Problem: Yellow/brown spots on leaves and leaves’ tips curling downwards
Medium/grow method: FoxFarm Ocean Forest
Feed and supplements used: FoxFarm Grow Big and Cal/Mag
water source: tap water with PhDown to get to 6ish PH
Climate: Temps stay between 70-80, RH stays between 50% - 75%
Additional Info: During veg stage, I was having trou
Strain/age: AK47 Autoflower
light used: HLG 135 LED, was at 18/6 now at 12/12 to start flowering
Additional Info: I had a Ph problem, so I had been watering more frequently to bring that down. Also, I am an idiot and had been using a fertilizer and not plant food. I recently fixed that and switched to FoxFarm Grow Big with a plan to switch to Big Bloom 2 weeks into flowering. I started flowering a week ago with gradual movement to 12/12. I am also going to start increasing the light soon.
The soil is pretty wet and if I try to push deep into the soil it is too wet and dense to keep going. I assume I overwatered and this is causing the plant to look sickly?
Also, I just started flowering and this is my first real grow. Is this plant going to produce? Or should I start over? I have learned a ton and now know better how to get started, so I am eager to correct any issues or start over if need be.
Over watered and over fed. Flush it out with PH’ed water, and cut back on the amount of nitrogen. Follow 1/2 strength fox farms schedule. I assume your using full strength? You didn’t mention how much.
The curling is excessive nitrogen. After flushing look for new growth, and the old growth will not recover.
Happy growing!
Thanks! So I already started my 12/12 light schedule. Is that going to cause problems if I flush? Also, I was doing 6tsp of big bloom twice a week, so I’ll cut that to 3tsp.
Also, won’t flushing further cause problems with water? The pot is pretty heavy and the lower soil feels very compacted. Is that an issue I can resolve?
Welcome ! You mentioned tablespoons, I recommend getting a TDS meter to measure feeding and runoff will give you a much better understanding of what’s going in and what’s coming out. Just my thoughts good luck
I like ocean Forest good product ! It is a pretty hot soil. I can usually make it to flowering stage or close too without feeding anything. After the flush watch your new growth an let the pot dry back out before you water again.
I would keep going with it. By the sounds of it you’ve made a heap of mistakes on your first grow but that’s how we learn. Use this as a training grow. You will make a few more mistakes before you’re done so make those mistakes on this grow and see how it goes. You have some solid growers in your corner as well so it should come good
I agree it’s over watered, and if anything, the excess nutrients are probably the cal mag you are feeding it. Typically you don’t need cal-mag with tap water, only distilled and reverse osmosis water needs cal mag. What is the pH of your tap water before you adjust it?
You need to get yourself a Fox Farms feeding schedule. Big bloom is a micro nutrient used throughout the entire grow and it would be really hard to overfeed with Big Bloom. The name is misleading, as where all other products bloom formula is for bloom, Big Bloom is not, Tiger Bloom is the product you add during flowering to give it extra Potassium and phosphorus. Grow Big is what has the extra nitrogen in it for veg and early bloom and is eventually discontinued near the later half of flowering. Apparently everyone on this forum thinks Fox Farms is out to sell you more nutrients by telling you to use too much so they want you to cut back. Me, I think Fox Farms wants you to be successful with your grow so people will use their products. They did a lot of research into it and it is not my place to second guess their feeding schedule. I’ve used Fox Farms for 12 years, using their feed schedule and never felt the need to cut way back on dosages. Most of the people here who tell you it’s hot “hear that Fox Farms nutrients are too hot”, it’s obvious they don’t use them.
What occurred originally to think you had a pH problem to begin with? What started all these problems? Did you actually have a problem, or did you start flushing because you did a pH test and started chasing numbers on a meter?
So I had a problem early on in veg with yellowing leaves. I hadn’t been testing my Ph and was just using tap water. Once the yellowing problem happened, I tested my tap water Ph and it was like 8+, so I assumed the yellowing was Ph. That’s when I started Ph’ing my tap water to get it down to around 6 when I fed it.
Then I was reading about feeding and realized I had been using FoxFarm fertilizer and not feed (in my defense, I got it from the ‘Plant Food’ section of Home Depot). So I started I bought the three pack of FoxFarm food and started feeding it along with CalMag. I mainly used the CalMag because it seemed like that was a common additive and I was trying to catch up since I hadn’t fed the plant actual food until recently. I also heard it helped with the yellowing.
I also didn’t realize what the PPM meter was for (I thought it was just for Hydro builds) and hadn’t been testing my runoff bc there wasn’t much runoff water when I was watering.
Then I just tested the runoff while flushing last night…it was at 4500 PPM , so I flushed it good with Ph’d water down to runoff being around 500ppm. I am now going to leave that as is until it dries out. Then I’m going to test the runoff and if it’s good, then I will start up the FoxFarm feeding schedule again.
I think I have learned a lot on this grow and am going to let her finish. I also managed to drop my Ph meter in my water bucket while flushing, so I think I may have killed that meter lol. Oh well!
That’s unfortunate, fox farms ocean forest and happy frog should have ppm of 2000-3000. You probably went too far and now will need to be much more aggressive with feeding since it has been flushed of all it’s nutrients. Coco doesn’t have nutrients so it needs to be fed and that is where ppm readings are below 1000. Some prefer using coco just for the reason they have more control of the nutrients since there are none present to begin with. Using soil is easier for new growers since it has plenty of nutrients to get you through most of the grow before you NEED to feed to keep your plant alive, but you can feed if you want to push what is possible.
This has been a tough grow and hopefully you learned a lot to make the next grow go better. Definitely keep your plant growing, they are extremely resilient and you may be surprised by what you get. May not be a big harvest but it might still be good stuff, you just need to get things under control.
Get the fox farms feeding schedule if you don’t have one and start following it at full strength since there are no nutrients left in the soil. If you haven’t mixed them yet and are uncomfortable with the process, you need to take your container of water, stir in the nutrients one at a time and adjust the pH before feeding. Fox Farms nutrients are acidic so if you start with water that is 8.0 or higher adding the nutrients should get you close to the desired range of 6.2-6.8. That should be your target range for feeding IN SOIL and since nutrients are more available at different pH readings you need to vary your feedings in this range, do not get OCD and shoot for a specific number of say 6.5. It’s important to let the pH range vary.
The Fox Farms trio you bought will be a good start, but you should know that they are only part of the feeding program. I say this because there are many growers starting out that use Fox Farm products, but most are unaware that the trio lacks the potent potassium and phosphorus that the flowers require for obtaining nice tight, big fat buds. Fox Farms expects you to use the solubles (powders) that get mixed in during the flowering stages of growth. They are the products in the purple section of the feeding chart at the bottom, open sesame, beastie bloomz, and cha-Ching are the products. If you use the solubles you mix them before adjusting pH. They are very acidic and you will need to adjust the pH up, even starting with a pH of 8.0.
When growing in soil, the yellow leaves early in the seedling/early growth stage are most likely caused by over watering. Next time you germinate a seedling, water the soil well before placing your seed, even to the point of a little run off if starting in a small pot. Place your seed in a hole so that there is only about 1/4 inch soil on top, turn your light on, and then comes the hardest part of all, leave it alone!
The pot needs to dry out from the top down so the roots search out the moisture at the bottom of the pot. They develop much faster that way then watering a little bit every day. You shouldn’t need to water for at least 5 days. If in doubt, pick up the pot and if it feels heavy, then wait another day. Using a humidity dome is counter productive since it keeps the soil evenly moist and doesn’t allow the soil to dry out from top to bottom and if used should only be used the first day or two for short periods of time.
, so I flushed it good with Ph’d water down to runoff being around 500ppm. I am now going to leave that as is until it dries out. Then I’m going to test the runoff and if it’s good, then I will start up the FoxFarm feeding schedule again.