Please help - 1st Grow - Leaf Issues

Hey everyone,

1st grow (in a long time) and thread. Appreciate the info/knowledge gained through this board. Little background - received some clones from a friend about 6/7 weeks ago. They were quite stretched and lanky so I did some topping and LST to try to salvage them. They’ve bushed out nicely - but I’ve been dealing with some leaf issues. Tips appear to be red or dark on some leaves. Any ideas what could be causing this? Leaves are a lighter green and this issue appears to be throughout different parts of the plant - not just strictly new or old growth. Photos taken outside of tent in normal light.

Water: Thought it was potentially a PH issue so I bought a PH pen a few weeks ago and have been watering with PH’d tap water that sits out for at least 24 hours. Out of the tap is 7.7, 75 ppm, and I’ve been adding PH down to get it to 6.5. Water about 3/4 gallon every few days til runoff. Have a soil moisture meter and tell by container weight when to water again.

Soil and Nutes: FFOF in 7 gallon fabric pots, amended with an organic slow release fertilizer called Trifecta plus (one I’ve used with my vegetable garden and plants love it - pic below) It’s a 5-10-4 fertilizer and I applied a 1/4 cup per container in the root zone as instructed - when I potted up the clones. Also, I’ve top dressed and worked in 5 TBS of Dolomite Lime per container when I was thinking I had a soil PH issue about two weeks ago. I have not fed with any additional nutes. I thought the Trifecta plus along with any nutes in the FFOF would be enough to last through most of veg. Was hoping to veg 3-4 more weeks before flipping to flower.

Light: HLG Scorpion Diablo at 50% power about 24” from canopy top.
Temperature/RH: 78-81 F / 55%-65% (have smart humidifier and AC Infinity Cloudline Temperature/Humidity Controller.
Tent: 4x4 AC Infinity Cloud Lab

Any ideas? Please let me know if you need any additional details. Thinking it could be Mag deficiency and was going to try watering with some Epsom salt. Figured I would post here first before trying anything else. Thanks again in advance!

Magnesium deficiency and too much nitrogen

Looking at your fertilizer you could have an excess of P that will cause lockouts of Ca, Mg, Zn and Fe. According to their feeding list 1/4 cup was way too much so it's quite possible.

I just had a problem were I overdosed my plants with iron and had to flush a couple times to reduce the iron and the plants are coming around nicely now. The pots they are in are only 1/2 gal so I set them on a screen over a pan to catch the runoff then soaked to saturation with RO water. I let them sit for a couple hours then mixed up enough 1/4 strength AN 3-part nutes to to totally water them if they were dry and needed a full watering. Then poured that thru each to flush out the RO with the extra iron. Did that again for the next watering and now the new growth is coming in nice and healthy looking so it seems to have worked.

You need a fert that is lower in P than K or N. Something like Jacks 12-4-16 would do great but go low on the feeding.

Leave your water as is and see,couple of days after you water you'll know if it helps.

Edit: add some epsom,dolo lime has Mg it in, not sure how quick it is though?

OldMedUser said:

Looking at your fertilizer you could have an excess of P that will cause lockouts of Ca, Mg, Zn and Fe. According to their feeding list 1/4 cup was way too much so it's quite possible.

I just had a problem were I overdosed my plants with iron and had to flush a couple times to reduce the iron and the plants are coming around nicely now. The pots they are in are only 1/2 gal so I set them on a screen over a pan to catch the runoff then soaked to saturation with RO water. I let them sit for a couple hours then mixed up enough 1/4 strength AN 3-part nutes to to totally water them if they were dry and needed a full watering. Then poured that thru each to flush out the RO with the extra iron. Did that again for the next watering and now the new growth is coming in nice and healthy looking so it seems to have worked.

You need a fert that is lower in P than K or N. Something like Jacks 12-4-16 would do great but go low on the feeding.

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Thanks everyone for the responses! Would you recommend a flush or try the epsom salt addition to my watering first? Also - if a flush is recommended, do I need to use PH’d water or can I simply use my tap bathtub or garden hose to flush since I’m not concerned with nutrient uptake during the flush. I’ve seen 3 times the container size is recommended for a flush, so that’ll be a decent amount of water for me to PH.

How much Epsom salt per gallon is recommended? I’ve seen some places say 1 gram per gallon of water. Does that sound right?

Thanks again!

BringTheHeatErnest said:

Thanks everyone for the responses! Would you recommend a flush or try the epsom salt addition to my watering first? Also - if a flush is recommended, do I need to use PH’d water or can I simply use my tap bathtub or garden hose to flush since I’m not concerned with nutrient uptake during the flush. I’ve seen 3 times the container size is recommended for a flush, so that’ll be a decent amount of water for me to PH.

How much Epsom salt per gallon is recommended? I’ve seen some places say 1 gram per gallon of water. Does that sound right?

Thanks again!

Click to expand...

You don't need to flush 3X the pot volume for this. Follow the procedure I did and that should be enough. You want to saturate the pots with enough to soak it so all the excess salts have time to dissolve then push that water out with enough of a light nute mix to basically replace that water.

If you are using your tap water to feed your plants then you might as well use it to flush as well. Make sure it's not cold so fill a bucket and leave it long enough to to warm up to room temp or add some hot to get it to 75 - 80F before using it. Cold water puts the microherd in the pots into hibernation mode and they work best at the higher temps. For soil grown plants counting on a healthy microherd 80F is ideal and around the temp you want when mixing organic soil to 'cook' for a few weeks before using with plants. Organic inputs need to be processed by the bacteria and fungi in the soils to turn it into something the plants can eat.

The 3X volume is a full flush which is rarely needed so a partial flush is enough to reduce the nute level lots without washing everything out. That's why I follow up with a low dose of a complete nutrient but I'm using AN 3-part for that. You need something with more balance as the P is way too high in the stuff you have. Better for tomatoes than pot as pot need extra P during the stretch but more K than P after that.

At most I would use 2X the pot volume but I just did mine twice so much the same as that. 2L pots so not a huge amount.