Cannabis Nutrient Deficiencies? Pests? Diseases?
An easier and faster way to diagnose your cannabis plants when symptoms first appear!
An easier and faster way to diagnose your cannabis plants when symptoms first appear!
by Admin | Nov 24, 2024
Nutrients, genetics, & grow mediums are all important parts of well-grown cannabis plants, but arguably nothing is more important than the environment it's grown in!
When you take the time to understand not just the plant, but your growing environment, you will create ideal conditions that will leave you with a great product, maximizing terpenes and trichomes while minimizing stress to yourself AND your cannabis plants.
When growing indoors, as simple as it may sound, we can’t forget that their natural habitat is the outdoors. Our goal is to recreate the natural environment for plants as closely as we can. The basics for establishing your environment for a grow tent are broken down in this article to help you maximize your cannabis yield.
It doesn’t take luck or prayers to yield unbelievable cannabis plants, it just takes planning, scheduling, and record keeping.
It’s like the old saying goes, “when you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.
No matter what experience you have growing, creating the ideal grow room for your cannabis plants will make you feel as if you’re a natural grower with the greenest of thumbs when it comes time to harvest your plant.
It doesn’t matter what kind of growing medium you are using, when growing indoors, you always want to be mindful of;
pH Level
Watering
Nutrients
Airflow
Temperature
Humidity Levels
Lighting
When you are paying attention to the needs and condition your plants are in, you invite favorable growing conditions with delicious results.
You don’t need state-of-the-art equipment. While it may be helpful for your indoor grow room, it is not necessarily helpful for your wallet.
If you want to produce substantial yields, these must-have equipment are beneficial for every indoor grow room.
These include:
Dehumidifier
Humidifier
Light Timers
You can even save yourself the time of getting all the pieces individually when you invest in a grow tent kit.
Use code: GROWDOC on these sites to receive a nice discount!
Just like us, cannabis plants like a comfortable temperature. Nothing too hot, nothing too cold but something just right.
Different stages of growing will require different temperatures for ideal growth. Without a doubt, controlling your temperature is PIVOTAL for the growth of your cannabis plant.
When the temperature is too hot, you leave your plants susceptible to
Curled leaves
Restricted Bud Growth
Spider Mites
Powdery Mildew
Root Rot
Nutrient Burn
Nutrient Uptake
If your temperature is too cold, anything below 60℉, you run the risk of freezing your plant & damaging your roots. If this is not caught just in time, your roots will be permanently damaged, your plant will die and force you to start over.
When you are germinating seeds, this stage allows you the most wiggle room to try out different temperatures, between 70 - 85℉ or 20-29°C
Once your seedling is ready to start the vegetation process, you will want to keep your temperature around 78℉ or 25°C. You will maintain this temperature if you are starting from a clone instead of a seedling.
After you’ve completed the growing process and are ready to begin flowering, you will want to bring your temperature down to 64℉ or 18°C
Temperature varies throughout the plant's life. Learn more through the VPD Chart later on this blog.
Having inconsistent and wrong temperatures can signal to your plant the end of the veg cycle and may initiate flowering prematurely.
In addition to early flowering, your trichome production may be affected, growth will diminish and a variety of symptoms could begin to show on your leaves.
Raising lights, adding more fans, air conditioner, floor heater are all ways to adjust the temperature in your grow tent.
Inconsistent levels of relative humidity can not only threaten the livelihood of your plant but may also ruin your entire plant if left unchecked.
The humidity needs of your plant will vary depending on the stage of growth it is in.
Too little humidity will cause unwanted stress for your plant while too much can promote mold growth.
When your clone is in the process of establishing roots, humidity levels should be up to 95%. Because there are no roots yet, your plant will be receiving its moisture through its leaves through the openings in the stomata.
As your plant begins to root and enter it’s veg stage, it’s time to bring your rH levels down to around 60%.
Once you enter the flowering stage, your humidity levels are ready to drop down to 30-45%. It’s during this stage that will help promote the production of trichomes as well as terpenes.
With the help of such tools as the IR thermometer and hygrometer, figuring out where your humidity levels are will never be guesswork.
To get as accurate of a reading as possible, check the levels around your plant by keeping the probe near the plant itself instead of the room as a whole.
You can have a humidifier, dehumidifier, stronger inline fans, even adding a plastic cup over a seedling to create a dome effect, are all things you can do to adjust humidity.
Plants love oxygen and keeping them oxygenated is just as vital as making sure your cannabis plant receives the proper nutrients, light, and humidity levels.
With proper, gentle, airflow, you will create an environment that encourages
Breathing room for the leaves (which helps with photosynthesis).
Strength development (especially in the stem) due to the resistance created from the air against the plant.
Regulated humidity levels.
Prevention of Bud and Root Rot as well as mold in general.
Maximizes carbon dioxide uptake.
To enhance these benefits of airflow, you do not need to maximize the speed of airflow. All you need is a gentle breeze, something to help move the leaves and create that circulation of air, especially in your indoor grow tent.
Oscillating fans are perfect to use to create this gentle breeze while also preventing windburn.
Once you have your airflow circulating, you can further promote clean air when you use an extractor fan. This fan will help pull out any moisture or pollutant like dust and odor.
In order to determine what size extractor fan to use, you will need to calculate the volume of your indoor grow tent.
Calculate the volume by:
Length x width x height
Once you know the volume of your tent, you can then determine just how much space your exhaust fan will be working with.
The amount of air you need determines your CFM (cubic feet per minute). This is just the amount of space that is treated with the exhaust fan.
CFM can be higher than the actual volume size you need, but using a fan with a lower CFM will level your humidity levels unbalanced and will require more maintenance and attention.
Learn even more about CFM with AC Infinity here.
VPD brings all these elements together. Because your cannabis leaves can only hold so much moisture in them before being released as liquid vapors and back into the air, paying attention to your VPD will help you determine your plant's stress level.
Despite the word deficient being synonymous with lacking, when dealing with VPD, it is anything but marred and does not have to be stressful.
Vapor pressure deficient, VPD, is a greenhouse metric that combines the temperature of the air and leaves and the relative humidity (rH) into a unit of pressure. This equation (VP stat) takes the overall environment into consideration so that you can find out what the best growing needs are for your cannabis plant.
With this equation, you are able to determine the difference between saturation vapor pressure inside your leaves and the vapor pressure of your overall grow tent.
You do not need to be a math wiz to calculate your VP stat. With the help of a VPD Chart & calculator, you can easily find out what your VPD is, and where it’s supposed to be!
When it comes to the amount and the intensity of light, just like the temperature and humidity levels change during different stages of your growing, so will your lights.
Different lights work better for different types of strains and at different growing stages.
While picking out your lights, as tempting as it is to spring for the highest wattage available, that is not always ideal.
More wattage does create more lumens which will promote growth, but those extra lumens will generate more heat.
The more heat you have, the more adjustments you’ll be making to maintain your cannabis plant and growing environment of your grow tent.
Knowing how many plants you want to grow will help you determine just what kind of light will serve you best, but overall, LEDs are favored because they are
Affordable
Highly efficient
Consume less energy
Use of both blue and red spectrums
Overall, using a dimmer switch will help you control the intensity of your lights, and in turn your temperature, throughout your growing.
Using an automated system or controller is great, but if you are unable to use one, using a timer works just as well.
When you are experimenting with what works best for your plants and indoor grow room or grow tent, alter one variable at a time. If your plant has any adverse side effects or does something that you like, it will be easier to determine what caused this change if you make one change at a time instead of multiple changes at the same time.
If you’re worried about the dank smell of terpenes from your indoor grow tent, you can combat it with the use of an active carbon filter. With the use of this filter, any fears you have about just how smelly your plants will get will be stamped out.
Keeping and maintaining an environment that is healthy for your cannabis plants will enrich your growing experience and provide protection for your plants against a plethora of ailments.
.png)
