Please help me diagnose my poor plant's problem!

Troubleshooting Diseases
21

Thanks for the response, fnd.

As you can see, my plant isn’t enclosed in a closet or anything. I work at a hospital and sleep there almost 50% of the time, so my room is often pretty dark at night, but occasionally I’ll be home and have the cheap overhead lights on for a bit. I just am surprised that would keep her from flowering. And I really don’t think anything else would be keeping her from flowering, since she’s 6 feet tall with lush green leaves and no signs of any deficiency or other problems.

Any other sage advice floating around out there?

22

I actually think she may finally be showing signs of flowering. Perhaps the 48 hour dark period I gave her helped kickstart things.

Whaddya think? These fine hair-like projections at the apex and branch points look promising to me (immature pistils?)…

942×530 122 KB

Apical bud (above)

942×530 139 KB

One of the sub-apical branch points.

2 Likes
23

Gratz on the buds :raised_hands:

1 Like
24

I bought a ph meter on e bay 13 dollars and also purchased ph up and ph down at grow store

25

So almost 2 months later since she started flowering, I come home from a weekend away, and her leaves are all droopy and soft. What the shit!

Usually this is over or under-watering, but I have been watering her everyday this week and she hasn’t sprung back to life, so I think under-watering is out. I have been watering her the same amount for months, so I really doubt over-watering is the problem. I thought perhaps “root rot” is the issue, as her roots are hanging down from the bottom of her aero-pot at this point and she sits in a large pan (often with stagnant water at the bottom, below the level of her soil, however). But I checked out her tush, and the roots hanging down are all white and clean.

Her LED light had gotten a little close, so I moved it up to ~12 inches away again. But still, her light had been that close for weeks without any issues. It’s on a 12/12 program, so that has also been consistent.

I just rechecked her water and nutes (fox farm system), and they’re clocking in at pH of 6.5 and 6.7 respectively.

It looks like a lot of her hairs are turned brown at this point, but they aren’t curled in yet. I ordered a magnifier to look at her trichromes to see if they’re cloudy, but it won’t get here for another week. It is nearing the 2 month mark (her White Widow strain is listed as having a 60 day flowering period) though.

Can you guys help me solve this one?! She’s so close to harvesting, it would be tragedy of the highest order if I ruin this somehow.

So this is how she looked 10 days ago (May 10)… So pure of heart, so strong in body, so hot in the face:

530×942 183 KB

This is her today (May 19), all droopy and sad, almost like one of those celebrity gone bad tabloid photos:

529×943 165 KB

Up by the apical bud, leaves hanging straight down, some curling, and some with some yellowing:

530×942 165 KB

530×942 153 KB

This branch a few nodes from the apex still looks totally healthy today for whatever reason:

942×530 178 KB

There are 2 lower branches like this that look like they’re totally dying. She’s been shedding dried up leaves periodically since she started flowering, but not entire branches like this:

530×942 148 KB

Any ideas out there? Pleeeease help! Thank you so much for reading.

1 Like
26

Yeah, overwatering and as a result damping off looks like the result, but the fact that the lower growth looks yellow and not that healthy makes me think something is building up in the soil, maybe like a nutrient salt toxicity.

Maybe a rootbound issue? This is hard to say. I don’t see anything obvious nor outside of you previous suspicions, like maybe over watering. The discoloration in the leaves, this might be pointing to something, nutrient lockouts or toxicities can come from things other than a pH out of balance, just a thought.

happy growing,

~MacG

27

damping off or root rot ?
Could flushing help ?
With alittle hyd peroxide just to give it time to finish ? I know it dirt but I dont thing doing nothing is an option
It will add o2 to the medium and maybe put a cooling rack under the pot so it can drain.and not sit in runoff
It looks like my tomatoes after the first frost :slight_smile:
Good Luck

28

So I had a couple additional thoughts:

  1. Is it time to harvest, and that’s why this is happening? Upon closer inspection (my 60x lens hasn’t come yet, but I used one of the lenses from my google cardboard as a crude substitute), the trichromes appear to still be clear, so I don’t think that’s the issue.
    -Still, should I prune off the 2-3 branches that are shriveling up? Not sure what the implications of that will be.

  2. Over-watering:
    I have been watering (with Fox Farm nutes twice per week) this plant almost every day for her entire life (September - present), but this is my leading theory right now. I haven’t watered her since Thursday now, and it’s still damp in the top inch of the soil. I wonder if she’s waterlogged, and her roots are starving for oxygen?

I don’t think it’s root rot, as a couple of her roots are hanging out of the bottom of the pot, and they look white and healthy. Although the drying rack is definitely a good idea!

Also don’t think it’s root-bound. I have one of those Superroots Air-Pots that has holes all in the sides and is a wrap-around design. Only a few roots even seem to be coming out the side, although maybe I’m too high up:

530×942 195 KB

Do you all think a hydrogen peroxide flush is the best move at this point? it’ll kill the good microbes in the soil, but she’s only a couple of weeks from harvest at this point anyway I think, so I was probably going to flush her with water soon for a couple of weeks regardless. Conversely I could amazon prime some FloraKleen flush solution, but that would only really help if salt precipitation is the issue.

Thanks for all your help!

29

I’d have to go back to the over watering water logged as the most likely.

H2O2 might be a good idea, it will bring more oxygen into the root zone.

~MacG

30

Thanks MacGyver and Iva! I just ran to CVS and grabbed some 3% H2O2 and diluted it according to FLUSH with H202?!? Have u done it before?!? | Rollitup (2.5tsp/gal). Just gave her a biiiiiig ~1/2 gallon flush, as she was sucking it down (seemed pretty thirsty after holding her waterings for 2 days.
I also propped her up on a drying rack over her basin, to be safe ;D

Hopefully this helps! i’ll let you guys know how it works out over the coming days.

In the meantime, should I keep watering her with FoxFarm nutes (liquid Big Bloom, Grow Big, Tiger Bloom system) twice a week as well, or give her some time to flush completely clean?

31

After further research, it sounds like it’s pretty normal for their leaves to wither up and die towards the end of the flowering period, and it has been 56 days since I first noticed her flowering (of a 60 day flowering period, per ILGM store page for fem White Widow).

Could this simply be the normal physiologic process of sucking the energy from the leaves to the buds?

1 Like
32

Shes starting to do her thing congrats