Looking for some immediate help! Many thanks are appreciated in advance. My friend has been dealing with some issues with his plants. A few weeks ago, it was spider mites. Now that those have been dealt with, he's got some other problems. Now, his plants are showing some odd signs that look like some sort of nutrient deficiency or something. The leaves have slowly but surely been turning blueish in color. And they are actually almost starting to look BLUE, which I know can't be a good sign. The edges of the bigger (and now smaller) leaves are turning brown, and look like are starting to die, although the plant still looks perky. Much help is appreciated! It looks like it's primarily affecting the top half of the plant more than the bottom, but I have no doubt that if left unchecked that it will likely start affecting the whole thing. My friend was nervous a couple of days ago about nutrient deficiencies and flushed his plants with water just a couple of days ago, but I don't think he flushed them with enough water as they're in 3 gallon pots, but only used a couple gallons of water to flush them. My first reaction was to have him flush the plants, but if he did it just a couple of days ago, and the soil's still moist, I don't want him to overwater them. Can you confirm my worries on that one? I picked up the trio of Fox Farms furts for soil the other day, but didn't want him to adjust anything until after I had posted my concerns. Here's the details on the plants: 2 plants, same symptoms About 3 weeks into vegging - just starting to get bushy About 10 inches tall I think the strain is Twisted Sister They're currently vegging under 1 200w CFL (real watts), and another 100w in T12 tube lights Any help you can lend would be much appreciated, as it's his first grow. I've never grown any, so any help I can lend would be minimal, but I have been providing him with assistance in posting to the GC forums lately. If you need more details, please let me know as I should be quick to respond today.
Hi, we're missing some info... This is a soil grow right? Just checking... A flush really requires 3 x the amount of soil. What are your temps? pH? Humidity? Has it been fed ever? Do you know anything about the contents of your soil? What water do you use? Can we see a picture? It would really help.
I wish I could get you a picture, but I'm at work, and won't be back that direction for another 9 hours, but i can post one later tonight. 1) Soil grow 2) I don't have exact humidity numbers, but i know it's low 3) Ph was about 6.2. I know it should probably be a bit higher which I'll try and adjust on the next watering 4) Tap water, leaving it out for 24-48 hours to let the chlorine evaporate 5) Nutrients - not a whole lot. 2 waterings ago, a 1/8th of a cup of epsom salt was added to a gallon of water to add a bit of magnesium to the soil, and some diluted urine (1/4 cup) to the same gallon of water to increase the nitrogen a bit. However, I noticed the blue color starting before that. The last few days though the leaves having been getting more and more blue, so I don't know if something was adjusted incorrectly. 6) What's in the soil? All the good stuff. Bat guano, worm castings, shells, and a few other things but I can't recall off the top of my head. What I'd REALLY like to do is almost start with a new baseline by removing all nutrients from the soil, and building them back up with the fox farms nutrients, but again, I'm nervous about flushing the soil so soon after watering them 2 days ago. I've noticed that they haven't really grown much in terms of height over the last week or so, but have REALLY filled out a lot over the last 4-8 days.
Mmm, I think personally I'll be able to tell more from a picture. I don't think peeing on your plants is a great idea. It's been discussed here before and the general consensus is that it's not advisable. Get proper nutes! But you said the problem started before that so..... Did you mix that soil yourself or was it shop bought? What is the temperature in the grow space? Was that pH your 'run off' pH or of the water going in? Post the pic when you can.
Well, as far as the urine goes, it was only a 1 time thing until we could find proper nutrients to add. Once time shouldn't make a dramatic impact like this as I know of people using it regularly w/o any problems. But yes.... I've since gotten other nutrients (Fox Farms), and urine will no longer be used to adjust N levels. It was shop bought soil. Drains great, looked like it had lots of good organic nutrients. I'll have to test the PH run off when I go over there tonight. Temp of grow space ranges from a low of 77 at night to roughly 82 during the day. I'm guessing with the majority of PH questions that I've received, that you're thinking it might be a PH related issue? Is that were the majority of these kinds of problems comes from?
Well I have never seen a blue plant, so I'm eager to see a pic. However, wonky pH can produce all sorts of funky colours and leaf patterns. The runoff pH is the important one imo.
Well, the leaves are blue-ish, and mostly at the center of the leaves working its way outward, becoming lighter green, and finally almost yellow and brown at the edges. I'd love to get some PH run-off results, but I think the issue with that, is that it just had a couple gallons of water run through the soil a couple of days ago, and it's still 2-3 days away from needing more water. I'm assuming I'd be in danger of overwatering the plant if I tried to get run-off ph now, wouldn't I? Would you advise that I just keep my fingers crossed for the next couple of days until it's dry enough to water, and then update the thread? 2 inches down in the soil, it's still moist. I'm a little unclear about the effects of flushing on soil and watering can effect the timing of adjustment of nutrients and ph. If the soil is still very moist (but has drained fine after the watering), I'd assume that adjustment of PH and nutrients couldn't be done again until the next watering, is that correct? Needless to say, I don't have a green thumb, which hasn't helped the issue. I'm an IT guy by nature, so having systematic approaches to things works best for me, but I know that doesn't always work out when you're dealing with living organisms as they respond different than computers.
Sounds like a nute/pH combo. Two factors to consider here. It kinda depends on the severity of the problem, if it's really serious and needs dealing with, then over watering is probably the least of your worries, and frankly if it hadn't been over watered previously, wouldprobably recover just fine if then left to dry out. However, if the problem lies in your soil, ie, there are nutes in it which are burning your plant, then each time you water without flushing then you are just flushing the roots with the problem! Did that make sense? I'm baked. Well these things should be adjusted at the time of watering and once you get your schedule organised, it will be easy to achieve this. There is no point feeding any nutes until your pH is stable otherwise they are being locked out and effectively wasted. Doesn't matter. You can't beat a bit of experience which you will gain quickly if you aree willing to learn. You can be methodical about growing mj, think of it as a process of elimination, there are a number of things it could be, we are ruling them out one by one. In time you will leaarn that plants 'talk' to you and tell you exactly what they need.
The way you do a run off to determine the ph is with distilled water. You pour the distilled water onto one spot, not over the whole thing, until you get a small amount of water come out the bottom of the pot/container. It is this small amount of run off that we are going to measure. We are probably talking about a tablespoon. Just so we are clear. I would not make any decision to change my soil mix based off a single runoff test. If after 4 or 5 runoff's I consistently see a low ph, then I will add to my soil to increase the ph to closer to 6.4. Since I have that runoff, I also at the same time, measure the ppm and compare that to what I'm feeding the plant. If I am feeding like 1800ppm and the run off is 1000, I know that I'm feeding it too much food (and we all know what happens when we feed too much food - salt build up/ph changes/crazy shit) and reduce the ppm. My personal goal is to have a run off of like 6.45ph and 30~50ppm
The more that I look at various troubleshooting guides, it almost looks like a combination of a couple of things. The edges that are turning brown look like a potassium deficiency, blue-ish darker center looks like a magnesium deficiency, and the spots almost look somewhat like a calcium deficiency. The references I'm making in comparison are from http://forum.grasscity.com/sick-plants-problems/473617-self-diagnose-your-plants.html I'll try to get a picture up tonight so I can be more clear. Sorry about that.
I have a white dwarf autoflowering in week 6, and i just cutt off three upper fan leaves to get light to the younger leaves at the nodes. I knew shock was going to happen, but not like this - the remaining leaves majority of started to curl down, and the upper fan leaves shrank in size curling down giving off a blue tinge as well. I have 3 100 w cfl fulll spectrum on it and 1 18 inches soft white fluro. Hoping it just gets back on track, but im just pointing out it could be anything!
Here's a few pics I took last night. Obviously, because of the flash, they're not coming out with the blue-ish tint, but what's happening is that most of the upper leaves are starting to turn darker in the center to a very dark green, and go brown/yellow the further out from the center of the leaf it gets. Also, the pics DID capture the brown spots that I was talking about. Take a look. The 4th picture, a leaf in the background kinda shows the darker tint to the leaves, as does the last picture. Thanks!
Hey Vapor - do you foliar water or feed at all? The burning seems either to be nutrient burn or burning by foliar watering with the light on. How are the youngest leaves near the buds? Let fan leaves die until they fall off, dont cutt any off! I may have killed my autoflowering by cutting off a couple - you need them to have a positive turgor pressue which draws water up the whole plant.
hmmm.... well, it's under CFL's, so I didn't even consider the heat, but they do get hot. it could honestly be that as the brown spots have been showing up just in the last week or a little more, and they've only been getting foliar fed around that time as well.
It's still my opinion that it's a pH/nute burn issue. It's not necessary to foliar feed the plant imo. I doubt cfls could cause heatt damage like that, hps maybe, not cfls.
Hey vapor - i am actually using 3 full spectrum cfls (power of 100 watts, using like 30 watts in reality) and in my experience CFLs can generate enough heat to keep a closet pretty warm. I got sum random browning then deep blue hues in the leave - and I am blaming this on nutrient burn because i use Tiger Bloom. I use the aid of a 10x to 100x microscope in my grows- and if you can it would be good to look at the discolorations under magnification because sum molds can sometimes look like burning. What kind of CFLs are you using? Foliar feeding with lights on will cause temporary heat spots.
and also, its not that foliar feeding isnt necessary but its Natural for it to rain. So if your humidity is low, a mist here and there at night time may not be a bad thing.
Well, i think i figured out the issues with the spots, but I do have some concerns, so hopefully one of you can alleviate some fears a bit. I'm almost positive that it's PH related. Needless to say, my old method of testing PH wasn't accurate enough, and I've discovered that he's been watering with water that's got a PH of 7.1-7.7, depending on the day. I confirmed this with a new PH pen that arrived yesterday. I haven't done a run-off test yet, but will likely help my friend do this tonight, or tomorrow to get the results. SO... that being said, here's my new questions 1) I've read that it's not good to adjust PH more than .1 every 2 days. If that's the case, should I have enough time to get the PH adjusted correctly before the plants get too afflicted with the nutrient lockouts (which is what I'm assuming is happening from the high PH of the water)? 2) Would it be a good idea to flush the soil of the plants to get rid of any nutrients that might be built up? 3) Should I be concerned about overwatering these things? The plants rarely seem to need to be watered more than every 3-4 days. I'm just concerned that there won't be enough time to get the PH corrected before it starts to affect more and more of the plant. I'm just unsure about what methods to take when adjusting the PH as I'm deathly afraid of overwatering. From what I've understood, you can bring plants back from pretty much anything except overwatering. Feedback?
honestly id say dont even pay attention to Ph. this is a small grow, you should simply have started on water using an organic soil perhaps with ph regulators (gardeners gold is great). so then after a few weeks just give a very dilute solution o fnutrient and gently increase that solution over time and switch between that and water only feeding.