Hello! INTRODUCTION: I am doing a Stevia grow. I post questions on this forum because the knowledge of the Cannabis growers is valuable to me even though what I am growing is not Cannabis. I believe that allot of the Cannabis cultivation knowledge may apply to my herb growing hobby. Thank you. QUESTION: What does it mean when the very tips of the new growth are coming out dried out and/or burnt? The man at my local hydro store said something about dried out and/or burnt tips of the leaves but I can't remember what he was saying. Could it be a Calcium Magnesium deficiency? I ask this because I remember asking the hydro guy if I should be using General Hydroponics CaliMagic during the visit when we were talking about burnt leaf tips. Any and all help is greatly appreciated!
Burnt tips are the first sign of Nute Burn. Your soup is probably too hot (PPM too high). Back off the food by diluting with water. Are you having PH issues as well? If the PPMs are too high, the PH should be dropping.
Dear Beachbound, Yes. The pH has been dropping like 0.3 to 0.5 pH units in 12 hours. I check the pH everyday at 8:00 AM and at 8:00 PM and adjust it to pH 6.0 every time. It stayed around 6.0 for a little while when the nutrient solution was new but now it's been dropping again. I keep the reservoir topped up so that it is always at six gallons of total nutrient solution. And I change the nutrient solution out every two weeks. I was having pH dropping issues much more when my ppm was higher. I lowered the ppm and am still having the pH dropping issues. So thanks for pointing that out to me. I will lower it some more. Hopefully doing so will make it so that the leaves stop burning at the tips of the new growth. Thanks for you help!
I took one gallon of nutrient solution out of the six gallon reservoir. Then I put one gallon of plain water back in. I am monitoring the tips of the leaves to see if they are still burning. If they continue to burn, I will take out more nutrients. Thanks for the help!
As an update message... Dear friends, I diluted the nutrient solution so much that it seemed as if my plants almost stopped growing or something. The pH stopped dropping down for a while and has dropped down from 6.0 to 5.8 overnight... but I am surviving. So, even though I don't yet have a ppm meter, and because I want my plants to be thriving, I have officially started adding small amounts of nutrients to the existing nutrient solution. Besides that, I have now purchased my water pumps for the UFO LED GrowLab 80 tent, ebb and flow grow that I have been working on setting up. One pump will circulate the un-aerated nutrient solution and one will do the flooding of the 2' X 2' BOTANICARE flood tray. NOTE: I will be using a very small reservoir because of space limitations. To be more specific, I will be using a 10 gallon BOTANICARE reservoir. So because of the small reservoir, I will be filling the empty space in the flood tray with Hydroton. The extra Hydroton will displace more water rendering me with the ability to use a small reservoir. NOTE: I will be tipping the flood tray by raising the back end of it up about an inch. This will make all of the extra water run down to the flood and drain fittings of which where it will drain back into the reservoir.
This sounds like a familiar problem I had with small 3 gallon buckets in hydro. I was growing cannabis and the tips of the leaves kept drying out and burning. It ended up being a cal-mag lockout problem due to my roots being crowded in my 3 gallon buckets. Haven't had the problem since I switched to 5 gallon buckets.