What Is Happening To My Plants?

Hi,
I been trying to find out what is happening to my plants. I been searching every website I can find about problems.

I spray neem oil and Diatomaceous Earth on the plants and the soil. I have nematodes coming that I will use per plant. Also have the yellow sticky pad..

Anyways before the photos here is the break down on the plants. This is in multiple rooms so I am starting to think its not pests.

Clone Room:
3 plants 1 Ninja fruit direct from Ninja and Vader themselves and 2 mendo purps from a friend. I started noticing the chunks missing a couple weeks ago and I started noticing the small holes in the leaves when I started spray with neem oil about a week ago.

Indoor, 5 gallon smart pot, soil is fox farms mixed with some perlite. I know that I could have used more perlite but ran out.

Nutes I used currently is the GH flora trio, Botanicare cal-mag and Botanicare hydrogaurd. I feed them about every 3 days or when the soil is dry down to my knuckle. I use the feeding chart on growweedeasy. The PH is between 6.0 and 6.5.

Lights are dual Mars Hydro 300 watt lights at 24" above the top of the tallest plant. They are currently on 24/0 because I thought I had pests that eat in the dark. Co2, Temps are 80-82F... Humidity is a bit low at about 30%. I do have an exhaust fan and a fan blowing between the top of the canopy and light.

Seedling tent:

40 plants started in rapid rooters moved to rockwool cubes. In flood tray now. About 6 weeks old. Larry Og, Sour D, Jawa Pie, Obiwan OG, and violator Kush.

Same nutes as above. Ph about 6.0...

Lights are T5 about 3-4" above plants. Co2, Temps are 75F... Humidity is a bit low at about 35%. I do have an exhaust fan and a fan blowing in the tent.

Besides the humidity being a bit low, which I have humidifiers coming soon, I am not sure what is going on.

I been trying to follow everything in the book but ran into this problem. Would love the help.
Thank you.

Any body? The quietness scares me lol. Like my plant has cancer.

calmag is not necessary in your garden.
your knuckle test is meaningless.
allow your container to dry until right before the plant wilts
then water with 1 1/4 gallon of water all at once. dont water again until
pot is light again.

it appears you are over feeding your girls
I think Organicare(botanicare) dry fertilizers alone would rock your world following directions on the bag

Real dark leaves and freckling. Looks like low or locked out Ca.

Did you ever find any bugs? Never start spraying crap on your plants until you have identified your foe. Just make things go from bad to worse.

With your low RH you should be running your nutes at half what you would normally do or you get toxic salts buildup and dry crispy leaves and crackly buds when you smoke them. I have the same problem but the last grow I went half and got a good run.

Good luck!

It's not a calcium issue for sure! In that last pic..2028..in that lower leaf in the backdrop..is that some form of mold on the leaves? Seems for sure something is eating them away..doesn't look like a nutrient issue.

Thank you all for the replies.

@Blitz35 Thats Diatomaceous Earth. I posted this in other place and they told me it was pests and that I should use neem oil or Diatomaceous Earth.

@OldMedUser This is what I use for my feeding chart.


Like I stated above I posted this questions once before on another site and everyone was saying pests. They said that its pests that eat during the lights off. I am at work during lights off so I can't track that.

@chemphlegm Thank you. I will give them less. I will do a water only feeding next time to drain out the salts and the old junk. Then I will do a new feeding schedule. I am getting a delivery of super soil so all my plants from now will be in super soil. Plus I will move these girls into that. I am using calmag because I am using Distilled water and people state to use calmag.

As that's a drain to waste method it's much lower in PPM than what I feed my girls in soilless. My AN 3-part and those GH are almost, if not, identical in NPK values for each bottle.

For soilless growing I give them 1ml/L as seedlings every 2nd watering then 2/L until they get bigger and look hungry then I'll go 3/L but I've never gone 4 and AN says use 4ml/L from start to finish. Don't like fried plants much so never go all the way.

A little calmag is ok but there should be enough of both in the nutes alone.

@OldMedUser alright let me see where I am at. I am kind of lost at your math. I am horrible at math so please bare with me.

The basics:
1 teaspoon= 5ml
1 gallon = 3.8L

I am at week 4 of the feed chart above.. 1/2 tsp per gallon of each.. Which comes out to 2.5ml per gallon.

You do 2ml per liter?

So I should do almost ~1.5 tsp or 7.5 ml per per gallon?

Just trying to clarify it the conversion has my mind twisted.

1L is damn close to a US quart so X4/USG.

That's for feeding in pots of soilless and not drain to waste tho. With real dirt like FFoF or something you shouldn't have to feed the plants at all until it's time to flip then just low level bloom and veg nutes and any bloom boosters you want to use like Big Bud.

Have you looked under the leaves with a microscope to inspect closer? Some leaves on my pepper plant looked just like it..i couldn't figure out why..but half eaten leaves, with the 'bite' marks along the edge just like yours. my pepper plant was out on the balcony all summer though, i never did find anything once i brought it in..maybe a handful or so leaves were affected. The fact you say this is happening in multiple rooms, seems all the more reason that it is some infestation that maybe spread in the grow areas. Any common vents in the rooms? Maybe a pet that gets too close to the plants? If it was just one plant then ya..maybe it's a mutant seed..but to happen everywhere in seperate rooms..is fishy. Try to figure out what else they share in common besides the source of water.

Pic 5,6,7 might be caterpillar damage..?
Pic 4 reminds me of a garden pest that rolls the leaves over and lays eggs inside...
Just throwing it out there

What it looks like to me is damage caused by spraying stuff for bugs that aren't there. The DE once it dries on the plant sucks the oils out of the leaves and causes necrosis of the leaf tissue. Notice how most of the damage is in the valleys of the leaves where water and DE would collect and cause damage like that. Tips of the leaves and edges to where runoff collects and can burn especially if the lights are on when it's wet. Just water can do that so I never foliar feed or spray water on my plants.

One leaf laying over another so moisture from the top leaf gets trapped will burn the bottom leaf and turn it brown. Seen a lot of new growers freaking out over that one. I call it leaf sweat damage. lol

Chasing non-existent boogie men here methinks.

Before spraying them I took these plants outside. Took a loupe and searched every square inch of the plants for any bugs. None was found.

Other sites were saying that pests were eating the plants during lights off. I then put the plants in 24/0 and the leaves kept becoming "eaten".

This damage was happening weeks before I got the DE and the neem oil. It's also still happening after de and neem oil. The other sites have gone quiet so I am reaching out to other sites.

I don't post before I do my research I want to figure this out myself but I can't find anything anywhere online that resembles this.

I can give these girls a "bath" by spraying them with water to clean off the leaves. Before I put them in lights out to dry. Just trying to see what is going on.

That's some weird shit then so don't know what to tell you.

Good luck figuring it out.

Don't use ozone in the room by chance?

This is why I am stumped too. I am new to growing but never found this online. well closet thing I found was caterpillar or vine weevils. Never found either.

No their is no ozone stuff in the tent. Input fan, fan to blow some air in the tent and filtered exhaust.

Hope you figure it out! i still don't know myself what did it to my pepper leaves. When i first spotted one big leaf like that, half chewed, i presumed the wind ripped it, or maybe me by accident when rotating it on the balcony, even though the leaf was in the middle centre of the plant lol..but when i brought it in for good in september, it still happened, i never found anything either and then it just stopped. It was next to my cucumber plant and tomatoes and parsley and 2 weed plants..nothing else was affected. Though, i did notice an issue with my parsley a few weeks later, and that wasn't outside for months at that point...again, some chewed up leaves, i finally found one tiny green caterpillar on the stem of the parsley..same damn color as the stem, like a chameleon! That's the only one i found..im guessing maybe the culprit..nothing happened after that. My balcony is 5 floors up, no trees around the building at all, so i dont know how that caterpillar found its way to the plant, but i guess it was on the pepper and crawled onto the parsley in the end. Odd thing, those plants are gone for about 2 months now, i only have 2 weed plants now, and i noticed on one of them..3 leaves near the top of the plant are chewed/ripped again, and that wasn't me. It hasn't spread at all since i first noticed it a few weeks ago..just to those 3 small leaves next to each other. The plant it's on is not the healthiest looking, maybe it gave up, or maybe weed is not it's thing. I remember having a ladybug inside in the summer, it wanted nothing to do withthe weed..it loved the tomato, lived on it for days..the weed, as soon as it landed on it, it took off! lol

@Blitz35 it's funny cause I actually have a commerical microgreens company and never had one look like it's been eaten. I add cannabis and Bam..

So I think I may have found what the issue is. So the leaves are slightly twisted, the brown spots on the leaves and the missing pieces of my leaves. This looks like.... Drum roll..... Boron deficiency! See the photo attached. Looks somewhat like my leaves. I do use distilled water because my tap water sucks so there is 0 boron in my water.

I will go get some boric acid and add some to a pH flush. Then hope the girls start healing. Will keep you posted.

blazesci said:

@Blitz35 it's funny cause I actually have a commerical microgreens company and never had one look like it's been eaten. I add cannabis and Bam..

So I think I may have found what the issue is. So the leaves are slightly twisted, the brown spots on the leaves and the missing pieces of my leaves. This looks like.... Drum roll..... Boron deficiency! See the photo attached. Looks somewhat like my leaves. I do use distilled water because my tap water sucks so there is 0 boron in my water.

I will go get some boric acid and add some to a pH flush. Then hope the girls start healing. Will keep you posted.

Click to expand...

That also causes the leaves to look chewed up? Update how it goes, im curious, i never had a boron deficiency. It can get locked out if there is too much calcium, potassium or nitrogen in the medium.