I think I have an idea what her problem is, but I don't want to influence anyone's opinion. Soil grow Temperature is maintained at 76 -- 78 F Distilled water Fox Farm Grow Big Nutes HPS 400W light on an 18/6 schedule. 38" tall on 5/26 and was 23" on 5/3 Indica / Sativa hybrid (Caramelicious from Amsterdam Marijuana Seeds) (BTW: they suggest the plant's max height is 65cm or 26.6", which she has exceeded by a foot) pH has been fluctuating due to grower's inexperience (5.8 on 5/3, 6.1 on 5/11, 6.8 on 5/15, 6.2 on 5/19, 7.0 on 5/22, 6.8 on 5/26). Water schedule is about 450ml per week spread over three applications. One is straight water, one is water + Epsom Salts, one is water + fertilizer. The watering is applied in the dish under the pot in order to keep the top soil dry to discourage gnats from nesting. All except the last watering was absorbed within 5 minutes. The last feeding took about 2 hours to absorb into the soil. The grow room is an extra bedroom with a ceiling fan on the lower floor of the house. The fan is on low 24/7 to provide adequate air circulation. The leaves are sprayed with distilled water once or twice a day. Her photos are attached. I can provide more if desired.
Def should not take even 1 hour let alone 2 for water to be absorbed! Have perlite in that soil, what kind of soil is it? You must have perlite for adequate drainage. Your leaves are burned as well, stop misting them, the only water your plant needs comes from the soil. If money is tight use cheap aquarium pH testers like me, they work well enough if you are using decent soil and let your water sit out at least 24-36hours before using. Again, you can use aquarium pH up & down to adjust water. Your water's pH should be 6.5-6.8 when it goes in. Nutes will drop pH dramatically, pay attention. Good luck.
Thanks for your input. It isn't a drainage issue. The soil is about 50% potting soil, 15% peat moss, 20% perlite, 10% sand, and about 5% earthwork castings. Drainage has been pretty good and the water retention is fine. I should have included this in my initial post. By the leaf burn, are do you mean nutes? Lights? This was something that I wasn't considering, but it would make sense. I wonder if it is a symptom rather than the cause though. You make a great point about the pH of the solutions. I think this caused the problem because I did not adequately test the pH of my solutions initially. I began testing my feeding solution in the past several days when I started noticing the issues and because of the pH fluctuation in the soil (I was performing chemical analysis of the soil twice per week and came to the realization that testing after the fact was problematic). My theory is that the pH fluctuations shocked her. She then stopped eating, which caused the slow intake of the last feeding (which was Saturday). This has led to an over watering problem, which I failed to realize to late. Is this theory possible or am I lost?
I would agree that the pH changes are messing with the plant. You should flush the soil out in order to restore correct pH and remove any acid salts that built up. Run 3x the pot size worth of water through it, so if you are in a 3 gallon pot run 9 gallons of correctly pH'd water through. I also agree with gsxrkid, you don't need to spray the leaves with anything, just water through the soil. You need to turn off your HPS lights when you take pictures, so we can see the color of the plants correctly. They look like they are clawing downward, which sometimes means too much nitrogen, but it's hard to say without seeing the color of the leaves. It could just be the pH problems causing the clawing.