ColonelBlake
Well-Known Member
Hi All. This is my first grow, and I've been experiencing some issues the past 3-4 weeks. I'd be very grateful for any constructive input. If I'm missing anything please let me know and I will try to quickly provide the info. I'd also be happy to provide more pics if needed.
Grow medium: Soil ( made myself - 40% compost, 30% sphagnum peat moss, 30% perlite ). Mixed by hand. Mistake 1.
Container: 20 gallon fabric pots. I realize this is too big of a container now.. Mistake 2.
Grow area: 8x20' greenhouse. 8' ceiling.
Water: 80% RO, 20% well water. I put some well water in there to help buffer the ph and to replace micros the ro water stripped out.
Water frequency: 2x times weekly. 2-3 gallons per plant. Top couple inches are usually dry.
Plants: 6 gorilla glue, 6 purple chem ( started as clones ). Currently 5-6' tall.
State: Pre-flowering.
Planted: Early May ( almost 3 months old ).
PH: Soil ph is 7-8. Water ph 6.3 to 6.5. Lately I've been using 6.0 in hopes of lowering the soil ph.
Nutes: GH Trio. 400-600 ppm. Calmag 2ml/gal.
Problems:
1) Yellowing leaves on the bottom of plant and some on the inner/middle of the plants. Leaves generally get depleted, crumble, and fall off. Which seems indicative of a Nitrogen deficiency.
Action:
Once I noticed the leaves turning yellow ( 3 weeks ago ) I started pumping the plants with nitrogen. They were yellowing pretty fast btw. GH trio was used at 5ml/gal grow, 5 ml/gal micro, and 1ml/gal bloom. PPM ~550; PH 6.5. After a couple weeks of this I noticed some plants had the 'claw', and there was also very minor tip burn on some leaves so I backed off. I watered only the next feeding, then I resumed nutes at rate noted above. Once started I went to a feed, feed, water regime.
I should note that prior to the yellowing I wan't feeding the plants much at all. Basically the first 2 months in the contains. I would Feed ( 1/3 dose ), and then Water the next time. Most of the plants did turn a lime green before this, so at first I think there really was a nitrogen deficiency. I was such a noob that I didn't recognize the problem before it happened. Lesson learned.
2) Not sure how to best describe this. The pic will describe it better than I can. It's almost like a rust (brown/yellow) on random areas on some lower leaves ( not all plants have this ). I first noticed this yesterday and thought it was mites or thrips. But I looked pretty closely with a 45x magnifying lens and I'm not seeing anything moving around. Maybe I'm dong this wrong though? I'm thinking it might be a PH issues?
Action:
I started flushing all the plants ( 5gal ph'd water [6.0 ] per plant ). On of the problems here is that my greenhouse is somewhat remote, and I can only transport 40-45 gallons at once - not to mention it takes a day or so to generate 40 gallons of RO water. That and my containers are so damn big. So I really don't know how I can accomplish a proper flush of 2x the container size ( 40 gallons per plant ). It would literally take weeks to do this.
Notes:
Despite the issues noted above, my plants seem to be growing vigorously ( possibly out of control; I'm literally running out of room ). The top 2/3 of the plants seem healthy and have a nice green look - not too light or dark.
Testing the soil ph has been an issue for me. I have one of those two prong sol probes that checks the ph ( plus light and moisture ), but it seems pretty unreliable. I also have done a slurry test on occasion ( 1:2; one part soil to 2 parts distilled water w/ ph of 7.0 ). This seems more reliable. Unfortunately I do not have pans under my containers because they are so damn big ( 20g), so I don't know how to test the runoff ph. Btw my greenhouse sits on a crushed limestone foundation so runoff goes right through the floor.
As noted above, this is my first grow and I may be me overreacting a bit. But there are issues for sure. I'm hoping to prevent the issues from getting any worse, and I also would like to learn from this and prevent it from happening in the future.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading my post. I tried to be as concise as I could
Grow medium: Soil ( made myself - 40% compost, 30% sphagnum peat moss, 30% perlite ). Mixed by hand. Mistake 1.
Container: 20 gallon fabric pots. I realize this is too big of a container now.. Mistake 2.
Grow area: 8x20' greenhouse. 8' ceiling.
Water: 80% RO, 20% well water. I put some well water in there to help buffer the ph and to replace micros the ro water stripped out.
Water frequency: 2x times weekly. 2-3 gallons per plant. Top couple inches are usually dry.
Plants: 6 gorilla glue, 6 purple chem ( started as clones ). Currently 5-6' tall.
State: Pre-flowering.
Planted: Early May ( almost 3 months old ).
PH: Soil ph is 7-8. Water ph 6.3 to 6.5. Lately I've been using 6.0 in hopes of lowering the soil ph.
Nutes: GH Trio. 400-600 ppm. Calmag 2ml/gal.
Problems:
1) Yellowing leaves on the bottom of plant and some on the inner/middle of the plants. Leaves generally get depleted, crumble, and fall off. Which seems indicative of a Nitrogen deficiency.
Action:
Once I noticed the leaves turning yellow ( 3 weeks ago ) I started pumping the plants with nitrogen. They were yellowing pretty fast btw. GH trio was used at 5ml/gal grow, 5 ml/gal micro, and 1ml/gal bloom. PPM ~550; PH 6.5. After a couple weeks of this I noticed some plants had the 'claw', and there was also very minor tip burn on some leaves so I backed off. I watered only the next feeding, then I resumed nutes at rate noted above. Once started I went to a feed, feed, water regime.
I should note that prior to the yellowing I wan't feeding the plants much at all. Basically the first 2 months in the contains. I would Feed ( 1/3 dose ), and then Water the next time. Most of the plants did turn a lime green before this, so at first I think there really was a nitrogen deficiency. I was such a noob that I didn't recognize the problem before it happened. Lesson learned.
2) Not sure how to best describe this. The pic will describe it better than I can. It's almost like a rust (brown/yellow) on random areas on some lower leaves ( not all plants have this ). I first noticed this yesterday and thought it was mites or thrips. But I looked pretty closely with a 45x magnifying lens and I'm not seeing anything moving around. Maybe I'm dong this wrong though? I'm thinking it might be a PH issues?
Action:
I started flushing all the plants ( 5gal ph'd water [6.0 ] per plant ). On of the problems here is that my greenhouse is somewhat remote, and I can only transport 40-45 gallons at once - not to mention it takes a day or so to generate 40 gallons of RO water. That and my containers are so damn big. So I really don't know how I can accomplish a proper flush of 2x the container size ( 40 gallons per plant ). It would literally take weeks to do this.
Notes:
Despite the issues noted above, my plants seem to be growing vigorously ( possibly out of control; I'm literally running out of room ). The top 2/3 of the plants seem healthy and have a nice green look - not too light or dark.
Testing the soil ph has been an issue for me. I have one of those two prong sol probes that checks the ph ( plus light and moisture ), but it seems pretty unreliable. I also have done a slurry test on occasion ( 1:2; one part soil to 2 parts distilled water w/ ph of 7.0 ). This seems more reliable. Unfortunately I do not have pans under my containers because they are so damn big ( 20g), so I don't know how to test the runoff ph. Btw my greenhouse sits on a crushed limestone foundation so runoff goes right through the floor.
As noted above, this is my first grow and I may be me overreacting a bit. But there are issues for sure. I'm hoping to prevent the issues from getting any worse, and I also would like to learn from this and prevent it from happening in the future.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading my post. I tried to be as concise as I could