Stumpy Autos - is my light too close? DLI, PPFDDLI

[green_machine]

Hey mate, I had a look through your diary and I have some thoughts on your current grow and the stunted plants.

While it is possible for too much light to cause stunted plants I am not sure this is the sole cause in this instance, although it might have been a contributory factor.

There were 3 areas I saw in your diary that was causing me concern.

 

1)      Nutrients – The first thing that really struck me as I was going through your diary was on day 12 when you started feeding the plants. If that feed was anything other than a seaweed solution you were feeding too early. You can tell this by looking at the size of the plants and the volume of compost you have, there is no chance a little baby plant like that had rooted out that 12l bucket, and so there should have been more than enough feed to get you through the first 4-6 weeks (depending on environmental conditions). It is well established that overnutrition at early stages can lead to stunted plants as well. To give you a comparison, I just have put some clones into 2l pots, and they were fine in their compost for 21 days before needing a feed.

 

2)      As a side note when talking about feed I think it is very important to be consistent on how you report your measurement. Telling us the ppm of your feed doesn’t really tell us much you would be better to keep it simple and just report your feeds as ml/l. if you did want to get fancy you would be better off reporting and recording the EC rather than the ppm levels and this would tell us more. However, since you have given us a ppm reading, I want to discuss this, as a feed of 150ppm means your water must e incredibly soft and as such, I would be prepared and expect to need a calmag supplement at some point o the grow.

 

3)      The next issue I saw occurred a couple of days later on the 14 days as you tried to train or top your plants. To my mind, I see these as small baby plants who have already gone through a bit of a shock with the feed a couple of days earlier and before they have had a chance to recover you have started stressing them again by training and topping. Again, I think this was being attempted too early and I would have waited for more growth before doing this.

 

4)      Lastly, you had the overwatering issue, where your plants were sitting in their runoff. This is a 3rd shock to the plants within the same week and although you dealt with it quickly, I think the damage had already been done by this point.

As I see it the poor start as detailed above would be more than enough to stunt any auto plants and I think these factors probably played a more significant role than having too much light in stunting your plants.

 

I would like to give you 2 examples from my own grows, the first example is from the animal biscuits in the drobe grow and was the first grow I did in my current drobe and was my first grow with LEDs.

At the time I had thought that having more light would mean I got more growth so I was constantly keeping my light as close to the plants as possible with the highest light intensity I could manage,

This led to me getting short stunted plants, but they produced insane amounts of nodes and side branches, I was seeing as many as 4-5 nodes per inch of vertical growth. This is a pic of the plants which hopefully gives you an idea of what this looks like. I came to the conclusion that this was caused by a mixture of too much light and training too early and constantly without giving the plants a chance to recover.

 

 

My current grow has also produced stunted plants and I wanted to contrast this as this one is not due to too much light but bad environmental conditions and compost that was too hot for the clones. In this second grow while the plants are stunted I didn't get the intense growth of the stunted plant, the distance between nodes was much more normal the overall -lant has just grown smaller than expected.

 

 

Hope this helps, but feel free to ask me anything if you need me to clarify.

 

atb

Greenie

 

Edited May 11, 2022 by green_machine
clicked submit rather than attach

[Wacky Wardrobe]

42 minutes ago, green_machine said:

they produced insane amounts of nodes and side branches

That was what happened to mine.

Plus zero stretch in flower.

XL genetics.

Coco production levels.

Plants were like footballs of bud!

:-)

[mysticriver]

if you've got a decent phone, I use (iPhone 8+) the photone app

it £4.95 for the led version. I use it all the time to fine-tune the par for the different growth stages: seedling; veg etc

you need to put a small piece of 80gsm paper over the front camera lens to act as a diffuser

its accurate enough (for a 5-er). migro also did a YouTube video on it

 

 

mystic

[MindSoup]

 

I don't think its your light though. 

Edited May 11, 2022 by MindSoup

[RUFUS HOUND]

4 hours ago, mysticriver said:

if you've got a decent phone, I use (iPhone 8+) the photone app

it £4.95 for the led version. I use it all the time to fine-tune the par for the different growth stages: seedling; veg etc

you need to put a small piece of 80gsm paper over the front camera lens to act as a diffuser

its accurate enough (for a 5-er). migro also did a YouTube video on it

 

 

mystic

 

Ive a P30 which supposedly has an excellent camera - I have the android version of photone which apparently doesn't need the paper hack.

[MindSoup]

I tried that whole paper trick and its bollocks every time you move the paper a mm the reading changes. Why bother with the hassle/guess work when a uni-t is literally £9 on ali express. 

Edited May 11, 2022 by MindSoup

[RUFUS HOUND]

7 hours ago, green_machine said:

Hey mate, I had a look through your diary and I have some thoughts on your current grow and the stunted plants.

While it is possible for too much light to cause stunted plants I am not sure this is the sole cause in this instance, although it might have been a contributory factor.

There were 3 areas I saw in your diary that was causing me concern.

 

1)      Nutrients – The first thing that really struck me as I was going through your diary was on day 12 when you started feeding the plants. If that feed was anything other than a seaweed solution you were feeding too early. You can tell this by looking at the size of the plants and the volume of compost you have, there is no chance a little baby plant like that had rooted out that 12l bucket, and so there should have been more than enough feed to get you through the first 4-6 weeks (depending on environmental conditions). It is well established that overnutrition at early stages can lead to stunted plants as well. To give you a comparison, I just have put some clones into 2l pots, and they were fine in their compost for 21 days before needing a feed.

 

2)      As a side note when talking about feed I think it is very important to be consistent on how you report your measurement. Telling us the ppm of your feed doesn’t really tell us much you would be better to keep it simple and just report your feeds as ml/l. if you did want to get fancy you would be better off reporting and recording the EC rather than the ppm levels and this would tell us more. However, since you have given us a ppm reading, I want to discuss this, as a feed of 150ppm means your water must e incredibly soft and as such, I would be prepared and expect to need a calmag supplement at some point o the grow.

 

3)      The next issue I saw occurred a couple of days later on the 14 days as you tried to train or top your plants. To my mind, I see these as small baby plants who have already gone through a bit of a shock with the feed a couple of days earlier and before they have had a chance to recover you have started stressing them again by training and topping. Again, I think this was being attempted too early and I would have waited for more growth before doing this.

 

4)      Lastly, you had the overwatering issue, where your plants were sitting in their runoff. This is a 3rd shock to the plants within the same week and although you dealt with it quickly, I think the damage had already been done by this point.

As I see it the poor start as detailed above would be more than enough to stunt any auto plants and I think these factors probably played a more significant role than having too much light in stunting your plants.

 

 

 

 

@green_machine much appreciated for the detailed analysis, that why I love this site and all its great members 

 

I made a few mistakes along the way but hope to learn from them, so I have a few questions and some extra info.

 

Feeding wise, do I need to feed the plant anything at all for the veg period (auto only) as it only lasts 4 to 5 weeks and like you say the compost should have enough in it for that period?

I bought myself a TDS meter as I am used to using ppm - it can be converted to EC by a simple calc as far as I know. EC doesnt give a breakdown of whats in it (neither does TDS) unfortunately.

My water is quite soft at approx 150ppm but never noticed any calcium deficiency but I have with magnesium. - hence the epsom salts.

I cant quote ml of feed Im afraid, as my neuts are not a liquid, its in granular form (chempak no.2 & 8) hence the ppm, also ml doesnt show the content of neuts in a solution.

Can you give me an idea of when to start any topping / training - wait until flowers appear ?

 

Ive got 2 of brock1's shd x guerrilla exodus auto seedlings on the go and this want this run to be as perfect as possible - so no topping, only LST, lay off the feed during veg period, dont train too early.

I will also keep my lights higher this time and keep the DLI less than 45 during flower - 1 of my boards is recommend for a 2x2 but I have 2, assumed more light the better, I didnt dream my little lights might be too close as no burn but its a bit more complicated than that.

 

[RUFUS HOUND]

45 minutes ago, MindSoup said:

I tried that whole paper trick and its bollocks every time you move the paper a mm the reading changes. Why bother with the hassle/guess work when a uni-t is literally £9 on ali express. 

do you have an android or ios

 

[MindSoup]

Android geez

[RUFUS HOUND]

you dont need the paper trick - it doesnt work on android 

[green_machine]

Hey @RUFUS HOUND

 

I thought I would reply point by point for you.

 

I made a few mistakes along the way but hope to learn from them, - We all do, I have been growing for a while I and I still make mistakes, I hope that by sharing the mistakes I make other people can learn from them.

 

Feeding wise, do I need to feed the plant anything at all for the veg period (auto only) as it only lasts 4 to 5 weeks and like you say the compost should have enough in it for that period?  - No, Probaby not, you should have more than enough nutrients in your compost to last you throughout your veg period. If your environment is really spot on and the plants are growing really quickly you might need to add a little feed towards the end but you should see signs of it to let you know.

 

Something I don't often see mentioned on here is how to tell when to feed, I think a lot foe people assume you need to wait until you start to see a yellowing of the leaves but if you are a very careful observer of your pants you will notice the growth of your plants stall when they run out of nutrients and this will be at least a week before any leaves yellow. I have always looked for this as my sign to introduce feeds in my grows.

I bought myself a TDS meter as I am used to using ppm - it can be converted to EC by a simple calc as far as I know. EC doesn't give a breakdown of whats in it (neither does TDS) unfortunately. - It's fine mate, it's not a big deal and I had sort of missed the part that said you were using the chempac nutes. But I do think it is still better to report an ec rather than a PPM, it is a bit pedantic, but in general e.c's are better for mixed solutions such as nutes (look at the hydro guys, they all talk about e.c. not ppm).

 

My water is quite soft at approx 150ppm but never noticed any calcium deficiency but I have with magnesium. - hence the epsom salts. -

If your water is registering at 150ppm on your tds meter this is an e.c of 0.15, and as I said this is very soft water. Epsom salts will help and you might have enough Ca in your water supply, I will keep an eye on your next grow man so we can see how it is going but it is worth bearing in mind that a calmag supplement might be on the cards (difficult to say as there might be enough in the soil as well) will have to judge from the plants.

 

I cant quote ml of feed Im afraid, as my neuts are not a liquid, its in granular form (chempak no.2 & 8) hence the ppm, also ml doesnt show the content of neuts in a solution. - See the response above about TDS and e.c.

 

 

Can you give me an idea of when to start any topping / training - wait until flowers appear ? - Yes, but, I saw someone had given you a link to a really great thread with a description on how to train, I will also, be about so you can always tag me and ask me something before going and doing anything, I generally get back pretty quickly. I think it will be better to show this to you as you are growing rather than try and type out an explanation, you will learn it better by seeing and doing rather than reading.

 

I will also keep my lights higher this time and keep the DLI less than 45 during flower - 1 of my boards is recommend for a 2x2 but I have 2, assumed more light the better, I didnt dream my little lights might be too close as no burn but its a bit more complicated than that. - My advice is would be to keep both lights but keep them as high as you can in the tent and turn the wattage down till you are getting around  your 45 DLI in the centre. Makes it much easier than having to move lights around constantly and will give you the best read of high-intensity light.

 

 

hth

Greenie

 

[RUFUS HOUND]

@green_machine cheers mate - your a star

 

 heres is a link to the diary - feel free to comment - good or bad.

[MindSoup]

15 hours ago, RUFUS HOUND said:

you dont need the paper trick - it doesnt work on android 

 

No but it still shows that the paper is inconsistent and thus the paper trick is inaccurate.

Edited May 12, 2022 by MindSoup

[mysticriver]

19 hours ago, MindSoup said:

I tried that whole paper trick and its bollocks every time you move the paper a mm the reading changes.

now then, that doesn't happen, I do not know the world you speak of, as my small piece of 80gsm is affixed with small sellotape 

"but it still shows that the paper is inconsistent"

-no it doesn't 

 

 

mystic

[mysticriver]

17 hours ago, RUFUS HOUND said:

you dont need the paper trick - it doesnt work on android 

the app itself tells you how to do it, the notification should come up if you need to do it or not it will tell you "diffuser required"

 

 

mystic

Edited May 12, 2022 by mysticriver