hey everyone how are things

its getting close to xmas now hope santy brings somthing nice to u all

anyway lets get on with it

last time i was here i was about twelve days in and things were going great in my first hydro system which i am more and more impressed at how simple it is, with the right advice hydro is the easiest way to grow (saying that i am only three weeks in)but so far the maintainance has been minimal compared to soil grows

the holland secret nutes i use have a week by week program which makes it so easy my plants seem to love it and u can be sure if they did ent like it they would let me know in no uncertain terms.

well since last time i watched my plants,six out of the ten took off straight away the other four were much slower.
two of my cuttings had quiet a bit of flowers on them and at the time it slightly worried me that they might not have taken so i started with one of them to try and get some of the flowers off the cutting and as gentle as i thought i was i ended up pulling it up i saw no roots so i thought it was dead but when i pulled up it s peat pellet i found a few long rootz stickin out so to say the least i was not happy but live and learn

out of the other nine five are getting very big while the other four took longer to take properly and it probably has a lot to do with the strains

i have also taken the bottom branches from the plants i supose my logic is less branches that wont get the light the more energy goes to the higher parts of the plant that get light

anyway that has been the last ten days and on to the next . i change the resovoir every ten days due to my nutes program which is an eight week program but my plants are a twelve to fourteen week flower so it will get my eight week program up to about twelve weeks

so for the imfamous question is hydro faster then soiland now for some pics029.jpg

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Lookin' good there cuckoo. One thing you may want to think on is overcrowding (see my signature). I started my plants about that close together hoping to weed the males out before they got too big, but things got out of hand quickly with the whole rapid growth hydroponics thing. If you plan on transplanting them then I guess it'll be alright. I'm on my first hydro grow and definitely impressed with the results.

Do you add water or diluted nutes in beteween res. changes with holland secret? My little plants are sucking up like a gallon a day between the 6 of them so I've been alternating water and watered-down nutes or I'd be changing the res every 3 days. I've seen alot of debate on this but no real answers. They seem to like the way I'm doing it now, a few times I've noticed a mini growth spurt when I added the nutes.

Anyway keep up the good work!

__________________
Burning down the house since 1981.

My First Indoor Grow!

well plusextra

thanks for the tips
over the last week or so i have been thinking on the over crowding issue u are deffinately right way to close
now if u look at the pictures all the big plants(purely by accident)have ended up at either end leaving all the small ones in the middle but i suppose they wont stay small for ever all the cuttings are different strains so getting rid of one or two is a last resort
what would be the problems caused by overcrowding

next week ill be investing in an ec tester because at the moment i have no idea what the ec is
my resovoir is a fifty litre tank last week i put in fourty l and it lasted six days before a top up(with no extra nutes)an ec tester should give me better info

do u think another ten days in veg is ok

As long as you have the space for them to grow, then you can keep them in veg as long as you like. Mine have been in veg for about 5 weeks and I just put them in 12/12, they looked just like yours at the same age and now they're about 8-14 inches tall and 8-16 inches wide.

Some of the bad things that can happen with overcrowding, especially with hydro where you have water evaporating all the time, is mold. Where a few leaves are bunched up and there's no airflow between them, it starts to get all wet in there. It looks like they're sweating. This can very quickly lead to mold and other bad stuff. Once you get mold in a bud you are in big trouble and must perform surgery on your plant. I've never had it happen myself, so I don't feel I have the experience to tell you how close is too close. Also the amount of air you've got circulating makes a big difference.



There are two things to remember when putting your plants into flowering.

1)They will double or triple in height by the time you're done. First they'll slow down growth and start getting less blades per leaf, then they'll start shooting up pretty fast.

2)It is best to wait until the plants are sexually mature before flowering them, even though you can do it beforehand this may lead to hermies/mutations. Sexually mature means waiting until the branches start alternating like stairs instead of looking like a ladder, which should be happening in a couple of weeks at the rate you're growing. (it also depends on what type of light you're getting to them, alot of reddish light is believed to cause plants to begin this transformation earlier.

I don't think you have anything to worry about as long as you're prepared to make room if needed. Just be ready for them to get alot bigger is all I'm saying. Good luck, I'll be watching.

__________________
Burning down the house since 1981.

My First Indoor Grow!