my past 2 cycles have ended up like this and I’m not sure what’s up. I keep having this same issue during flowering. It seems like to many leaves start to turn yellow way too fast. Im at 3 1/2 weeks right now. I’m using 5 gallon buckets with soil. The leaves seem to discolor to a darker color with darker center stem, then they turn yellow and die. I know that buds are sucking a lot of nutes right now from the leaves but over all it seems to be happening too fast. My soil PH is around 6-6.5 (I have had issues with maintaining proper PH with the soil) 9 days ago I checked the PH and realized it was at 5. Which I now have corrected. Does it look like the PH could be my whole problem? What would you guys suggest as a cheap and better alternative to plain soil? *update I added additional pictures
Can't really tell much from the pics due to light discoloring the natural leaf colors but it sounds like a phosphorus deficiency. In flower, there needs to be more phosphorus available to them and a lot of growers don't provide it soon enough in the grow. Both P and K are needed during veg too. What are you giving them and when did you start?
I know, it’s hard to get good pics because of the amber HPS light. But there is a lot of discoloring. I just added a hand full of bone meal to the top 1” of the soil yesterday. Ive been feeding them earth juice bloom.
I'm not familiar with earth juice Bloom but on their website it shows N=0.00% – P=3.00% – K=1.00%. Unless they pack a huge phosphorus punch into that 3% somehow, that's nowhere near enough for flower IMO.
you know, I thought that same damn thing about how low the NPK numbers are. The guy at the shop I got it from said that you cannot really go by those numbers and insisted that the earth juice is really good stuff. I’m starting to doubt his opinion. I actually just bit the bullet and I went out and bought most of the pvc to make my first hydro setup. Any experience with hydro? I’ve been reading and I decided to go with an NFT setup using 4” pvc. I still need to get the growing medium and nutrients. But I’m pretty sure I have everything else needed. But any recommendations would be appreciated.