Hey guys. This is my second attempt at growing indoors (closet). I have a dual deep dome light fixture hanging about 36 inches above two young clones (150 watt flouroescent light bulb in each dome = 300w) inside two 5 gallon smart pots. They seemed to be healthy and fine until I started seeing signs of heat stress (leaves cupping and going upwards, brown edges/spots starting to form) so I turned off one of the fluorescent bulbs for now so only 150 watts is heating the clones rather than 300, I figured since they're young they can't handle that much light yet. But so far there hasn't been much of a change or recovery, the leaves aren't dried up or burnt all over, but there are some burn spots on a few of the leaves and there's still some cupping going on. I thought there might be a nutrient deficiency happening as well so I decided to start feeding them nutrients (about 4 drops for each clone, recommended by instructions was 7 per quart of water) to see if that helps any until my real nutrients package arrives in the mail. If any of you can provide advice / assistance I'd really appreciate it because I've invested a good amount and don't want to screw things up this time.
It's certainly not that they can't handle that much light. At 36 inches away they are probably struggling for light to begin with. Heat stress is caused from heat (yeah I know) but you didn't mention the one single most important piece of information related to your problem. That being the temperature. Without any pictures or details on your grow other than it being in a closet with 300w of light that is about 30 inches to high, I'm gonna take a big educated guess and say that your problem is a lack of ventilation. You can't have a closet grow without it.
What kind of dirt do you have? How old our your plants? When did you put them in your pots?Are we talking 300 actual watts here?Definitely not heat stress from the sounds of it.
Room temperature is fine, around 70-75. I have ventilation in my room and I keep the closet door slightly open so I don't think that's the issue, but I could be wrong...I've only had the clones for a couple days now, they're both the same strain that I got from a dispensary (one is younger than the other; one has 2-3 sets of leaves the other has only one set of leaves). & the soil I'm using is Fox Farm Ocean Forest Potting Soil. Yes 300 actual watts. Update: I opened the closet more and plugged in a fan to provide more ventilation.
If you have the door open and the temps in the closet are only 75 degree then heat stress is certainly not the issue. With lights being 36" away, it's safe to say that the plants are also getting very low light. FFOF can be an issue. That just depends on the strain. I start my seeds and clones of Cotton Candy in pure FFOF with little issue. They do start out with a minor nute burn on the tips though. On the other hand, I germed a seed of Lemon Auto and I think it had a very hard time dealing with the high nutes in the soil. FFOF is a rather hot soil. Some strains can handle it, many cannot. It's recommended that you cut the soil with a general soil. Adding nutes to an already hot soil is only gonna compile the problems. Since you have already added nutes, I would flush the soil. The more water you put through it the better. Then wait a week or so and see how the new growth is doing. You shouldn't be adding nutes to FFOF until it is in flowering, especially if you are using strait Ocean Forest.
Your probably right, the soil may be too hot because I mixed the FFOF with another soil and that clone seems to be doing better than the one with just FFOF...but flush the soil? I fed them nutrients once and only 4 drops...on the youngest clone a dark grey spot is forming on one of the leaves at the base as well as light yellow or green highlights & spots along its edges and a couple in the middle...I've been checking all the different types of deficiencies and I think it might be low magnesium. I already ordered the Cal-Mag in case. And regarding nutrients, the other package I ordered includes one nutrient bottle that is for vegetative growth before the flowering process. Should I not use it? Update: I lowered the the light fixture down about 6 or 7 inches and fed the clone a lot more water to help flush the soil.
Its not the soil. Its 100% to hot stagnant not enough ventilation. Sent from my HTCEVOV4G using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Ok, well I just added a fan set on exchange air flow, and I have a vent in my room with an open window as well. I hope that was the only issue..I'll keep you guys posted, thanks for the input thus far.
"It's 100% too hot" "Room temperature is fine, around 70-75." Punchreba, 70-75 degrees is too hot? Huh. J
"It's 100% too hot" "Room temperature is fine, around 70-75." Punchreba, 70-75 degrees is too hot? Huh. J
" would flush the soil. The more water you put through it the better." I don't use Fox Farm Ocean Forest, and haven't, but isn't this an organic soil? If it is an organic soil, what is to be gained by "flushing it"? Am I correct in thinking that there are no chemical/soluble fertilizers in this product? If there are no soluble fertilizers then what exactly could be removed from the soil by water logging it? Organic soil amendments such as are added to these soils; kelp meal, bat guano, crab meal et al will (for lack of a better word) "burn" a plant only if they are not sufficiently broken down (Nutrient Cycled) by soil microbes (bacteria/fungus). This is due to either insufficient soil bacteria/fungus cause by low amounts or poor quality worm castings or thermal compost or simply not enough time for them to have broken down yet - or both. Either way the burning of a plant in organic soil comes down to lack of nutrient cycling, whatever the cause. Organic soil amendments are not water soluble and therefore cannot be removed (flushed) from the soil by pouring water through it and to attempt to do so is a fools errand. J
Conflicting view points on this issue....so you're saying it's lack of nutrition? It's probable, but I wish I knew exactly which deficiency it was. From the looks of it it seems like either a calcium or magnesium deficiency, but I don't know for sure. It's really noticeable on one of the leaves. I wish I could upload a photo for you guys but my stupid Iphone won't send it to my email...& by the way, I don't think he meant flush out the soil's nutrients, but the 4 drops I fed the soil. Also I don't know if the soil's organic, but this is what it says about it online: a powerhouse blend of premium earthworm castings, bat guano, and sea-going fish and crab meal. Composted forest humus, sandy loam, and sphagnum peat moss give Ocean Forest® its light, aerated texture. Ocean Forest® is pH adjusted at 6.3 to 6.8 to allow for optimum fertilizer uptake. There's no need for nitrogen fertilizers at first; instead try an organic blend like FoxFarm Big Bloom® Liquid Plant Food to encourage strong branching and a sturdy, healthy growth habit.
The problem with this statement is that the bagged soil here is already active. The breakdown of the insoluble amendments into soluble salts (which is literally the only way a plant can take up nutrients, so orgo grows clearly involve soluble nutrients, its just in orgo its a biproduct of microbial respiration that brings them into the medium) occurs as soon as the culture is combined. the soil out of the bag in FFOF is absolutely hot enough to burn seedlings and flushing this soil will absolutely reduce its salinity. Organic soils burn plants via the same mechanism as inorganic salt's "nute burn." It has nothing to do with improper breakdown. The foxfarm bottled nutes themselves are concentrates of salts gathered from orgainic soils and i promise you they have plenty of soluble "chemicals" to burn with the best of the nutrient families. Usually, In organic cultivation, the soil never reaches a point where there is more nutrient readily available than the plant can use/store immediately, so in practice it is nearly impossible to burn your plants in a home crafted organic soil simply because it never sits long enough sans greenery to achieve a sufficiently high concentration of processed nutrients to approach toxicity. If the soil culture is allowed to carry on without draw from a living plant, until the microbes themselves reach equilibrium with tolerable ph and or salinity, this culture (as in FFOF) has high enough concentrations of soluble salts to harm young growth. If your plants are showing stress from lack of microbe activity in your soil, it wouldn't be from high salinity, or "nute burn", but rather from deficiency as the elemental nutrients potentially available remain locked in an insoluble (unusable) form waiting to be processed. Long story short, if you are using ocean forest for your seelings, flush the bloody piss (pretty literally) out of it first.
I think i miss understood the post. 75 is great. Hows the air flow/ventilation? It just sounds like it is cupping its leaves to try to retain moisture. Leaves dont feel dry huh?Sent from my HTCEVOV4G using Grasscity Forum mobile app
I didn't say it was a lack of nutrition, sorry for any confusion. I've no doubt there's more than sufficient nutrition in the Ocean Forest soil for your young plants; however, before a plant can make use of the nutrition in any soil amendment it must be broken down into its most basic elemental form and/or organic compounds by soil microbes. The issue with commercial bagged soils is that A. You never really know how much compost/worm castings (which provide soils with microbes) or the quality of the compost/castings to begin with. These soils are often referred to as "hot" because the soil amendments added simply haven't had a chance to properly break down prior to use because of insufficient cycling time or insufficient & low quality compost/castings meaning low microbe counts to get the cycling done. Insufficiently cycled soils will burn plants (hot), while the same soil that is well cycled will not. A good way to speed up and ensure proper soil nutrient cycling is to add additional compost and/or worm castings to your soil (while making sure to adjust aeration as needed) or to simply top dress with either if your plants are already growing. J
It's hard to tell without a pic but heat-burn tends to be browning on the edges of the leaves or small but consistant burn circles all around the plant.. Here is a pretty standard pic of heatburn:
There seems to be good airflow, the tip of a few of the leaves are pretty dry but overall they don't seem to be underwatered or without any moisture at all...how far away should my two 150 watt flourescent lights be from the clones? Right now they're about 2 FT away
Interesting, so how would I go about adding compost/worm castings? And what do you mean by adjusting aeration?