New grower, multiple problems suspected +REP

Hey guys, this is my first post here, but I'd like to say that it's great to have such excellent advice and expertise, I'm glad to have found this website.

To start off, I'm growing in a small closet space which I've lined with mylar. I've installed a fan to cycle the air in the room. My light is a 250 HPS; the ballast sits outside of the growroom.

I got 4 clones 2 weeks ago which came in mediocre health condition. I started off by feeding too many nutes for sure and or awhile I just gave them water and even flushed them once after reading about nute burn. Also, I used humboldt roots and myco madness (to assist with digesting nutes) with every watering.

I did some foliar feeding with insecticide + water.

The lights were at about 15 inches from the plants, but after I noticed nute burn and heat stress I backed them up to 18 inches and now to about 22-24 inches from the tallest plant until they show signs of recovery from heat stress.

Recently I saw some signs of magnesium deficiency (contorted growth/yellowing in between veins/red-purple stems) and I foliar fed with a weak solution of epsom salts + watered them with a weak solution.

After this some of my plants showed some signs of phosphorus deficiency (dark green patches on leaves + stunted growth among other things). I foliar fed with some cha-ching from fox farms b/c it had a high concentration of phosphate without too much of other things (weak solution) and I will water with a weak solution next time they need water.

Besides that I just notice that the leaves were drooping + clawing a bit and I thought the only thing it could likely be from was heat stress since I think I've been real good about watering (waiting until the soil is dry, the pot is light, and the moisture meter reads dry). I really doubt I've been underwatering them, so I think it was due to heat stress, but now that the temps are down to 72 in the room and the lights are pushed back, I'm not sure why it's doing this.

I used a shitty camera phone to get some pictures (first 3) of the small/thin one with the likely phosphorus deficiency (among other things), and the last pic shows the lower leaves of one of my better/bigger plants. The bigger plant has slightly droopy, but healthy new growth, but it's lower growth looks like it's still nute burned + nitrogen deficient.

+REP for all good help, sorry about the essay, but I want to be clear about everything so you guys can help me the best way possible.

Thanks in advance!

You have provided a good amount of information and I am sure several people will be here to give you there opinions of your problems you seem to have diagnosed yourself by reading about it whether it is correct or not remains to be seen however you certainly have taken the time to get proper nutients and supplies.

My opinion?

Stop with all the crap.
Stop follair spraying except one last time to get whatever crap that is left under the leaf.
Water without any crap in it. Get the picture?

Basiclly get your plant that is a weed and could normally do this itself to grow before playing with all the crap.

Good luck.

It sounds like you are overanalyzing things. It's hard to tell from your pictures but you may just be burning your plant by adding all those nutes and stuff. I'd do as cruzer suggested and just water with plain water for a while. Don't flush again, just water with clean water so you don't stress your plant anymore. Slowly your soil will come back to its normal state. Give it time, plants are good at healing themselves.

To echo the previous two posters, you definitely sound like you're "over-loving" them.

The one thing I'd say to check would be the pH of your runoff - if you're ferting them (and even over-ferted them), then they shouldn't be lacking too many nutes at all - more likely the pH of your water is too high (possibly too low, but I'd guess too high) and is not allowing the plant to absorb that particular nute, no matter how much of it you try to feed it.

Just my $.02 - if you don't have one, get a pH tester and let us know what it reads.

Thanks for the help guys! +REP for all who have helped so far.

I get that I am most likely overdoing all the analysis. Given the pictures of the small one in particular, you guys still think watering is the best corrective solution? What does everyone think of my light distancing and the drooping? Would better pictures (take the plants into another room with normal light) help in diagnosing the problem? I realize that if I water normally they'll probably be just fine, but I just want to try to take the best corrective solution and learn for the long run. I will water normally for now and I will stop foliar feeding, but I'm using an insecticide that is supposed to be foliar fed so I'm wondering if you still think I should stop completely.

I will test the runoff next time I water one of the plants, but I read in one post that pH of runoff is not really indicative of soil pH b/c of a variety of factors (I think it was an Uncle Ben post or something). The pH of solutions going in has been around 6.2-6.5.

I will update you guys when I get the pH of the runoff tested, but do you guys also want better pictures so you can see the plants better?

So anyone have any other thoughts? Should I get better pictures? Haven't taken the pH of the runoff yet.

Sure, better pictures are always good.

You mentioned you have a 250w over them and not sure of the distance.
This may help. Outdoors plants get about 10k lumnes per foot.





Here is another chart you may like.

As`many have stated above. Just give them phed water for a week or two and go from there. The clawing is from over nuting and over watering. Heat stress causes the leaf edges to turn up, not down. Save these and bring even one of them to maturity and you will have learned tons I am sure! Good Luck!

And yes you are correct. Soil, water and run off ph are all different things. Keep you feeding water at 6.5, give or take a few tenths. Remember to ph after adding nutes. BUT DONT feed them shit for now! LOL just the water dude. Oh ya, Cruzer is right about the light. And his chart is one I have used for a long time as reference. But remember. Your plants are young, so ease the light closer as they mature. In the spring you dont rip your shirt off and spend the whole day in the sun, you work your way into it. See what I am saying? Unless that is you are a sadist and love pain!!!!

Great responses! Love the light chart cruzer.

Cowboy, thanks for telling me that clawing is due to either nute stress + overwatering, that helps me a ton.

I will get new pictures tomorrow when I water them. My current plan is to bring the light 2 inches closer in the morning and see how it goes from there (when plants are exhibiting symptoms of nute burn do they get affected by light stress much more?). I'll also try to remember to get the pH readings from the runoff and post those as well.

+REP for logic!

just remember marijuana plants grow in the wild all by there self with no one tending to them and they do fine. i would just keep it simple , forget all the nutes and crap just make sure the ph in your water is accurate, and just water them, once all the stuff gets flushed out it should be fine, just dont over water

Livingstrategy said:

Great responses! Love the light chart cruzer.

Cowboy, thanks for telling me that clawing is due to either nute stress + overwatering, that helps me a ton.

I will get new pictures tomorrow when I water them. My current plan is to bring the light 2 inches closer in the morning and see how it goes from there (when plants are exhibiting symptoms of nute burn do they get affected by light stress much more?). I'll also try to remember to get the pH readings from the runoff and post those as well.

+REP for logic!

Click to expand...

Yes, nute burn can be aggrevated by too intense light. I would keep that 250 at 18 to 20 inches for now. Let the plants chill and heal for awhile. Then let them grow to the light. The more they grow the closer they get.

cowboylogic said:

Yes, nute burn can be aggrevated by too intense light. I would keep that 250 at 18 to 20 inches for now. Let the plants chill and heal for awhile. Then let them grow to the light. The more they grow the closer they get.

Click to expand...

I watered them today and took a few pics. My pH meter was reading about 6.7 on the runoff, but it's been acting up a bit so I hope that's accurate. My one plant in worst condition isn't looking good at all, but I got some pics of my other plants to see if you can have a look on what that might be.

Sorry about the shitty picture phone quality.

Any other advice about the problem?

Thanks for the help so far guys, really appreciate it.

Yeah all I see in the pictures (the ones without the orange HPS) look like they are nuted to hell. If you save some of the run off you can do nutrient testing on it to get a good idea of what you might have oded em on specifically.

I don't think a good flush ever hurts with nutrient build up and burn but only do that if you have continued problems after stopping foliar feeding. When you introduce different methods of feeding (especially with specific nutrients which can end up locking shit out) you are just going to have to worry about one more thing.

Concentrate on getting your general plant care down before you try to go over and above.

It looks like you planted in MG or something? From now on do not nute your plants til they start getting light from lack of N, then give them a proper dose of a full array of nutrients. Nuting early in soil is something a lot of people do.

Thanks for the help. This is FFOF soil, I'm using light warrior now for my new purple kush clone so that I don't have overnuting probs again. It's very likely that I started using nutrients too early and I think that is where most of the problems came from.

I was just posting the pics to see if anyone had anymore acute diagnosis about the problem mostly. I was wondering if it WAS starting to possibly show some nitro deficiency yet.

Thanks guys!

We see the pics of the lower leaf, How is the upper half doing?

The top half is pretty green and looking decently healthy. Doesn't droop that much, but there are small wrinkles in the leaf and the tips look like they show mild heat stress. I'll try to borrow that camera phone again to show the top.

cruzer101 said:

You have provided a good amount of information and I am sure several people will be here to give you there opinions of your problems you seem to have diagnosed yourself by reading about it whether it is correct or not remains to be seen however you certainly have taken the time to get proper nutients and supplies.

My opinion?

Stop with all the crap.
Stop follair spraying except one last time to get whatever crap that is left under the leaf.
Water without any crap in it. Get the picture?

Basiclly get your plant that is a weed and could normally do this itself to grow before playing with all the crap.

Good luck.

Click to expand...

Couldn't have said it better myself!

Sorry for taking so long to reply, I've been incredibly busy lately.

I recently flushed out all the plants except for the new kush plant (which I'm working on taking better care of than the last ones). I found the soil was much more acidic than I had previously thought; I'm hoping that flushing the soil will help with most of the problems.

On a random note, I have been using an oscillating fan directly on my plants at a high speed, do you guys recommend this? I've heard different sides of this debate.

I got a quick picture of the top of one of my plants (which is considerably more healthy than the bottom parts of it, but still could use tons of work) and I also got a general shot of the grow room itself. If you notice, I have a wide spectrum fleurescent light in between all the plants to give supplemental light (250 W HPS ~21 inches above tops of plants). What do you guys think about the placement of the light? I know it's not a CFL so it is likely to be hotter - do you think it's likely to burn some of them? (I think I might have seen burns on some of the kush clone's leaves and it was close to this light).

I'm really going to work on getting a decent camera to get better pics. I am seeing a few minor things on my new kush clone that I'm not sure of as well, so I'm hoping to get a few good shots of it soon.

Thanks again for all the help guys! If it weren't for you guys I know my situation would be exponentially worse.

cruzer101 said:

My opinion?

Stop with all the crap.
Stop follair spraying except one last time to get whatever crap that is left under the leaf.
Water without any crap in it. Get the picture?

Basiclly get your plant that is a weed and could normally do this itself to grow before playing with all the crap.

Good luck.

Click to expand...

believe it or not this is very good advice.. VERY good.. because yeah they just need a really small amount of nutrients, more so when your plants are bushy and stuff, and even then its still a pretty moderate amount. what I would do for my first/whatever unexperienced grow, is just water with VERY VERY mild nutrients, and then if you see any deficiencies, correct em, and do it that way. over time you learn how much nutrients the plants really like.

good luck!! and don't worry we all mess up.. i know i did on my first grow many many times and still came out with great product