Day 44 since germination of my first grow and it’s been pretty smooth sailing up until this week, so hoping this is something that can be fixed.
I’ve recently noticed that the leaves have been turning light green / yellow and a little droopy, I figured it might be overwatering or some sort of nutrient deficiency. But then I check on them this morning and almost all of them have these dark brown spots on a decent portion of their leaves. Can someone help me figure out what this is and what to do about it? Is it mold/fungi from root rot or nutes? I did some defoliation / lollipopping to all of them yesterday so maybe it’s a stress reaction, seems a bit extreme though and I haven’t seen them do that before.
Strain: Mostly White Widow and 2 GDP
Soil: 50/50 Fox Farms Ocean Forest & Happy Frog with extra perlite and mycorrhizal fungi
Lights: 4x P1000 Viparspectra lights at 100% 18” above top of canopy
Temp: Avg 76° during the day and 70° at night
Humidity: 65%
Nutrients: Fox Farms trio (have really only been using it recently)
Water: 6.5 PH (tested run off the other day and it was 6.4PH & 1,200PPM)
I water then every 2 days when the soil is dry, they each take about 1.5L before there’s runoff
Feeding schedule: I’ve primarily been using only Big Bloom (1-2tsp / gallon) once or twice a week for the last 3 weeks. I started to give them 1.5tsp / gallon of Grow Big once a week, last feed was on Monday and last watered on Wednesday. They were all repotted from 1 gallon to 3 gallon fabric pots 12 or so days ago so perhaps I started giving them nutes too soon before they absorbed all that’s in the soil?
Your run off numbers look good Growmie but something is off in the root zone. A more accurate method of testing the PH and PPMs would be a soil slurry test. Take about a 1/4 cup of soil down near the root zone and add an equal amount of distilled or RO water and stir. Let it rest for 30 minutes and strain it through a coffee filter and test the PH and PPMs. Your watering or feeding frequency are too soon unless your in a small vessel. Follow a drench to drought routine with liberal run off (20-30%) when using synthetic fertilizer
Welcome aboard. Doesnt look like septoria to me. Looks more like calcium spots. PH issues can lock out the uptake. Adding a supplement for calcium and mag wont hurt a bit. Make sure ph is in line and wait it out till unlocks. She will grab what she wants then. Some nute lines require a calmag supplement. I do not know yours. Extra nutes dont help these plants unless we are controlled environment with blazing light and co2 supplement. OG is spot on for liquid.
Thanks for the response! Might be a dumb question but how do I collect the soil from the root zone, do I have to cut the bottom of the fabric pot or can I go from the top (starting at a couple inches or so down)?
I just bought a cal-mag supplement per Storm’s recommendation, which I thought might be the case due to the purple stems that have recently started popping up. I’ll add that the next time I water and completely halt any feeding for the time being.
Take a piece of 1 or 1 and 1/4 pvc sharpen bottom all the way around. You can even put a couple noches in it so it is serrated. Push to bottom of pot tamp top inside pvc with a dowl and pull it out. Keep the soil from bottom of pvc. Soil has to be moist and able to compact for this to work. You can even hit dowl with a hammer to compact it down. Put new soil in hole. That is how we did soil sample back in the day but we use steel pipe.
No matter how you do it. Roots are going to get damaged. Do it close to side of pot to cause least damage.
I flushed each on Sunday (1 gallon of 6.5 PH water and then 1 gallon of 6.5 PH water with 1tsp of cal-mag), so now just waiting to see how they respond. I measured the run off after the 1st gallon and then again after the 2nd, PH looked good and PPM dropped from ~1,100-1,300 to around 900-1,000, so definitely got some excess nutrients out of it. Maybe should’ve flushed it even more but I didn’t want to overdo it.
While I wait, I was hoping you might be able to help me with an autoflower I have that’s currently flowering (almost 7 weeks from germinating) . Over the last 7 days the leaves went from a healthy dark green to a lighter green with a little bit of brown starting to come through. Also there’s some purple starting to appear on the branches / stems. Doesn’t look bad yet but if this is an early sign of something I want to get ahead of it this time.
What’s your input and run off PH for this one. Most plant leave issues are PH related. Remind me again of the nutrients you’re using and feeding frequency
I would consider removing the fan leaves; here is why…if there is an issue, these puppies could share with the rest of her, BUUT, she us also ABSORBING the issue if its something else…regardless, keeping positive and assuming its a combo of not flushing enough, but not wanting to over water her, lets believe the fan leaves took the hit and removing them, ( and waiting it out until shes thirsty again) will freshen her up and get bsck on track. Also, i could be mistaken or lucky, but i have root drenched heavily more than once. And all it did was push out even more salts and clear up the medium extremely well. It is a great thing so when you need to flush completely…to all readers, i am learning the numbers game ppm and the other one, C something lol, so this is all from my own visual experiences, i have had these looks and this is what got things back on track. oh, the red/purple in the stems CAN be eggy bagel, but nowadays, you gotta check your specific strain- it could be a great thing and just a coming of age…check under the fan leaves or the whole underside for irregularities or worse, (creatures).
People are split on defoilation- my experience is that the plant loves it, if you do it by a small margin ( 10-20% per removal) and give it a couple days before doing it again.
Priority personally goes:
it looks crappy.
its yellowing
its being a bully ( you can usually tuck those )
Lastly, totally hoarding space and light and wont stay put.
Check facts on your strain to see if it all ends up as deficiencies, as others pointed out, and i can agree with, my response is based on your scheduling being perfect and the properties of the medium and plant response being the answer.
I tested the runoff yesterday - PPM was 1,400 and PH was 6.1-6.3. So I flushed it until I got a PPM reading of ~700-800 and 6.4PH. It got noticeably worse over the last 2 days but hopefully yesterday’s flush helps and it improved.
I use the Fox Farms trio (so mainly Tiger Bloom). I haven’t really been sticking to any sort of schedule, just occasionally putting 1-1.5 tsp / gallon which I may have started too soon or inadvertently fed too often due to the lack of a fixed schedule. I started to put them all on a schedule last week but then started to run into these issues so want to first make sure they’re healthy before resuming nutes.
For the photos in the original post, I assume it’s best not to flip them to flower until they bounce back right? I’m a little concerned if I wait much longer that I won’t have enough space when they double in size during flower.
Also, just wanted to say thanks again for the help. This seems like a great forum.
Also, the plants from the original post don’t seem to have gotten any worse which is good. I’ve been watching them closely ever since I flushed them and I think they’ve started to clear up a little bit but still too early to tell.
This was really close for soil range and wouldn’t have flushed unless it was the Fox Farm recommend flush. 6.3-6.8 for the soil and feeding a few rounds at a higher PH will pull that back to the sweet spot. There’s a larger demand of potassium and phosphorus during flowering. I would use the complete trio for the remainder of the grow and set up a routine feeding/watering routine. The FF trio is not very forgiving and salt heavy so use a drench to drought with liberal run off on water and feed days and monitor the PH and PPMs Growmie
Thanks man, will do. I also bought a better PH meter on Amazon today (Apera P20), been using the cheap $8 Vivosun one which seemed to work pretty well for a while but I’m starting to have my doubts.
That Apera 20 was a nice choice. I use the Apera 20 and it’s very reliable and accurate. Keep it clean and store it in the storage solution and it’ll stay calibrated forever
