not sure what my PH is but I was using distilled water so im sure it was fine + all my nutes are organic so I doubt there was a nute burn. Would a hermie make all the leaves turn yellow and everything to start dying? Cuz every plant has buds, plus they started as clones, not sure if they can still turn into hermies
This is what made me ask if you checked for a hermi; The buds themselves are fine, however they dont look like they are getting any bigger, the only progress I've seen in the past 3 weeks is that about 50% of the hairs have turned orange if not more.
If impregnated the hairs will darken and going by how far into flower you were when this began, I am guessing around 4 weeks since you said; So its about 8 weeks into flowering with Sour Diesel (Sativa) and everything was going well until about 4 weeks ago
so that would put you about 4 weeks in
anyway the hairs should not be darkening that early. That is one early sign of impregnation.
You said the bud growth had slowed down or stopped. That is another early sign of 'impregnation' because energy has been transferred into seed creation/development that would otherwise go to bud and cannabinoid production.
Pick a few seed pods on a few buds and clip them or use something to open them and see if you can find the beginnings of an immature seed in any.
Another thing to watch for is if knocked up you might see your resin production seem to not only stop but actually seem to reverse itself. I have had experiences where it looked as if the trichome heads were shrinking or drying or evaporating and there was less shine/sheen to them, they were not glossy, they were dull but they had not changed color yet. They looked slightly like the old dried jr. high Jello I used to toss up and stick to the ceiling, they appeared like thick/half-dried gooey rather than bursting with sticky fluids gooey and if you touched them they were hardly sticky.
If you see anything like that going on it is another possible sign that you might be expecting a delivery from the marijuana-stork of a few thousand beans or so.
Hopefully that is not the case but those things caught my eye and struck my memory and I thought I should mention the possibility and suggest a good search.
You asked; Would a hermie make all the leaves turn yellow and everything to start dying? Actually
. no
.. not this soon and never dying as in early dying but only as in normal dying but because pollinated some visual speeding up/advancement of the normal process could be seen, as in the case of the early darkening hairs. Some stages of the normal process are sped up and somewhat visually different than normal because of it. But no, your plants should not be dying early deaths due having had intimate relations with a hermi. If actually dying there is different reason.
That intimate relations with a hermi bit jogs an old memory of something that once happened to a friend of mine many decades ago when we went to a strip club one night
. it makes for a rather amusing tale ...... if you are not Jimmy ..... but I will save it for another time.
Distilled water
. one of the variables that are believed by many growers to be an absolute constant.
Distilled water should ideally be nothing but hydrogen and oxygen molecules, with a PH level of 7 and no additional gases, minerals or contaminants.
Have you ever seen the color of rainwater that has been collected in a bucket? The yellow tint it has is due to the slightly acidic pH level, which is usually around 5.6, because carbon dioxide and water in the air react together to form carbonic acid, a weak acid.
Distilled water is water that has been boiled in an apparatus called a still and then recondensed in a cooling unit (condenser) to return the water to the liquid state. Some high-end distillers use a charcoal filter to remove any remaining gases. The boiling action kills bacteria and other micro-organisms, and contaminants are left behind in the boiling chamber. The effectiveness of distillation is over 99+% (99.99% removal has been achieved even on ocean waterover 35,000 P.P.M).
Now while common knowledge will tell us the above would mean you would have water with a PH level of 7, when tested some distilled water will test out in a range of pH 5.5-5.8. How can that be?
The reason is that distilled water dissolves carbon dioxide from the air. It dissolves carbon dioxide until it is in dynamic equilibrium with the atmosphere. That means that the amount being dissolved balances the amount coming out of solution. The total amount in the water is determined by the concentration in the atmosphere. The dissolved carbon dioxide reacts with the water and finally forms carbonic acid resulting in acidic water.
Distilled water ideally consists of only hydrogen and oxygen, with a completely neutral pH of 7. In reality, it almost always is slightly acidic, from 5.6 to just under 7, because the water absorbs carbon dioxide from the air. A gallon of distilled water can be made neutral by adding 1/8 tsp. of baking soda, a substance with a pH of 8.
Freshly distilled water is the key, freshly distilled and promptly packaged in a way to assure as much of its freshness as possible for as long as possible and then used while still as fresh as possible.
Possibly a number of those who read this will state they have checked distilled water and found it acidic and possibly not one person here will say they have ever tested distilled water and come up with anything other than perfectly neutral water, I dont know. I do know though that I have seen it enough times to know it was not a fluke and then had to find out why, which is explained above.
In that our nursery has THOUSANDS of trees and bushes in pots that range in size between 3-gallons and 50-gallons (not counting seedlings), a lot of pour through testing is performed and distilled water is used. We of course have to adjust the PH of the growing medium we use so again distilled water is used. A sample of the growing medium is placed in a container and then the container is filled with distilled water and allowed to sit. Later a PH meter is inserted and allowed to sit until there is no changing in the reading. We also use distilled water to calibrate PH meters.
Imagine what can happen if you think you have 7 and instead you have 5.5 or 5.6 or 5.8? If you just trust it and you do not catch it and you calibrate your meter by it think of what could follow?
I have never been into the distilled water for watering thing, even back before I knew a person could be fooled, but other than knowing you have to watch out and not just assume and believe, if as should be distilled water is cool and the gang.
When it is not what it should be it is a problem. I have only known two or three growers in my life that have had the problem, so evidently it seems greater than it is due to the amount used at the nursery, but I have known those few who did run across distilled water that was nowhere near a PH of 7 but trusted it and had problems.