Auto Berry - Slow Growth and Shaded Leaves

[shadow22]

Hi. What is going on with my Auto Berry? I am watering them with spring water (pH 7.0). I tried using fertilizer, but it just burned it. I ended up cutting those burned leaves off about 2 weeks ago. I have watered it also recently with magnesium as well as zinc (mixed it in with spring water according to the bottle). I recently transplanted it to this larger container (I drilled lots of large drainage holes). I am watering every 3 days, but I have changed it now to 4 days since it's a larger container than the one I was previously using. I'm using a 180W LED UFO light. There is an outtake fan in the top left corner of the box (you can kind of see it), and an intake fan in the bottom right (half of it can be seen). Temperature is unknown, but I would guess 27 degrees Celsius during the day and 18 at night. I did buy a Humidity sensor, but it didn't work so that too is also unknown.

Useless without images, so here you go:

Many thanks.

 

[Srilania]

Not sure about any other issue, but depending on the source of your spring water, you might have some water issues. If the spring water is in a bottle labeled as drinking water, then it's not just water, but also contains salts and minerals, and can adversely affect things. If it's a spring from the area, there can be contaminants you cannot taste. If it's from a bottle, stop buying that. Buy either distilled water, that says distilled, or reverse osmosis. Most supermarkets have those RO machines where you can reuse the bottles for their machine, and pay a little bit. This can ensure that you're not getting some kind of contaminant, if no other issues are present.

That, and everything I've been told and reading has been saying you want it below 7, like at 6.5.

 

[shadow22]

Not sure about any other issue, but depending on the source of your spring water, you might have some water issues. If the spring water is in a bottle labeled as drinking water, then it's not just water, but also contains salts and minerals, and can adversely affect things. If it's a spring from the area, there can be contaminants you cannot taste. If it's from a bottle, stop buying that. Buy either distilled water, that says distilled, or reverse osmosis. Most supermarkets have those RO machines where you can reuse the bottles for their machine, and pay a little bit. This can ensure that you're not getting some kind of contaminant, if no other issues are present.

That, and everything I've been told and reading has been saying you want it below 7, like at 6.5.

So I should keep the pH exactly like this image displays, close to the ~6.2-6.4 range:

Can I add a little lemon juice to regulate it, or should I buy something like 'pH down' from the hardware store?

*EDIT* Just been reading around and lemon juice or vinegar seems to be fine. I'll try it out

 

[Srilania]

I'd still recommend testing with distilled water or RO water a bit, Ph balanced down to that range, and make sure that's not the culprit. As I said, if you're doing the store bought "spring water" realize most times that spring water was a spring from a municipal water supply, the exact same water you get at home from the tap. And if you mean an actual spring from the ground, again, you don't know what's in that water, and it could have any number of contaminants, even if you cannot taste them. It's just easier to swap to a different water a few times than to get a sample tested in a lab for checking.

Realize there's a ton of things that can naturally be found in the ground, such as radon (can cause a lot of problems) and arsenic. And thanks to some parts of the US running a lot of fracking, there could be some really nasty stuff. Just swap water, and double check to be sure.

 

[CO Finest]

What kind of soil are you using?

 

[shadow22]

What kind of soil are you using?

Potting soil from my local hardware with perlite I added manually. I maintained a 1:1 ratio, but tended to add just a little more soil. I can take a photo of the bag it came in if it helps you in any way.

 

[CO Finest]

Ok so does the bag have a NPK or info you can share. Sorry to ask ? but hard for me to help point out some problems without enough info. I do not like to guess.

 

[shadow22]

Ok so does the bag have a NPK or info you can share. Sorry to ask ? but hard for me to help point out some problems without enough info. I do not like to guess.

I'll check it out now. Don't worry about it. Feel free to ask anything. You're trying to help, and I will help provide the information you need. In the meantime, I went to the hardware today and bought this for $10. It's one of those old analog pH meters, but it should be fairly accurate. Interestingly enough though, the soil seems to be quite okay! I also bought Sulphur to lower the pH, but seeming as it's fine, I won't need it.

*EDIT* I checked it out. No NPK information whatsoever. It must be a very cheap bag of dirt

 

[shadow22]

I watered it last night (500ml spring water with about 1 teaspoon of lemon juice) and it's getting worse.
I'm thinking I should just flush the soil with tap water for 5 minutes since it looks like too many nutrients are in the soil. This is extremely frustrating. I don't want to buy distilled water since it's about $5 a liter.

 

[shadow22]

Okay, I gave it a good flushing with about 4 liters of tap water. The pH is down to 6 now. I will start to water with tap water every 3 days from now (letting the chlorine evaporate first of course). We shall see how it goes. I will also get another intake fan installed since the box it's in is a little warm.

 

[NuttyProfessor]

I would flush her a few times , if the pot is 20 litre flush with 40 litre , are you using flowering nutes now ?

 

[shadow22]

I would flush her a few times , if the pot is 20 litre flush with 40 litre , are you using flowering nutes now ?

Yeah, good idea. I will flush it out every 3 days maybe 3 times
No nutes at the moment. I will stick with the flushing. When it recovers and shows a need for nutes I will back them on again.

 

[NuttyProfessor]

start back slowly , half strength

 

[shadow22]

start back slowly , half strength

I'm thinking another possibility could be too much light or the heat is just too much for it.
Problem is, I can't raise the light any more. I could unplug one side of the lights so only 50% of the LED's are lit. Either way, I am leaning more towards heat stress.

 

[shadow22]

Okay, I added an extra fan dangling on the inside by fishing wire and metal chain. It's pointed directly at the A. Berry, so we will see if it helps. You can't have too much air flow anyway

 

[shadow22]

Since this plant has had stress (confirmed pH imbalance stress. I need to get it all the way down to 6) and hindered back in it's development, I now have to wait longer for it to reach harvest. It had already started producing trichomes, and since it's an auto flower I can't control it with the lighting state. Note, it was planted 25/MAY/2014.

What will happen now. Will it over develop, under develop or will it know by itself to compensate for it's hindered development? I assume I just wait until most if not all of the pistols have turned brown, and check under my 60X scope to see if the tips of the trichomes are milky with a few of them browned (I'm going for more of a CBD effect). I am mostly worried though this problem has really had an impact on it's development and I will get a terrible yield. I have another A. Berry seed germinating on standby so I can get another up and growing quickly anyway.

By the way, it's starting to smell AMAZING. It's like nothing I've ever smelt before. The aroma is a very smooth, musky sweet candy smell. The closest thing I can describe it as is it smells like a cup of coffee with five table spoons of sugar in it. I am getting extremely excited now, but I am having my doubts on the yield. From what I have so far, I will probably get at most 3 average joints out of it if I'm lucky. It's my second grow (first indoors grow) anyway, so this kind of annoyance is to be expected.

 

[shadow22]

Okay, the runoff pH is now 5.8 with nutrients included. Much better than what it was. It should take 3 weeks to show improvements. In the meantime, I gave the leaves that were damaged a good trim back. The main cola has brown stigmas already, and the trichomes are good from what I can tell. I'm not sure if I should pull the plug on this one or leave it going. No one replied to my question regarding the over or under development.

NOTE: the main cola has browned over already with its stigmas, but the two small offshoots below with their large fan leaves still have white stigmas (no trichomes yet from what I can tell).

What should I do?

 

[shadow22]

Well, what I did was cut off the main cola. The trichomes started turning brown. Another problem I figured out what it was being light bleached. That 180W LED UFO light sure is powerful, even when I half it down to 90W (50% of the LED's on). I will need to build a bigger stealth grow box so I can raise/lower the light. I have one I can use actually, but it's extremely tall. I will put it in the garage instead of my room. I will also need to fork out the money to fit it with ducts, fans and the reflective diamond material. It has hinges, but I will need to add lots of foam padding to keep the light out (as well as smell) with it having the feature to be lockable as well.

 

[shadow22]

Well I smoked it, and it didn't get me high. I'm very disappointed, but I won't give up. I've started to work on a much larger stealth grow box. This way I can have a very deep container for the soil and have plenty of room for the LED UFO light above. I've also got some temperature and humidity equipment on the way so I can get all these problem causing variables out of the way so I can setup the perfect growing environment. I will keep this topic updated as progression is made.

 

[labexperiment]

Instead of updating a Frequently Asked Questions page, why not start a journal for yourself. If you run into problems you can pop in here to FAQ and start a new thread with a link in your signature so we can go look at your journal and see what you have done up to the point where you encountered your problem and help you sort out your issue.