How long on average does it take a plant to recover from a stressful event and start growing again?

My whole indoor experience has been horrible so far, and i'm bout ready to just go back and buy my pot off the streets ... but cant justify killing sick plants.

I started my first indoor grow in a crap coco slab w/ some organic components .. and this was a disaster, so I repotted to a compost based soilless mix (I know this makes no sense , its sphaggnum peat, peat hummus ... compost from shrimp/bark, etc.)

I was hoping that in about a week or so i'd start to see my plants getting better, but their just getting worse.

They either aren't growing AT ALL, or every newly grown leaf turns yellow hours after i've first seen it. (Im into day 23 after they've sprouted, and they are tiny, sickly looking plants)

So yeah, im assuming now they are in a good medium, but how long will it take before they start to recover?

Can someone PLEASE help me? The experts on here seem to help everyone else, yet most of my pleas for help have gone unanswered unless I beg and beg for help, so PLEASE i'm begging you. And don't ask for pics, they've already been posted in one of the like 5 or 6 threads ive made trying to get help which has had no reply. I may be a scientist and all, but I aint a horticulturist, and now im so fucking lost, frustrated, confused, and pissed at this whole experience.

I really don't want to go back to buying street weed ...

Just get some decent potting compost, and re-pot into that. Rinse the roots in clean clear water, and start over
Or start again with fresh plants in decent compost.
Keep it nice and simple. Plants - compost - light - air - water - gentle feeds when needed. Job's a good'un
I suspect that, being a scientist, you may be over-complicating things?
Your current compost sounds over the top IMHO, and is probably burning the bejaysus outta your poor li'l seedlings try a "seedling and cuttings compost".

Thanks arnold :/

The compost i'm using right now is generally regarded as the best organic growing medium in North America. Its called Pro-Mix by premier, and i've made a thread about it, people in that thread told me that it was actually LOW in ferts (0.4-0.1-0.1) and that i'd have to start feeding it sooner.

I bought it and repotted my plants for the same reason you stated, to get a fresh start ... but this seems to have done nothing.

Yer absolutely right, i've way overcomplicated things such that my mind is in such a tizzy right now I have no clue whats going on. Its a culmination of things I just don't understand.

For eg. I have NO idea when to water in this compost mix, it was wet when I purchased it, and its still wet (9 days later).

I also don't know when to feed, or how much to feed (aka I don't have a clue what to look for in terms of deficiencies or burns).

I started out with hydro cuz I figured I could control all these things, I mean its 'practically' impossible to overwater coco, and it was very easy to tell when to water as it would just dry out (this compost hasn't dried in the least), and in terms of ferts I figured all i'd need to do is add them such that the drain EC for seedlings is ~1.0 and for vegging plants is ~1.5-1.7 ... things didn't work out as such.

You compost is wet and you haven't watered for 9 days ?
How big are your pots ?

Hi Hitech,
sorry you are having such problems mate.I thought as Arnie did that your compo is too hot but you saying it came wet and still is is a bit strange.

Can you get some pics up?

I will take some more up to date pics in a bit (now that someone has actually responded to my pleas) but they look about the same as the pics I posted in my other thread, except the plant has obviously grown more then its first set of leaves as shown in the pics i've posted.


And PS, forgive my 'frustration', I mean nothing against anyone on these boards, I mean you're helping ppl for free, and because you want to, I respect that ... i'm just REALLY frustrated right now, so much so that I havn't germ'ed the 5 more seeds that I have because I currently feel I am incapable of growing a plant (any plant for that matter).

My pots are 3gallon grow bags

I don't know this mix, so cannot comment. That it is wet after 9 days worries me - sounds like it was badly stored. Pre-packaged compost should be moist, not wet, and should dry after around 3 - 5 days in the pot with plants. But that it is still wet accounts, I think, for your plants' poor performance. Get some simple, ready to use, ordinary garden potting compost. Forget the organic mallarky for now and get your growing under control.
Ordinary multi-purpose potting compost should be dirt cheap at your local garden Centre, and at this time of year should be well fresh. Avoid buying from GC's that store their compost without shelter - this is what gets it sodden, when its rained on and all the goodness gets washed out too)


Water when the compost dries, but don't let it get to the point where the plant wilts. Water it till you get water flowing out the bottom, and wait half an hour. If the overflow has been re-absorbed, more water. If not - throw out the excess. Then wait till compost is almost dry again before watering further. Usually I water every 3 or 4 days in 6.5L post, which take 1.5L each watering But see above - I don't trust that sodden compost of yours.
Feeding should not be an issue till flowering has commenced. That's a bridge to be crossed when you get to it

I think that's your problem mate as if that is soaked in water,the size of the plant(s) means that they can't effectively reduce the overall water content of such a large amount of compost so effectively you are semi drowning your plants.

Wait for others to comment but I think it's a case of repotting in much smaller pots.


Edit:As per Arnies post Hitech,therein lies the problem.

For wee seedlings?
No-oooooooooooo!
Get them out of there and into small, and I mean small, pots. Let them fill those pots with roots and when they have, pot up into a medium-small pots. Pot up in stages until you reach the final pot, then 12/12.
No wander the compost is still wet - not roots to drink the water, and all in a plaggy bag and sweatying to hell and back - turning the copmpost sour in all likelihood.

Yeah I guess its a matter of symantics , it came 'moist', not dripping wet. After I potted them I gave them some water, but yeah, in the 9 days since, they remain about as moist as they always were. I have one of those cheap moisture sensing things, the top third of the soil it shows as being in the middle (aka adaquately moist), but if i put the probe deeper it jumps right up to like completely saturated .

The soil I bought was not sheltered, I had never thought about this, they just sit on pallets out in the open (in fact I could prolly go steal a whole pallet late at night thats how little security this store seems to have ).

Absolutely appalling practice. Avoid like the plague. Any GC doing this is simply not worth giving money to. This is no doubt why the core of the compost is still "saturated"

I guess that was kinda stupid on my part, potting from small pots (you can see their size in my pics in the other thread) to 3 gallon pots, hah.

I'll go buy some potting compost (I thought that most soils were shit, unless you knew exactly what you're buying ... I guess .. i'm wrong?)

When I repotted though, the roots had grown straight down laterally and basically formed this compact flat mess of roots at the bottom of my pot, should I get deeper pots I guess?

I also just found a local Canna Coco retailer (and in my own extremely small town at that, unbelievable), so i'm going to be making a trip out to the hydro store, should I buy some root stimulator? Like Bio-bizz'es Root Juice?

Damn i'm a noob

And yeah, its not a GC , its a hardware store (Rona), they just happen to be the only local store to carry Pro-Mix, and I will not use any other brand of soil (unless I move to the UK ... which i'm not ). Not having a car (and not having any friends either), has made the practice of obtaining medium for growth not such an easy task, or else i'd just go to Toronto (30 min drive from me ), where I could find practically anythnig that the north american market sells (unfortunately JI, B&Q and the like are not sold in this continent :/)

No.
Don't pot up till you see a dense rootball formed throughout the whole compost.


If you want to waste money, feel free. But TBH, I just buy whatever product is best from the local GC, although root-stims I rarely use, cant see the need. A bog-standard Seaweed Extract is just as good (and that's prob all you'd get in a "Root-Juice" type product anyway). Firms like BioBizz just add premium prices because they know Cannabis Growers tend to be non-gardeners who can be fleeeced and made to think they need to buy "Cannabis Specific" products. Bollocks they do!
Use your local Garden Centre (but not the one that stores its compost in the open)! After all, you are growing plants. Do you need a specific store for tulip growing, or rose growing? No! So why on earth folks think they need a Cannabis specific grow-shop I'll never know (except for things like lights and extraction, I suppose).

Ah, i'm only gonna grab the Canna Coco because I know it, and this store wont be here for long. Canada and the US have very little regard for Canna because of its ties to Cannabis cultivation, so when you see their stuff ... you buy it (well since day one when I wanted to use coco I had wanted to use Canna and its coco A+B mix ... but Canna Coco was non-existant. Almost busted a nut seeing a. a hydroponics store in my tiny town b. they carry a complete line of Canna products.

I never bought root juice for the reason you just stated, it seemed like a waste and them just trying to take my money. I DID buy Bio-Bizz Alg-A-Mic though (its seaweed based, and i've used it twice now, in a light foliar spraying, hoping to somehow magically rejuvinate my sickly plants, i dunno.
I bought it cuz BioBizz site says its needed in the feeding regime using their products in Coco.

And Bio-Bizz nutes are actually real cheap here, like $5 (CDN) for 1L of Bio-Bloom, seems reasonable to me heh (and ppl on this forum seem to rave about their nutrients).

I've just been trying to seek out a good hydroponics store, not cannabis growing store, heh.

And thank you all so much for replying to this thread so promptly, I do appreciate it, and appoligize for my lil hissy fit there, i'm calming down a bit now (still have no faith in my ability to grow plants, but meh, we'll see).

If theres one word to describe my entrance into indoor growing, it would be ARROGANCE.

I figured since I grow organisms all day every day that plants would be simple to grow. I was very wrong!

And about the watering, thank you for answering a question i felt too stupid to ask. I wasn't sure if pouring water into my plants until it starts coming out the holes would drown my plant, so I watered it for the first time liberally (in coco i let it pour out the holes of course, as I was trying to monitor its EC)