Help ! I think my plant is dying !

Hello again,

The story is short, my plant is 4 weeks old. I've started with one 23 Watt CFL light bulb and everything was going fine. I've added some more light about 2 more light bulbs 45 Watt each. 3 Light bulbs ( ECONOMIC ). Aprox. 4800 lm ( lumens ) Light program : 16 Hours light ON / 8 Hours light OFF.

She was looking so fine when I had just one 45 Watt light bulb ( like in the picture below ) after that everything went for bad to terrible ...



I water it 1 / 4-5 days, using only rain water.

I am using a fan that works 24/7 getting the air into the box.

The temperature is constant about 26 Celsius.

I use special soil and a little perlite.

My soil details :

organic matter 55 - 60 %
moisture 65 - 75 %
mineral salt 0.7 - 0.8 %
mineral nitrogen 50 - 150mg / kg
soluble potassium 100 - 150mg / kg

The box is covered with aluminium foil.

The plant little box is covered with white paper so that light can't get to the roots.

The old light system was like this :



After this light setup, in a few days I've got this yellow leaf problem :



The leafs ware starting to fall down :



So I've decided to change light system setup like this :



I've cut down the ugly yellow leafs and let only the green one stay.

Nothing good happened so I've started to use some universal fertilizer for indoor plants, after 1 day with fertilizer the plant looks bad, she looks like she is dying :



Please help me save this plant ! Any suggestions would be much appreciated, thank you !

for the love of merlin somebody help him

i would just leave it. is your water ph'd

jackm420 said:

i would just leave it. is your water ph'd

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Its rain water !!!

remove that white cardboard over the soil. It needs to be able to dry out. you could be over watering.

make sure roots have plenty of air.

I dont see any drain holes in the container/pot?

welshwizzard said:

make sure roots have plenty of air.

I dont see any drain holes in the container/pot?

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The box has 4 big drain holes under it ...

why are the lights so far away? cfl's don't penetrate very far! what the hell ?, lol ( and what ringsixty said)

Looks like overwatering in my opinion

^^^^^^^^^^^^ Remove the cardboard, stop watering, lower the lights and spend the next 48 hours reading a "How to Grow Marijuana" book/website/etc etc.

I does look like it has too much moisture, don't be afraid to let the soil get dry to the point of the pot being much lighter. The paper on top of the soil is stopping the water from evaporating, I would remove it (light will not get to the roots). Also, move the lights back to your original setup. You could also make some DIY reflectors out of aluminum foil for your lights, it would really help up the intensity of the lighting you have. I think you will see your plant come back to health just let the soil dry out, the roots need oxygen.

Edit: the cardboard on the side of the pot is fine but you need to remove the piece on top of the soil. Good Luck

what exactly is special soil? At this stage it's either overwatering, or wrong ph of soil. Some soils are way to acidic.

Cascadian said:

I does look like it has too much moisture, don't be afraid to let the soil get dry to the point of the pot being much lighter. The paper on top of the soil is stopping the water from evaporating, I would remove it (light will not get to the roots). Also, move the lights back to your original setup. You could also make some DIY reflectors out of aluminum foil for your lights, it would really help up the intensity of the lighting you have. I think you will see your plant come back to health just let the soil dry out, the roots need oxygen.

Edit: the cardboard on the side of the pot is fine but you need to remove the piece on top of the soil. Good Luck

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I did a check right now and the soil is extra wet - very wet ! i will remove the white paper over it ... hope she will get her health back ...

Should I try to transplant it to a new dry soil ?

No, don't try to transplant. It is already in shock right now and would likely die if you did. Let it dry out, with temp at 27.5 Celsius it should not take too long. Once the plant recovers and starts growing again you can transplant, just make sure you have a healthy dose of perlite in the new soil.

Cascadian said:

No, don't try to transplant. It is already in shock right now and would likely die if you did. Let it dry out, with temp at 27.5 Celsius it should not take too long. Once the plant recovers and starts growing again you can transplant, just make sure you have a healthy dose of perlite in the new soil.

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Ok the temperature is now 26 Celsius, hope it will dry out, I've made some new holes in the box to dry out better. Thank you and I hope she can get back from shock ...

Cascadian said:

. You could also make some DIY reflectors out of aluminum foil for your lights, it would really help up the intensity of the lighting you have.

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Do not use alluminum foil for a reflector. Take down the alluminum you have up (not your issue but foil is not good) There are many post about this, here is just one for example. https://www.rollitup.org/general-marijuana-growing/127857-aluminum-foil-reflector-yay-nay.html

Your issue is forsure over water. Let her dry out and she will do just fine

You don't need to feed yet either. The soil you have should feed her for a while. Just get the watering and moisture under control and feed when she tells you she needs it. I don't usually have to feed untin the 3rd or 4th week. My last grow was no food till flowering! I just added a tsp of molasses to 2l of water and she did fine

I agree with not feeding for several weeks at the earliest especially with lower light levels.

I wasn't aware of the issues with using aluminum foil (I don't use it personally). It appears it can create hot spots that can burn the plant (it reflects more heat than light). Not sure that is a huge risk with CFLs but why take any risk. If you must use foil, use the dull side it will create fewer hot spots. Good Luck

I usually use foil for a reflector unless I can make one from ducting or somthin, I make most of my equipment (I move my setup about every grow cause I have been moving a lot in the last few years) but with cfls, I have never gotten hot spots. Mostly happens with hPS and mh. But is look into the R6 mylar bubble insulation they use for HVAC insulation for the walls. That stuff is awesome and its only like $40 for a huge roll of it.

Stop watering to dry her out, take paper off top, get lights closer, use something better than white paper to keep light off roots, do not use additional ferts/nutes yet, she has stretched so may fall over when adding weight so I think I would also repot burying stem up to just below cotyledon leaves, would possibly wait until she recovers some first before re-potting.