Hello, Everyone!
I am back again this week to see if I can gain some more knowledge.
I am currently growing 4 autoflower plants indoors(2 Quick One, 1 Wedding Cake, 1 Blue Cheese) using Happy Frog soil mixed with Perlite and Dolomite Lime.
The water i’ve been using the whole grow so far is rain water that i’ve been collecting and replacing weekly.
The plants are 1 month old now and just began to enter flowering in the last week.
Ever since the first switched over to flower I noticed it’s lower leaves starting to yellow and droop slightly.
at first I thought this was due to underwatering. Namely because I was so afraid of overwatering on my first attempt at soil that I have been making sure to only water by picking up the pots and watering when they feel light and dry. (typically 2-3 days between waterings)
so when the first plant started showing the droopy, yellowing leaves I gave it some water and decided I would watch it for a few days.
The yellowing continued to get worse and then 2 other plants entered flower and now they are showing the same thing.
All of them were perfectly healthy and happy looking until the flower switch.
from my hydroponic grow I was thinking it looked like nute burn from the browning leaf tips.
I was expecting to possibly need to supplement some nutes later into flowering, but I really didn’t think there would be a deficiency at the very start of flowering with short lived autos in happy frog.
if this looks like some sort of deficiency(Nitrogen or Magnesium?), the list of items I have to try and remedy would be…
A bag of worm castings
More Dolomite Lime
12-12-12 fertilizer pellets
also, I have my nutes from Hydroponics if I could mix that in with the water to feed them. not sure if you can or should do that.
General Hydroponics Flora Trio series
Advanced Nutrients Perfect pH balance Trio series
and a bottle of Advanced Nutrients Overdrive for late flowering.
pics below and as always, any help or advice is greatly appreciated!
you all have already helped me so much in my last 2 grows, thank you!
Id also let the one with the swollen leaves to dry out a bit. The clawing, swollen leaves is a symptom. Autos are picky about their watering and feed. Youll find thay most autos require about half the feeding thats recommended. Pick up your pots and if there is a little weight to them youre good. If light then water.
so I shouldn’t worry at all about it yet?
a week into flowering just seemed a bit early to start having such rapidly yellowing leaves if they weren’t having an issue.
When it is a nice even fade like that, She is pulling what she wants from them for new growth. The true answer lies in the PPM’s out. When I start to see that, I am usually low and give her a good feeding and she stops eating herself.
Absolutely! All of our nutrient blends contain the necessary elements for plant growth. Start with the formula ratios identified on the label for the specific plant or crop you are growing, and then adjust and experiment until you find the right formula for your specific need.
Found a little more info in a statement made by a grower online. That party states:
“Hydroponic nutrients leech to fast in soil. Roughly 50% of what you use in the soil will go past the root zone and as soon as you water the rest will go away as well. In order to use them in soil properly you need to add a lot of peat or coir to help absorb the nutrients so they stay near the root zone longer. Its better to use a slow release fertilizer in soil.”
I know very little about hydroponic nutrients. But I’m thinking they’ll work until you’re able to pick up something else.
the meter I have is a fairly cheapish one from Yinmik.
the only dry nutrients I have are 12-12-12 fertilizer pellets.
not sure if just sprinkling some of them on top would be more of a benefit or a detriment. as I don’t know how long it would take for them to start breaking down to get down into the soil.
You can do a slurry test of soil for PH by using distilled water (not tap water), mix 1/4 cup of your medium in a clean container and add 1/2 cup of distilled water. Mix it thoroughly and measure PH.
You can do a runoff test by watering through and collecting the last 1/2 cup of runoff to measure salt levels.
Your meter may or may not do the job: we’ve found the cheap meters don’t tend to hold up and they tend to drift. Proper storage is critical: use storage solution or 4.01 PH calibration solution for storage. Storing it dry or in distilled water will damage the delicate glass bulb in the probe tip.
I have 5 broken, useless, junk meters. Two were dropped and 3-won’t calibrate
None worked as long as my Apera 20 or Apera 60EZ.
They also calibrate well.
my opinion is just spend the money on a nice one either appera Or blue lab and make sure you get a big bottle of the calibration juice other than that lower leaves turning yellow no big deal. I let them rock until they’re dead and then pull them off.
I think hydroponic nutes are much more stronger than organic nutes or dry amendments to your soil. They are meant for a different application. I tried using hydro nutes in my soil potted plants and seems to have some of the same issues. I switch to bio bizz liquid feed and it seemed to fix that issue.
