[rama777]

[rama777]

Thanks man, and no worries on the delay. You’re kind enough as it is taking the time to help people out!

Here’s where I’m at. I defoliated the bottom 1/3-1/2. I think I’m 3-5 days from the flip.

[rama777]

I have a but of N toxicity that developed. I wonder if it’s also potentially from excessive calmag. Would there be any indicators that would help tease the two out from each other out if they were happening at the same time?

[rama777]

Oh that’s interesting. So calmag can deepen colors in a similar fashion as potentially excessive nitrogen?

[rama777]

Day 41, 7” tall. Lookin’ awesome. Lots of tops. More than I expected. My uninformed thoughts are to either thin out the number of tops during the eventual pruning sessions and just let ‘em loose from there. Or, keep all the tops and probably (need to?) put in a screen after the end of veg pruning and maybe another one midway through the flowering stretch.

Or I guess a third option is to keep all the tops and not use screens. But somehow that seems risky. I’m envisions buds touching buds. At that point I’d be tying things to the poles in which case screens would likely make a lot more sense.

Fewer tops and no screens sounds good to me, if indeed there are too many tops to continue unsupported. But, if you thought that would potentially decrease my yields by more than 5-7%,g I’d bite the bullet and use screens.

[rama777]

I am so incredibly confused about light distances with MH and HPS. The forum discussions on them are outdated and not very scientific.

But an average recommendation is 12-18” for 400mh (what I’m currently running). Some went as low as 8”

Personally I’ve been running at 15-16” which seems to be around 7,000 lumens. There are old charts floating around that show optimal distance ranges for MH and HPS. The optimal range for a 400Mh according to the charts is between 18” and 5”. 5??

And then for HPS it shows 8-29?” Obviously both of those extremes are ludicrous. At least 29” is. 8 certainly sounds risky and with questionable spread.

My plan was to keep the HPS at 16” but maybe not at first. 16” HPS is 16,000 lumens. That’s double the lumens of what I’m running with the MH at 16”. I’m sure there is a question of photosynthetic usability based on the spectrums. Sheesh. Not much helpful information.

What wise words can you share from experience? Should I lower my MH to 14” for a couple of days, then maybe even bring it down to 12” until I switch/flip in about 10 more days?

Then when I do switch, should I begin by matching the HPS distance to the equivalent lumens that they were getting under MH, then just keep decreasing the distance until I get to?? How close is too close?

I do not believe I will have any issues with leaf surface temperatures regardless so I should be safe to go as low as I can, whilst still keeping the ladies happy. I’m not trying to stress them out. I just want to aim for the most light they can get without inducing harmful stress.

With all the years under HID, I’m surprised there isn’t better information out there. I can’t seem to find it anyways, otherwise I wouldn’t be bothering you about it. I tried before asking, a lot, I swear 😉

 

[rama777]

Well shit, I accidentally broke one of the main branches on that plant! Lol, maybe that’s not the end of the world since it’s the biggest. Future space problem solved!?

I taped it up and put a support underneath it. Considering just letting it go though..

[rama777]

I jumped the gun. Feel free to skip responding to this! I untied the mains on the monster plant and can see that I will be able to tighten things up. I tied them back down for now but I’m glad I played around with that because I can see that when I do loosen them up, they will add a few inches to overall height so I will keep them down and let the interior tops outpace them for a few days.

[rama777]

Or maybe long story short, if I were in your position and knowing what I know about some fast acting foliars, I’d probably add what I need directly to the roots. That’s certainly what I would do for my crops but foliar feeding is a lot more simple than getting nutrients into the roots when you have a million beds and crops to manage.

[rama777]

I’m not an expert at growing cannabis but I am an organic field farmer. A product I like is called Biomin. It has a touch of nitrogen. The calcium is mineral derived. It’s not readily available but it is very microbial active and shows results quickly enough. So basically the microbes on the leaf surfaces will consume the minerals and poop them out to become available to the plants. Truthfully though it’s best to use that at the very beginning of deficiency symptoms and then once every 4 days or so until it clears up.

They also make a magnesium product, as well as a trace minerals.

A word of caution about calcium chloride foliar sprays if that’s your source. They act fast, but they can have an inhibitory effect on nitrogen and phosphorous. If you use calcium chloride, definitely use less than recommended or you may see other issues arise!!

If you do hit them with a fast acting calcium, I definitely recommend a follow up foliar a few days later with something that has fulvic acids to counteract the suppressive qualities of fast acting calcium based products.

But again I’m not a cannabis expert and I’m not sure how reasonable it is to use foliar sprays on flowering plants, or how best to address leftover residues in the absence of rain. The products I mentioned are not toxic, but I’m not sure about potential corruption of flower flavor.

[rama777]

Bushy might not be the right word.

[rama777]

In hindsight I regret tying them down so hard since they seem to have a very bushy habit. They’re still only 6” tall from the top of the pot. Perhaps I could just cut the main tops loose from their tie downs and maybe they’ll tighten back up a bit? If I flip now, they’ll wind up being only 18” tall or so which seems like it would be wasted potential.

[rama777]

1. So I’m noticing in photos of plants that branches continue to grow outwards as they stretch. In that case, this larger plant seems like it’s really gonna smush some main colas against the tent wall. Any tips to avoid that? Or is it not a huge deal if I have adequate airflow and rotate the plants daily? I’m open to using screens if they will help me get out of problematic predicament.

[rama777]

Oh worth mentioning for sure is that my nutes have calcium and magnesium both. The people who make it told me that some strains still need supplemental calmag though. So whatever we pick as my target ppm for all waterings should certainly take that into consideration.

[rama777]

Also I suppose I’ve watered in the transplants with 400ppm of calmag, plus watered two of the plants with another 400ppm of calmag. If that sounds like dangerous territory, perhaps I should give those plants zero calmag for a watering or two, or three?

 

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