Hello,
I’m new to marijuana in general and have only been growing for about 3-5 weeks. I started off with 4 seeds, 3 of them successfully germinated. One of them I accidently broke the root from the seed before it had time to pop up, the other two came up, one of them came up about and inch but the seed never came off of the plant, eventually the seed fell off and it dried up. So I am left with one plant. It seems to be growing at a fast pace and seemed healthy for the first few weeks of it’s life. It also germinated very quickly. But all the sudden on it’s second set of leaves the tips curled down a bit and they also began to yellow. Then the first fan leaves also yellowed a bit on the tips. The first leaves to yellow started to get bad so I clipped them off not knowing what to do. The fan leave that is yellowing seems to not be progressing so I left it nor did I want to clip the biggest leaf on the plant. There were also a few small brown spots on the yellowed leaves. Now the plant looks a little almost wilted and the leaves with the yellow tips are quite droopy. I’m just trying to save my only plant until I can clone it hopefully and get a few more to fall back on if I screw one up.
I’ve done a lot of reading online and I’ve narrowed it down to what I think might be the problem but like I said I just started so my guess is not something I would like to go off of; over watering or lack of air flow.
My medium is 50/50 perlite and peat moss. I am not watering it very often but I use a spray bottle to mist it every few days (I was misting every day) but I have cut water as I think I may be over watering. The pot it is in has some larger holes on the bottom and I poked smaller ones on the sides of the container.
Air flow is almost non existent as this is a closet grow and I don’t have money for a fan right now, the best I can get is opening up the window and the closet door which doesn’t produce much.
Also the stem seems to be very thin for how tall it is getting, if I mist the top of it the plant will tip over so I had to make an improvised stake.
Two other questions I have are,
When can you start cloning a plant?
And when can you tell what sex your plant is?
I really appreciate any help.
Thank you
I’ve uploaded a photo as well, this is what it looks like right now except it is a bit more droopy.
Wow, so much, where to start.
The plant is likely stretching without enough thickness or rigidity in the stem for two reasons, one because you have no fan – a light breeze slightly shaking the plants around helps them develop thickness and rigidity. Also plants have no moving parts to bring the air over their lungs – their leaves, fans are kinda important indoors without the natural wind and breezes of outdoors. The second reason because the light is not intense enough, you could get brighter lights or possibly just moving the light closer would help increase intensity at the leaves.
Otherwise the plant doesn’t look that bad minus the yellow tip. Are you feeding it? This could be a nitrogen deficiency. I would be worried about over watering as it can cause these type symptoms as well.
When you can clone is a kinda iffy subject. Normally you want it to be pretty big and well developed so you can cut a decent length stem off of the mother plant.
Most strains may show no sign of sex until well into the flowering period.
Thank you for the quick response! I apologize for asking so much at one time. I am not feeding it again because it comes down to money, as well as the fan and light. All I am using is a fluorescent light in a heat lamp as well as a flood light at times for additional light, the fluorescent does not produce heat though so I will move it closer to the plant. Fan is going to be next on my list and then some nutrients. I’m afraid if I treat it for a lack of one nutrient it will have too much of a different kind. I used miracle grow peat moss and perlite and I have no idea if there is any nutrients already in there or not. I’m going to try and find a fan and not water it this week, the soil is pretty wet and I just went up there to check on it and the stick I put in the ground seems to have absorbed quite a bit of water as well so I think that may be part of my problem.
I just found an old laptop fan I rigged to concentrate the air a bit so it will blow on my plant. Nothing fancy but I think it will work for now, and it’s got two settings. Low will barely move it and high will shake the entire plant a bit. I will keep it on there from here on out and see if maybe my stem and branches bulk up a bit. I’m excited. 
Sounds good, any air flow over the leaves and around the plant will be very beneficial. And having the one light that you can put close will help a lot as well. Did you say you are using a heat lamp? As in IR keep your lizard or hamburger warm heat lamp? If this is the case, this lamp is almost useless to the plant, IR can be used by the plant but very little is needed and likely enough is produced by the fluorescent light on its own. Also IR is more needed in bloom, maybe you can use this light later in combination with your more intense light for flowering.
No matter the type of light, if you can find the exact specs for its lumens/FLUX per square foot (or the equivalent PAR for red/blue only LEDs) you can use this as a loose guide as to what you need as minimums:
Seedlings and clones require about 400-1000 lumens per square foot.
Vegetative growth requires about a minimum of 2,000 to 3,000 lumens per square foot.
Flowering requires about 5,000 to 10,000 lumens per square foot, ideally, and can take possibly much more.
10,000 lumens is supposed to be about the average power of the sun at sea level on a clear day at high noon, or something like that, lol. 8,000 - 12,000 lumens is supposed to be about the average power of the full sun without any overcast or no clouds depending on altitude and potentially other factors.
It’s not ideal, but you can make do with 2,000 lumens for an entire grow if necessary.
Keep in mind there are the exact spectra you want to be sure are included in your light. White light has equal parts red, blue and green light in it. However green light is pretty much useless to the plant, that is why all the green light is reflected away from the leaves and why the leaves actually appear green to your eye.
Chlorophyll absorption peaks are at the spectra of 430 nm (blue) and 662 nm (red) for chlorophyll a, and 453 nm (blue) and 642 nm (red) for chlorophyll b. Chlorophyll b is not as abundant as chlorophyll a, and merely help in increasing the absorption range.
Lights are often rated in a color temperature rating. 6500k is slightly blue shifted, 5000K to 5800k is considered kinda right in the middle, very balanced, and 2700k is red shifted. Those are some of the most common numbers, I’ve seen 3000 and 3500k as well. Pretty much anything above 5000k to 5800k is blue shifted spectrum light and below is red shifted. Yes, in flower, using fluorescents, in general more 6500Ks are used in veg and more 2700Ks are used during bloom/flower.
Being aware of this information will help you choose the right lights no matter which type you end up deciding to use.
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I am using a heat lamp outlet thing, not sure what you guys call it. It’s like the cone the light plugs into, the bulb is a fluorescent simple one you find in your house though. I have two of them and the other one has a heat bulb and a incandescent light again like the one you find in your house but I normally don’t have both lights on the plant at one time because the incandescent tends to create quite a bit of heat and obviously the heat bulb does as well.
Thanks for all the light info, I am going to try and find some cheap lights for now maybe off craigslist, I think for now the one bulb will do but once it gets any bigger I am going to need more and if I clone I will definitely need more.
