A new grower with a few large problems

[Kalidas]

So I'm paranoid about posting pics and since I only have a camera phone the color is off (making it hard to tell what's wrong) so instead I'll describe my problem and hope for some suggestions.

My plants are about a month and a half in to flowering but I've got some intense problems. Since introducing my HPS lamp a few days in to flowering they got much bushier (fuller, greener leaves) and the flowers have swollen and are looking nice however I began using a flowering fert. (miracle gro 'bloom booster' flower food) the leaves have been turning yellow with brown spots. The smell of the plants has a 'rot' smell. I had a problem with the heat building up since it's a 400 watt lamp in a small closet space. I think this is why the top leaves are turning brown and hardening, they seem almost crispy and some have broken off. One plant looks like it's done better since introducing a humidifier and keeping the temp below 80 (it would sometimes get up to 85 and on one instance 90 degrees) but the other (with the leaves that broke off) has it's calyxes turning a yellowish color and sometimes falling off.

On the other plant the calyxes are turning an amberish color which is expected but why is the other plant doing so poorly?

I water them both every three or four days with 40 ounces at a time (they're in gallon pots and they're both about 18 inches tall) and I've stopped using the fertilizer.

Here's the fertilizer ingredients by the way:
Nitrogen - 18%
Phosphate - 30%
Soluble Potash - 15%
Boron - 0.02%
Copper - 0.07%
Iron - 0.15%
Manganese - 0.05%
Zinc - 0.06%

The other fert I used was geared toward veg. but it had 30% nitrogen. A friend told me it might be a nitrogen defficiency. I have a strong feeling the heat really did the one in but am I underwatering or messing up with the fertilizer? Should I just cut the one down before the buds are ruined? I was hoping I could wait until the calyxes are mostly an amber color but I don't know how long that will take, I don't even know if the one has that much time left to live.


The top of my first plant. Most of the leaves towards the top were damaged by the heat and burnt...this is why it looks so disfigured in the picture below as well.


The leaves toward the top as I said before are burnt and some point up. It's difficult to see but the leaves are all tinged with yellow, the healthiest part of the plant seems to be the middle for some reason but even the middle is now spotting. Also, you can't see the flowers very well but the calyxes are almost all a yellowish-orange color, what does this mean?


The top of the second plant (the better of the two). The buds seem healthy on this one, the calyxes are beginning to change color though, what does this mean?


A better picture of the leaves and what I'm sure is a nutrient deficiency, if not several. I'm sure a lot is wrong with these plants but again, I've never grown anything in my life and I've certainly never used a HPS lamp either...this aspect of my growing experience really introduced me to some problems.

I'm afraid I despise HPS lamps. Though the buds themselves look nice. The trichome count seems considerably high, especially since they came from cheap press seeds.

Still, I'm really concerned by how badly they're doing. Should I just cut them down? I mean I'm terribly afraid that the buds will end up getting damaged. They're about six weeks in, I hear six to nine weeks is all that's needed. At this point would they get me high if I smoked them? I know that's probably a bad way to ask and I realize I sound like an idiot but I'm a bit high and I've been stressed out with flowering...I was so proud just a few weeks ago when they were bright green and full of life, but after a few bad nights they got screwed.

Also, I have yet to find a 30x microscope, where should I be looking?

[mordgrow]

do you have PH or TDS meters?

[Ganja Guerrilla]

how close are the HPS lite to the plants

[Redterra]

I think if there 18 inches they could be root bound as 1 gallon is quite small, also how close is your light you might be burning the tops, also you might think about giving them a flush cant do any harm but i would try bigger pots and also moving the light up a bit.

[Kalidas]

The light is almost twenty inches away but it was about four or five inches closer.

I have no PH meter because I hear they're about a hundred dollars.

Since the plants are about six or so weeks old should I just cut them down in the next week or so? The trichomes are pretty visible and the buds look to be a normal size...how do I determine when to cut them down? I want to make sure it's as potent as it can possibly be, is there a general time table I can use?

[mordgrow]

search "harvest" and "trichcomes" here, you'll find a lot of stuff on when to harvest, you need to pick up a 10 dollar hand held micro scope and look at the condition of yoru trichcomes (clear, cloudy, amber, or a mix )

harvest when trich.s are cloudy or amber or a mix of cloudy and amber

do you know what PH your water is? thats pretty important, PH meters are only like 30-50 bucks

and read a lot of stuff here
spend a few days reading random threads related to the same situation as your grow

GOODLUCK!

[Eckolaker]

I suspect it the Miracle grow nutrients your using.

[BUDSLiNGER]

Miracle grow may be the problem, dump it and flush,

[frog-godbee]

Man the rotten smell is most likely your roots .... if you had tempreture problems your resevoir probly got quite hot too .... once your water gets above 25 0 celcius or 78 F it can't hold very much oxygen .... thats why whales live in cold water because it can hold more oxygen and therefore sustain more life .... with stuff all oxygen your roots will rot and have a hard time taking up nutrients .... Your plants can generally handle tempretures up to 35 o c or 95 f without a problem provided that the water tempreture is cool .... once your plants get above 32 o C or 90 F they start drinking lots of water to cool themselves down ... but if they are drinking warm water they have to drink massive amounts and basically still get nowhere which stresses them out ..... the first sign of the light being too close to your plants will be the edges of the top leaves .. the edges will start curling upwards ... this means the surface tempreture is too hot ... ummm i forget the rest of the question ..... iam stoned ~

[Kalidas]

So now that I have the pictures up, do you think they're on the verge of death or what? The browning all over has me so depressed. If I were to do this again should I use a bigger pot? I thought the gallon size would be enough since the plants are only seventeen to twenty inches tall. I wish I had a better watering and fert plan. I think I should have gone with CFLs and not a 400 watt HPS. I mean I'm growing in a closet.

I've got a small fan positioned next to the plants, pointed up toward the reflector to move the heat. The plants are about two feet away from the lamp. I never shut the door but sometimes close it to a third of the way open. I live in the room near the closet and am always home so I think I'd be doing a better job but I have little experience and since they were doing so well for so long (up until the third week under the HPS, but even after the second the leaves at the top began moving up but I assumed that was because the lamp was just sixteen or so inches away) I thought I had this down.

I'm bummed out that I won't be able to do this again, at least for a while. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot. I also gained a greater appreciation for life...it was nice. I was just hoping I'd have some okay plants at the end, not this. I'm now afraid I won't even be able to smoke the small but shimmering buds. Speaking of which, are the calyxes turning that yellowish color a bad sign? I'm sure at this point it is since everything else has gone wrong in the past couple of weeks.

[frog-godbee]

definately have toxic salt build up ......... man flush the pots out thouroughly with water once a week to prevent this.........

[BUDSLiNGER]

Also looks like ph issues.... Gluck buddy