Yellow tips on leaves?

Discussion in 'Sick Plants and Problems' started by geetar77, Nov 24, 2007.

  1. well this plant is about 2 weeks old now, and its growing very fast but i've been noticing these yellowing tips on the leaves...not sure what is causing it i have 2 26 watt CFL's on it, with soda can reflectors about 2 inches away, and the new sprouting leaves are all curled up instead of flat out..i don't have a PH tester, can't afford it, so i am just using my tap water..i know bad idea but thats all i have...it is well water so it isn't city. should i be boiling my water to distill it? would that be better than just using straight tap water? is that even why the leaf tips are yellowing? i'm not using any nutes, and the potting soil i used is nute free..please tell me what you think
     

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  2. I'am not a dirt guy but if it were mine. I might move light away a little and feed it. seems to look a little dry,hot and hungry. Again i do hydro, and i believe the man who knows everything knows nothing:wave:
     
  3. Nine out of ten problems can usually be diagnosed here. http://forum.grasscity.com/sick-plants-problems/25983-nutrients-bugs-various-problems-guide.html

    Your problem looks like this
    Over Fertilizing - Signs of over fertilization include: dead/burnt leaf tips/margins and leaves curling under.

    Solution - Check and adjust the pH level as necessary. Flush and decrease the fertilizer/nutrient level.

    It's amazing what a little bit of reading will do, especially a sticky called Nutrients/Bugs/Various Problems Guide

    This may or may not be your problem. The way to tell would be by testing the TDS (nutrient level) and the Ph. There is no hard and fast thing you can do that will correct this problem in all plants. Boiling water will kill germs and bacteria but it doesn't distill the water. All of the minerals etc. will still be in the water. Distilling water captures the steam as the boiling water evaporates, cools it back into water and puts it in a seperate container. All of the nutrients are left in the pot where the water was boiling. If you simply boil water that won't help unless it is a waterborne bacteria problem or something like that.

    I don't have a clue as to what you can do to correct this problem without a way to test the nutrient level and ph of the water/soil etc. Do you have a friend that has the meters?

    You can also get drops for testing the Ph in water and soil Ph meters are cheap. As far as something for testing nutrient level in soil, I dont have a clue.

    This might help for a soil grow. Buy some distilled water from Walmart. I have bought some there before and the PH is ok and it cost less than $1 a gallon. Use this water to flush your plants. Use the search feature to find directions for the correct way to flush plants in soil. This will help some with any Ph problem and will also dilute any nutrients in the soil. This will maybe at least buy you some time to find a meter.
     
  4. Sneakers is right, we can only guess about your problem without info on things like pH.

    But I can tell you that my plants had a similar looking problem, which turned out to be a pH issue (although my plants were more advanced into the problem before I figured it out).

    A flush generally solves problems involving nutes/pH, but if you don't know the pH of the well water you use then you might just be flushing it with the same water that's causing the problem. If you can't find a way to check pH soon but want to do a flush anyhow, I recommend buying a gallon or two of distilled water, which you can find at any gas station or target/walmart. The pH will be pretty reliably 7, which isn't idea but can buy you some more time until you can get some testing supplies.

    -Edit- Sorry, I just reread your post and saw that you're not using nutes and your soil is nute free. But I still stand by my suggestion, because the fact that your water is from a well doesn't mean a thing about pH, it'll just be free of the additives that cities generally put into tap. If you can't afford the pH meter, I suggest saving up for it and using distilled bottled water from the store, it's cheap. Or you could collect and use rainwater, depending on where you live, but there's always going to be some risk unless you can test. My vote's for the bottled water.
     
  5. okay that all sounds like good ideas, i went ahead and moved it further away from the light, and added a fan in there to keep the hmidity and heat down i read that that can cause what my plant is doing right now as well...i'm betting my well water is doing it i'll go out and by some distilled water and flush it out..how much do the chemical PH tests cost? and where could i get one?
     
  6. A chem pH test kit will cost you about $10, although you can always spend more on pH testing supplies. Just search "pH test" on amazon.com and you'll find some, otherwise check out local gardening stores. Let us know how your plants respond!
     
  7. okay i definitely will...i'm wondering do you think they'll be okay for a couple more days with distilled water til the PH test arrives? or should i go out and try to buy one from a store
     
  8. will this work? if i get some test strips too for a back up check. i also just looked at my bag of potting soil and noticed it has manure in it, and i just read that manure is a fert! i didn't know that i asked the guy at the store for no ferts and he said this was it..will it be alright if i keep it in this soil and flush the hell out of it? i think this is the main problem along with the PH http://www.amazon.com/Deluxe-pH-tes...1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1195969762&sr=1-1
     
  9. You can water with the distilled water if you want and not damage the plants, but if the old water has changed the pH of the soil the plants may not improve. I vote for a flush, and then water with the distilled bottled water if you need to. Then when your pH equipment comes you can test your well water. If it's OK then you can use that and not buy more bottled water. Otherwise, you can just use distilled water and you'll be fine.

    Yeah that seems like it'll work, although it has a pretty limited pH range that it'll test for. A massive flush can be used to make potting soil usable, but it'd probably be easier to just buy new soil and do a flush/transplant. Don't buy potting soil, but instead use topsoil. The former almost always has nutrients added, no matter what salespeople say (and they've said it to me too, it nearly killed my plants!). The latter is generally nute free, and quite well suited to growing any plant.
     
  10. okay i have the ph tester ordered, it'll be a little while before it gets here though..i have already flushed it out, and will go get some distilled water to water with until the tester gets here. thanks for all the help, i will update when i get the reading for the PH of my water.
     
  11. welll i think i might have just killed her! i am so pissed, i needed to transplant to better soil, and when i took her out i saw alot of roots left behind in the old pot...i really hope she can bounce back from this i am so worried..all this work and effort and now it could all be ruined by some stupid ass mistake...if there's anything i can do besides just sit back and watch to see if she makes it please let me know..
     
  12. Don't worry yourself too much, the same thing happened to one of my plants. It'll take some extra time to recover, which means a longer wait until you see any growth. But for now you just have to wait, and make sure not to overwater, and make absolutely sure not to feed it anything until you see some improvement. Take a deep breath, and remember that these are hardy plants!
     
  13. yeah that is true...i just hope she survives! seemed to still have a decent root ball intact even after the trauma..wish her luck! i'll let you know if she bounces back.
     
  14. the leaves are now starting to wilt upwards...there may be too much water in there, i don't know..and that PH tester is on back order so i'm screwed for a while before i can get PH. idk what to do
     
  15. Wilting from too much water makes the leaves heavy and the droop down, not up. It's hard to try to diagnose a problem just from a little description like that, is there any chance you could get a picture up for us?

    My first thought based on what I heard (which, again, isn't enough for a clear diagnosis) is that your box may be running too hot-- when my box overheated earlier this year the plants' leaves started to tilt upwards, and they kind of curled up from the center. What's the temp?
     
  16. Yeah i'm sorry i posted that hastily this morning before school, hence the lack of detail and no pictures. here are the pics, kinda hard to tell sorry about the bluriness but pretty much angling upwards toward the light, and wilting up from the center like you were saying. it may be getting too hot in there, i don't have a thermometer to tell though. i really didn't want to have to drill a hole in my box and try to rig an exhaust and intake system 1) for noise issues 2) for money issues and 3) for stealth issues...but i may have to change my mind and try to figure it out..
     

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  17. That looks like heat stress to me, but that can sometimes be solved by just moving the lights farther away from your plants.

    And let me get this straight, your box doesn't have any air intake or exhaust?
     
  18. yes you are correct..i didn't know how it would react or if it would work in the beginning...actually this whole thing started off as just a trial to even see if i could do it, and now it turned into me wanting a persy stash for the winter months...so now i'm kinda going along with the flow and hoping i can get her to flower. its definitely heat stress, she is getting worse. i think its a combination of that and stress from the transplant too...
     
  19. okay so just got my PH tester, and my well water was at 7.2. i just made a gallon batch, got it down to 6.8 and am about to do a flush with the balanced water...i was thinking since i just transplanted should i wait to do said flush? or should i just go ahead and do it now? its bottom leaves are almost completely dead now, it looks like its eating itself i'm not sure. when the top leaves wilted upwards so drastically, they touched my lights and burnt both tips, so i cut the burnt part away as best i could, should i just remove both the bottom leaves as they are pretty much dead? if so where should i cut them off? also, even with all this stress and trauma it is still continuing to put out excellent new growth down low..which i am hoping is a good sign.
     

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  20. Yo man, still looks like a bit of nute burn. Don't stress it too much because it is not bad. I recommend not feeding them either. Next time the soil dries out down at least an inch deep, go ahead and flush the pot. A good flush with a one gallon pot for example, would be to tripple it and flush with three gallons.
     

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