Get a Harvest Every 2 Weeks

Thanks for the reply Al
No. In fact, a high pH is desirable for foliar sprays intended for controlling mould and powdery mildew. These sprays are intended to be applied infrequently, about once every 2 weeks. More often isn't necessary. One should also take care to see that the overspray from such high pH sprays doesn't fall in the flood tray or otherwise get to the plants' roots

That is very interesting and new news for me! It really breaks the mold on what I thought the plants would like. I do spay lightly, and I don't see over spray as a problem.Question, how can the plant handle such a high PH?

There's something else wrong aside from the pH of your spray.

I use the recommended dose of wetting agent, and neem oil...I don't see any other variable except the for the time of day that I spray. When I spray them is usually 3 hours before lights on, and the ventilation is in full force. I spray every 2/3 days, 3-4 times depending on how bad the infestation.

I don't know the nature of the damage your spray seems to be causing

The damage is wilting/curling leaves, starting at the top of the plant, with slight yellowing, starting at the bottom of the plant. Also the new growth will exhibit the same curling, and very will be fragile. Also, my Sativa dom. strains become more affected from this. I need to spray again today for mites, so I highly appreciate your advice AL....Thanks again

daddychrisg said:

Question, how can the plant handle such a high PH?

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pH must be sustained within a roughly 5.5-6.0 range (dependent upon medium) in the rootzone or certain nutrients may be locked out or prevented from being taken into the roots. While you can foliar feed cannabis plants, it's not the main path for nutrient uptake nor are leaves as sensitive to that pH range as are the roots. An occasional spray with a mix that is pH 9 should be fine.

I use the recommended dose of wetting agent, and neem oil...I don't see any other variable except the for the time of day that I spray. When I spray them is usually 3 hours before lights on, and the ventilation is in full force. I spray every 2/3 days, 3-4 times depending on how bad the infestation

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.

Spraying every 2-3 days is not 'occasional.' You're spraying far too often and might be causing some of the problems. Stop spraying for at least a week, perhaps 2- and see if your problem doesn't resolve.

If what you're spraying for mites isn't killing them after (at worst) 2 applications, your mites are resistant to the insecticide or what you're using just doesn't work on mites. Mites readily develop resistance to insecticides; this is accelerated by haphazard application of miticides, where some mites miss being sprayed or get a sublethal dose. Those that survive will be resistant and so may their offspring. Most miticide instructions (in fruit tree directions) recommend you use them only 'once a season.' In an indoor grow op, that can be taken to mean you can repeat the use of the miticide if you have killed them all and have a long period of absence (several months) of mites. If mites reappear within a week or two after a spraying, you didn't get them all the first time, they've developed a resistance to your treatment- or you're importing them.

Mites are not keen travellers, so the only way they will get in to your op is if you bring them in. Never bring plant material into your op which has been growing outdoors. Wear clean clothes, make sure shoe soles are clean and don't brush up against any other plants on your way into the grow room. Check plants in and around your house for mite infestations and get rid of any that have them. Azaleas are famous mite hotels.

Once mites are in, you really have to take extraordinary measures to get rid of them. Thorough application of known effective miticides like abamectrin (Avid) and Dead Red to existing plants along with a VERY through cleaning and vacuuming of the grow op- not a speck of dust anywhere- is where to start. Badly infested plants (where mites are spinning webs) should become compost.

If you're seeing wilt, get a look at the roots of the affected plant. The problem might not just be mites- you may have rootzone problems from gnats (scarid fly, aka fungus gnat) or even overwatering. If the roots are not white and active, there's a problem in the rootball.

al b.... i try to keep up....but your thread updates so much....with that said, i know you've mentioned what you foilar feed with..... but i cant seem to find it. what do you like to foilar feed with and why?

and im looking at investing in a mister/sprayer

something like this: Mondi Premium Mist 'n Spray Bottle | Miscellaneous

or

Duroblast Power Sprayer | Miscellaneous

or

Precipitator 360 Spray Bottle | Miscellaneous


which one you think is better??? what would you get? are they any better than a spray bottle from the dollar store?

Quick response to you Blunts, I have used two of the three that you listed, "360-Mondi" and for the money, I say the Mondi is the way to go...I now use a 1 gallon sprayer from Home Depot "13.95" that does the job the best...But it depends of course how much spray you need...

Hey Al, thanks for your time, I have to go tend to the garden right now, and I plan to read your post in fine detail later....

LoudBlunts said:

al b.... i try to keep up....but your thread updates so much....with that said, i know you've mentioned what you foilar feed with..... but i cant seem to find it. what do you like to foilar feed with and why?

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The reason you can't find it is because I haven't actually said I foliar feed- because I don't. See no need for it, moreover, I'm already contesting problems induced by humidity and have gone to extraordinary measures to keep my RH in check. Foliar feeding would exacerbate some problems.

damnit al, now that you mention it....i do remember why you said you DONT foilar feed.


damn stoner memory!

LB, it's just the short term memory that's failing you. In about 5 years, you'll remember it all with crystal clarity.

wow this is a shit load of pimp info I just read 69 pages dam lol
al you the man this is just what the doctor ordered.

Oh my, terribly sorry, but you can find the pimp info over here. Everything you'd ever want to know about pimps without acksherly having to read 69 pages.

BTW, I got demoted. I once was 'da man,' but now am only 'a man' or more commonly 'that idiot who stole my parking space.'

Haha Al that's an awesome story I bet he was thrilled when he saw that on his back step...takes some balls to cut down your whole drop over a feud but it served the asshole right! Thanks again for all the help I'll definitely be checking in daily.

sg, I'm not usually that kinda guy- and fortunately, haven't had to exhibit such assholiness ever again. That's in no small part because I scaled my op so I could do all the work myself.

well I was giving you props for all the info as for actsherly no chance, and
im not a gang banger looking to pimp out hoes sorry to offend you we are
red neck moutain men up in alaska braving the 20 below weather,
just ment that your setup seems flawless and the best ive read so far.

Thanks for the praise, and I'm not at all offended.

My op isn't flawless- I'm still learning about coping with seasonal environmental changes as I don't have total climate control installed. The cooltubes make it a hell of a lot better, tho.

Up in Alaska, watch out for madmen with sporks!

daddychrisg said:

also, so you take your clones and put them directly into flowering? is that stressful for the plant, like, creating less bud or less quality? i don't know too much about SOG, or the way you are doing it anyway with the flowering cycles.

I don't mean to just jump in with this, but I will just throw out my thoughts on this. When you take a clone from the mom, that clone is as old as the the mother was at that time. So, if your mom is 4 weeks old, then so is your clone...So once you have roots, the clone is actually very mature... Probably about 6 weeks mature! So it is more then ready to go into bloom...

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Thank you,this is an awesome thread & im learning a ton but the redundindency of the allready been answered questions is seriously clogging the real info,hopefully your clarification will lay to rest the issue of cloning.

To AL & all the others answering questions in this thread,without a doubt this is the most informative thread ever,im struggling to get through it as im reading every last post from the start,im at page 42 right now.

Haha I hope if I get robbed the only weapon the guy has is a spork!

panhead said:

Thank you,this is an awesome thread & im learning a ton but the redundindency of the allready been answered questions is seriously clogging the real info,hopefully your clarification will lay to rest the issue of cloning.

To AL & all the others answering questions in this thread,without a doubt this is the most informative thread ever,im struggling to get through it as im reading every last post from the start,im at page 42 right now.

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Thanks for the praise.

While it's not my forum to moderate, it would be thoughtful for readers in this thread to leave queries directed to me, for me to answer. You're right, the waters can be muddied somewhat. Every once in a while, the thread gets a flood of new posts, which can cause me to overlook some of them.

Here's what dcg said in response to denver4mx:

daddychrisg said:

When you take a clone from the mom, that clone is as old as the the mother was at that time. So, if your mom is 4 weeks old, then so is your clone...So once you have roots, the clone is actually very mature... Probably about 6 weeks mature! So it is more then ready to go into bloom...

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Mind you, interlocution or not, what dcg said was quite correct. The clone will have identical maturity characters to the mother plant. When raising up new plants from seed, it takes about 6-8 weeks for the plant to come to sexual maturity (non-gender specific preflowers at nodes), at which point it can be sexed and then either flowered or used as a donor plant.

al B.... do u only flush your plants for 1 week or 2, & do u use any chemicals 2 help

Reading back, this is one of those posts that kinda got through to the keeper.

denverm4x said:

haha i don't mean to be dissenting, i am just typing what i think i have read. i have just heard/read that clones of clones of clones just eventually water down the line and are not as desirable as.... should i say, the seed plant? anyway i am just interpreting what i have been learning. it makes sense that clones are exact DNA replicas, but again, it also seems to make sense that the copy of a copy of a copy is not as good as the original.

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This is a common myth about taking clones of clones, rooted in an incomplete understanding of how DNA works. Cloning is a bit more like a copy of a computer file, with a built-in error detecting checksum, than a photocopy or a tape recording, neither which respect fidelity to the source being copied. DNA does make mistakes in replication, but when DNA makes 'errors,' the mutations are most often lethal. If seeds are produced from DNA with a lethal mutation, the seeds just won't sprout, ending the possibility of DNA error transmission.

However, it is the non-lethal mutations which plant breeders rely upon. Non-lethal mutations may in fact be desirable changes in the plant and can be selected for in future generations to emphasise them.

DNA mutations occur mainly in sexual reproduction (male pollen fertilising a female flower). When replicating plants by asexual means (propagation by cuttings), the risk of DNA mutation of the progeny is near nil. Nothing changes the DNA (in the nucleus of every cell in the branch cut off the mother) just by virtue of cutting it off the mother plant.

Unless you have a strong source of ionising radiation in your clonebox, you have done nothing to the plant to change the structure of the DNA in your clones- and they will behave identically in all ways to the donor plants.

denverm4x said:

also, so you take your clones and put them directly into flowering? is that stressful for the plant, like, creating less bud or less quality? i don't know too much about SOG, or the way you are doing it anyway with the flowering cycles.

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Once they have a good spray of roots, my clones do go straight into 12/12 light in the flowering area. The purpose of the abrupt change is to make the clones go to flowering behaviours as quickly as possible so they don't continue to gain a lot of vertical height. We want short plants (compared to plants grown outdoors) in SOG to suit the rather weak foliar penetration capacity of artificial lighting- even a mighty 1000HPS ain't the sun.

However, keep in mind that my mums and clones are always kept under 24/7 light and cannabis plants don't switch modes instantly from veg to flower. The plant produces certain hormones which determine its growth habit and does so in response to the photoperiod provided. It takes a few weeks for plants which previously only have known 24/7 light to fully change their hormonal balance toward flowering in response to 12/12 light.

We do exploit this rather slow growth habit shift in SoG. My clones still continue to display some veg characters for the first 4 weeks in 12/12 light, at which point they stop gaining vertical height and start packing on the bud weight. This dwindling vegetative character hangs around just long enough to make the plants gain some overall size and then stop before they are too tall to suit indoor lighting. The laggardly shift in growing habit eliminates the need to give any veg lighting time to clones after they have set root in a SoG op.

infamouse21 said:

al B.... do u only flush your plants for 1 week or 2, & do u use any chemicals 2 help

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I don't flush them at all. All my tanks run flowering nutes at 1400ppm. I have tried running tank 4 on pH adjusted water only and found absolutely no difference in the smoking characters.

However, a plant will only store about 2 weeks worth of nutes, a bit less than 2 weeks for very mature, advanced plants. If I run tank 4 (wks 6- on water, by the end of wk8, the plants will begin to look pretty N deficient. Every so often, I have the time and space to flower plants a bit longer than 8 weeks; helps the density a bit. It's better in my case to continue to run nutes in tank 4 in the off chance that I'll have the space to keep them flowering a bit longer. Since it doesn't make any difference to the smoke, I'd rather keep nutes in tank 4 and be prepared for longer flowering if I can do it.

I think I have still missed part of d4mx's query.

Is there a difference in the per plant yield or quality in plants abruptly shifted from 24/7 to 12/12? There's two questions there, I'll get to them one at a time.

Since we are deliberately growing small plants in SoG, of course the per-plant yield in SoG is lower than in methods which involve growing full sized (ie grown outdoors in a full-length season) or bushier plants- but there's benefits to that trade-off.

The SoG method is an adaptation which exploits certain growing characters of cannabis plants to better suit the limited foliar penetration capacities of indoor lighting compared to sunlight.

If you grow tall, bushy, unpruned 'christmas tree' style plants indoors, quite a bit more floorspace is committed to supporting small, lower branches which produce small, fluffy buds. Indoor lighting can only penetrate foliage so far from the lamp (and growing tips only so close), so lower branches produce even less under artificial light than they would outdoors. These poor-producing lower branches also make a lot of leaf which restricts airflow around the plant unless they are adequately spaced, gobbling up valuable, expensive lighted square footage for no productive benefit.

Some folks have tried to get around the foliar penetration and height issues by lopping the mainstem and allowing the plant to bush out. This causes growth to divide, encouraging smaller lower branches to form larger terminal colas than they would on an unpruned plant. However, it is the nature of cannabis plants to form their largest and densest colas on the tip of the mainstem. The chunky terminal colas are sacrificed in this method. Lopped yet bushy plants still take up a lot of lighted floorspace per plant, but at least they make it more productive than unpruned plants as the light can be dropped lower to encourage better production from lower branches.


('scuse my kindergarten art, please...)

In SoG, you can raise 4 plants per sq ft. Full sized and bushy plants need closer to 1-1.5sq ft per (or more). Both SoG & unpruned plants develop their best buds on the top of the mainstem. SoG simply eliminates everything but the top cola. 4 stalks of the largest buds the plant characteristically makes, with all lower branches removed, will outyield a single bushy or unpruned plant every time. Better yet, SoG gives you ONLY top colas and the clumpier lumpy buds attached to the mainstem just below them. On average, SoG buds are much larger and denser than those from any other method due to exploiting the uneven bud size production in the flowering habit of cannabis plants.

So... SoG makes best use of the penetration ability of indoor lighting by limiting plant height while preserving the largest buds and by eliminating low productivity parts of the plant, makes better use of lighted floorspace.

But what about the quality?

Plants raised outdoors will mature to harvestability (about 50-60% of calyxes having turned brown/orange) in around 8-10 weeks. We do just the same thing in SoG, using the same cues for maturity and readiness for harvest.

SoG has the final benefit of being weeks faster than other means due to elimination of veg time between cloning and flowering. No veg time also means you need no facilities (extra room, floorspace, MH lighting if desired) for vegging, either.

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