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Establishing your plants

This is the formative stage of your plants, where you have cloned a cutting from the parent plant, or planted a seed, and begun the growth process.When a plant is at this stage, it is at its most fragile. Your plant is just realizing its potential, and is vulnerable to excesses in its enviroment.

Rooted cuttings and seedlings are generally fed a mild (1/3 strength : 300-400 PPM ) flowering food mix while under fluorescent lamps. Soft light and mild nutrients ensure that your young plants are not burned out. Thid nutrient formula encourages good, early root growth, while the low nitrogen / low light levels provided by the fluorescent tubes keep top growth compact. Under these conditions, your plants will manufacture a strong, healthy formative root system, and develop a thick, sturdy stalk.

When your young plants have developed their first couple of leaves and are ready to be moved to green-growth conditions, switch to a mild (700-900 PPM ) green - growth fertilizer  mix. The increased light spectrum, stronger nutrient and increased air flow will encourage the plant to expand to fill its new enviroment. Your crops will become established during this stage as they grow accustomed to their new growing conditions.

As they mature, slowly increase the food strength up to full strength green - growth mixture ( 1400 PPM ) . A larger plant requires more nutrient to fuel it. At this point, your plants have graduated from transition to full green - growth stage. This period of development generally requires seven to ten days for plants to fully realize their potential and acclimate themselves to their new growing conditions.

A plant formative stage is like a childs formative years. They use this time to strengthen themselves, learn their enviroment and become adept at functioning within it. Managing this stage well can ansure a healthy, happy plant.  

PROGRESSING TO GREEN - GROWTH.

 Your crop has fluorished through a healthy initial transition stage, and has become established. The enviroment should now be available to the plant at 100% eficiency, in the form of full light levels, full strength air flow through the crops and full strength nutrient solution ( 1400 - 1800 PPM ).Stable growing conbitions such as temperatures, pH and crop spacing have been addressed and new root and shoot growth is progressing.

Also, the healthy, balanced enviroment you have provided your crops should ensure that your plants are pest and disease free.

It is now time to evaluate your nutrient strength levels, as increasing food strength may result in fuller, faster growth. This has two benefits to you, the grower :

1) Faster Green - Growth Stage (crops reach "target " size sooner )

2) Potential for greater crop yield later

              But, before increasing the food strength available to your crop, ensure your garden will benefit from these higher levels. An overly- rich nutrient level can damage your crop. There are some tricks that you can tweak in other areas of your garden to help support the introduction of a higher food strength. Provide higher light levels (1000w per 32 sq ft / 3 square metres ) Ensure proper ventilation and increased airflow through the plant mass. Regulate your temperature. Above ground zero, keep it moderate, (30 celcius / 85 farenheit ) during the light cycle, (21 celcius / 70 farenheit ) during the dark cycle. A regulated temperature in the root zone is also key. Try to keep it between 21 celcius/ 70 farenheit for 24hrs a day.

Keep monitoring the growing conditions, keeping an aye on pest or disease.

Ensuring the optimum conditions discussed earlier help eliminate these intrusion into your garden, but accidents can happen. Also, introducing regukar applications of a growth mix or booster treatments could prove beneficial at this stage and CO2 enrichment may also be an option to explore. If you have not altered any of these enviromental boosters to your plants, do NOT increase the food strength. Your plant requires all of these factors to be operating at peak efficiency or it cannot process a greater food strength. And if you introduce greater food strengths to a crop that cannot process it, the end result will be the magnification of any problems in your garden.

Modifying your food strength should always be introduced only once your crops have become fully established in their green - growth stage. You should introduce gradual increases in the strength of your nutrient, so that you do not stress your plant; an additional 200 PPM increase very two or tree days should suffice. During this strengthening phase, watch your crops closely. If your plants show any signs of stress whatsoever, reduce the food strength immediately. It is always better to catch any problem early, as recovery is more easily accomplished.

The maximum food strength of your nutrients depends on the type of crop you are harvesting and the enviroment you have supplied. If you have maximized your enviroment by introducing and increasing all of the factors discussed earlier, fast growing crops can easily adjust to gradually introduced nutrient - rich mixtures. If your chosen medium is a Sunshine mix or potting soil, you can achieve an ultimate nutrient strength of up to 2100 PPM. Should you be using rockwool hydrocorn or comparable product you can achieve a nutrient strength of 2300 PPM.

GREEN-GROWTH TO FLOWERING STAGE.   

This is where some of the growth output of your plant shifts from vertical lift, stability and root structure to the production of flowers. There are some adjustments you may make to your lighting and your nutrient during this stage to maximise your yield. It is especially important to change the nutrient mixture of your food if you are harvesting a short - day crop plant, where the day length has been reduced from 18 to 12 hours. These plants tend to "stretch" during this transition stage and this elongated, spindly growth can comlicate plant spacing and create crowding and heat problems later. Another nasty by-product of a plant with sindly stalks and tiny leaves is a susceptibility to pests and disease. To avoid these unecessary problems, adjust your nutrient solution by lowering the total strength by about 200-400 PPM to balance it out. Also, you should lower your nitrogen levels until flowers start to appear. These two modifications will help keep your plants sturdy and compact through the transition stage.

FLOWERING AND CROP PRODUCTION STAGE  

This is the beginning of the crop production for your garden. Once you start to notice flowers appearing, all of your hard work is beginning to bear fruit (please excuse the pun ). The appearance of these flowers signals the end of secondary transition stage and the beginning of the production stage. Be proud parents, your little ones have graduated and are ready to get a job.

At this point, gradually increase food strength again to the levels prevalent in the green-growth stage. You can use the guidelines there to keep a healthy level.

Again, just like in prior stage, monitor your crops closely for stress during the adjustment. And, as always, maintain the healthy, productive growing conditions your plants have been thriving under to this point. One small change you may want to institute is lowering your temperatures slightly. during the light cycle, keep the temperatures at 24 celcius / 80 farenheit and during the dark cycle, drop it to about

18-20 celcius/ 60-68 farenheit above ground zero. Adjust the root zone temperature to reflect 21 celcius / 70 farenheit, 24 hrs a day.

If you went the extra mile during the green-growth stage and introduced all of the enviromental boosters to strengthen the nutrient mixture, feel free to do the same here. If during the green-growth stage, your plants thrived with the strong nutrient mixture, now is another time you can apply that boost. Simply match the PPM strength of the flowering mixture to the PPM strength of the green-growth mixture that exhibited the optimum results.As you begin to notice growth slowing up near the ens of the flowering stage, lower the strength of the nutrient mix to compensate.

Your plants have now realized their entire growth cycle. All that is left now is to harvest the fruits, or vegetables, of your labour. Maintain a healthy enviroment through these last periods of your crop`s growth, and monitor their stems, leaves and roots for any negative signs. Vigilancs, perseverance and hard work can build an amazing garden, but don`t forget that like so many other areas of your life, indoor gardening is a learn-while-you-go experience. If one "experiment" fails, you have learned what not to do. Simply start over and apply this new knowledge to make sure the mistake doesn`t reappear.

Hardly anyone will have a resounding successwith their first crop, but by the time they are harvesting their tenth it ia all old hat. Roll up your sleeves, dig in and learn.

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Head Gardener
Unit 11, Barton Business Park, 60 Cawdor Street, Eccles, Manchester, M30 0QR, United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0) 161 707 9860             Fax: +44 (0) 161 950 1110

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