Raenemaker
- 4
- 1
Hi Everyone!
I'm a long time lurker but a first time poster. I really appreciate all of the valuable insight and input that these forums give to new growers. I pour through them constantly as I lurch from one drastic, nearly harvest killing mistake to another! :)
Why am I finally posting? Because I seem to have a very simple problem but I can't figure out how to solve.
I'm growing about four strains right now. The one that showed the most promise in veg was sour diesel. I have two of them and they grew like monsters very quickly. I let them get too big and I didn't super crop or low stress train them, so they've gotten pretty tall. I tried to make the best out of a bad situation and just use some trellis netting and interwove of the branches into the top. Seemed to work fine.
The trouble started once I flipped the SD into flower. I made another rookie mistake in a long list of rookie mistakes and didn't slowly transition from grow to bloom nutrients. Almost in the second week I started seeing a much faster rate of yellowing leaves. I thought it was excess nutrients so I dialed down my Advanced Nutrients mix ( the base of which was connoisseur A&B) but kept feeding the weaker strength.
I'm at week 7 and the problem just seems to be getting progressively worse. The leaves are increasingly yellow, there is a brown spotting problem, and plenty of fan leaves die off. The tips and edges are crispy on many of the leaves.
I would like to trick myself into thinking it's just the end of the Sour Diesel flowering stage but I know from reading that diesels have a longer than normal flower cycle (10-12 weeks) and I probably got a good three weeks left. At this rate of fan leaf die off, I don't know if the plant will make it that long.
From reading a multitude of online sources and looking at the symptoms, I'm landing on the theory that it is a nutrient lockout problem from overfeeding, resulting in a lack of calcium and magnesium uptake. I also think that it is a consistent problem of not having enough nitrogen in the mix of the early stage of the flowering cycle. Best solution for that from what I read is a flush and then after 2 weeks of pH regulated water flushing slowly and at a very low strength (10 pct of reco?) adding the nutrients back in, this time including nitrogen in the mix.
I also AM concerned that maybe it's a level of heat stress ( many of the leaf tips are turning upward as well), so I have dialed my light output down by about 15%, but I'm pretty sure it's a nutrient problem because even the day after I feed the weak solution they seem to be turning more yellow. Weirdly enough the buds also seem to be getting bigger after such a feeding so its confusing.
My questions are twofold at this point:
1) has anyone seen anything like this before, who's growing a sativa or sour diesel or anything else, and do you have any suggestions?
2) a really stupid one: now that I have a plant in a 5 gallon pot that's almost five feet tall, and its branches have been grown into a trellis net, with the larger branches tied to the trellis net framing, how does one flush such a beast without damaging the plant?
Here are the other relevant pieces of information that I can think of:
-gavita 1000de light set at 280w output for heat management
-growing in 100% perlite ( yes this was a newbie mistake and I should have picked coco coir, but I read a series of online journals extolling the virtues of it and I couldn't resist trying it... I think it's a great medium if you're an advanced grower not the smartest call as a new grower)
- using advanced Nutrients mix, the base of which is their connoiseur a and b line, but have also been adding bud candy, overdrive, bud x, and rhino skin. ( I asked a professional grower for a nutrient formula that he recommended; I realized far too late that he was basically giving me the Advanced Nutrients formulas straight off the bottle, which were way way way too hot.... I dialed everything down to a quarter strength and that's what I've been using once a week, with pH balanced plain water for the rest of the week ( for the last 2 weeks I've been supplementing the plain water with Cal Mag) , daily... I will be switching to floraduro for the next crop, or something as simple)
- the water is runoff from the split AC unit in the room, extremely clean with 4 ppm to start; on feeding days I've been getting the ppm up to 800
- keeping pH and the 5 - 5.8 range to help offset what I think is a hot root zone across the board (ppm in the runoff is close to 1800!!)
Would love any advice but especially the advice on how to flush, since I'm guessing that that's my best shot to saving it (that and super light on the nutrients for the rest of the flowering cycle, if any at all).
Help me Obi Bong Kenobis; you are my last hope!
PS my tablet doesn't seem to want to upload pictures so I'm going to upload them in a separate reply post
I'm a long time lurker but a first time poster. I really appreciate all of the valuable insight and input that these forums give to new growers. I pour through them constantly as I lurch from one drastic, nearly harvest killing mistake to another! :)
Why am I finally posting? Because I seem to have a very simple problem but I can't figure out how to solve.
I'm growing about four strains right now. The one that showed the most promise in veg was sour diesel. I have two of them and they grew like monsters very quickly. I let them get too big and I didn't super crop or low stress train them, so they've gotten pretty tall. I tried to make the best out of a bad situation and just use some trellis netting and interwove of the branches into the top. Seemed to work fine.
The trouble started once I flipped the SD into flower. I made another rookie mistake in a long list of rookie mistakes and didn't slowly transition from grow to bloom nutrients. Almost in the second week I started seeing a much faster rate of yellowing leaves. I thought it was excess nutrients so I dialed down my Advanced Nutrients mix ( the base of which was connoisseur A&B) but kept feeding the weaker strength.
I'm at week 7 and the problem just seems to be getting progressively worse. The leaves are increasingly yellow, there is a brown spotting problem, and plenty of fan leaves die off. The tips and edges are crispy on many of the leaves.
I would like to trick myself into thinking it's just the end of the Sour Diesel flowering stage but I know from reading that diesels have a longer than normal flower cycle (10-12 weeks) and I probably got a good three weeks left. At this rate of fan leaf die off, I don't know if the plant will make it that long.
From reading a multitude of online sources and looking at the symptoms, I'm landing on the theory that it is a nutrient lockout problem from overfeeding, resulting in a lack of calcium and magnesium uptake. I also think that it is a consistent problem of not having enough nitrogen in the mix of the early stage of the flowering cycle. Best solution for that from what I read is a flush and then after 2 weeks of pH regulated water flushing slowly and at a very low strength (10 pct of reco?) adding the nutrients back in, this time including nitrogen in the mix.
I also AM concerned that maybe it's a level of heat stress ( many of the leaf tips are turning upward as well), so I have dialed my light output down by about 15%, but I'm pretty sure it's a nutrient problem because even the day after I feed the weak solution they seem to be turning more yellow. Weirdly enough the buds also seem to be getting bigger after such a feeding so its confusing.
My questions are twofold at this point:
1) has anyone seen anything like this before, who's growing a sativa or sour diesel or anything else, and do you have any suggestions?
2) a really stupid one: now that I have a plant in a 5 gallon pot that's almost five feet tall, and its branches have been grown into a trellis net, with the larger branches tied to the trellis net framing, how does one flush such a beast without damaging the plant?
Here are the other relevant pieces of information that I can think of:
-gavita 1000de light set at 280w output for heat management
-growing in 100% perlite ( yes this was a newbie mistake and I should have picked coco coir, but I read a series of online journals extolling the virtues of it and I couldn't resist trying it... I think it's a great medium if you're an advanced grower not the smartest call as a new grower)
- using advanced Nutrients mix, the base of which is their connoiseur a and b line, but have also been adding bud candy, overdrive, bud x, and rhino skin. ( I asked a professional grower for a nutrient formula that he recommended; I realized far too late that he was basically giving me the Advanced Nutrients formulas straight off the bottle, which were way way way too hot.... I dialed everything down to a quarter strength and that's what I've been using once a week, with pH balanced plain water for the rest of the week ( for the last 2 weeks I've been supplementing the plain water with Cal Mag) , daily... I will be switching to floraduro for the next crop, or something as simple)
- the water is runoff from the split AC unit in the room, extremely clean with 4 ppm to start; on feeding days I've been getting the ppm up to 800
- keeping pH and the 5 - 5.8 range to help offset what I think is a hot root zone across the board (ppm in the runoff is close to 1800!!)
Would love any advice but especially the advice on how to flush, since I'm guessing that that's my best shot to saving it (that and super light on the nutrients for the rest of the flowering cycle, if any at all).
Help me Obi Bong Kenobis; you are my last hope!
PS my tablet doesn't seem to want to upload pictures so I'm going to upload them in a separate reply post
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