First grow, Lower leaves dying fast in week 2 of flower

[G_The_Crow]

Hello everyone, and thank you in advance for any comments or assisatance.

This is my first ever grow for cannabis. I have grown hot pepper plants in the past with decent success, so I had thought that some experience with plants would help me here. Unfortunately, I’m running into an alarming problem in this second week of flower. The lower leaves of all of my plants are turning yellow with brown spots and are drying up and dying at an alarming rate.

Here’s a quick rundown of my setup:

Strain: White Widow Autoflower
Soil: Fox farm ocean forest
Pots: 5 gallon fabric
Lights: Vivosun VS4000 (400 Watts)
Schedule: 18/6
Temps: Night: 78F Day: 85F (Peaked at 92)
Humidity: 50%

First off, I know the temperature is high. Unfortunately there’s not much that I can do. This summer has been hot. My A/C can only do so much. I’ve done everything I can but this is as low as I can get the temperature to go.

The plants had been growing perfectly fine up until the first flowers started showing.

I am currently entering week 6 of the grow [week 2 of flowering] and I have noticed the lower fan leaves of all 4 of my plants begin to develop brown spots and wither away. The lowest set of 3-fingered leaves on the plant in the supplied pictures went from perfectly healthy to dead in 3 days. I had pinched and bent the large fan leaves down so that they would not shade the branches as they were first forming, a few weeks ago.

The soil I have been using is Ocean forest from Fox farm. Up until I began seeing preflowers, I had not used any nutrients as the soil had been advertised as feeding plants for that amount of time.

Upon seeing preflowers about a week and a half ago, I started using Fox farm Tiger Bloom nutrients in accordance with the bottle directions.

I also am battling with fungus gnats. For about a week I have been spraying neem oil on the lower soil. I have also been using mosquito bits in my water, both with and without the tiger bloom nutrients. The gnats seem to be dying off.

I am having trouble identifying what the problem could be, since there has been hardly any time between this problem starting and the leaves dying off. I’m beginning to panic that something has gone horribly wrong.

It seems like this grow has been going perfectly until suddenly falling off a cliff.

Can anyone shed some light on the situation?

Here are my photos:

[ChittyChittyBangin]

First off, welcome to the growmunity! Second off, your girl looks completely healthy. Fading of lower leaves during flower is completely normal and is to be expected. Autos can be finicky about nutes, so keep your eyes out for any drastic changes. Also, remember to follow the flushing schedule when using salt based nutes. If not, your soil ph will swing hard and your plant will have a hard time recovering. I would also recommend a water water feed routine. The dark waxy green leaves is an indicator of excess nitrogen. Do you have a ph and ppm meter? @G_The_Crow

[G_The_Crow]

Thank you for the response! I’m glad to see someone thinks all is well. I was shocked to see the leaves turn so quickly.

Unfortunately I don’t have a ph/ppm meter-- I was led to believe that autoflowering strains would be quick/easy enough that I figured I wouldn’t really need one. I had thought about getting one after my first few rounds with these white widow auto seeds [I got 20 during a recent sale].

After a few grows with my current seeds I was hoping to branch out and try a photo strain, at which point I was going to get more equipment.

Do you think a meter would be good to have anyway?

[SlayinAsquirter]

There’s nothing wrong with that plant, it’s beautiful. Keep doing what you’re doing👊

[ChittyChittyBangin]

@G_The_Crow yes a ppm and tds/ppm meter is a must if using salt based nutes ph-ing water in, checking runoff, ect. I grow organic and i have a set. Believe it or not, photos are way more easier to grow than autos. You can train them and control when you are ready to flower. They are way more forgiving than autos when mistakes are made also. Autos are like mad karens who didnt get enough whip in their Frappuccino…

[1HappyPappy]

Welcome
Plant looks very healthy and happy

I use a spray something like this for fungus gnats and i just barely spray the top of the soil careful to not get any on the buds of course.

The spray is quick to het rid of the flying adults but if they been around long in in numbers, chances are theres larva in the growing medium.

This is what i use for the larva and this product is all natural if you don’t like pesticides, this product will get rid of them by itself, but it takes a couple weeks as the adults die off over time and the larva never survive to become adults.

[danniep40]

@G_The_Crow you really need to use foxfarm trio plus calmag for your plant

[DRsDank]

I agree that plants hungry. Needs more than just tiger bloom.

[G_The_Crow]

Thank you to everyone for your responses. I’ll order a ph/ppm meter to measure my water and runoff. Until that arrives, what are some warning signs i should look out for to know if something is truly going wrong?

@danniep40 @DRsDank do you think that the plant will be able to make it to the end of its flower with just the tiger bloom nutrients? I’ll be ordering the trio of course, but it may be a while before I can get them. Do you think the plant may be in peril without more help before she can finish?

[1HappyPappy]

@G_The_Crow

what are some warning signs i should look out for to know if something is truly going wrong?

Discolored leaves spreading, leaf distortion like a claw, twisting, or turning up on the edges like a taco, extremely dark green leafs…
Things like that linda.

[danniep40]

@G_The_Crow you will probably finish but suffer bud quality

[G_The_Crow]

That’s sad to hear… I’ll give extra nutrients when they arrive but I think she will have to make do with just tiger bloom for another couple of weeks before I can get them.

Guess I’ll have to take it as a lesson learned. I’ll still appreciate the best that she can give.

[Side3ffects]

Keep looking at those fading leaves. To me it looks like they are correcting themselves after you gave them some food and the green is slowly starting to come back. Not saying this is fact but for me tiger bloom really dropped the ph of water after adding. Your second pic shows a yellow leaf on the right side. That is where I’m noticing the green coming back. You might have corrected the yellowing already

[Christa]

she looks delicious

[G_The_Crow]

In the past couple of days, the yellowing hasn’t spread, but none of the green has come back, either. At least we’re not going in the wrong direction.

I did, however, feed for 3 waterings in a row. A bit of an overcorrection-- I do have a couple of individual “claw” leaves here and there on some new growth, but the very newest leaves are looking healthy again so I’m sure they’ve recovered from a momentary overfeeding.

I’ve used plain water again on my most recent watering and all seems well.

No further leaves have died in the last 3 days so hopefully I can take this as a sign that things have been [mostly] corrected. The flowers are growing nicely and look healthy.

Thanks for the insight, everyone

[ChittyChittyBangin]

Give her a few more days and youll see more improvement. My grows can take up to a week or more to really see what a correction did.

[G_The_Crow]

Update for this morning:

During the week where I gave tiger bloom with every watering, my plants began to recover. The green wasnt coming back, but all of the leaves stabilized where they were and did not deteriotate any further.

The day after I watered with just plain water, the dying of the leaves immediately resumed and I lost another pair of fan leaves on each plant.

I wonder if i am experiencing a PH problem. Unfortunately im still without a ph meter [still a ways away from arriving], however, I am aware that my tap water is extremely alkaline. [Very hard water with tons of cal and mag in it].

I wonder if the tiger bloom is actually fixing my ph problem, then.

This is telling me that I need to be adding it every time i’m watering. And so I will. Hopefully by now its not too late. The buds on two of my plants have stalled-- week 4 of flowering and they havent progressed beyond how they looked on week 2.

[G_The_Crow]

New pics from today. This is not the same plant as from the original pic, but is definitely the sickliest looking out of the plants I have growing.

The others are somewhat better but all have similar issues.

Anyone able to diagnose her issue from these pics? The other plants are recovering but this one’s still struggling.

Emtering week 4 of flower right now.

[Christa]

Feed her

[ChittyChittyBangin]

Did you ever get a ph and tds meter?