Burnt tips, mushrooms & flies

[Kays]

Hey all, my plant is growing pretty well, no major problems so far, but today as I open the grow tent I see a tiny mushroom sticking out of the soil right next to the main stem of the plant.
Also, 2-3 black flies (looked more like small mosquitoes) were flying around the tent.
Should I be worried? I read that mushrooms aren't bad for the plant but I'd like more opinions on the matter.


On top of that it has been around a week that my plant had white/yellow burnt tips on some leaves (the ones that were new when the issue appeared).
The burnt tips have pretty much stopped developing, they are not spreading to other leaves nor are growing in length but it would be nice to know what caused them so that I won't repeat that mistake in the future.

Some info:
Growing in 20L of potting soil, my plant is currently 23 days old from sprout. The water has a ph of 6.5 more or less. So far I gave her 6-5-5 nutes.

Here's what I've done the last week or so:
Watered 1.5L with 1/4 nutes (no runoff), soil dried in around 2 days.
Watered 3L of ph'd tap water (got some runoff), soil still hasn't fully dried out in 7 days, and is only now starting to get drier.
One or two days after the 3L watering I noticed the burnt tips, which spread for maybe 3 days, after that they stopped getting bigger.
Now (a week after the 3L watering) the mushroom popped up.

For more info you can find my journal here:
First Time Grower - 300w CFL - Northern Lights Auto, Royal Cheese Auto

Here are the pics.

Any help is appreciated!

 

[LLHmaryjane]

re: Burnt tips, mushrooms & flies

What kind of dirt are you using? Are you adding nutrients at all? The little dark flies are probably fungus gnats and the if that is a mushroom, I would say your dirt needs to dry out but again, need to know what kind of soil it is and how much are you watering? Your plant looks really healthy so don't panic, lets just figure out if you need to adjust something to make it even better. Also need to control those gnats before they get out of control, but that's easy. More information, will help us determine what you might have going on and the best way to treat it.

 

[Kays]

Thank you for your reply!

I'm using some rather cheap universal soil bought at the local gardening shop. It doesn't have any slow release nutes or anything like that. It's 20L with no perlite or anything like that. The pot is also far too big for those 20L unfortunately (probably shouldn't have tried to eyeball the pot size).

My nutes are 6-5-5 for veg (the one I gave her) and 4-6-6 for bloom. The dosage on the bottle says 1 cap for 2L of water.
I gave her 1.5L of water with a quarter dose tuesday of last week and ~2.5L with a little under half a dose yesterday. I gave her 3L of ph'd water in between these two waterings and that was probably too much as the soil didn't dry out for a whole week.
So yesterday the top inch was dry and I gave her just enough to get some runoff, hopefully I didn't overwater again.

I cut the mushroom shortly after posting the original post and no more seem to have popped up
Thank you for identifying those flies for me, upon further research they sure look like fungus gnats! Right now there's only a couple flying around, but I definitely want to stop the invasion in its tracks. What do you think is the best way to do that?

Also, the lady is 25 days old from sprout but she still hasn't shown any pistils (she's an auto). Should I be worried?


Thank you again for helping me out with these problems.

 

[LLHmaryjane]

Okay, first your watering practice; you are right on with watering until you have some runoff and you should test that runoff ph level once a week until you get it down. You don't have to worry about over watering in any one single application; you have to worry about it not drying out enough before you water it again and that does take a little practice. I go by the weight of my pots and by how damp the dirt is at the center of the root ball. To treat just a few fungus gnats, you should put yellow sticky cards in your plants (look up plant sticky traps on Amazon). This will catch the flying adults. If the gnats persist, they can lay eggs in the dirt and their larvae will hatch out as itsy bitsy maggot looking things all through your dirt. If that happens, I have had success with hydrogen peroxide mixed with water but we'll do that carefully only if needed. The yellow sticky cards and letting your dirt dry out completely should zap the problem very easily.

 

[LLHmaryjane]

You have her on 12/12 light schedule or you are just looking for some pre-flowers under 24 hour light period? Auto flowering plants still need a dark period to flourish in the flowering stage but they do usually start pre-flowering very heavily even under vegetative light if left long enough. The time for it to take to pre-flower is determined first by strain, then by the environment, then by any stress training or other growing techniques. If you are sure it's a female and you are just looking for a "sign" it's ready for flowering, that is determined more by size than age.

 

[Kays]

Sweet, I was worried that watering her too much in one go would do damage. Knowing that's not the case is a relief. Also no new yellow tips after the last watering, so fingers crossed .

I remember seeing those yellow cards at the gardening shop, so I'll get some of those soon.

As for the light cycle, I have her on 18/6 since the start. But today I spotted what I believe are the "sacks" (calyx?) the pistils come out of. Four on the topmost node and a couple on the ones below it, so I'm a little less worried.

Thanks you for your continued support! Really helpful.

 

[LLHmaryjane]

Nice! Those are probably pre-flowers woohoo, ready for the flowering stage. You could switch your lights to 12/12 now if you want to. Even though they are auto flowering, they still require at least 12 hours of complete darkness to be the best they can be at the end! If you want the most yield keep them under the veg light until you see full flowering, then switch your lights. The pre-flowering might stop and more vegetative growth will happen before they start automatically flowering.