New Grower Need help with my first grow...

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I have been lurking the past few weeks on this site and everyone seems really cool and wanting to help...so please I am begging for help...
Ok, I am on day 20 from 3 Auto White Widow breaking ground. They were planted in 3 gal pots with a mix of Coco Coir and Perlite. They are under 400w MH. Only watering them a few times and no nutes yet. I do have canna coco A + B, and Cal-mag but I haven't used them yet.. They seem so small and stunted compared to other pics I have seen at day 20. Maybe I am just a noob and I am bugging out, but they are really small and don't seem like they are growing. Any help suggestions etc will be gratefully appreciated. I attached some pics from today..
 

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what up slim jim? I grow soil so this is just a guess but look really dry to me. supposed to water at least once a day. a little down the stem. I do anyways. look like need nitrogen also because they are very small for that age. im sure someone will be along to help.. good luck my friend
 
First off faded187...Love the glasses on the dog! 2nd thank you for the quick response....I will try a little water down the stem. And here I thought I was overwatering them...I just hope they will still grow to be normal size...
 
Dry dude...

What I'd do is sit the pot in a bowl of water (or a bucket or something) with a bit of water at the bottom of the pot. This way the bottom of the pot is now wet and the tap root of the plant will start to seek that wetness out.

The faster the tap root hits the bottom of the pot the better.

Secondly you want to keep the soil a touch moist. So I would also water lightly from the top.

Thirdly coco and perlite (while a great substrate) has no nutrients at all. Personally I would just use tap water for the first 4-5 days. After that I'd start feeding very lightly, increasing the amount of nutrients by the tinest amounts each feeding.

Think of it like body building. Each time you go to the gym you need to be lifting more weight than the last time, or else you are not growing. With plants it's kinda similar. Adding a little bit of nutrients each time increases pressure around the root zone forcing more food up into the plant.

In my opinion the plants are under watered and underfed.

With growing if everything is 100% the plants will grow 100%. If everything is 100% but one thing is only 20% the plants will grow only 20% of the speed. Right now your nutrients are probably like 5-10% (only getting whatever tiny amount of nutrients are in the water and coco) so you need to give them some food now and next time add an extra few drops of nutrients per litre. So depending on your nutrients you may start off with 0.5ml per litre their first feeding. Then 0.75ml per litre. Than by week two 1ml per litre, then up to 1.25ml per litre, then by week three 1.5 ml per litre and so on and so on.

Not sure what nutrients brand you are using - so please check their advised feeding schedule, my example above is purely an for illustrating the theory and not a real schedule :)

Hope that helps bro

Coco and perlite is a bit of a b!tch to work with in the very beginning but stick with it and it WILL reward you.

Finally make sure and use Coco specific nutrients if possible!

Good luck and feel free to PM me if you need.


EDIT : Also can you put up some pics of your grow space for me - thanks

SECOND EDIT : I just realised that I realised half way through writing this post you are growing in coco not soil, so ignore the fact I used the word 'soil' I assumed soil at first. Also this means that coco is like a wick or a sponge. If you water it, the water spreads through the whole coco. Generally with dirt you need to carefully slowly water it so not to make any dry pockets. Where as coco is less likely to create dry pockets.

Also with coco you NEED to KEEP it moist all the time. Especially once you start feeding it, otherwise the nutrients have a tendancy to dry out and create salts which you don't want. Keep coco moist, make sure to mix a good bit of perlite in it and water lightly but regularly, like lightly twice a day.
 
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I agree with Happy and Faded, the girls look hungry, the medium over dry. The girls wanna eat like"munch"!
 
First off faded187...Love the glasses on the dog! 2nd thank you for the quick response....I will try a little water down the stem. And here I thought I was overwatering them...I just hope they will still grow to be normal size...
thank you. its an old pic.. I got em laser surgery while back for hims birthday. lol
 
Guys, wow, thank you for the quick responses! I am using Canna brand Coco A and Coco B. It's specifically for growing in coco. I have a tray (cement mixer tray) under all 3 pots. Can I put a gallon or 2 of water on the bottom so it gets absorbed through the drain holes on the pot? Also would it be wise to mist the top of the soil with water to keep it moist all the time?
My tent is a 3x4x5 w 400w MH air cooled hood. See pic below, and again..i am so grateful for all the help!! Thank you so much!
EDIT: When I feed them with nutes, do I feed until I see some runoff?
Also I have a bottle of Cal-Mag. Not sure if I need to use it or not?
 

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Autos love coco, so I would suggest u use the CalMag. As far as the other questions, holla at Happy. He seems to know coco, and just have no experience with it. Sorry I couldn't help more
 
Hi Jim

Firstly you want to google Canna Coco Feeding Schedule. I'm not sure if you work in mls of gallons so I didn't link one of you. If you go to Cannas website you'll see them there too.

I would not use Cal/Mag unless a deficiency is showing. If you are using Coco Specific nutrients such and Canna Coco then you shouldn't need it. Keep the bottle handy just in case and only use it if someone with high reputation on this website advises you to do so.

Actually Jim since your plant is 20 days old and you hadn't feed it (last time I read your thread) I would say you should give it a good slow feeding from the top. (if you feed from the bottom already that's fine too.) Just get the pot nicely moist all the way through with nutrients.

Start slow with your nutrients but push them (increase them slightly) each and everything feeding, so that it's still in line with the canna feeding schedule. What I mean by that is you'll see in the feeding schedule it might say for example... week one give 1 ml per litre, week three give 2 ml per litre, week five give 3 ml per litre. Well from week one I would start feeding 1 ml per litre but slowly increase it each time so when you are at week three you are at 2ml per litre. If you can make the increases gradually each time it's better for the plants growth. You can actually give it more nutrients this way.

I have experience with Coco by the way Green Bandit. I was using it for the past year or so with my Autopots. But just switched to Plagron Lightmix for the craic (the fun / laughs) and uses TaNgs schedule too see if I could tweak that setup to be any more successful.

It seems that the plants did seem to grow quicker and bigger when I was using the coco, so far. However I haven't dialled in TaNg schedule to my rooms' requirements yet. It seems to be underfed for my room. So that could have something to do with it. I'll stick to Plagron Lightmix for the next 3-4 cycles until I have it dialled in and make my decision do I stick with it or go back to coco after that.

The problem here is that I use RO water and I found that Canna Coco nutrients weren't good enough for my RO water, so I was adding Canna mono nutrient line, Calcium, Magnesium, but then I was getting Iron deficiencies (which I never had before I started using RO water) so I ditched that and switched to Plant Magic Magne-cal Plus and never looked back.

SlimJim did you tell us the background EC of your water? That would be good to know. Also what's pH are you thinking of feeding them at? I found 6.0 worked best.

Also what coco are you using? I found Canna Coco Professional Plus was the best.
 
As always, thank you for the quick response....EC of water is .2 and I am feeding them at 6.0 ph. I have to check the brand of Coco if i didn't throw it away the bag it was in...
I am not sure when to feed them nutes..Every day? Every other day? Water in between? Water till I see some runoff? Water with nutes until runoff? I did some searching but I get all different responses...I know I have to dial in my own setup but some direction would be great! Thanks again
 
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