So this is my first attempt. The plants are a month old and of the same strain and in a 85:15 coco/perlite mix in 1/2 gallon pots with built in run off trays. Lighting consists of a 650 watt LED with all red spectrums turned off, so maybe 400 watts running at the moment. Light is approximately 4' over the plants. Humidity hovers in the 45-65%. Temps during lights on are 75-80, and 70-75 with lights off. Plants are on an 18/6 light schedule. Plants are watered to about 10% run off approximately every 3 days and fed every other watering. On feeding day, plants get around 3ml of Soul Synthetics Grow per gallon (company recommends 5-10 ml) along with 5 ml of Cal-Mag. On watering only day, 5ml of Cal-Mag is added. Distilled water it ph'd to 5.8 +/- .2. I try to hit 5.8 everytime but when checking calibration of ph meter against reference solution, my meter is usually off .1-.2. My problem started to show up about a week ago, Image, Image(1), and Image(2) are of the same plant. Under normal lighting, new growth is lime green and seems really thin and underdeveloped, while older growth is darker green. Also found a dark spot as can be seen on on image (1). Image (3) plants seem the correct color, but leaves are twisting,curling and there seems to be minimal space between nodes. Image (4) is what i think is my healthiest plant for comparison. Image (5) is a few plants who seem to be in the middle of the pack. Do i have something to be concerned about or am i just an overly worried noob? Any and all advice is greatly appreciated.
Anyone? Just looking for a little advice, dont want to do anything that might hurt my plants. Thanks in advance!
OK...sounds like you've got several issues going on here. I would get them out of those pots with built in reservoirs. You can't see down in it and there's no way to know for sure what's lurking around in there....not to mention you've got moisture hanging at the bottom of the pot. Got to have definite wet/dry cycles with this plant. Put them in some normal pots with good drainage and water them in. DO NOT GIVE THEM ANYTHING ELSE until you can pick up the pot and it feels like it is DEAD DRY!!! This business of watering every 2 to 3 days and feeding every other watering is going to kill your plants. You should probably just now be getting to the place with these that they might need a little feed. It will take the plant a few weeks in good soil to use up what is naturally there. Only when the plant has had time to use up the nutrition in the soil do you start nutes. The pH thing: Sounds like you have a very unreliable pH meter. That's only going to make for more trouble for you and may very well have a big part to play in what's going on with your plants right now. The correct range for soil is 6.3 to 6.8 with 6.5 being the sweet spot. If you're out of range consistently, the roots of your plants are going to lock up and not be able to take in nutrition. I suspect that your issues here are a combo pack of over watering, feeding when you didn't need to and unbalanced pH of your water. Go ahead and spend the money and get yourself a good reliable way to monitor the pH of your water and feed solution and order a TDS/EC tester pen (only about $20) so you know how strong your feed solution mixture is before you give it....and avoid frying your plants. You need to get in the new grower threads here and do some serious reading on the basics of growing this plant indoor in soil. You can either take the time to read and get the information now or you can do it the hard way and pay for it over and over with unhappy plants. You need to understand how the plant grows, what it likes, what nutrition it needs and a bunch of other stuff so you have a basic concept of how it's done. Good luck! TWW
Appreciate the response, I'm in coco and perlite though. Will definitely get a new ph meter, repot into smart pots, and back off the water. Thanks!
Get a ppm/ec pen. Those look hungry for nitrogen which is very difficult to lock out do to pH, plus you'd usually see some sort of leaf deformity from pH being out of range. Feed every watering if you are watering to runoff, you don't have to baby coco like you do soil. Smart pots will help with the wet dry cycle, great route to go. boost up that feed !
I think you may have been right about the hungry part. NPK of food im using is only 3:1:1, and i was drastically using less than recommended amount. Upped nutes and new growth is looking better. Thanks!