New Grower My first grow, all feedback welcome

[Kosbrand]

Update on day 21 after germination.

Last week was very worrysome. Grow stalled and all 3 plants were drooping (See last picture). The leaves also started feeling crispy and papery.

I was still fighting to find the cause until I took the whole pots out and looked at the bottom of the pot. You could clearly see, through the air pot bottom holes, that the soil was ultra dry. There were even some tiny roots coming out desperately looking for water.

Despite regularly watering, I think most of the water stayed in the upper layers of the pot and didnt have the time to sip in because of the 400w hps and fan repeatedly frying and drying the top soil.

Yesterday I soaked all pots until water ran out. They recovered in hours and 24h later look reborn.

I hope this problem didnt slow the plants too much. At least I learned from my mistake. Pretty difficult for a beginner to aim for the right watering quantities not to over or under water.

I keep you guys posted!

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[bad dragon bzzz]

tons of books on growing.not many even mention how much how often when to water.so many variables everyone is different.medium,size of pot,size of plant,breeze,temps,humidity probably one of the trickiest bits of growing.overwatering and underwatering look so damn similar to that nobody can do for you,its a head first find out and see kinda thing.
a bit of practice is all it takes back on track.
good luck n keep er lit.

 

[Moonshade]

Alot of usefull info above.
Here my reaction.

Hello sir and welcome on the forum. I recognize my own strugglings in the beginning, tough i am not a specialist. (AF 14 and 15 now).
Never had to stop or wasted a round, so here my
I think you ve overwatered in the early days my friend when i read the quantity in your first post...20l airpots are big but let the roots make efforts to find h2o. I do it by draining the whole pot once while prepping, germ seeds and put them in. Some plastic over it or cup or whatever. And wait. Just wait. Spray! a little bit! around the seedspot when you see no glasshouse effect anymore on the cup or plastic. And wait. No panic, dare to wait! It s a herb!
I m using airpots 12l....and indeed they dry out some cm from the holes...but let them.
Thats why they are designed for...aeriation of the roots and your soil life! I m watering, no hps but cob and 21 a 23 degrees steady, now on day 45 or so max 0.5l...per plant. Even not daily...

Another trick when soil dries out: water in phases, in steps. A bit, wait 15 min. Another bit. So on. Better soil saturation, less drop off on the bottom, less spoiled nutes or flush effect.
Nutes same advice. Less is more. Use max. 50 procent of the product manufact advise thing. It will not give you 50 less harvest!
And too avoid writing too much lol.
dare to do nothing! Just a sneeky look a day but let them grow.
It sounds weird. I am also jealous on the big rocket tops i see over here but my advice: just love the process, love a nice finish without too much worries. I take the minor big endscore results with it. You will learn for round 2. 3 . 4 and so on.
Had last year a RQS haze (my first sativa)...only 20 grams dry. But i didnt gave a sh#t. It was ok, weaker pheno already from start, didnt like our world or so but i enjoyed it.
Read over here , watch, follow and learn. Full of gentle people. Just becuz THEY are here.
Take it easy and the magic will take off, for sure with your setup.
Grtz
Moon
O and search for the right lamp distance from start. A lot of detailled hps grows to find here

 

[Deleted Grower A]

I agree looks like overwater and watering is probably the toughest thing to master imo so don't feel bad.

If you do the finger in soil test it doesn't really work that well as the bottom of the pot can be wet still even though the top is dry. Only accurate way really is to know the feel of the pot when the soil is dry by picking it up and aim for that or buy an expensive digital meter (The cheap ones are crap). My advice is let those plants dry out really good I have saved two plants this way, your plants will actually tell you when there thirsty they will start to droop but you want to catch it fast and water but good for when you really don't know the weight of the pots.

Archie and Moon gave some great advice and Moon is right it's great advice to stay out of the grow room or tent and let them do there thing, I don't know what it is but I swear they do better and grow faster when you do.

 

[Kosbrand]

Thanks for the great replies guys.

I think I have indeed overwatered them in the first 10 days. The soils stayed pretty moist in the bottom of the pots then. I think the roots crawled down there and upon drastically lowering my watering the next 10 days the bottom, where most roots are, dried up (as described earlier).

I just checked them and they are looking even healthier now. So they did need water.

So happy they are doing well again.

Will check the hps guides.

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[Moonshade]

Let them dry out now (till your pot each day and feel the difference), adjust your lamp distance, let the damaged/misformed leafs for what they are.
Be lazy now for 5 days or so :smoking:.

Grtz Moon.

 

[Kosbrand]

Put lighting closer or further away? Temps are around 25c.

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[Moonshade]

SEARCH the forum my friend. Reading is learning.
I repeat myself :
-Let it dry out, water in bits and if you think this is too less, then stop.
-Search for ideal temp/light height yourself amigo.
-reread the posts above about more factors then just temp...
I hope to see a catch up in about a week.

 

[hecno]

The guys have you covered with watering , an other problem with over watering is leaching the nutrients in the soil out around the plant . As has been said , let it dry out some and give it a light feed and they will bonce back , I find soil is a major part to growing , worth spending time on understanding soils , To start with stick to the same pot size for a number of grows till you get the feel of it . I go as high as 27 liter for bigger strains . The plant in this photo is 21 days old and are just living off the soil . Fell free to tag me any time .

 

[Kosbrand]

Update day 28 after germination

First of al another big thanks to @Moonshade and @hecno for the great insights. I followed the directions to check for overwatering and let them dry out more. I think they definately had too much water in their first weeks.

What happened though is that the royal gorilla strain went pale, yellow and drooping more or less overnight. I watered as soon as I noticed and upped the dose of organic growing nutes. It greatly recovered the days after, although the leafs stay yellow (which I read is normal that yellow leaves dont turn dark again).

What I reckon happened is that I overwatered in combination with too little NPK nutes. I always gave them about 1/3rd of recommended organic alga grow (NPK 4-2-4). As said after upping to recommended dose they recovered.

I also tested the runoff water which was 6.5 after watering with 5.5, so the soil is probably too alkaline. New PH meter arriving tomorrow for more accurate results.

A new side problem is that on a very few leaves some dark spots are appearing, after research this looks like either a calcium or P deficiency (see last pictures).