Possible nute deficiency OR light stress

Growin4fun77 · Jan 12, 2023

Hey.
Currently running 2 Barney Bubbas.
Medium = FFOF
Nutes = none so far
Seed down = last week of November
Repotted seedlings to 4 gal; 11/28… 4 to 10 gal; 12/22
Humidity = 55-65% (mostly)
Temps = 78-84 range (mostly)

On Monday I brain farted and left my humidifiers to auto, 73% (the tent was open a while for defoliation. So, I was trying to get humidity back up quickly. Well I also closed the closet door resulting in insane overnight humidity (80+%) and temps 89 degrees. To make matters worse, they’d just received their largest drink (2gal) that afternoon. And to make matters really worse, my plants had grown to the point they were only 13 inches from the lights.

I see plant C loosing it’s dark green color, it just doesn’t look as perky, additionally… there are some yellowing/brown mottling/and a faint redness to the veins in some leaves

I have all the ingredients arriving for a veg and/or flower compost tea and plan to properly amend the soils for a slower release source of food too; but need advice on what the nute deficiencies in the pics below may be. Also not ruling out heat/light stress.

My goal is to flip to flower sooner rather than later.

Can anyone ID the issue and help me figure out what top dressing/compost tea regimen may hell get these (or this) ladies back on track before I flip to flower?

HydoDan · Jan 12, 2023

Looks like light stress to me.. Try raising your light. see if it helps..

Growin4fun77 · Jan 12, 2023

HydoDan said:
Looks like light stress to me.. Try raising your light. see if it helps..

I raised it up to 18-19 inches last night and backed the intensity from about 65-75% down to 50%.
Question if you don’t mind… I noticed the one on the right (C) was significantly more impacted. It also has been 0.5-1 inch taller than the left one (B) the entire grow.

Am I correct to assum that small of a distance could have been the difference as far as the symptoms of the light stress are concerned?

HydoDan · Jan 12, 2023

I would think so.. Get yourself a Lux meter and do some testing.. See what works for you..

Growin4fun77 · Jan 12, 2023

HydoDan said:
Looks like light stress to me.. Try raising your light. see if it helps..

Hey if the issue is still progressing and the lights have been raised up + turned down for 24 hours would that indicate it was either fully or partially nutrient related. Or can the stress from high heat/humidity and light take a few days to fully show in the leaves.
Only older leaves are impacted; but not lower ones. Weird.

HydoDan · Jan 12, 2023

Sounds like you stressed them out pretty good..Keep an eye on newer growth it will respond first.. They make take a while, plants just take time.. Get everything dialed and healthy before you flip..

Reap911 · Jan 12, 2023

HydoDan said:
Sounds like you stressed them out pretty good..Keep an eye on newer growth it will respond first.. They make take a while, plants just take time.. Get everything dialed and healthy before you flip..

I think this is best. It does look like some of the veins are a darker green than the rest of the plant which points to a possible deficiency but I think first see if you adjust the lights distance how they respond.

I like to give my plants a bit of kelp when they are stressed. Light foliar spray just to give them a bit of assistance has helped in my experience.

Growin4fun77 · Jan 14, 2023

Reap911 said:
I think this is best. It does look like some of the veins are a darker green than the rest of the plant which points to a possible deficiency but I think first see if you adjust the lights distance how they respond.

I like to give my plants a bit of kelp when they are stressed. Light foliar spray just to give them a bit of assistance has helped in my experience.

Hey Man, I backed the lights off and it didn’t seem to slow the problem down much if at all. It actually progressed. I hit them with a basic Vegetative compost tea… ie castings, guano, kelp, fish bone meal. I only went 1/3-1/2 strength; but based on my research this Fox Farm soil is fizzling out.

Do you think a diluted foliar kelp spray would be beneficial or redundant since it’s already in the tea I watered with yesterday?

Reap911 · Jan 14, 2023

Growin4fun77 said:
Hey Man, I backed the lights off and it didn’t seem to slow the problem down much if at all. It actually progressed. I hit them with a basic Vegetative compost tea… ie castings, guano, kelp, fish bone meal. I only went 1/3-1/2 strength; but based on my research this Fox Farm soil is fizzling out.

Do you think a diluted foliar kelp spray would be beneficial or redundant since it’s already in the tea I watered with yesterday?

So I think that just doing a light foilar to give them a small boost of nutes will definately help the problem. Foilars allow for an immediate uptake of nutrients so it is generally the go to when it comes to deficiencies.

I like Kelp because it ticks so many of the boxes when it comes to the nutrients it carries. Identifying nutrient deficiencies has not been my strong suite so my go to has a process of elimination. Kelp it a general but you can look at something more specific if you think you know what the problem is.

Remember that teas are adding biology to aid in the breakdown of your organic material that is found in soil. Its not to say that it is going to necessary add nutes to the mix but it will add the biology that is needed for your soil to produce food for the plant.

When you say fizzled out, you mean its lost its nutritional value?

You need to look at top dressing your soil then. Remember that these craft soils, which it sounds like you have bought, do have a very specific nutrient base which is great for growing at first but they do need more food to ensure that the plant has what it needs in abundance. Consider how much nutrients synthetic grows use. These plants chow.

So if you are going to be a soil grower its important to keep this in mind, you are not ever really going to feed the plant directly, you are going to feed the soil and through that the plant will get its food.

So if there is not food for the plant, that means that your soil is not capable of manufacturing the relevant nutrients out of whats available in the soil. Makes sense?

So your next step is to top dress your soil with some organic material & minerals with a cover of mulch & worm casting/compost to bring in and get the biology going so you can get food back into the soil.

People vary on what the totald are but I am seeing decent results with a doing 240ml of organic material every 4 weeks in a 40l pot (9gallons) and roughly the same amount of minerals.

Growin4fun77 · Jan 16, 2023

Reap911 said:
So I think that just doing a light foilar to give them a small boost of nutes will definately help the problem. Foilars allow for an immediate uptake of nutrients so it is generally the go to when it comes to deficiencies.

I like Kelp because it ticks so many of the boxes when it comes to the nutrients it carries. Identifying nutrient deficiencies has not been my strong suite so my go to has a process of elimination. Kelp it a general but you can look at something more specific if you think you know what the problem is.

Remember that teas are adding biology to aid in the breakdown of your organic material that is found in soil. Its not to say that it is going to necessary add nutes to the mix but it will add the biology that is needed for your soil to produce food for the plant.

When you say fizzled out, you mean its lost its nutritional value?

You need to look at top dressing your soil then. Remember that these craft soils, which it sounds like you have bought, do have a very specific nutrient base which is great for growing at first but they do need more food to ensure that the plant has what it needs in abundance. Consider how much nutrients synthetic grows use. These plants chow.

So if you are going to be a soil grower its important to keep this in mind, you are not ever really going to feed the plant directly, you are going to feed the soil and through that the plant will get its food.

So if there is not food for the plant, that means that your soil is not capable of manufacturing the relevant nutrients out of whats available in the soil. Makes sense?

So your next step is to top dress your soil with some organic material & minerals with a cover of mulch & worm casting/compost to bring in and get the biology going so you can get food back into the soil.

People vary on what the totald are but I am seeing decent results with a doing 240ml of organic material every 4 weeks in a 40l pot (9gallons) and roughly the same amount of minerals.

Killer advice! Thanks for taking the time.

Yea the nutes seem to be fizzling out in the FFOF soil.

My reason for coming to this conclusion is that as I test ph every few days. Overtime I found the rootball on the ailed plant expanded SIGNIFICANTLY faster (I did some damage to the other rootball during final transplant). My guess is that by final transplant the ailed plants larger root mass had mostly exhausted the nutrients in the FFOF soil from the initial 4 gal pot and therefore quickly began up-taking the nutrients in the fresh soil when transplanted to 10 gal.
Whereas the one whose rootball has just in the past few days began to expand to the edges of the pot is not showing deficiencies, looks great and also began to grow noticeably faster than the more challenged plant!

I’m gonna do a Kelp spray for sure. And want to do a top dressing as well. I have some questions comments/need for pointers below. Can you help as best you can?

2 questions.
1. Due to height constraints I want to flip to flower soon…. Using the photographed nutrients below, how would you top dress for early flower?
2. How do you mix your Kelp Spray? And does it need to be PH’d?
3. Based on the appearance of the plants now (photos attached) would you feel comfortable to go ahead and flip to flower at the end of this week… after applying the top dress and giving it time to soak up the kelp spray?
4. **Edit** Oh, and what could I use as mulch? This is a new concept to me.

Thanks for all the help. Yes I plan to be a soil grower, so it’s all truly helpful, and appreciated.

ComfortCreator · Jan 16, 2023

The goal should be 1 or 2 nodes of perfect green again before flip. It may take a week or so.

Changes to a soil grow do not show up instantly and sometimes will not repair damaged leaves...you may need to look to new growth to understand if it is improving.

They should be fed or topdressed a good veg formula for now. Flower nutes arent needed for a few weeks into stretch.

Make sure they get enough magnesium.

Growin4fun77 · Jan 16, 2023

ComfortCreator said:
The goal should be 1 or 2 nodes of perfect green again before flip. It may take a week or so.

Changes to a soil grow do not show up instantly and sometimes will not repair damaged leaves...you may need to look to new growth to understand if it is improving.

They should be fed or topdressed a good veg formula for now. Flower nutes arent needed for a few weeks into stretch.

Make sure they get enough magnesium.

Thanks man!

Growin4fun77 · Jan 16, 2023

ComfortCreator said:
The goal should be 1 or 2 nodes of perfect green again before flip. It may take a week or so.

Changes to a soil grow do not show up instantly and sometimes will not repair damaged leaves...you may need to look to new growth to understand if it is improving.

They should be fed or topdressed a good veg formula for now. Flower nutes arent needed for a few weeks into stretch.

Make sure they get enough magnesium.

Hey man. I applied a top dress:

2 Tablespoons Kelp Meal
4 Tablespoons Fish Bone Meal
1-2 tbsp bat guano
1 tsp epsom salt
Covered with up to 1/2" layer of worm castings across the whole container.
Covered with mulch

And will apply a foliar feed kelp spray in the morning after lights go out and things cool a bit.

From there I’ll consider a foliar feed that offers calcium and magnesium if I need it to tie us over until the amendments I top dressed with today get to work.

Yours and @Reap911 advice have been killer. So thank you.

Reap911 · Jan 17, 2023

Growin4fun77 said:
Hey man. I applied a top dress:

2 Tablespoons Kelp Meal
4 Tablespoons Fish Bone Meal
1-2 tbsp bat guano
1 tsp epsom salt
Covered with up to 1/2" layer of worm castings across the whole container.
Covered with mulch

And will apply a foliar feed kelp spray in the morning after lights go out and things cool a bit.

From there I’ll consider a foliar feed that offers calcium and magnesium if I need it to tie us over until the amendments I top dressed with today get to work.

Yours and @Reap911 advice have been killer. So thank you.

Sounds really good. Now just let that settle and see how the plants respond.

I would look at maybe adding some form of additional microbe mixture to get the biology going. Earth worms and Springtail mights will also help the breakdown process.

I generally mulch with a combination of Alfalfa, Lucerne and Dandelions. Then I seal the top layer with hay.

Last thing to keep an eye on is to ensure the top dress doesnt take up all the liquid you are feeding it. I use a pressure sprayer day 1 and 2 to get the top layer nice and moist. Then I monitor it closely until I can see luqid uptake is not being impacted my the too layer.

I generally do a top dress every 4 weeks. So generally I do one one week before flower and the end of week 3 again. This is just to keep the food availability for both the plants and the soil food web at a decent amount.

Once I do testing I will get more precise but that has been a general rule of thumb for me.

Growin4fun77 · Jan 17, 2023

Reap911 said:
Sounds really good. Now just let that settle and see how the plants respond.

I would look at maybe adding some form of additional microbe mixture to get the biology going. Earth worms and Springtail mights will also help the breakdown process.

I generally mulch with a combination of Alfalfa, Lucerne and Dandelions. Then I seal the top layer with hay.

Last thing to keep an eye on is to ensure the top dress doesnt take up all the liquid you are feeding it. I use a pressure sprayer day 1 and 2 to get the top layer nice and moist. Then I monitor it closely until I can see luqid uptake is not being impacted my the too layer.

I generally do a top dress every 4 weeks. So generally I do one one week before flower and the end of week 3 again. This is just to keep the food availability for both the plants and the soil food web at a decent amount.

Once I do testing I will get more precise but that has been a general rule of thumb for me.

I had the good fortune (I think) that my mulch was pretty moist. It also was a big bag so I was able to fill up a 5 gal bucket and pull out most of the larger pieces.
I watered in with about 1 gal on the plant that was drier and ended up being just short of 3/4 a gallon on the other. I got a few ounces of run off with both but nothing major and the entire bottoms of the pots weren’t wet… just moist in a few places.

As for the earth worms, never heard of this concept. Need to research. If it’s easy and makes sense then I’ll get after it!

Late night pics of the ladies below, after their top dress last night, to compare newer growth in healthy plant vs the ailed one and also of after their kelp bath at lights off this am…. things seem to be on the up and up. We’ll see how this top dressing treats em!

Growin4fun77 · Jan 20, 2023

Update… after a few good days and good responses by applying all the advice to the ladies. We flipped to 12/12 this am.

Keep ya’ll posted. I’m sure I’ll have questions along the way.

thanks for the help so far!

Reap911 · Jan 20, 2023

Yes sir. Looking happy and healthy. Well done!

So I would recommend a small dressing end of week 3 again just to get another bit of biology kicking. My rule of thumb is a think layer every 4 weeks. I use 9gallon pots and once a plant goes out, another goes in. This just ensures a continuous cycle of nutrients being broken down by the food web and keeps the biology going.

In my opinion, if you are going to go with soil, Vermicomposting or composting, or both, is the secret sauce. Getting good at this is where you are going to take your growing to the next level. Biology is key in this game and if you get good and making your own, that is where you step up a notch. The stuff you get at the shops is great but the stuff you can take out your bins is still fresh and the microbial life abundant. This plays a big role in making teas as well.

Think of it as your own personal food for your plants. What you then have is the opportunity to add in what you want to go to your plants. It really opens the door for you to experiment.

How familiar are you Sprouted Seed Tea's? I would get a Alfalfa and Corn one in the soil in the first week or two of flowering. Cant recall the exact science behind it but I remember it being highlighted as a go to during the stretch period.

Growin4fun77 · Jan 21, 2023

Reap911 said:
Yes sir. Looking happy and healthy. Well done!

So I would recommend a small dressing end of week 3 again just to get another bit of biology kicking. My rule of thumb is a think layer every 4 weeks. I use 9gallon pots and once a plant goes out, another goes in. This just ensures a continuous cycle of nutrients being broken down by the food web and keeps the biology going.

In my opinion, if you are going to go with soil, Vermicomposting or composting, or both, is the secret sauce. Getting good at this is where you are going to take your growing to the next level. Biology is key in this game and if you get good and making your own, that is where you step up a notch. The stuff you get at the shops is great but the stuff you can take out your bins is still fresh and the microbial life abundant. This plays a big role in making teas as well.

Think of it as your own personal food for your plants. What you then have is the opportunity to add in what you want to go to your plants. It really opens the door for you to experiment.

How familiar are you Sprouted Seed Tea's? I would get a Alfalfa and Corn one in the soil in the first week or two of flowering. Cant recall the exact science behind it but I remember it being highlighted as a go to during the stretch period.

Thanks friend.

Definitely had setting one of those three layer worm bins up… where the compost goes up top, and there are holes in compost bin for the castings to fall through and then smaller holes in that castings bin for excess moisture/water to run off. Then I was gonna literally just add a cooler leak/water dispenser to get that run off out of the bottom bin. My space is limited so have to get creative. Open to ideas/suggestions.

Will certainly read up on the seeds tea… open to anything that keeps these girls happy. Blown away at how fast some happy gals are stretching on this grow as opposed to my last grow which was down right embarrassing but a hell of a learning experience.

Brycec · Jan 23, 2023

Growin4fun77 said:
Hey.
Currently running 2 Barney Bubbas.
Medium = FFOF
Nutes = none so far
Seed down = last week of November
Repotted seedlings to 4 gal; 11/28… 4 to 10 gal; 12/22
Humidity = 55-65% (mostly)
Temps = 78-84 range (mostly)

On Monday I brain farted and left my humidifiers to auto, 73% (the tent was open a while for defoliation. So, I was trying to get humidity back up quickly. Well I also closed the closet door resulting in insane overnight humidity (80+%) and temps 89 degrees. To make matters worse, they’d just received their largest drink (2gal) that afternoon. And to make matters really worse, my plants had grown to the point they were only 13 inches from the lights.

I see plant C loosing it’s dark green color, it just doesn’t look as perky, additionally… there are some yellowing/brown mottling/and a faint redness to the veins in some leaves

I have all the ingredients arriving for a veg and/or flower compost tea and plan to properly amend the soils for a slower release source of food too; but need advice on what the nute deficiencies in the pics below may be. Also not ruling out heat/light stress.

My goal is to flip to flower sooner rather than later.

Can anyone ID the issue and help me figure out what top dressing/compost tea regimen may hell get these (or this) ladies back on track before I flip to flower?

They look fine. Maybe a slight light stress but nothing to worry about yet. Raise your lightzs a little and you should be cool. Great looking plants!

Growin4fun77 · Jan 24, 2023

Is this browning/yellowing much to worry about?
***edit: I’m referring specifically to the leaf tips. Some of the discoloration is there from an earlier, primarily, calcium deficiency***

Seems to be popping up mainly on leaves closest to where the fan oscillates. Or where the fan leaves rub against the walls.

Super cropped a few mains to even out the canopy level/evenly space them out.

Possible nute deficiency OR light stress

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