My grow is almost in it's 3rd week and I'm starting to notice that (not all leafs) some of the leaf tips are turning brown. I'm growing with Miracle Grow, mixed with Bat Guano (10-2-1) so don't need to feed for a while. I've been making sure my PH is around 6ish and my water is 125 or so ppm. I haven't tested the PH from my run off yet but I suppose I had better. Are my plants getting too much nutrients from the soil? I have a feeling it's time to flush... Also...i'm using a 125watt grow light (6500k) which is providing tons of light for my 3 plants so I don't think thats the issue. And they are getting fresh air, and have a fan blowing on them.
The plant is most likely getting too many nutrients, that or a pH problem. Test the run off and make sure its in the optimal range. Any chance you can get some pictures?
Kinda having issues with my camera but here is the best pic. If you notice on the left and right leaves you can see the brown tips..
that's your problem. I don't know if bat guano can burn your plant (don't think so) but the miracle grow is notorious for causing nute burn on small plants. luckily your case is mild so far. also try to keep your ph more at 6.5 instead of 6
Yeah, I really didn't want to go the miracle gro route anyway but thats what I ended up with. And got the impression that miracle gro has low Nitro (checked the bag), hence the guano.. I'm thinking a good flush might be the way to go. If so is it ok to flush with tap water, not worrying about ph until maybe the last flush?
I can't really answer that. it would always be best to flush with ph balanced water. maybe try buying a couple gallons of distilled or reverse osmosis water. I would wait it out a bit first, see if it gets much worse and how fast. whatever you do decide to do, don't feed it. (and definately not after midnight)
Well I think i'll wait til tomorrow, they'll need water then anyway and i'll flush them at least twice with tap water i'm leaving out over night to get rid of any chlorine. And I have some GH PH down so i'll tweak the water just in case. But if anyone else has any ideas, love to hear them.
I think everybody pretty much covered it, except you do not want to use pH down. In fact, unless you have a reliable pH meter, I would steer away from making adjustments. Your plants aren't showing any major symptoms aside from very minor nute burn. If your runoff does measure 6.0, you aren't in critical territory by any means. I would water with 6.5-6.7 (no nutes!) until the runoff is a bit higher. Once again, a reliable pH meter is key. Without one, you will attempt to correct a problem that may not even exist. Is the 125 ppm water your tap or some other source? If it is tap, it is probably slightly alkaline, and is a perfect source of water.
Yes, it is tap water. I do have a pH meter, yes it's cheap but it seems to work...at least it's consistant when I use ph down to measure the ph balance. So you think I should stay away from ph down and just use regular water? Both my ph meter and another method using drops both tell me my ph is around 7.5+
If your tap is truly around 125 ppm, the concentration of protons in the solution should be pretty weak. So adding a small amount of base or acid will radically increase or decrease the pH. When you water with that tap, it will mix with the more acidic soil and probably level out. Measure your runoff from a plain tap watering and see what you get. If it's high (more than 6.8), then continue using a little pH down to keep it around 6.5. Edit: If it's low, say 6.0 or less, scratch the pH and just water with your 7.5 tap until you get it closer to 6.3-6.6.
So my run off seemed to be testing in 7+ range. I used ph water of around 6 and flushed each plant twice. I'll keep you posted.. I think I'll keep using a ph of around 6 until this goes down some.