First timer, really need help

[AimiJack-Guy]

Ok, I planted 4 autos (2 gorilla cookies, one strawberry pie, one watermelon zkittles, and one blueberry regular seed) in a 4x4 tent on the date 4/8. This was in living soil mixed with fox farm ocean forest for the bottom 3rds and ocean forest for the rest - directly into the soil. The first one started to show up on 4/10 so that's when I started counting days.

Amazon 'experts' in the comments swear with that all you need to do is water autos and you are ok. I'll try to organize this so it's at least readable... in in the south, US in a hot humid place but with no light resting the meter read 71⁰F and usually between 79 and 84 (mostly around 82) and humidity around 51% u til I put a fan in there an it drops to around 35%.

I always thought the leaves seem odd - I was giving each about 200ml of water each day but dropped to every other day as I saw a leaf yellowing and feared I was over watering.

The final 4 pictures are from 18 days after the first seed popped out of the soil, the others from 2 hours ago so about 21days now. The light is a phlizon 2500w cob and fabric pots. Any help at all would be appreciated... I know I have to have made a stupid mistake

 

[Daipot]

I’d say it’s more over feeding than overwatering as the leaves are yellowed but that medium looks drier than sand. The new growth on the top looks decent though. Maybe try dialling back nutes a little and upping the water volume by touch. Just keep an eye on the new growth but that’s looking find too me. Have you splashed any of the feed on the leaves while feeding?

 

[Bill.de.Cat]

If I read that correctly you basically planted straight into OF in the top of your pots. Then just watered with plain water. OF seems a bit hot for quite a few auto seedlings as most people using it scoop out a buffer zone and use a light seedling mix so roots can get established before they get into the OF. Depends on pot size as to Wether it would carry them all the way through a grow. MoG is a good person to chime in on that as he has been doing a lot of researching on balancing the nutrients. They do look a bit burned and I don't think that size pot would have enough to get em to the finish line. Posting in the infirmary section would probably be a good idea.

 

[DDubs]

How is your water pH going in? Have you watered to runoff and measured the results? I find that that is the first step to trying to root out an issue.

 

[AimiJack-Guy]

Only im using plain tap water at first but the last week, bottled water.

Amazon 'expert' said all I needed was water and nothing else, so I didn't use nutrients just water. I tried to not overfeeding so much and from what bill the cat and daipot say I can assume I underwatered, need to work on ph, and also need to have a buffer with OF next time.

Expert told me OF would keep things at good ph... why did I not come here from the start...

 

[DDubs]

Ya, i would suggest you check your pH. Tap water can be all over the place depending on the source. Im not sure what the pH is of bottled water. If your pH is out of range than the plant cant take up the full range of nuitients. Checking the ppm numbers on your run off tells you how nurient packed the soil is. There are recommended number ranges depending on the phase of growth. Like Bill mentioned, that soil can be packed full of nutes that your plant may have a tpugh time handling that early.

It doesnt look like they are beyond saving. Just check it now and move forward onnthe right foot. Keep in mind, it takes a day or two to see results so dont make a bunch of drastic changes at once and lose track of what actually corrected the issue.

 

[Bill.de.Cat]

Only im using plain tap water at first but the last week, bottled water.

Amazon 'expert' said all I needed was water and nothing else, so I didn't use nutrients just water. I tried to not overfeeding so much and from what bill the cat and daipot say I can assume I underwatered, need to work on ph, and also need to have a buffer with OF next time.

Expert told me OF would keep things at good ph... why did I not come here from the start...

Tap water is not necessarily bad, if from city most likley chlorine was added so you'll need to let it sit out for 24 or more hrs to get ride of the chlorine. If well water it's probably going to have disolved minerals like calcium. That has to be taken into consideration. With bottled water you have to read label to see what kind of process was used, filtered, reverse osmosis, spring water etc. If you haven't yet I advise again to start a thread in the infirmary area as a lot of the more experienced growers scan through it to help us new guys.

 

[NickDanger3rdEye]

Are you using Nature’s Living Soil? I’m not an expert but I think you need to make sure the pots are a fully watered so all of the soil is moist. Don’t water everyday. Watch your plants as they will let you know when they need watering. In veg they don’t need a whole lot of water. When they go into flower you will usually need to water a little more frequently but not every day. If you are using NLS do a search here. Several of us have had issues with it.

 

[AimiJack-Guy]

I used nothing on them besides tap water and the soils and I underwatered heavily 2 weeks ago I switched to bottled water and my then mostly redish plants have turned mostly green again with some sugar leaves colored.


Now that I know I can actually grow them, I've started purchasing nutes for the next time.

Edit: crazy person salted all 5 plants and when I got home blueberry was already dead... the autos stopped growing but survived - they just switched to making buds though strawberry pie kept growing while making buds (ironically right around the right time to produce buds so I wonder if the salting had no real affect on them besides probably helping in the red colors at the time [like bright bright reds]) I'll look for a pic.


Middle is watermelon zkittles (barney'sfarm), last is gorilla cookies (fast buds)
At about a month old after the salting (I was already underwatering then also) and watering better turned everything green again which was cool to see

 

[AimiJack-Guy]

Day 12 of 2nd grow they are much bigger than I expected
Same as last time NLS and OF but using wholly mackerel and big bloom at planting (directly into the soil) it looks like they are getting too big for the pots (15L)

Yesterday was the first day I added grow big I'm using slightly over 1/4 what they recommend. Middle plant is royal 00 auto blueberry, top right seeds man's lemon auto, bottom right areas farm purple punch, bottom left fastbuds purple lemonade, top left, fastbuds blackberry.

I just had a pretty big fan last time taking in air from outside the tent through a duct hole, this time I thought to buy an exhaust fan but decided to get a small 10$ fan first to see if I could save the money - works great.
My last grow made me want to upgrade to a mars hydro 3000ts i think it 400$ but the nutes seem to be getting me excellent results so I'll upgrade when my phlizon 2500w cob led one dies (I know it's not actually 2500w lol)



Any advice on getting them to grow taller before they grow more outward?