Any help?!

imadrumar

Member
Here's what im running in a 4x8x11 room. 2 600 watt HPS with aircooled hoods and can fan exhausting the air from the hoods and the room out into another room.
Plants are Purple Diesel and Grape Ape in 12"x 12" pots in FF Happy frog and my nutrients are Gen hydro Flora grow/micro/bloom floralicious plus, Koolbloom, and Blackstrap molasses.
i dont currently have a PH meter which im going to buy ASAP so i use a few drops of PH down every time i water. I follow the GH simple drain to waste schedule from start to finish and flush before switch to 12/12 and 4 weeks into flower and before harvest. now ive realized that ive most likely over fed in the past because i would feed almost every watering which i know is bad and causes salt build up which i had a problem with.
But with the lights i have and the soil and nutrients i use i feel like my plants should be huge. but they are nothing compared to what i see others with a similar set up as mine. Am i missing nutrients? or adding too much? or should i completely drop the GH and pick up something new?

My last harvest is just now smokable and it tastes pretty great. very good for back pain indeed. but my buds just dont look as big as i feel they should.
Also what about techniques in veg to make em bushy. also how big should i let them go in veg before i put into flower? the plants i just harvested were about 2' wide and 2' tall.
one plants got an ounce and 3/4 and the other got 2 and 1/4. but even without CO2 enrichment i feel like i should be able to pull 1/4 lbs off each plant at least.
Any questions, comments, Q tips?
Thanks all.
 

Vindicated

Well-Known Member
I'm very skeptical about the benefits of Floralicious Plus in an organic potting mix. Floralicious Plus is humic acid with a little kelp. If your soil or potting mix is rich in organic matter (which Fox Farm is) you don't need these. The kelp is nice, but the humic acid is a total waste here. KoolBloom is your PK booster and it doesn't have anything that your Micro and Bloom won't have, so I would skip this stuff too.

I'm sure you already know that Fox Farm inoculates their soils with good fungi and good bacteria, so a nice feeding of molasses can definitively help them thrive. In addition to feeding microbes, molasses also contains lots of trace minerals, so in a way it's kind of a booster unto itself. Go ahead and keep this stuff around if you continue to go the organic route. The only problem I see with your current setup is that your using synthetic hydroponic nutrients through all phrases of growth, and if your like most growers, you probably only use the molasses towards the middle or end of your flowering phase. There's a chance you could be killing off the microbes early on, making the molasses more of a micro nutrient additive then a food source.

Lastly, and you already know this, whenever using hydroponic nutrients you got to verify pH and adjust. You really don't want to go at it blindly. You don't need an expensive pH pen. The $15 General Hydroponic pH Kit that includes Base, Acid, and pH test solution should be good enough. If you really hate the idea of pH adjusting, then go purely organic next time around.

These are my tips and I hope you find the feedback useful. As always, fact check everything and continue learning and growing. Best of luck man.
 
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