Southern Hemisphere Troubles

Kiaora Whanau, Im having a bit of trouble figuring out why why two of my plants aren’t supporting their own weight! I’m only in early flower and the branches are lying over on top of my SCROG screen!I’m feeding CANNA nutrients at about 1200ppm, with a feed water water feed schedule the plants are in a potting mix that is locally produced the room temps are reasonably stable during the day but night temps are cool at 15degrees Celsius. I ph the water a Nute mixes to between 6.0- 6.5. I haven’t checked the ppm or ph of any run off please help :+1:

@Slayer880

Welcome to ILGM

Your droopy leaves is from "OVERWATERING "

Back off on your wateri g and let them dry out.

SECOND, Yellow Leaves are a " NITROGEN DEFICIENCY "

First off, some interesting, basic facts…

Your marijuana plants need 18 essential elements. They get carbon, hydrogen,
and oxygen from atmosphere and water. They get the 15 other elements via their
roots. These elements are sometimes grouped as major, secondary, and trace elements.
The groupings are determined by how much of each element is needed–some are needed
a lot more than others, but all are necessary.

The major elements are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The so-called secondary
elements are magnesium, calcium, silicon, and sulfur. Some people group these seven
elements as “macronutrients” because they’re required in larger weight amounts than
the remaining essential elements your plants need. Those are called micronutrients,
and they’re very important even though your plants don’t need as much of them. We’re
talking about iron, zinc, copper, molybdenum, boron, manganese, cobalt, and chlorine.

Until recently, silicon wasn’t even included in the essential element list, but modern
research on marijuana plants indicates your plants use silicon to build strong cell walls,
resist pests and diseases, and to create THC glands.

Nutrients problems most likely to reduce growth rate, THC percentages, and harvest
weight often involve nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and calcium. But problems with
deficiency or excess of any of the 18 essential elements is likely to cause serious
trouble for your marijuana plants.

How do you know your marijuana plants have nutrient deficiency or excess? Look at your leaves.
If they’re not lime green, upright, and looking like the perfect marijuana leaf photo
accompanying this article, your leaves are trying to tell you something.

But here’s a twist…it may not be your organic fertilizers, soil, or hydroponics nutrients
that are actually causing the problem. Signs of nutrient element shortages or excess may
merely be a symptom of the real cause of the problem. For example, low temperatures
interfere with nutrient uptake. So you can’t solve a temperature-related nutrient
deficiency problem by increasing your nutrients dosing…you solve the temperature
problem instead, so your marijuana plants can take in what they need.

The Right Amount of Nitrogen
Makes Your Marijuana Healthy and Green

Nitrogen makes up 78% of the dry volume of our atmosphere and plants need to
capture it if they want to grow at all.

No doubt you already know nitrogen is the big N in the N-P-K on your hydroponics
nutrients bottles, and it’s a big, important ingredient for your marijuana growing success.

Unless your plants are in the final weeks of flowering phase, yellow leaves
(especially lower leaves) are signs of trouble, and the troubles are most often
a nitrogen deficiency. It starts with the bottom leaves and works its way up until only the newest growth is green.

On the other hand, if your marijuana plants are overdosing on nitrogen,
the leaves will be extremely dark green.

Either way, nitrogen problems mean big trouble for your marijuana plants because nitrogen is
absolutely necessary for plant survival because nitrogen is a primary elemental support for
protein synthesis, growth, leaf development, metabolism, and root health.

If you oversupply nitrogen, you get marijuana plants that are too tall, thin, and gangly.
It’s harder to get successful flowering from plants that have been overfed nitrogen.

If you see that the very tips of your leaves are yellow, that’s an almost sure sign of nitrogen
deficiency, which occurs most often during a fast-moving grow phase or when you’ve switched
to an improperly-configured bloom fertilizer during flowering. Many brands of hydroponics
nutrients do not contain the right ratios of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, or they
contain the elements in forms that are not easily available to your marijuana plants.

These potential nutrients problems are especially harmful in flowering phase, when your plants
only have 12 hours to run their photosynthesis metabolism.

Nitrogen deficiencies first show up as leaf tip yellowing, especially on lower leaves.
Then it spreads to affect entire leaves, and moves up the plant. When you do research
on marijuana strains before you buy seeds or clones, take note of the strains that are
said to be heavy feeding. Those will likely want higher parts per million of nutrients,
and they are hogs for eating nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. In bloom phase, your
marijuana plants want less nitrogen, and more potassium and phosphorus.

The only time you tolerate signs of nitrogen deficiency is when you’re more than halfway
through flowering phase. During those closing weeks, your marijuana plants are focusing on
floral production so they sucks stored nitrogen out of leaves rather than doing the work of

That’s why you don’t need to add extra nitrogen (beyond the amount found in a properly-configured
flowering base nutrients product) to flowering crops after they’ve passed the midway point of
flowering cycle: excess nitrogen during flowering negatively affects bud development, taste, and aroma.

Fixing Nutrients Problems to Save Your Marijuana Plants

In later articles in this series, you’ll see a more detailed program for analyzing and fixing
marijuana nutrients problems but it’s important to understand a couple of things right away.
One thing to know is that organic or “natural” fertilizers often fail to remediate a deficiency
fast enough because they aren’t immediately bioavailable to your marijuana plants.

If you’re absolutely sure your marijuana root zone pH, grow environment, water, and other factors
are what they should be, and your plants are still showing signs of nitrogen deficiency in soilless
hydroponics marijuana growing, it almost has to be that something’s wrong with your base nutrients.

What are your remedies? If you’re growing in soilless hydroponics using synthetic hydroponics
nutrients, you have it pretty easy.

First, make sure your pH meter is working perfectly (or use the new pH Perfect base nutrients
that automatically buffer and adjust pH to the ideal sweet spot). Flush your plants (I prefer
Final Phase or Flora Kleen), dump your reservoir, fill with reverse osmosis water, and feed with
quality hydroponics base nutrients. When I say “quality hydroponics nutrients,” I mean a reliable
brand of hydroponics base nutrients other than the brand you were using when the nutrients deficiency
occurred.

You can also experiment with slight up and down adjustments of nutrients strength (ppm) or nutrients
water pH and see if that corrects the problems. For example, many of us follow the dosage instructions
on nutrients bottles and end up with 500+ ppm during flowering. In some cases, that’s too much, and what’s
really strange is that using too much nutrients can result in nutrient deficiencies.

So try changing your dosage 50-100 ppm in either direction, and see if it makes a difference.
Try adjusting you pH from 6.2 to 6.0. Different nutrients interact with root zone material and
water differently, so that you might get absorption of 12 elements, but the pH is wrong for three
other ones. Even small adjustments in pH (unless you’re using pH Perfect base nutrients in which
case it doesn’t matter), can affect individual element’s absorption.

Wrote By
Stitch
Posted By
Garrigan65

4 Likes

@garrigan62 cheers for the info bud! I’ll let them dry out a bit and see how we get on. But see in the pic of the whole room how the right hand side looks low, that’s because the branches just won’t stand up. Is there anything that would cause that to happen?

1 Like

Overwatering will do that every time. That’s why they droop over the leaf stem can’t support the weight of the leaf. But once she gets back on track she will be able to support the leaf. and you will be surprised on how fast she can recover

Will

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Oh cool got ya mate. Thanks again for the info, I’ll post some updates in the next week or so :+1:

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@garrigan62 here’s a pic of my ilgm super skunk scrog last grow. 4x4x6 with 600w hps I managed total dry weight of 16oz :drooling_face:

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That had to be an awesome grow. and you’ll do just fine on this one.
Here are some pic’s of my grow. Should be ready for harvest in a week or two.

This is my Blueberry

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Strawberry Haze

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Gold Leaf Up Front and Pineapple Kush in the background along with more Blueberry

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Fingers crossed for this one :+1: nice looking plants bro, that’s one decent sized room. Do you notice the extra growth under my light, I think I’ll try a different light shade to see if I can get a more even canopy, power down here it too expensive to be adding more lights. I think it’s about 33cents pkw/h

I also have 3 tents in that room also. I have 20 more plants to sit out after I harvest these.
10 clones and 10 seedlings
The tent are 3x3x76 4x4x76 and 4x5x76

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That must keep you busy @garrigan62. There’s nothing I’d enjoy more than having a garden that large. Unfortunately in my neck f the woods it’s extreamly frowned upon hahahaha. One day the rules will change

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You know that for sure and were i’m at it’s not legeal So I have to be low key … lmao

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new premium mix pack just arrived aconanied by some Durban poison and 5 extra goldleaf. It’s a shame today is the first day of winter, I’ll probably outdoor a few of these :+1:

Ordered on the 24th may arrived 6days later. Unreal postage times @garrigan62

Is this from overwatering? Its been raining almost every day for 2 weeks!

I’d say so bro if it’s been raining that much. Did you dig the hole and replace the dirt with a potting mix or other type of growing medium.? Lots of back yard soils are mainly comprised of clays and can become waterlogged. Cannabis does not like her feet to be too wet so pays to try use a free draining mix. Hope this helps good luck

I dug a grow hole. Mixed potting mix with a bit of the clay rich soil. But the spot i had it in was a low lying area where water collects during the rainy season. But last year, we didn’t get this much rain. Yesterday, i dug her up, rinsed her roots, and transplanted her into a 5 gal bucket with Kellogg potting mix, perlite, and worm castings. She looked well last night, survived the transplant. Gonna go check on her this morning. Rained again, hope she did well. Will update you.

Shit that’s a big effort bro we’ll done! I’m sure it will pay off. Just make sure you PH any water and nutrients you might give her to 6.0-6.5ish and you’ll be sweet!

1 Like

Bottom leaves a bit droopy. Probably because of the transplant. Will be checking ph. Has been at 5.5. I’ll raise it a bit from now on. Thanks for the advice @Slayer880!

Ye looks algood tho. A few droopy leaves would be expected. Do yo still have the packaging of the potting mix? Is it classed as a soilless mix because that would change the ph range you would would want to achieve. Drill plenty of holes in that bucket so she don’t hold water :+1:

Soil ph tested at 6.8. Those bottom leaves are now loosing color. Im afraid the nitrogen lvl may be too high. Kellogg soil was one of the suggested mixes for growing pot in particular. The levels are .30 .10 .10. Its an unknown strain so im not sure what the best N lvl should be. Havent used any nutes since the transplant simply because the NPK levels are a bit higher than what im used to. Maybe i should have run a few gallons of water through the soil before the transplant. Ill send another pic in the morning so you can give me a diagnosis.