Blue hash, Amnesia, Blue rhino, vanilla kush, critical kush, white widow and afghan kush. (Was thinking of starting with the vanilla kush from barneys)


I have a good ventilation system and have bought temp and humidity monitors, as well as PH tester and a TDS which all seem pretty straight forward.

My main concerns are with the soil mix and the nutrients. There isn't a growing community where I live so I have no one to ask advice from. If you could help me with any advice regarding any part of the set-up or grow it would be really appreciated :)

:thank you:

Happy smoking
:rasta:
 

St. Phatty

Active member
If you have access to a forest area -

dig around and you will find the forest humus (under the leaves) varies in depth.

Anywhere from an inch to 2 feet deep.

That forest humus is a great soil component.

You would also need drainage oriented components (e.g. sand or perlite or whatever is under the humus, if you dig that far).

And some Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium rich components -

* steer manure for the Nitrogen
* chicken manure for all 3
* selected bat & seabird guano's for Phosphorus
* Wood ash for Potassium.
 

Guy Brush

Well-known member
ICMag Donor
Veteran
I wouldn't take in soil from the outside into closed areas. Better heat sterilize it somehow or buy some.
 

Mikell

Dipshit Know-Nothing
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Probably simpler using a soil amendment recipe from the organic subforum. That nutrient has very high N.
 

thejact55

Active member
I wasnt a fan of vanilla kush from barneys.
I like a few of their strains though. My experience could be different than yours, but ive seen a few people who werent impressed with that strain. Whatever makes you happy though at the end of the day though :)
Worm castings, if you have access to em, are a great add to your soil.
More is less with nutrients, so be careful with them. Start with it well diluted and dont start to early. It always seems that new growers always go too heavy on nutes.
Really, you seem fairly studied and prepared.
 

St. Phatty

Active member
I have 2 neighbors that use Miracle Grow for Cannabis.

One experienced grower that got decent results, in 16 gallon pots.

One in-experienced grower, who got fantastic results in the ground, but filling the grow-hole with Miracle Grow.

Can't get any more un-weed-tailored than Miracle Grow.
 
Like guy brush said watch out with stuff taken from the outdoors it could have mites or other little critters in it. You might need more then one plant too since there's roughly a 50/50 chance any given plant will be male it suck to grow a single plant out just to end up with a dude. You don't need to grow a bunch out until full maturity but I'd definitely start out with more then one unless you have femmed seeds. But sounds like you live in a country that's unfriendly to mj so like agentpothead said stay safe and good luck
 

insomniac_AU

Active member
I wasnt a fan of vanilla kush from barneys.
I like a few of their strains though. My experience could be different than yours, but ive seen a few people who werent impressed with that strain. Whatever makes you happy though at the end of the day though :)
Worm castings, if you have access to em, are a great add to your soil.
More is less with nutrients, so be careful with them. Start with it well diluted and dont start to early. It always seems that new growers always go too heavy on nutes.
Really, you seem fairly studied and prepared.


I have to agree with this. I ordered and grew Barney's Vanilla Kush a few years back and I didn't like it all. From memory it wasn't a particularly pleasant taste and not particularly strong.
 

Maple_Flail

Well-known member
what you need doesn't need to be tailored to cannabis.

go organic, it is simpler then stressing out about what your country has to offer.

are there farms in your country? if yes, they are likely using something you hadn't thought of to feed their farms.

worm casting, bat and bird guano, wood ash, other animal manures, kelp and alfalfa meals.

you got lots of options that don't come out off a bottle and can be bought without much of an eye raise.
 

maxbaker

New member
Thanks for all the help! Update: pH problems!

Thanks for all the help! Update: pH problems!

Thanks for all the help everyone. I really appreciate it!

I'm around 2 weeks into the grow:

Germination went smoothly (~3 days)
Transferred it to a soil/peatmoss/perlite mix and it grew fast the first 2-3 days.

It stagnated when developing its first two fan leaves (2-3 days without change) because I had low humidity problems (~35-40%) and the lights were too far so I brought them closer.

I fixed the humidity (50-60) and the temp are good at (25°C-18°C lights off) and Its been growing well for the past week or so and fully developed the first fan leaves with the next two visiblly on the way.

I transferred it to its permanent home today because I could see the roots at the bottom of the pot.

I added compost to the same soil mix I was using to a ratio of ~1:3. The soil and the compost both have very high pH (~9) only the peatmoss had a pH of around 5.5 I think. The filtered water I use also has a high pH of 9.

I bought some pH down solution and using some small sample pots did experiments to see how much I had to add to my water to get the right run off range.

It was around 6.5-7 mL/L which made my water a pH of 3 to give me a run off of ~6.4

After transplanting I watered it in the big pot and gave it 2L* (pH 3) of water because I wanted to test the run off but it wasnt enough water and I didnt want to risk having the soil take too long to dry since the plant is still kind of small.

So I tested a sample of the soil with some neutral water at a ratio of 1:2.5 and it came out at 7.5 :(

I read that when using good soil and compost I shouldn't try and regulate the pH (because of how the breakdown of the organisms works?) and that if it aint broke dont fix it...but its still early.

Any advice on pH? I ordered a digital soil pH meter so I dont have to water till run off while the plant is still small.

I think ill top after another week of good growth?

P.S. Sad to hear you didn't like the strain. Hopefully it won't be too bad as a first time grow.
 

Mikell

Dipshit Know-Nothing
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Run off is a very inaccurate way to measure soil conditions.

Never pH water outside of 6.0-7.0.

What you want to know is the soil pH.

Take a 100ml sample of soil and add 100ml of distilled or 0ppm reverse osmosis water. Mix every 5 minutes for 15 minutes. Strain through a coffee filter and test the water.

Soil pH is less relevant in a well balanced organic soil mix with high microbial activity, but not irrelevant. If you continued to water with 3.0 you would very quickly see the result, plant death.

Your soil is closer to nursery potting soil and will need pH adjusted feed eventually.
 

superpedro

Member
Veteran
Perhaps your filtered water should be diluted with rainwater? Can´t tell from pH alone, if you have a strong buffer.
If you cant meassure EC/ppm, you get an indication from the amount of acid needed to bring the pH down. And you use way too much.

Can you buy potassium phosphate, K3PO4, in your country? Since most fertilizers, natural and synthetic are too heavy in N for flowering. Small amounts of pure PK fertilizer can be used to tweak the formula in the right direction, as your grow develops.

Compost can be tricky. Outdoors I use what comes out of my horses, mixed with sawdust. If I use it too early it raises pH a lot, but when it´s old enough I have to ad dolomite to bring the pH up. (perfect since cannabis uses a fair amount of Ca.)

Good luck bro :)
 

maxbaker

New member
Thanks. It definitely felt like something was off with all the ph down i was using. Ill get some coffee filters and test out the pH the way you said.

So should I water with pH 6 until the soil adjust to the right pH?
 

maxbaker

New member
I don't have access to rain water here. (Rains twice a year) and the country is still a developing country.

I do have a tds meter though so I can measure the ppm.

There is definitely potassium phosphate here which i was planning on using if i dont get a chance to order or get some nutes from abroad. Have GHE biobloom which will also use.
 

Lost in a SOG

GrassSnakeGenetics
If you stick to the soil recipes in the organic thread.. using a higher N ratio in veg and higher P in flower (aim for 1:3:2 NPK in flower) then it is just a case of water them and watch to see if a deficiency occurs.

The better you mix and cook the soil (keep moist to allow microbial life for at least 2 weeks before using) the more likely any amendments you add will be available, and often with time the soil mix gets better. Once you start adding chemical nutes you wipe out a certain strata of life in the soil and start to ruin organic soil..

If you can get hold of hair then that is a brilliant source of N, like bone or horn.. You could also use fish blood if you're in a place that has access to the sea, also dried kelp is good for K. Manures? guanos? finely crushed charcoal?

The most fool proof approach of making a good healthy organic soil will hopefully mean you don't need a tds meter..

Without knowing even which continent you're on, though i'm enjoying guessing, I couldn't comment on whether to use anything from the outside but in a place where it rains twice a year I can't imagine your soil is very lively and conducive to growing a hungry plant like MJ.. :2cents:

Also Barneys are crap, imvho.. just lame dutch mafia/business men literally only out to make a buck.. I'd never risk my freedom to wait three months to smoke their poor stolen representations of other peoples work..
 

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