Another Newbish Adventure in Cultivation Problems

Right now, we're rockin Buddha Tahoe, Delahaze and MK Ultra in the bloom tent. They're like the Three Stooges in there; Buddha had the calcium uptake problem (solved) MK Ultra looks like a mutant, and Delahaze...

Those 600w lights really screw with color perception, so I didn't really notice how light green Delahaze was turning. I swear, I need shades for the bloom room. It just blinds me.\

Anyway; MK (Mary Kate) had some funny leaves; missing entire bits along the rib but not eaten by insects. Weird folded, curly, twisted leaves that were most unattractive and kind of scary looking.
Delahaze was paling out to a light, fashionable spring green; ribs and all. O lawd, sez I, what's all this now?

Research; Mary Kate might have a bacterial thing that affects the leaves, or it could be one of those pinhead Ozark strains that are all inbred and their eyes are too close together. Think Honey Boo Boo in plant form.

Delahaze; Turning pale is the plant's way of shutting down the photosynthesis factory because something is wrong in the system. But what? We have clean, chlorine-free water, organic nutes, I KEEP THEM COMPANY AND PLAY MUSIC TO THEM fer petes sake!

We certainly used fresh Smartpots and coco when we planted the seeds, got no bugs, so it is mystifying. I figured it must be something in the medium causing problems, so I flushed all three pots with a solution of 3% hydrogen peroxide solution (the stuff in your bathroom) two teaspoons per gallon of water. This was followed by a couple good flushes of plain water, then light food and beneficial bacteria (Orca) for a couple of days. Hydrogen Peroxide kills ALL bacteria, good and bad, so you must replace the good stuff.

We're back on the usual feeding sched now. There could have been something clogging the roots, like some sort of bacterial scum, I still don't know. However, after the treatment, Mary Kate is not throwing out weird leaves any more, and Delahaze...well. A picture is better.
If you saw this in your grow room, you would not be happy. However, it is RE-GREENING from the top down, and from the stem outward. You can see the pale area is retreating to the tips of the leaf here. Soon it will be all green. Well, not this one because I picked it, but overall, it is showing positive results from the flush.

I've read that the leaf is a historical record of the plant's health, so it took about four days for this greening to get noticeable.
I don't know why three unrelated seeds would present three unrelated problems, especially since our last grow had no probs until the end of the grow, when one of the sativas got rootbound. I fixed that by aerating the coco with a weeding fork, and we successfully put that one in the bag.

If they weren't MY plants, I would enjoy the challenge more. I am pretty happy with what we've got now, everyone seems to be happy and feminine.

I am the plant guy. My partner is the people guy. I don't like meeting new people and trying to socialize, so I leave that to my compadre. He came back from LA one day with an interesting proposition put to him by a "friend of a friend who knows a guy."

This guy put himself out as part of a consortium, willing to financially subsidize our grow. Oh, I can see that such a union would not be in our best interests. I also think the guy I've never met is probably some skeevy dude with criminal connections. We keep it small, legal, legit. I had this mental image of me being forced to maintain hundreds of plants, like the princess spinning straw into gold for Rumplestiltskin.

I just want to say, all the problems aren't necessarily in the grow tent. You have to be on guard for people looking to exploit you; when someone offers to subsidize you financially, you're not gonna be rocking 3 plants, just sayin.

Personally, I think you are over analyzing. If you give the plant, water, food, and keep the environment good and stable, the plants will grow. Many times you notice a little something and react, it will do more harm than good. Post pics of the whole plant so we can get a better idea of what is going on.

The problems are solved, I think. Any of them could have been fatal. I have a science background, and my over-analyzing seems to be paying off in catching problems that could get worse if ignored.
The universe is testing me...

BUT WAIT! You say that's not enough? THERE'S MOARRRRR!
The pot in the upper right contains two seedlings. The one on the right, if you look, appears wonky. Of course it's all the way in the back so I had to climb in there to look at it. What I found was shocking! The little seedling had a single strand of long human hair (mine) wrapped around it. I carefully got it untangled without damage to the stem.
I shall call that plant Porphyria, from Robert Browning's poem, 'Porphyria's Lover."

"Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her.
No pain felt she;I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee.."

Ah, hell. Stressed Buddha Tahoe has hermed. I yanked its seedy presence out of the bloom tent and it gets to be my Xmas bush for a few days. And then...the knackers!

Equally as horrible, MK turned out to be male. It was not a feminized seed, so we took our chance. It has not been a really great cycle.

Okay, where we at now in this nightmare grow? Good question, let's review:
1. Delahaze turned as yellow as hepatitis eyes in the bloom room.
2. Buddha Tahoe had RO water issues leading to calcium deficiency and crispy leaf spots.
3. MK looked real good until it grew balls.

So, of the three plants in bloom, Buddha hermed, MK was just a dude, and Delahaze turned yellow. We yanked the first two and ganked them into hash. Worried, worried, afraid that Delahaze would herm too.
This was such a fail grow, it was very disappointing. However, the dude curse passed over Delahaze, perhaps it was the lamb's blood I painted on the door?

I've begun ten days of flush on Delahaze; as a quick check with the 'scope shows that the cloudy trichomes are about equal with the clear ones. We'll be yanking this bad girl soon, and here's why...

Delahaze on Harvest Day

Some final notes. As you can see, this plant is paling from the leaf tips in toward the stem. The flushing resulted in a bunch of stinky water. Earlier, we treated our coco with H2O2, flushed it well, then let it dry out a bit, and the hydrogen sulfide odor disappeared, and the plant began to turn green again.

We had a similar problem with Cotton Candy, another sativa. It's interesting to note that treating the CC with a good flush, coupled with aerating the pot with a screwdriver and letting it dry out for a day cleared up this problem. When we decanted the CC, I examined the root ball. There was no slimy anaerobic bacteria in that pot at all.

Now, I've noticed that these two sativas both lacked definitive tap roots, unlike the indicas. They tend to wad up near the stem, blocking water absorption. Water tended to puddle up around the stems, while the indicas have never exhibited this tendency. Our indicas have had 3-5 bigger taproots. The sativas look like bean thread noodles.

I think the key to avoiding this stinky bacterial infestation is aeration. These noodle roots need to be repeatedly broken up so that air can get in. We removed the smart pot like a sock, and found several layers and patches of this reddish-brown anaerobic bacteria in the coco medium.

We discarded the coco and soaked the pot in a strong H2O2 solution before rinsing it well with distilled water and drying it thoroughly. Any future sativas will be dealt with to avoid this problem again.