What am i doing to these poor plants?

Alunaone · Mar 6, 2022

Hi from AU. I'm doing a grow for the 1st time in 30 years, and 1st time under lights. 3 x cloned white rhino under 1x 600watt MH in a 7x4 tent in coco coir with roughly 20% perlite in 10 gallon cloth pots. The 1st 6 weeks of their life was tough, and was spent outdoors in an extremely shaded environment in 1 gallon pots. They were then transferred into the pre mentioned indoor environment but had no nutrients for 10 days as it was all last minute and I was broke. Despite this they were growing nicely with their 7 fingered leaves pointing at a nice angle toward the light. Having no nutrients the leaves were not staying green for long, and had what look like nitrogen deficiency. The last 7 days I've been feeding them 2 litres of canna coco per day from mix= 40mil of each A and B added to 10 litres of tap water. The folliage has gone mental with new thick growth and the leaves have turned dark green, however the amount of fingers has reduced down to 3 to 5, they seem to be drooping, new leaf stems are purplish (but turn green), and two of the plants branches have turned purple (main stems slightly. The other one hasn't changed colour as much (slight purple main stem) The run to waste is roughly 10% of the 2 litre feeds. One thing that has increased the last 5 days is the humidity (which has causes a slight green mold on the perlite). I might add I am glad to have all these errors on my 1st grow and I'm really curious as to what would cause the purple, and finger change? I am over feeding, or the humidity? Regards P

Alunaone · Mar 6, 2022

Alunaone said:
Hi from AU. I'm doing a grow for the 1st time in 30 years, and 1st time under lights. 3 x cloned white rhino under 1x 600watt MH in a 7x4 tent in coco coir with roughly 20% perlite in 10 gallon cloth pots. The 1st 6 weeks of their life was tough, and was spent outdoors in an extremely shaded environment in 1 gallon pots. They were then transferred into the pre mentioned indoor environment but had no nutrients for 10 days as it was all last minute and I was broke. Despite this they were growing nicely with their 7 fingered leaves pointing at a nice angle toward the light. Having no nutrients the leaves were not staying green for long, and had what look like nitrogen deficiency. The last 7 days I've been feeding them 2 litres of canna coco per day from mix= 40mil of each A and B added to 10 litres of tap water. The folliage has gone mental with new thick growth and the leaves have turned dark green, however the amount of fingers has reduced down to 3 to 5, they seem to be drooping, new leaf stems are purplish (but turn green), and two of the plants branches have turned purple (main stems slightly. The other one hasn't changed colour as much (slight purple main stem) The run to waste is roughly 10% of the 2 litre feeds. One thing that has increased the last 5 days is the humidity (which has causes a slight green mold on the perlite). I might add I am glad to have all these errors on my 1st grow and I'm really curious as to what would cause the purple, and finger change? I am over feeding, or the humidity? I think I am also lacking airflow. Regards P

phxazcraig · Mar 6, 2022

Are you adding any cal/mag in there somewhere?

I'm a rookie here, but I don't think the purple stems mean anything particularly bad. Purple leaves, yes, that would be bad.

What pH and EC are you feeding them?

It does look like too much nitrogen.

SofaKingHigh · Mar 6, 2022

Alunaone said:
Hi from AU. I'm doing a grow for the 1st time in 30 years, and 1st time under lights. 3 x cloned white rhino under 1x 600watt MH in a 7x4 tent in coco coir with roughly 20% perlite in 10 gallon cloth pots. The 1st 6 weeks of their life was tough, and was spent outdoors in an extremely shaded environment in 1 gallon pots. They were then transferred into the pre mentioned indoor environment but had no nutrients for 10 days as it was all last minute and I was broke. Despite this they were growing nicely with their 7 fingered leaves pointing at a nice angle toward the light. Having no nutrients the leaves were not staying green for long, and had what look like nitrogen deficiency. The last 7 days I've been feeding them 2 litres of canna coco per day from mix= 40mil of each A and B added to 10 litres of tap water. The folliage has gone mental with new thick growth and the leaves have turned dark green, however the amount of fingers has reduced down to 3 to 5, they seem to be drooping, new leaf stems are purplish (but turn green), and two of the plants branches have turned purple (main stems slightly. The other one hasn't changed colour as much (slight purple main stem) The run to waste is roughly 10% of the 2 litre feeds. One thing that has increased the last 5 days is the humidity (which has causes a slight green mold on the perlite). I might add I am glad to have all these errors on my 1st grow and I'm really curious as to what would cause the purple, and finger change? I am over feeding, or the humidity? Regards P

Looks like that plant is re-vegging

Alunaone · Mar 14, 2022

phxazcraig said:
Are you adding any cal/mag in there somewhere?

I'm a rookie here, but I don't think the purple stems mean anything particularly bad. Purple leaves, yes, that would be bad.

What pH and EC are you feeding them?

It does look like too much nitrogen.

No I'm not, I cut the nutrients in half after flushing them. They are looking much healthier, and there is a few baby 7 fingers that have appeared, but mostly 1 to 5. I definitely need to improve the ventilation, and purchase some EC gauge.

Alunaone · Mar 14, 2022

SofaKingHigh said:
Looks like that plant is re-vegging

The lights have been on 24hr cycle since moving indoors. This is still possible?

Alunaone · Mar 14, 2022

I

phxazcraig said:
Are you adding any cal/mag in there somewhere?

I'm a rookie here, but I don't think the purple stems mean anything particularly bad. Purple leaves, yes, that would be bad.

What pH and EC are you feeding them?

It does look like too much nitrogen.

Forgot to mention I'm using bore water. I know other outdoor growers in my area that use the same water without an issue though.

Nectarivorous · Mar 14, 2022

SofaKingHigh said:
Looks like that plant is re-vegging

Yep single fins all around the top

Nectarivorous · Mar 14, 2022

Alunaone said:
The lights have been on 24hr cycle since moving indoors. This is still possible?

It's possible the plant had begun to flip prior to going in and then was forced to reveg. Could also be related to stress of they're getting too much light over a 24 hour period. I've always done 18/6 so can't really comment there.

Nectarivorous · Mar 14, 2022

Alunaone said:
I

Forgot to mention I'm using bore water. I know other outdoor growers in my area that use the same water without an issue though.

Having been an irrigation man I can say that bore quality can vary even over a fence let alone a suburb. That's not to say that's your problem though. I use RO water then build my own nutrient profile which I've found to give me Max control but some more experienced Aussie boys here will be across bore water

Alunaone · Mar 14, 2022

Nectarivorous said:
Having been an irrigation man I can say that bore quality can vary even over a fence let alone a suburb. That's not to say that's your problem though. I use RO water then build my own nutrient profile which I've found to give me Max control but some more experienced Aussie boys here will be across Time to run some tests.

Time to run some tests. I've had a few hot days locally and the humidity inside has hit 76% with 30deg c. Hypothetically speaking If I was to correct all the issues overnight, the plants should carry on as per normal until I decide to flower them? The clones were taken from healthy females, my concern was they had turned sex, is this possible from clones? Appreciate your comments.

Nectarivorous · Mar 14, 2022

They can

Alunaone said:
Time to run some tests. I've had a few hot days locally and the humidity inside has hit 76% with 30deg c. Hypothetically speaking If I was to correct all the issues overnight, the plants should carry on as per normal until I decide to flower them? The clones were taken from healthy females, my concern was they had turned sex, is this possible from clones? Appreciate your comments.

They can definitely go Herm due to stress, for sure. I'm not sure if that ever got far enough into flower to be able to sex it but all you can do is keep vegging then throw into flower when you're ready.

Alunaone · Mar 14, 2022

Nectarivorous said:
They can

They can definitely go Herm due to stress, for sure. I'm not sure if that ever got far enough into flower to be able to sex it but all you can do is keep vegging then throw into flower when you're ready.

If/do the leaves increase to say 7+ fingers does this define them as female? I had been checking for pistils but didn't see anything obvious.

Alunaone · Mar 14, 2022

I was considering flowering one branch to make sure

Alunaone · Mar 14, 2022

I'm now convinced of the reveg. I've been away for a few days, and closer inspection of the two smaller plants have revealed brown pistils.

Nectarivorous · Mar 14, 2022

Alunaone said:
If/do the leaves increase to say 7+ fingers does this define them as female? I had been checking for pistils but didn't see anything obvious.

No only the sex organs will tell you that. The ones above are female pistils. You'll have to see what they produce when you flower them again

Xhale · Mar 14, 2022

SofaKingHigh said:
Looks like that plant is re-vegging

Nectarivorous said:
Yep single fins all around the top

Nectarivorous said:
It's possible the plant had begun to flip prior to going in and then was forced to reveg.

I 100% agree with these points. I have re-vegged then flowered MANY plants in my hybrid outdoor+greenhouse grow over the years :) I would personally defoliate by cutting back 40-60% of the leaves but do not touch any branch tips, maybe top her if she's looks too tall (I would not top her now). This will force a massive growth spurt of all side branches. Then switch to flower when she's big enough. I've not had a problem with hermies when doing this. The plant itself looks healthy and unstressed....just confused;)

I don't like 24x7 light, but she may switch back to flower if you cut back the light now (e.g. I prefer a veg light rotation of 18/6)....other experts can comment on this precaution.

Xhale · Mar 14, 2022

Alunaone said:
the two smaller plants have revealed brown pistils

In the scenario that you want to re-veg these small plants: I've experienced these small buds to seriously hamper vegetative growth. Be ruthless cut the buds out and smoke them (or not) if you want to re-veg.

If you want to flower them, then go ahead.

phxazcraig · Mar 14, 2022

All in all, you need more instrumentation to know what to which conditions you are subjecting your plant. You need some way to measure the pH and ppm/EC of your water, a thermometer and hygrometer to know temp and RH, and some sort of light meter to measure your lighting.

Temp and humidity is no problem. You can get all sort of gauges for less than $10.

After temp and RH meters, the easiest (cheapest) meters to buy are basic moisture and EC meters. Those 2-pronged jobs you stick in soil to measure moisture work and are about $10 usd. An EC meter is about the same price but a tiny bit tricky. You want an EC meter, but you'll get a PPM meter in there too. (Some PPM meters do not include an EC mode - don't get one of those if you can help it.)

There are two PPM scales in use - 500ppm and 700ppm. (A pen on the 500ppm scale will read 500 at the same time a 700ppm scale reads 700. ) You want the 500ppm scale as most charts assume that scale. EC is EC, but it is also 2x the PPM when using the PPM500 scale. So you can get EC easily from the right PPM meter - except they may not tell you which PPM scale they use! I have one that has 700ppm scale and EC mode too, so i just change to EC mode every time I use it. Cost of pen was $12 usd.

After that, things get expensive. There are no accurate pH pens that I know of under about $50. I use a $75 Bluelab pen, and I calibrate it. I used to use a $15 pH pen until I found it was reading about 1 point high in pH. Be very wary of cheap pH pens. And know that the tips must be kept moist (in a special solution) when not in use.

And then we come to measuring the strength of your lighting. With LED's it's impossible to make any standard predictions. You either use charts from the manufacturer that give PAR values at certain distances - but these are given for full power settings. If you have a dimmer in use, you have no idea how much light the plants are seeing without a meter. Unfortunately a good PAR meter is the most expensive of all the meters here. FIgure at least $200 for a decent PAR meter. I paid $400 for my Apogee MQ-200. But I don't have to guesstimate my PAR values, I can simply measure them anywhere in the tent and adjust lighting as needed. All other meters are attempting to estimate PAR values indirectly, with varying degrees of success. I would not trust a phone app in particular, nor the little Lumen meter on one of those cheap 3-way moisture/ph/lighting probes.

As for your nutes, you need to know what you are putting into your plants, and you need to know the characteristics of your source water. For instance, here in Phoenix my tap water EC is over 400 because of the high amount of calcium in the water. It's actually too high for seedlings, particularly if you need to add some nutrients. Not so bad later in the grow for coco, but I use RO all the time because then I control what goes into it. I add 1.9ml/gal of Calimagic since I'm a) growing in coco and b) using RO water with no cal/mag. I end up with EC around 250 at this stage just from the cal/mag. Nutes (currently) take me to around 1400, and I hold pH at 6.0. For me, it's all working beautifully.

Alunaone · Mar 14, 2022

phxazcraig said:
All in all, you need more instrumentation to know what to which conditions you are subjecting your plant. You need some way to measure the pH and ppm/EC of your water, a thermometer and hygrometer to know temp and RH, and some sort of light meter to measure your lighting.

Temp and humidity is no problem. You can get all sort of gauges for less than $10.

After temp and RH meters, the easiest (cheapest) meters to buy are basic moisture and EC meters. Those 2-pronged jobs you stick in soil to measure moisture work and are about $10 usd. An EC meter is about the same price but a tiny bit tricky. You want an EC meter, but you'll get a PPM meter in there too. (Some PPM meters do not include an EC mode - don't get one of those if you can help it.)

There are two PPM scales in use - 500ppm and 700ppm. (A pen on the 500ppm scale will read 500 at the same time a 700ppm scale reads 700. ) You want the 500ppm scale as most charts assume that scale. EC is EC, but it is also 2x the PPM when using the PPM500 scale. So you can get EC easily from the right PPM meter - except they may not tell you which PPM scale they use! I have one that has 700ppm scale and EC mode too, so i just change to EC mode every time I use it. Cost of pen was $12 usd.

After that, things get expensive. There are no accurate pH pens that I know of under about $50. I use a $75 Bluelab pen, and I calibrate it. I used to use a $15 pH pen until I found it was reading about 1 point high in pH. Be very wary of cheap pH pens. And know that the tips must be kept moist (in a special solution) when not in use.

And then we come to measuring the strength of your lighting. With LED's it's impossible to make any standard predictions. You either use charts from the manufacturer that give PAR values at certain distances - but these are given for full power settings. If you have a dimmer in use, you have no idea how much light the plants are seeing without a meter. Unfortunately a good PAR meter is the most expensive of all the meters here. FIgure at least $200 for a decent PAR meter. I paid $400 for my Apogee MQ-200. But I don't have to guesstimate my PAR values, I can simply measure them anywhere in the tent and adjust lighting as needed. All other meters are attempting to estimate PAR values indirectly, with varying degrees of success. I would not trust a phone app in particular, nor the little Lumen meter on one of those cheap 3-way moisture/ph/lighting probes.

As for your nutes, you need to know what you are putting into your plants, and you need to know the characteristics of your source water. For instance, here in Phoenix my tap water EC is over 400 because of the high amount of calcium in the water. It's actually too high for seedlings, particularly if you need to add some nutrients. Not so bad later in the grow for coco, but I use RO all the time because then I control what goes into it. I add 1.9ml/gal of Calimagic since I'm a) growing in coco and b) using RO water with no cal/mag. I end up with EC around 250 at this stage just from the cal/mag. Nutes (currently) take me to around 1400, and I hold pH at 6.0. For me, it's all working beautifully.

Awesome info, thankyou ❤ I purchased a combo temp/humidity gauge a few days ago. Now I know exactly what I need next.

What am i doing to these poor plants?

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