What Are Your Growing Mistakes, Big And Small?

Sick Plants & Problems
#1

Sometimes it’s hard to come into a community as awesome as this one and see how successful and smart people are growing - so lets give it up and hear the other side: Who’s screwing up right now?! What did you DO!?! It’s RUIIINED! :hot_face: :sob: :nauseated_face: :face_vomiting:

… but how did you mess it up? what happened?

I saw a quote from the heroic @DougDawson recently which boiled down to “sometimes, sh*t happens and it doesn’t go perfectly.” What is going or has gone imperfectly for you in your grows?

I’ve been screwing up since I started, and it has been teaching me a lot. Early on, I sprayed neem when the lights were full blast or in the sun.

NOPE.

One time, I got a pack of unlabeled fertilizer that was an unusual, somewhat heterogenously colored and irregular powder. The idea was it was for aquarium plants and like all good things, was received from a guy with a weird name who got it from a guy withOUT a name. I tried using as little of a concentration as possible, but I completely wilted and fried some plants. Whatever it was, it wasnt good - maybe it was saltwater aquarium nutes lol…

One time, I stuck a landrace sativa in a tiny veg tent. Kept putting off moving it, upgrading it… and it kept stretching, and stretching, and eventually i had some ungodly untamable monster harassing my light hangers and threatening the good order of a mylar box. Remember to train early and train often! Sativas take no prisoners!

What’s (not) good with you?

12 Likes
#2

I have made many. The biggest fail was spraying pyrethrins during flower to kill white flies. It worked. It was fine. But it tasted like failure.

10 Likes
#3

Bleeeeeech, who doesn’t love a nice touch of petroleum hydrocarbon distillate in their Lemon Pound Cake? Those pyrethrins are serious stuff.

1 Like
#4

Yeah it was gross.

I’ve had a similar sativa issue to the one you mention. Fortunately I had trained it to multiple tops so after it stretched 5x I cut off the ones I couldn’t keep away from the lights and built a stadium style canopy. Less of a fail and more of a good save.

5 Likes
#5

My first indoor grow, everything was going (and growing) according to plan when i made my biggest mistake EVER!

Wanted to add some organic type compost at the same time my wife was getting manure for the outdoor garden from a local farmer, so i added some “aged horse manure” to my pots.

Little did i know that many of these farmers add lime to their fresher horse manure to cut the smell and then pass this off to gardners as “aged”.

The lime totally fucked up the PH of my soil, which did a number on my plants, and it wasn’t #1.

Also, since what goes in one end of a horse comes out the other end quite intact, i had bugs from the eggs laid on the hay the horse ate and the obviously still quite fresh manure.

Black flies, horse flies, deer flies, regular flies by the dozen, thrips, mosquitos, aphids and of course spider mites…i got 'em all at the same time.

I spent hours every day for weeks on end combatting the pests that had invaded my space, spending larger and larger amounts of money on bug killers and predatory insects that didn’t work well enough or fast enough and only made my already sad looking plants even sadder.

I ended up binning the entire run about two weeks before what i’d imagined my harvest date would have been and had real thoughts of giving up the idea of indoor growing all together.

So kids, don’t be dumb like me.

Never EVER use horse manure you get from a local farmer.

13 Likes
#6
  • Using iron anode/cathode to electrify roots.
  • Trying for the first time aeroponic with a tap water between 9 and 12 PH
  • Building a NFT line in a garage with 5°c/41°f as higher temp
  • Collect landraces over to decently work only one.
  • Hardly inbred a BX3
  • Torching gnats in plastic pots
  • Being jealous of the guys growing in clay balls, because they buy their medium one time for good.
  • Using an industrial 1Kw MH in a 1sqm/~3sqf closet, in plain summer
  • Overfert seeded females with cheap nutrients, under low density of light
  • Thinking that an aging motherplant is a secure genetic vault
  • Using zyms
  • Thinking that a finely regulated AC is overkill to produce fem seeds
  • Trimming and drying all strains the same way
  • Considering the negative pressure of a space, without considering the static pressure of the whole room then the house (recent ^^)
  • …and so much more
13 Likes
#7

They really need a “mind blown” emoji

Thanks for sharing

3 Likes
#8

This is fantastic topic btw

1 Like
#9

:exploding_head:

3 Likes
#10

Took in cuts I didn’t quarantine . Been fighting mites like 9 months :see_no_evil:

9 Likes
#11

I did DWC in a 2x2 and ended up with a fuck tonne of fully popcorn. :man_shrugging:

Another time I decided it was a good idea to bring an outdoor plant indoors in fall… then for the rest of the winter I was battling PM :man_facepalming:

5 Likes
#12

Too much light (not enough stretch & burned leaves) and too much water. Classic rookie errors and I’m still making them lol.

3 Likes
#13

Had family health problems 15-18 yrs. ago and my mistake was letting my clone only strains die off…

3 Likes
#14

not teaching more ppl how to grow correctly in my lifetime…my personality gets in the way and its my biggest downfall!!!:eyes::blush:

5 Likes
#15

Trying to get someone to water when you’re away is hard. You gotta tell em about the zipper and velcro, and how slow to water, which days get nutes, or water only… I always get super long winded and end up talking about the drunk guy that climbed the big fence at the raceway or some shit and how it relates to cannabis, lol.

Then at the end of it all, something came up for them two days in a row, and your plants are on deaths door. And then they won’t understand why.

5 Likes
#16

Just had a hiccup with my first indoor in awhile. Had my light turned up to keep the temps where I was happy in my tent but had the light too low and it was almost too much for my seedlings. One poor little guy almost lost all green before I realized my issue, turned the light down and raised it up some more. Now a few days later everyone’s doing much better and getting back on track. Thought I could use the old back of the hand trick but these new led’s are deceiving with how strong they are.

5 Likes
#17

Yep, I’m scared to even try mine at 100 %

It’s like fucking laser beams coming out lol

Circling back to letting others water, i now turn my light down when I leave town to mitigate any hiccups in my absence

5 Likes
#18

The one I’m using in my 4x4 is only 480 watts. Had it up all the way and like 3ft away maybe more and it was too much lol gave everyone a feed and adjusted things a bit and had a complete turn around. Even the one straggler that went totally yellow that I was gonna pluck and just start fresh with is doing much better.

4 Likes
#19

I’m now firmly think that true LED strains should be developed, on purpose i mean. Catalogs that can handle the major 500-700W arrays full throttle. It’s not even hard in term of selection, it’s just acclimatization.

Light intensity was never a problem for cannabis with all others lights, to the most stupid KW per square (feet/meter).

4 Likes
#20

I had loads of problems with hids. Mostly electrical (tripping shite breakers in dumpy apartments, lol) and heat. Leds have issues too, like we’re talking about
I’m ok with leds, and hid, just two different beasts. As long as you get good weed, I’m for it. Right now I’m looking forward to the ol hid in the sky :grin:

3 Likes