Whether it’s your first plant or something you’ve been doing for a while, there’s usually one moment that stands out the point where things didn’t quite go to plan.
This thread is about that.
What’s been your biggest challenge so far when growing?
It could be getting seeds to germinate.
Understanding watering.
Dialling in light and environment.
Or figuring out what your plant is trying to tell you.
For some, it’s the early stages.
For others, it’s getting through a full cycle consistently.
There’s no right or wrong place to be with it.
If you’re just starting out, sharing what you’re finding difficult can help others who are in the same place.
If you’ve been through a few grows, your experience might help someone work through a similar issue.
Start with one thing that challenged you, and what you learned from it — or what you’re still trying to figure out.
Some of my biggest challenges have been setting up a hydroponic grow. I’m used to using soil lol. I tried a cheap dwc system from Amazon but had very little success. Had trouble keeping nutrient levels correct as well as ph. Finally gave up put plant in pro mix and finished it haha. I intend to learn sooner or later tho.
My biggest challenge when I started was there is too much information out there, which at the time was overwhelming. Trying to figure out what’s correct and what’s false.
To overcome this issue, I enrolled in an Online Master Growers Class from Grow Weed Easy. It was worth every penny, oops! no pennies anymore so worth every nickel!
My biggest challenge is definitely popping seeds and not killing the seedlings. I have a horribly heavy hand when it comes to watering. It is a challenge I am still working on.
My biggest challenge was environment…chasing the prefect numbers actually did me more harm than good…just relax and read the plant. have a great day all.
Biggest challenge for me was perpetual growing having seedlings veging plants autos and photos doing organic soil , hydro and synthetic nutrients in soil it’s hard to keep up but everyone of my plants are doing great took my a while to get hang of but it’s working out
My biggest challenge has always been and always will be mother nature and her climate. Winter isn’t too much of a challenge for me with a nice heater in my tent, but once those temps start reaching 75*F or higher the fun really starts. My tent will generally run 10 degrees higher than ambient and add in the fact that it is located in a sardine can (metal shed) that while heavily shaded, still bakes and heats up in the summer sun. Last summer it I attempted to finish up a grow that pushed into July when temps can range anywhere from 90s to mid 100s outdoors, tent was pushing 115 and caused all of my plants to herm producing a several thousand seeds. End of September to middle of May is my time frame, anything past that is flirting with disaster.
Besides the environmental challenges when I was doing gorilla grows, mine is always the first 4 -6weeks of the plants life. Over watering probably being the biggest issue and controlling temps and humidity in less than ideal room conditions.
Biggest challenge yet is actually environmental, we have had an unusually dry spring and the humidity is very low so my dry backs are happening fast and it’s hard to stay up to par with the levels they are consuming and pumping out for my dehumidification. Got to be on it every day!
Besides figuring out the measurements for liquid nutrients, my biggest challenge has been figuring out when to water/not over water. Recently installed a soil moisture meter, and it’s helped a lot.
My biggest challenge has been to learn what style of growing I like. I tried dwc, coco, living soil, and super soil, organic, and chemical. I found living soil is my thing. I like the self regulating pH, this was also a huge problem for me without living soil, and the ability to not have to feed or amend anything during my grows. It’s just water till it’s done and harvest. I do want to try coco again now that I know it needs to be buffered before growing so it won’t cause deficiencies.
My biggest challenge to date is having to down scale my perpetual to just a single small tent. I don’t know how to grow without at minimum 2 tents lol it’s been a relearning process. But the conclusion is I simply need to convince the wife to let me get my other tents back up lol
Some of my biggest challenges have been water during the hot months and mold around harvest time. We grow outdoor so its us trying to work with nature.
My biggest challenge to date and I only had this with one grow was.. Gnats!! .. this was due to using fresh compost I made and they clearly laid their eggs in it. I used a combination of hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle (instant death), diatomaceous earth, and fly strips. What a nightmare that grow was.. sad thing was.. I spent so much time trying to eliminate them by drying out the top soil and all that, it actually cost me final harvest weight. It was the 1st grow in years I finished with under 1 lb. from my 4x4 tent.
So far my biggest challenge has been curing. I do the same thing every time and sometimes it’s sticky and dank and other times just ok. Even when it’s the same plant. I’m trying curing bags this time hopefully it will produce consistent results.
I think my last grow that I’m finishing at the moment was probably my most challenging. I kept running into issues, especially during transplant. I ended up losing 2 1/2 of my plants early on, but the four that remained came out being the best plants I’ve grown so far.
Learning about caterpillars and mold was the hardest part of growing. Still working on how to best Trim. I don’t smoke, or buy, etc, so I have never actually seen what the typical buds look like. Use my friends to a decent idea of trimming and videos. But hey, I am just the “gardener”. I treat them like any other crop. Each year I learn a little more. I learn best with trial and error.
My biggest challenge so far, would be with drying the buds too fast after harvest. All that effort to just end up with something that smokes harsh and is full of chlorophyll really sucks. Controlling humidity (and temperature) is key to a longer, slower dry and dank buds. My place always gets super dry in the winter, ambient is low as 30%RH, so I always struggled with this issue, and still am to some degree, but here are a couple things that help that helped me increase the humidity(dried in 2x2 tent with air filter on low):
Damp towels. Hanging damp towels in the tent will bump the RH but you need to keep checking and replacing them often.
Humidifier right outside of tent. Setting it right outside the tent air intake have had some success, so long as the water going in the humidifier is 0 PPM so your buds dont get contaminated.
Bring temperature of the entire room down as cold but still comfortable as possible if it’s also living space.
For future drying, I’ll be trying the Lotus method, which involves drying your flower in a frost free refrigerator or thermoelectric wine cooler, which seems to to work amazingly from what I’ve read.
Edit: i just forgot to add the goal is to reach as close to 60%Relative Humidity/60°F as possible, for anyone who’s starting out.
My biggest problem I’ve had was pretty recent actually. I’m solely a DWC grower, and root health is paramount for a successful plant. Just when the roots started growing for this plant to go into full veg, root rot had set in and I had the hardest time figuring out why. Corrected one thing only to have to issue come back time and time again no matter how much I would troubleshoot. I finally found the issue and was able to keep the plant living and then thriving well into the grow. It turned out the issue was one of my supplements had expired.
have a great day all.
