i have a nute problem with the plants i am growing in a bubble bucket setup. the new leaves grow fine but the older leaves tips tend to curl up and turn brown along with their edges. the tips of the leaves become crisp and will crack and break off easily. is this a potassium deficiency? what should be done to correct this? my water may be about 10 degrees colder then the air around the palnts....is it possible that making the water temp the same as the air temp would make the problem go away? Thanks
good description of the leaf damage and that sounds like a potassium def. what the NPK values of your nutes? what are the temps? potassium uptake is retarded @ approx 55 F. degrees
thanks for the reply. i am using dutch master grow croissance. sorry don't know the npk values off hand. air temp is 80-85 and water temp is 65-75. Thanks in advance!!
What is the ph? If it is between 5.0-6.0 then there is no reason why you should have a p deficiency unless your fert does not have enough p. Water res temp should be no higher than 68 degrees. Are these plants flowering?
ph is between 5.5 and 5.8 at all times, no these plants are just starting off. i am using well water that is about 400ppm out of the tap and it also goes through a water softiner(spelling). i heard that salty water causes less P to be absorbed, is this true? Is the water i'm using my only problem? i don't feel like buying gallons of distilled water, so is there something i can do to my water to lower the disolved soilds/salinity(ppm)? whats the cheapest/most cost effective way of doing this? Thanks again!
There is potentially the reason as to why. Yeah man here it is; I found it. Water containing more than 300 PPM of dissolved solids should be run through a reverse osmosis machine. Highly saline water that contains sodium will block the uptake of potassium, calcium and magnesium. By the way potassium is k not p like you said earlier. Also, every book I have seen on the topic says water softened h20 is the worst for plants. However, I also have well water that goes through a softener and I never have problems. I do grow in soil however so maybe this is the difference? Do you have an outside faucet or spigot? Usually the outside lines are not run through the softener. Try giving it this outside water for a while and see if they improve. Also if you have picture those might help to.
yeah i have a digital camera but its only like 2MP so it sucks at taking close ups....I'll see what i can do though. As for a spigot, yes i do have one, i'll test the ppm of that water today. I used to be big into chemistry and have a couple of distillers laying around, could i just use them to make my water pure again?? Thanks
Just click some snaps. They don't have to be close ups. Just take some pictures of the entire plant from the side and one from the top. Do it whith the HID's off.
i'm running a huge CFL, but i'll take pics with the light off. i'm not sure how to post pics here, can i send the pics to you?? or can you tell me how to post.
Uploading Pictures: Before you upload pictures you need to make sure they are the correct size. To resize pictures go to Paint (loaded on with Windows) and select the picture you wish to resize. Then click "image" then "stretch Skew" and resize at 10% increments. Don't forget to hit "save". Then click the reply button at the bottom of the thread you want to load the pictures on to and go to the bottom where it says "manage attachments". You can then upload the pictures you want.