Soil/cfl/led Grow Diagnosis Please!

[Snakeskins]

She's on day 36 of flowering cycle and this has been concerning. I defoled nearly every bad leaf there was 2 days ago and they're still growing back. I'm using ffof soil and soil nutes (gb, bb, and tb). I follow the ffof soil feeding schedule precisely. CFL and LED lighting together. There has been an ongoing problem with the pH of the drainage water coming out too low (around 5.5pH). I really need a proper diagnosis so I can fix this ASAP. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[Dalai.Lama]

You speaking of the browning? Kinda small but nicely squat, flower production seems slow for your strain for 36 days. I could be wrong, What are your temps and did you feed just recently? I fed with Gh kook bloom and instantly 2 nice big leaves on my white widow turned ugly, similar to a P or K dificiency. She is probably right at threshold of a lot and too much nutes. Your ph is to low, 5.8-6.4 seems to be the sweet spot range for most gardeners. Thirds type of problems are common with "soil" you should be using a soiled media or coco if you want something similar to soil. I would transplant if you can.

1.submerge root ball completely and gently knock off clumps of dirt(will take a good amount of time)
2. Use a b vitamin to reduce stress.

You're still not too far along flower, it may slow you a week but your plant will grow much better. OR your next run try soiled lol you don't worry with deficiencies unless you just never watch your plant. I'm in my garden constantly lol

 

[Snakeskins]

You speaking of the browning? Kinda small but nicely squat, flower production seems slow for your strain for 36 days. I could be wrong, What are your temps and did you feed just recently? I fed with Gh kook bloom and instantly 2 nice big leaves on my white widow turned ugly, similar to a P or K dificiency. She is probably right at threshold of a lot and too much nutes. Your ph is to low, 5.8-6.4 seems to be the sweet spot range for most gardeners. Thirds type of problems are common with "soil" you should be using a soiled media or coco if you want something similar to soil. I would transplant if you can.

1.submerge root ball completely and gently knock off clumps of dirt(will take a good amount of time)
2. Use a b vitamin to reduce stress.

You're still not too far along flower, it may slow you a week but your plant will grow much better. OR your next run try soiled lol you don't worry with deficiencies unless you just never watch your plant. I'm in my garden constantly lol

Thx for your help. I was hoping the problem could be solved with just more of a nute or better pH calculation/management. Pretty low humidity around 30% and 78°F in the tent. If thats the solution, I might let her ride it out the best I can and get ready for my first ×8 Scrog with roots organic soil.

 

[Snakeskins]

You speaking of the browning? Kinda small but nicely squat, flower production seems slow for your strain for 36 days. I could be wrong, What are your temps and did you feed just recently? I fed with Gh kook bloom and instantly 2 nice big leaves on my white widow turned ugly, similar to a P or K dificiency. She is probably right at threshold of a lot and too much nutes. Your ph is to low, 5.8-6.4 seems to be the sweet spot range for most gardeners. Thirds type of problems are common with "soil" you should be using a soiled media or coco if you want something similar to soil. I would transplant if you can.

1.submerge root ball completely and gently knock off clumps of dirt(will take a good amount of time)
2. Use a b vitamin to reduce stress.

You're still not too far along flower, it may slow you a week but your plant will grow much better. OR your next run try soiled lol you don't worry with deficiencies unless you just never watch your plant. I'm in my garden constantly lol

And the buds do look kind of small. Idk the strain. I'm hoping she's a 3 month flowering strain or something.

 

[Dalai.Lama]

She looks like a indica dominant hybrid from what I can speculate. Scrog will fornsure improves your yields a lot! Remember, more is never better, you can always add but it's impossible to remove. Humidity could be a little higher at that temp. I tend to sit at 75-79 degrees in veg with 40% humidity. I'm inside and do not use humidity machines. All dependent on your environment so always calculate ahead of time and adjust as needed. Leave her for about a week with just water feedings PH'd and see if that will fix it. May not even need a week just a couple days even. My process would be ito remove the nutrient rich environment into a less concentrate environment and continue your feeding after signs of improvement begins to show.

 

[Snakeskins]

She looks like a indica dominant hybrid from what I can speculate. Scrog will fornsure improves your yields a lot! Remember, more is never better, you can always add but it's impossible to remove. Humidity could be a little higher at that temp. I tend to sit at 75-79 degrees in veg with 40% humidity. I'm inside and do not use humidity machines. All dependent on your environment so always calculate ahead of time and adjust as needed. Leave her for about a week with just water feedings PH'd and see if that will fix it. May not even need a week just a couple days even. My process would be ito remove the nutrient rich environment into a less concentrate environment and continue your feeding after signs of improvement begins to show.

My tap comes out at 7.6-7.8 pH but I always make sure to adjust to 6.0-7.0. Should I be exceeding that pH zone in order to compensate for low pH drainage?

 

[Dalai.Lama]

So from my understanding, one reason to check drainage to to calculate how much nutrients are being absorbed verse being watered through. I would stay away from anything higher than 6.5, honestly, 5.8-6.5 should be your range. Are you using a legitimate ph meter or one of those soil meters that eveyone seems to buy at Walmart? Your burn/nutrient rich environment is the culprit. My best advice is just watch her closely. If things change for the worse than flush like a mofo and transplant "if" necessary. Also, you shouldn't use tap unless you have to or for flushing as it contains chlorine and shouldn't be used for watering. But if you don't have the budget for a water filtration system even the RO straw, then use a 5 gal container and let the water sit for 3-5 days with an air stone to prevent it from going rancid. My city has an aquifer beneath it so my water is always 6.5 hot or cold. Your problem may simply just be PH related, too much flux is never good for the plant.

 

[Snakeskins]

Fellas here's the thing, I NEED to find out which of my 8 plants are female. So can I take clones of each plant in roots organic soil? My idea is to let them root for a week in 18/6 then switch to 12/12 to reveal sex. To give @EventHorizan credit, I think I got the idea from him. But my question is can this be done with roots organic soil and ffof soil nutes?

 

[Snakeskins]

Ah Fudge it. I'll stop being so resourcefull and swing by the hydro shop lol

 

[Dalai.Lama]

Why not use cocoa as your base and make super cocoa? Same thing as super soil but using cocoa instead of soil to mitigate the problems involved with soil? Unless you like soil, I've never cloned that way, i always use peat plugs, RW, or oasis cubes. But a week to root and sexing seems like more work than it's worth, why not just veg until you see hairs? Best advice is just clone a female from the get go.

 

[Snakeskins]

Why not use cocoa as your base and make super cocoa? Same thing as super soil but using cocoa instead of soil to mitigate the problems involved with soil? Unless you like soil, I've never cloned that way, i always use peat plugs, RW, or oasis cubes. But a week to root and sexing seems like more work than it's worth, why not just veg until you see hairs? Best advice is just clone a female from the get go.

Ah shit! Lol. I was posting in the wrong thread. But hell yeah. I look at it like I'm graduating out of soil. Next I will use a soiless medium. I never considered the possibility to transplant from soil to a soiless medium. I mean is that possible?

 

[Snakeskins]

Oh I see what your saying. Make a mother plant from clone. I also plan on doing that and I think I will try coco coir or a sort of soiless mix. Well actually I was going to keep and raise a mother plant right in the soil that it's growing in but that depends on how many females I get.

 

[Dalai.Lama]

Well mothers are best from seed BUT if you're going to turn a mother into a clone then put your clones under stress and phenotype your plants. Choose the strongest, fastest, biggest plant from that batch of clones and keep it. We can't eliminate genetic drift BUT we can inhibit/control it. These are some vegging clones I have. Notice the difference from the smaller and bigger ones. And to the trolls ALL of them came off the same plant and ALL of them were pulled together. Cloning is a skill that I've definitely improved on but I wanna get better. Soil is not bad it just has three negatives that we growers rely on, 1: airatiom of medium, 2:it stays hot and is impossible to buffer without spending more money(unless you do super soil), and 3: to Dx a symptom or correct over/under watering is hard because it will stay wet until powder dry. Regardless of level I feel that soilless has huge advantages but if you wanna stay as organic and natural as possible then coco is the best sub for soil. Fox farms is amazing and I actually use the aqua forest to supplement my coco, I use cocoa, fox farm aqua forest, then I throw in the rest of the supplements(based on my environment), cal-mag, kelp, grow formula, and good for the micro bacteria. I'm huge on the whole carbon based feeding verse using nutes but I will still have my Gh on hand to correct deficiencies swiftly. Guess which ones I'll pull for flowering and cloning lol