Biggest Newby Mistakes Thread

I thought I'd start this thread as a help for new growers. Please feel free to add to it.

#1 - The main mistake I see new growers making is overwatering. Watering soil daily causes roots to drown and soon start to rot. Because of the way soil dries from top to bottom, it's easy for a newby to mistake the top inch of dry soil for a dry pot, they then water more and more and soon the roots in the middle and bottom begin to die. The first sign of overwatering is nutrient lockout. Plants go haywire and leaves begin to get yellow, blotch, dry out, curl and a variety of other symptoms appear specially stunting the growth. Diseases have an easy time taking hold, not to mention powdery mildew, fungus gnats etc.

I've found the easiest and best way to tell if the plant is too wet is to lift a pot. If it feels like rocks are at the bottom because it's too heavy, do not water. Just mist the top inch with minimal water if you see the top layer is dry. Wait a FEW days and lift again, if it feels like a few pillows are in the container, as in lighter, then water. Cannabis needs to have this thorough drying out to encourage roots to grow and look for water. A good deep watering (liners that catch water under pots are crucial as the pots wick the water up that drained out quickly through holes) once every 4 or 5 days should be sufficient in large 5-10 gallon pots, under High pressure lights, but fluorescent lights dry out pots way slower, so you really have to take into consideration the sizes of your pots. Small 1 gallon pots could dry out daily, and require a more frequent watering, that's why they are only recommended at the beginning stages of veg. Again, a fool proof way to check is by weight.

Overwatering is also a big problem in hydroponics mediums. Although it sounds contradictory, if you have too many watering cycles a day, or even when it's dark, the medium may stay too wet and encourage powdery mildew growth. Fine tuning in hydro is essential, specially in the flowering phase. Also covering all reservoirs and hydro surfaces helps alot to prevent PM (powdery mildew) and mold including little plastic covers for hydroton buckets, rockwool cubes etc.

Feel free to add a similar common mistake by newbys, let's pass on the wealth so these people don't get dissapointed at the first growing endeavors..

underwatering is a mistake, effects yield even though you can't see any negative effects visually in the plant.

Biggest mistakes I made personally was diving in without a full plan.
With all the info. out there on line and in forums like this its a good idea to find one that makes sense to you and you can realistically pull off. Then stick to it.
Theres a lot of product out there to be sold and alot of eager growers to buy it. Reminds me of when I got hooked on fishing ...I had to have all the best lures, line, reels, rods, boats....etc.
I doubt the fish cares. ....
H43

Hermit43 said:

Biggest mistakes I made personally was diving in without a full plan.
With all the info. out there on line and in forums like this its a good idea to find one that makes sense to you and you can realistically pull off. Then stick to it.
Theres a lot of product out there to be sold and alot of eager growers to buy it. Reminds me of when I got hooked on fishing ...I had to have all the best lures, line, reels, rods, boats....etc.
I doubt the fish cares. ....
H43

Click to expand...

I second that.. indoor growing is a completely different beast than outdoor(which is what I've done). Although, you can have a pretty complete plan and still have to adjust it as you go. Just learn how to read your plants and know what they are asking for and you'll be golden... it's a lot easier said then done though.

mistakes is my department / learn't the hard way , it's a good way to learn but better to learn from others . in soil , my biggest is over feed , resulting in burnt leaf / even killing the whole plant / go easy on the nutes / less is more , that's my advice . cool thread idea moldy / adding perlite will help with drainage in soil , having a same size pot filled but not planted into will give a guide to weight of a dry pot an when to water .

Another common newby mistake is to use containers that are too small indoors.
I've found it's very important to start seedlings and clones in cup sized pots or solo cups for the first week or so to force the roots to fill in and get vigorous. Then they are ready for 1 gallon pots and veg into those also forcing the roots to fill in to those. Then in flower you need larger pots for soil grows, a larger plant will give you more yield than a bunch of small plants. Alot of new growers will tend to try to fit in as many 1 gallon pots as they can into the flower area, yet don't realize that 1 gallon pots are way too small to get nice big plants in soil. You can get away with smaller pots if you're using coco or hydroponics, but if you're using soil, you need to transplant the 1 gallon plants into larger containers like 5 or 15 gallon pots (my favorite) so that the soil can host the larger root balls and not dry out too fast or loose the nutrients too fast once the plant is flowering. So my usual routine for soil is :

1.Plastic cups with holes in the bottom for seedlings and clones for initial root growth.

2. 1 gallon pots once the root tips start coming out the bottom of cups in veg.

3. 5-15 gallon pots once the plants are about 2 feet tall and are ready for flower.

Everyone has their preferred sizes and routines for transplant, but moving them gradually into larger pots makes a huge difference in their growing vigor.


* Let pots dry a bit before any transplants and wet the soil in the new pots thoroughly before the transplant and afterwards, so the roots are stimulated to grow into the new larger pots.

*Be very careful and do not break the rootball AT ALL. Imagine a bucket full of wet sand at the beach, and you are trying to keep it from falling apart..Treat the rootball like a very fragile sand castle.

*Always plant the rootball about half an inch above the soil level or pretty much flush with the top level of soil in the new larger pots. If you bury the stems (SPECIALLY SEEDLINGS OR CLONES) you will stunt or kill the plant, never bury a stem, they need to breath.

*Again, measure moisture in the pots by weight, lift the pots before watering again and only water when they are light..

mistakes is my department / learn't the hard way , it's a good way to learn but better to learn from others . in soil , my biggest is over feed , resulting in burnt leaf / even killing the whole plant / go easy on the nutes / less is more , that's my advice . cool thread idea moldy / adding perlite will help with drainage in soil , having a same size pot filled but not planted into will give a guide to weight of a dry pot an when to water .

Click to expand...

Yes, perlite works wonders when newbies are having a hard time with nutrient levels and overwatering or soil that does not dry. Perlite will make your pots dry faster allowing valuable oxygen to reach the roots and boost growth. Perlite also doesn'y "hold" nutrients very well, so it tends to help the leaching process and the constant renewall of good nutes. If you start to see a bunch of weird deficiencies and the other variables seem ok, it's probably due to waterlogged soils, and perlite is great at breaking it up and giving MJ a less-toxic atmosphere to grow in..

*Waterlogged soil causes nutrient lockout and nutrient poisining because the roots can't process them..too much water causes overdoses of nutes and drowning that look like nute burn many times..

Over-watering has an easy cure. Make at least 1/3 of your mix out of coco coir. It will make it almost impossible to drown your plants. I really have come to believe it should be a requirement for all soil mixes, but that's just my opinion. I like that I can water once every 5 days, or 5 times in 1 day, and they're fine either way. The number one newbie mistake is very solvable.

OMG i dont even know where to start. Probably my biggest mistake was thinking it would be easy.

my biggest newb mistake was buying all my supplies from the garden section at wal mart

Listening to people on this site.HAHAHA.But in reality it is prolly over or underwatering.It takes time and effort to learn what the plants need.The old aqddage keep it simple stupid should apply to most newbs as well.Starting with some crazy system is a surefire way to fail.

so wait you are all saying I should not spend $600 on five Jack Herrer seeds for my first grow? then toss up a half assed aeroponic arrangement under a single 23W CFL, dump miraclegro all over and expect ten pounds yield per plant in thirty days? I'm so confused

I really like this thread. I'm starting a grow soon and so I'm just reading a lot and semi lurking in the meantime while I plan everything out so 'common mistakes' list is perfect. thanks for posting!

ur man/woman only said KISS keep it simple stupid / it's an expression that fits growing in soil . like said earlier u can kill them with kindness . . pricy beans there nnnnghhhhgnnngh M8 . i bought JH beans as a newbee a couple of years back / not realising the flowering time , they can take 3 months to finish in flower , IMO a fussy plant . recomending a more indica dominant strain for the newbee in soil . not growing as tall / fininsing in roughly 8 weeks . using the pot up technique you could get away without feeding as most good soil/compost has feed already added . i like the coco tip thanks . learning by others mistakes is fine but we all make mistakes

bongoie said:

ur man/woman only said KISS keep it simple stupid / it's an expression that fits growing in soil . like said earlier u can kill them with kindness . . pricy beans there nnnnghhhhgnnngh M8 . i bought JH beans as a newbee a couple of years back / not realising the flowering time , they can take 3 months to finish in flower , IMO a fussy plant . recomending a more indica dominant strain for the newbee in soil . not growing as tall / fininsing in roughly 8 weeks . using the pot up technique you could get away without feeding as most good soil/compost has feed already added . i like the coco tip thanks . learning by others mistakes is fine but we all make mistakes

Click to expand...

wasn't serious, and thanks for the recommendation, I am actually considering Speed Queen for my first try because I heard it was pretty robust and fast

EVENTUALLY I'll buy some really great sativa strain but that's once I halfway know what I'm doing (and have enough smoke to last me if I screw up a grow)

go4it nnnnghhhhgnnngh / go easy on the miracle grow tho . . ma biggest mistake was not starting to grow earlier . getting in about it is a great way to learn /if not the best .

Cruzin said:

OMG i dont even know where to start. Probably my biggest mistake was thinking it would be easy.

Click to expand...

:smile:

my biggest mistake has been trying to avoid the biggest newbie mistake of overfeeding and as a result underfeeding... when using coco, it's quite imporant to get it nailed ASAP :wink:

Yea prolly thinking it would be easy

In all reality my thinking it would be easy lead to this problem. I went to big to fast. If i would have started out a little smaller and worked my way up as i tweaked my room, it would have been much better. I had grown with a roommate for a few years in an existing setup, so the watering and general applications i already had down, but i thought i could do things exactly the same in my new place, which was not the case.

Measure twice, cut once. Everything in growing is a precise calculation. If you are going on feelilng and not a precise measurement then chances are you are off.

Not being able to distinguish between the people that have been growing for years and the people that have been posting for years.