Uncle Ben's Gardening Tweeks and Pointers

I know what you mean about assuming. Having done my due diligence and dead level best to do everything right, it now appears I have done most everything bassackwards from beginning to end. Must have RO water! pH must be 5.4! Must use FF soil! Must trim those pesky bottom leaves and branches! Must have 4megawatts of light per plant! Must chop at the 60 days it says on the seed banks website! Somehow, I always *knew* most of this was total horsepucky and Uncle Ben confirmed it. I have always loved gardening but I have also always had a totally brown thumb. I owe so much to Uncle Ben; I'm on the verge of starting this years grow. This info could not have come at a better time.

Hopefully Uncle Ben will give some feed back on what we should start with, when we should change and to what.

I know you say to grow as much foliage as possible and let the plant flourish, so are you completely against trimming and if you are not what are the best methods so light distribution in a smaller grow room is even and gets to the whole plant.

Originally Posted by theshow88

I know you say to grow as much foliage as possible and let the plant flourish, so are you completely against trimming and if you are not what are the best methods so light distribution in a smaller grow room is even and gets to the whole plant.

You can get a cheap analog light meter that reads up to 10,000 lumens for like $30 (they have em at the nursery where I shop) and go outside on a bright sunny day and start measuring things like stand in the shade under a tree, check the bottom of a bush and then the middle and then the top. You will be amazed at what you find

Yes I know the sun is more powerful than all of our indoor lights but you will learn more from that one experiment than you can possibly imagine and then take your new toy and dial your garden in

Hey UB..

Hope all is well. I've got some kinda leaf driller or disease working my plants here. I didn't think it looked like mites. Whatever it is, it seems to be focused on the veins. There's a little bit on all three plants, but whatever it is seems to like this one in particular (this plant was in a bit of stagnant area.. I think that was part of it. I fixed that issue today).

I'm not sure, either, that the two pic's aren't two different things. The underside of the first photo looks the same as the top. The underside of the second photo looks more like a dimple (kinda like black spot fungi can look sometimes).

If you know what it is, any suggestions to kill it?

Thanks for any input

Originally Posted by potpimp

I know what you mean about assuming. Having done my due diligence and dead level best to do everything right, it now appears I have done most everything bassackwards from beginning to end. .

I'm right there with you. I'm coming out of a belief system. I've always considered myself a non believer in things and value the scientific method for discovering things about the universe. some how, I fell for a lot of hype.


check out these links, I'm going to try a few plants with the same nutes all the way and see how well they do...

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/l...010731700.html

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/...411532471.html

I'd like to get some soil testing done, too

Great thread Jjfoo; I added several nuggets to my "Uncle Bob How-to collection" from there. I am definitely going to get a soil test done. BTW, you fell for a lot of hype? Ha! I'm the poster child for falling for hype; I wasted about $500 on snake oil and rocket fuel from the Advanced Nutes hucksters. I was doing a "Subcool's Super Soil" grow alongside the AN hydro stuff and it outperformed the hydro significantly. Lets just say it was a far cry from their Nutrient Challenge video BS. Probably the worst example of being a sucker was buying one of those stupid Boost Buckets. It only works for 60 days or so and the refill is about $100. Well, they better enjoy their ill-gotten gains from me.

I had someone teach me they used 3 part general hydro and humic acid...

then someone else started bringing all these additives, at that point I was starting to read stuff from lucas that talked about how you don't need additives, so I was sceptical of the products. But, I was into cutting leaves off to expose bud, lollipoping to have top heavy plants that needed ropes to hold the buds, I though yellow leaves was a good thing. Thanks to lucas' writings I was starting to see that flushing or depriving the plant for 2-3 weeks was a bad thing, but my partners thought I was crazy.

I was anti male plant. I had a male about 3 weeks ago and I put it in another room (secretly, my partners told me to throw it away). I removed two plants and pollinated them. Now I have two plants with lots of seeds and there was no stray pollination at all. I'm getting ready to plant a bunch of seeds and do some UB topping.

I have a big batch of subcools soil and am playing with that and a three part nute from growmore (they make general hydro stuff, actually they make nutes for many companys that apparently resell it and add dye.

I'm looking into moving away from the liquids and getting some Jack's Classic.

I'm reading this from UB


"For me, a 9-3-6 and a 1-3-2 is all I need."


1-3-2 is the same ratio as Jack's Classic Bloom Booster

where does 9-3-6 come from? I'm looking at Jack's Classic All Purpose and it is 20-20-20. I mean can I use Jack's Classic stuff for Veg? Also, am I right to assume that 1-3-2 comes from using Classic Bloom Booster alone? (it is 1-3-2). I would have expected to see more N.