I used Miracle-gro. Any way to fix/flush?

if it hasnt already happened your plants should go thru some nute lockup and you cant flush so just leave your plants for 3-4 days make sure the soil is bone dry and start adding water again, just dont overdo it again watering once every 3 days for u should be good

I made the same mistake on my first grow. I was about to dump the plants when I saw a video on youtube on how to transplant from soil to a hydro setup. I went and bought a 10 gallon plastic tote, an air pump, and some party cups. I spent a couple of hours cutting root slits in the cups (a cheap DIY alternative to netty pots) and within a few hours I was running a DWC. Flushed all the plants for a few days then started them on Technaflora nutes and they are doing kick ass now! They dont look stunted at all.

I think your problem is the vermiculite more than the MG. Vermiculite holds water; MJ likes drainage - you have a conflict there. I've had issues with heavy-vermiculite seed starters that look very much like your pots -- dry as a fart on the surface, wet and swampy underneath, and unhappy plants.

Perlite, not vermiculite, is what you want if you're going to use a "cut" in your soil.

If it were mine, I would transplant to a straight-up potting soil (the MG is fine..by itself, or cut 20% with perlite), water thoroughly, and then leave them alone for awhile. Weed will usually work its way thru things, but when I look at your pot surface, I see a LOT of vermiculite - I don't think they'll beat this.

Bear in mind I have one grow behind me, and one going now, so I'm no expert. But, I think I've figured out a few things about growing in MG products in the meantime. One trick is to disregard this "more water = more nute release" thing and just water thoroughly. MG and other commercial soils are very very lofty - there's no threat of air exclusion, which is how overwatering hurts plants. As long as you have air, there's almost no such thing as overwatering. And more water creates a better nutrient-water balance all around; trying to skimp on water to avoid "nutrient release" just creates a very concentrated nute solution in the soil. Then, you have problems.

Check out my link to see my second MG grow. You'll see that I worked thru a couple things there, too. Look at the simple visual difference between your soil and mine. See what I mean?

MJ is tough. Don't give up on 'em.

I took everyone's advice and transplanted all of the weaker plants in smaller pots from 8" pots to 10" pots using 30% pearlite, 60% REGULAR potting soil (it's hard to find in January in 20 degree weather), 5% sand and 5% bone meal.

I then covered the soil in about 1/4 inch of sand and sprayed with an organic pesticide containing sesame oil to try to kill the fungus gnats that were definitely enjoying the over-watering.

Attached is a photo. I will update in a few days. The white thing in the middle is one of the fans I'm using. There are 2 other fans in the grow-box, you can see the wires to 1 of them and the other I had to take out for the photo.

EDIT: I forgot to add that I did away with the LST wires and am planning on ScrOG'ing this grow. Thanks to GreatWhiteNorth's advice, I can apparently ScrOG w/o having all female plants from the beginning. I am going to install a screen about a foot above the pots so they will have around 1-1.5 feet to grow buds.

5% bonemeal? that is a huge amount of bonemeal!
not sure if it will have any harmful effects, but the recommended rate i've seen is 1 tbsp per gallon of soil
that's what i used with very good results
organic nutes tend to be more forgiving, much less likely to cause burn, curious what you will see

growone said:

5% bonemeal? that is a huge amount of bonemeal!
not sure if it will have any harmful effects, but the recommended rate i've seen is 1 tbsp per gallon of soil
that's what i used with very good results
organic nutes tend to be more forgiving, much less likely to cause burn, curious what you will see

Click to expand...

5% was a rough estimate, it was probably a lot less than that. The bag said it was 6-9-0. It was also just in the transplant soil so I didn't use much per pot. I think it'll be ok. I don't plan on using any fertilizers until at least a month into flowering. I think the plants will be fine.

6-9-0, sounds like MG Organic bone meal
that's what i use, great stuff, does provide plenty of slow release nitrogen
tell you the truth, you may not need to feed at all, i just used the bone meal in the soil
then used bone meal tea as a nute, all i used, plant was happy with it

An update: I have transplated all of the plants into this new soil mix. all of the plants are loving it. i started flowering yesterday (yes, I know they arent filling the screen. it's just restricting their height for this grow. I'll probably ScrOG it next time).