[VerdantGreen]

yield is as much to do with using space efficiently and filling the canopy with buds, having as few gaps as possible. it doesnt really matter as to the plant count as long as the canopy is full and each plant has a decent amount of soil

fungus gnats are a sure sign that the soil is too wet and that it doesnt dry out enough inbetween waterings. the larvae will eat your roots and thus the plants will drink less water and your soil will stay wetter - a vicious cycle!
the worm exodus also points to the soil being waterlogged.
sounds like your soil could be better drained. i know coot hates perlite but it certainly helps drainage and aeration of soil. i use 20-30% in my soil.
get used to shucking (lifting) the pots to judge the weight and thus water content. wait until they feel noticeably lighter befoe you water again (you dont want then to be completely dry but you want them to be starting to dry out before you water again) you will soon get used to the right weight for a re-water.

anything organic like hulls that you add will try to decompose and use some of the nitrogen in your soil. soaking them in something N-rich will help but there may come a point where that is exhausted and it starts robbing your soil of N again. it can beb harder to balance soil when you have so many variables affecting the nutrients, personally i dont use such things but many others use them with success.

VG

[Easy7]

High plant counts in soil under a light in a small tent is not really an advantage. More to go wrong than right. Small flowers, inconsistent care and needs if the plants.

The only advantage of sog is less veg. Quicker growing time and more harvest per year. But soil is so slow compared to hydro.

Monocropping hydro blows the pants off running polycropping soil.

[Buddah Watcha]

Maybe you have roots aphids instead of fungus gnats, make sure to ID them on the sticky trap. Root aphids seem like your plants have deficiencies and cause really low yields. Good luck!

[bigbadbiddy]

Thank you all for the valuable feedback!

Re waterlogged soil/watering habits:
I will monitor this more closely.
But I thought I had this one figured out and want to reiterate: I do not have a fungus gnat problem at the moment!
I have very few flyers ever show up but only in my veg room and ever since I started removing clones that have trouble rooting early, I have not seen any fly around, only the odd one here or there on a sticky trap. I have not seen a single one on the sticky traps I have in the flowering rooms!

I did the lifting pot thing the last 2 rounds and thought I found the sweet spot. When I water after 2 or 3 days of letting them dry out, it usually means 1 more day without water would mean the plants drooping. Usually actually, the heavy drinkers are drooping when I start to water (which means the less thirsty plants would start drooping the next day as well).
Will lift the pots again and monitor more carefully but I was relatively sure that overwatering is no longer a factor...


I think it really is the combination of too many plants in too small pots in organic soil. 5 gallon pots and 16 plants under 630w CMH is just too much and because they are vegged in 1 gallon and transplanted to 5, they can never fill in the canopy. I am confident that I would hit my yields if I go 10 or 15 gallon pots, vegging in 5 gallon.
Since I am still pheno hunting for some mums and dads, I likely just have to accept the low yields for now.


A very important hint was the N-leeching from decomposing materials like the buckwheat hulls. I have had the plants vegging in the 5 gallon pots for a week now and planned to flip them but I have noticed the first signs of N-deficiency again and will have to topdress with EWC again. Probably will add some kelp, too. I think the pots are too small to actually improve the soil quality over consecutive rounds and as long as I stay in 5 gallon pots, I probably need to topdress after each flowering round. Question is with what, do I just hit them with a little bit of everything? Or just EWC and Kelp? hmm ...

Another factor in the whole pheno hunting thing is that my entire environment is actually just fine for some but not ideal for some other phenos. In the current round for example, the pheno that looks like my keeper (yielded best by far as well) looks really great. Very healthy and bushy and filling in the pot nicely etc. etc. in this round as well.
I mean that's part of pheno hunting as well, no? Finding the plant that performs best in your environment and responds best to you as a grower.
But I have 2 potential keepers and they are polar opposites regarding vigor and reacting to my environment etc.
The best yielding and structurally best plant is one keeper and it looks great this round again. Another potential keeper is very resinous and had the best terpene profile but structurally and regarding vigor, it is really struggling this round and not looking too great ...

@Buddah
It was never root aphids. Am aware that they can be misdiagnosed but I made pics and uploaded them and everyone came to the same conclusion: gnats.
And they are no longer an issue. It is very rarely I see any and only in my veg chamber and only if I give a clone too much time to try and root when it clearly won't.



Anyway, to summarize:
- Will continue to monitor my watering habit closely.
- Will topdress with EWC + Kelp
- Will innoculate again with microbial tea
- Will shoot for a more filled in canopy through LST/supercropping (already did that but the canopy is not really filling in, probably because too many plants in too small pots ...)
- Will accept lower yields as a byproduct of pheno hunting in organic soil and consider moving my pheno hunting to a hydro setup in the future
- Already calculated that I could run up to 6 15 gallon pots under the 630w CMH and up to 4 10 gallon pots under the 315w CMH. Once I am done pheno hunting, I will likely change my growing habits to run these large pots in flower and reduce number of plants from over 20 to 10 and should have better results then. I already have 4 plants under the 315w CMH that were vegged in 3 gallon containers. They fill in the canopy considerably better. But I have to flip them now after vegging for 1 week in 5 gallon or there won't be enough soil left to root through for flower.

[bigbadbiddy]

Howdy folks,

the plants are currently on day 4 since the last watering. One or two have started to droop a little and I normally would water now.

But I took you guys' advice and restrained myself and lifted the pots first and they were quite heavy still.
I then dug a little and while the sides and the top are dry, if I dig deeper and more to the middle, it is still moist.

Also, when I touch the fabric pots on the bottom, they still feel damp.

So it seems Verdant was right, I must be waterlocked....

It also makes sense since I just then remembered that I decreased the amount of buckwheat hulls and increased the amount of peat moss in my last batch of soil mix...

So it looks like I will have to add some perlite to the mix in the future but for the moment that is not a solution as I cant remove the plants from their pots until they are done flowering.

Maybe I should put the smart pots on racks, so they are not sitting directly on the floor and thus can dry out from the bottom easier?
Only solution that comes to mind for my current predicament...

The plants are showing an N-deficiency again which I will hopefully be able to combat with a EWC tea this weekend.

Will then install a scrog net for the first time, hope that goes well.


But through all this, the pheno that looked like the keeper from the first round, looks great. Not a yellow spot to be seen, branching, bushing out, growing tall, filling in the canopy. That pheno seems to be just fine with everything. But the others look all over the place. And now I have an idea why.

Thanks for all so far, continued feedback/ideas welcome.

But I do need to follow up with some pics, just too much workload at the moment, I didn't forget it though.

[bigbadbiddy]

Howdy folks,

quick update:

1) Verdant Green was right, I am waterlogged. The plants have not been watered for 8 days now. They are still moist/damp at the bottom of the pots and if I dig in, I can feel some moisture in the core still. That is way too long, so that is definitely the problem.

2) Others have said it before and I didn't listen, I should've used perlite. The buckwheat hulls are just decomposing, leeching N (most plants have several deficiencies due to the water not draining but the N-deficiency is what is most visible across the board with few exceptions). I assume that I would have the same issues if I used rice-hulls? I heard people use lava rock for drainage in organic soil to not have the perlite problem in the long run and not have the buckwheat/rice hull problem in the short run? Suggestions welcome.

3) I noticed that the PH down I have been using says on the label (very small in the corner...) that it is "antibacterial" and "anti-fungal" ............... fuck me that was a bad mistake on my part. So I can't be sure if that doesn't play a major role in my issues. I didn't notice that for so long because when I used it to PH my water for the first time, the plants reacted very positively coming from non-PHed medium/water ...... But I can't believe how dumb I was. I just PHed a new rez of water using apple cider vinegar instead. Works fine and I hope the plants will bounce back considerably from this.

4) I am currently brewing an aerated tea with EWC, blackstrap molasses and malted barley. Hoping this will give the plants an N boost to combat that deficiency and re-inocculate the soil with beneficial microbes, re-starting the living soil food web. Finger's crossed it works that easy ...

5) I believe I have to "ride it out" this round as I see no way to include perlite or improve drainage of the soil currently... The only thing/hot fix I currently see is to put the pots on some sort of a metal grid so the bottom of the pots is not in direct contact with the floor and doesn't stay damp so long.


Thoughts and feedback welcome!

[Guy Brush]

Don't use vinegar or you'll get the slime:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?threadid=253664

As I said before, you are experimenting your plants to death.

[bigbadbiddy]

Just trying to avoid general hydroponics PH down or something.

Initially I thought that I don't need to PH because organic soil, etc. etc. so I didn't have any PH down.

When I realized I need it, I had nothing available other than that pool PH down. It worked and the plants reacted positively, only now do I realize the info that it is antibacterial, because the plants are sad again...

So now I need a new form of PH down and had vinegar available and read before (on this very forum) that it is good to use. So I gave it a try.

Fact is, I had good results with adding just plain water but for the second time now, the plants have problems in the second round in a soil batch.

If I don't experiment, then I have to ditch organics and grow another way.

I am honing in on these issues bit by bit through feedback from here and by experimenting. I have been on here, asking for help and trying to figure out what is wrong with my soil mix for a good year now (off and on).
This is not the first, nor will it likely be the last time I hear that I am just overcomplicating it and need to keep it simple, just water, etc. but I am definitely not.

I tried keeping it simple, but in doing so, I ran into the same issues I am having now.

The problem I have had since the very start had to do with a) water and b) depletion of soil mix through a grow.

Regarding a) I thought I had addressed this problem when I realized I need to PH my water in organic soil because my containers are too small to really buffer the PH themselves. However I used both a bad PH down source AND had the drainage problem accumulating over time (the soil drains VERY well at the start by the way but even though I thought visibly the buckwheat hulls weren't decomposing, they apparently decompose quite fast after all, misjudged that one, badly).

This also ties into b) the apparent depletion of the soil mix over a single grow.
I was expecting from the start that I need to re-ammend the soilmix in-between grows but I was never sure with what. If I just topdress with a mix of everything or just EWC or just kelp or a mix of both, what about calcium, magnesium, etc. ?

Been asking that question for a good year now and I am either missing something super obvious that has been answered a million times and is stickied somewhere.... or .... there simply is no easy answer to this as it is dependent on my soil mix, which is never exactly the same for anyone.

So, how do I fix this? I ask for pointers online, like on this board, and then look what sounds most reasonable to me and try to implement and fix it.


Take the watering/drainage issue for example. I had decent success last round by watering every 2-3 days. The plants looked great and the buds were nice too, just not that plentiful.

But if I hadn't run into the second round problems, I hadn't asked here online, I wouldn't have gotten the suggestion that I am waterlogged after all and the tie-in with the buckwheat hulls and I would have never strayed from my normal watering schedule of 2-3 days in between.

And I would have continued to overwater them (like I probably did last round) and this time would have had even worse results because the buckwheat hulls further decompose and deplete the soil mix of N.....




Sorry for the rant.

The tea is almost ready and the smart pots have considerably lost weight. Time to pull the girls out, defoliate and then feed them the tea, give them a day or two and flip them.

Hope they react well.

And if I get no other feedback, my current fix to my problems would be to mix some perlite into my soil mix after this round...
Or make a completely new batch, yet again.

[bigbadbiddy]

Update:
The plants reacted very well to the malted barley tea and the defoliation.

I still have some yellowing and deficiencies in the leafs from ones I didn't remove during defoliation but the plants as a whole definitely took a positive turn.

Still need to take some pics ...

Will keep you all updated but for the moment it looks like a combination of adding back some nutes (EWC) and reinocculating with microbes (malted barley) has helped tremendously.
Gave them a very light watering/foliar 4 days after the tea and plan to make another tea with EWC and kelp next. Then give them another malted barley tea about 2 weeks into flower.

[SoCoCrow]

I'll chime in a bit here.

As to the question of amending depleted soil in between grows- IMO five gallon pots are a bit small to attempt a no till situation where simply top dressing is sufficient enough to replace depleted nutes. Others may disagree but I think remixing and amending would suit your grow better. As you said it sounds like some perlite should be added to lighten the mix. Large additions of EWC tend to hold water and create a heavy mix that's prone to compaction and water issues. A good compost will prove to have less compaction and water retention issues than large doses of EWC. It will also provide slow release nutrients to the mix throughout the grow cycle. (Your worms will have something to eat and not want to go anywhere also)

If just top dressing is your goal step up to minimum of ten gallons. ( I use 17gl storage bins atm) In that case I would recommend a few inches of compost amended with EWC top dressed in between each grow. You can also top dress with just about any dry amendment such as bone meal, alfalfa meal, guanos etc. Just follow the recommended dosage on the package for flowering and fruiting plant varieties.

As far as gnats go I have always found that potting up in sizes without overstepping sizes is the best means of keeping a good wet/dry cycle going. Tiny plants in big pots that were thoroughly watered is a sure fire way to have an outbreak.

Hope this helps.