First Grow - Overwhelmed - Brown spots make me nervous!

[adept]

I randomly decided to build a grow space and try my hand at growing a few cannabis seeds. I received some random seed and decided to move ahead with the project./

My grow space is a a storage area that is 2' wide, 2' deep and about 4' tall. started out pretty basic.

I started seeds germinating in late may (should have noted the date) and moved into 1gallon fabric pots in mid-June. By then my space was complete with diamond reflection, carbon filter, power & CFL light (105watt @ 6500k) and I thought I was all set!

I started off watering daily, found that was too much so cut it back to every other day once top of soil was dry. Upon further reading found that my plants may be having PH issues, so i checked my tap water and I was watering with high 7, low 8's. I purchased a PH up/down kit and started adjusting my water to 6 for watering over the next two weeks. Runoff water currently is 6.2-6.4 on all three plants. I'm using Fox Farms nutes every other watering at half-rate on feeding schedule.

After MUCH reading I came to the conclusion that my CFL light wasn't going to cut it, I even upgraded to TWO 105watt 6500k bulbs but after further research decided if I was going to do this I needed to get a better light. I splurged on a Mars Hydro 300watt LED Panel, as it seemed reasonable on function & cost.

24 hours after swapping out my light I found brown spots on my plants. I noticed some a few weeks back but they were soo small I figured it was PH related. However, after swapping the lights they have become more prevalent so i think it may be light related:


I know it's not the best picture but it's all I could snag before going to work today. I'll get detailed photos later this evening and update the post. My light seems suitably far from the plants (16"-18") but I'm honestly not sure.

At this point I understand there are thousands of variables that I'm leaving out here, but I'm basically looking for some guidance as to where I should look next and/or if I do have a light problem. I'm going to try to raise the light a bit more once I get home, but thought I'd reach out.

Any suggestions are appreciated, thank you!

(*Links within the post are photos of what I'm talking about)

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

Mmm the plants looked happy under the cfl lighting it should work just fine for vegging, i only use a 125w cfl for this purpose myself & do just fine.

Some minor things to think about !

1. Limited room in grow height, you may not want to grow em to tall as they will double or triple in size once flipped to flowering on 12/12 plus safe hanging distance from light source well as you got led panel in may cause bleaching if to close btw !

2. Don't look like you have any form of air intake either by passive means or active methods ?


The last pic of girls or we hope so from random seeds look a bit droopy that could be over or under watering, heat, humidity issue ?


They are quite few things we can & others who may care to help pin point in some ways

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

Oh btw the way welcome to

 

[Major PITA]

Welcome!
I would recommend reading up on correct watering techniques. Your appear to be getting too little, way too often.
Get the watering correct and get your environment dialed in, then stand back and enjoy the grow.

 

[adept]

1) I planned to maintain my 1 gallon pots as well as begin flowering at 12 inches high. I thought this may resolve my issues with vertical height.

2) there is an 12 x 4 air vent cut into the bottom which pulls clean fresh air from another cabinet. That cabinet has a 8" x 8" grate/ anel pulling fresh air from a separate room.

3) I do agree watering seems to be my biggest limitation, but with that cause the brown spots I do agree watering seems to be my biggest limitation, but with that cause the brown spots?

 

[adept]

Welcome!
I would recommend reading up on correct watering techniques. Your appear to be getting too little, way too often.
Get the watering correct and get your environment dialed in, then stand back and enjoy the grow.

I've been doing 1000ml ph adjusted waterings every other day and have about 200ml of run off each time. Every other watering I've been doing with the fox farms nutrients.

I'll do some focused research on watering technique next, thanks.

 

[Major PITA]

I've been doing 1000ml ph adjusted waterings every other day and have about 200ml of run off each time. Every other watering I've been doing with the fox farms nutrients.

I'll do some focused research on watering technique next, thanks.

I doubt it will fix the brown spots. However it will make your plants perk up and pray to the light. Right now they are droopy - most likely from over watering. If I had plants that size in 1 gallon pots, I'd use the 1 liter of water, but it should last them quite a while, like 1-2 weeks. It will be very difficult for anyone to see what is going on if your photos are done with the LED panel on. We need natural light to understand what the plant actually looks like.

1 gallon pots are a bit of a challenge. The plants will be root bound most of their life. Since you are growing small, the MH may do the trick for you. Ordinarily, I think a single MH300 is good for a single plant, at most.

 

[adept]

I plan to take some detailed photos under natural light this evening and will upload for review.

The fabric pots dry out a bit faster then I expected. I may change over to 2gallon plastic pots to retain the water a little better, but for now I'm going to just give it a week or so to dry out current pots until I can do more reading.

This being my first grow I did what I could to keep it simple but I'm considering building a screen system for the space.

 

[Major PITA]

Screens can be useful, but they can also be a pain since they don't allow you to move plants or get to them very well. It depends on the strain, the training, the room, etc. Simple is best ... for everyone, IMO.

Notice how perky the fan leaves were when under the CFL. That tells me they are now over watered.
18" from that light is fine as long as you can get adequate coverage.

 

[Flower Child]

KISS for your first grow- cant move plants if something go's wrong and need to flush etc. if screen applied.


Agree with PITA overwatered. Water deeply and not again till dry to point of nearly wilting.

Also regarding the spots- had that before....... its your water. You can adjust ph all day long and never solve it. Get a Brita pitcher and filter their water- don't ph treat it at all. Just filter and feed. Cured my plants and I drink filtered water too now- cant hurt- lol!

 

[adept]

That is very very likely, as we do have city water but it is pretty terrible in quality. Even with a water softener.

I'll give the filter a try, certainly can't hurt. Do you bother to test run off with using the filtered water?


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[Major PITA]

That is very very likely, as we do have city water but it is pretty terrible in quality. Even with a water softener.

I'll give the filter a try, certainly can't hurt. Do you bother to test run off with using the filtered water?


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Don't use "softened water". It has sodium in it. If the water is really hard to begin with, the plants will be drinking salt water.

 

[adept]

Don't use "softened water". It has sodium in it. If the water is really hard to begin with, the plants will be drinking salt water.

My garage feed bypasses the softener, and has a standard carbon filter housing on it. That's where I fill my jugs for watering the plants.

I only mention softer as an example of how I know the city water is bad. I plan to (a)replace the carbon filter on the housing in the garage and (b) also get a brita water filter as it's cheap insurance.

I just got home and took some more pictures. To me, the soil seems dry and could use some water, but I'm going to wait at this point.

Plant 1 Full
Plant 1 Leaf
Plant 1 Soil

Plant 3 full
Plant 3 Leaf
Plate 3 Soil


As you can see, I think Plant #3 is doing VERY well with color and no brown. Very odd occurrences..

 

[Major PITA]

My garage feed bypasses the softener, and has a standard carbon filter housing on it. That's where I fill my jugs for watering the plants.

I only mention softer as an example of how I know the city water is bad. I plan to (a)replace the carbon filter on the housing in the garage and (b) also get a brita water filter as it's cheap insurance.

I just got home and took some more pictures. To me, the soil seems dry and could use some water, but I'm going to wait at this point.

As you can see, I think Plant #3 is doing VERY well with color and no brown. Very odd occurrences..

Cool!
Learning when to water can be tough, but critical. Only you are able to lift the pots to decide how dry they are. All I can tell you (from my perspective) is they have the classic posture of a plant that has been kept a little damp. As to the brown spots, the first thing I would try is some Cal-Mag. I'm not great at nute' deficiencies, but that is my guess.
They are looking good!

 

[Flower Child]

Photos help enormously. Agree they are overwatered. And if fertilized every other watering that's 3-4 times a week. - even half strength - a lot of nutrients being shoveled into them.
Plant 3 may be getting spots too. She has dark green around veins but yellowing elsewhere unless it's light reflection in pic.

If they were my girls, I'd stop watering for at least 2-3 days- maybe more and then Brita filtered plain water only- no nutes. They are way too droopy. They should be holding their leaves up to the light like the little solar panels they are.
And fertilize a lot less. Once a week is plenty.

Weed plants are truly weeds and that means they thrive on neglect.
My BF is experimenting with that theory.
Our current grow has been watered only when so dry they are on verge of wilt.
And they have had no nutes at all. We put them in FFOF soil and they have done as well as our other grows.
We harvest this weekend and the girls are our usual bud filled plants- looks like our normal 13-14 oz that we get in our 4x4 tent.
The grow before this we fertilized only twice!

Cal Mag may help but that usually is in flower stage when it's needed.
Tap water is rough on plants. Our city periodically puts sulphur and other algicides in the water source- we thought ph issues till we found out- almost killed our plants till we discovered Brita filters.

 

[Flower Child]

Have you thought about starting a journal? Good way to have extra eyes catch issues and get good advise as you gain experience?

 

[adept]

A journal will help tremendously, especially if I'm going to only be watering based on the needs of the plant and not a set schedule. I will definitely be doing that for my second grow, but didn't want to start one right in the middle.

Against my overwhelming desire to give these plants water this morning, I skipped it. I'm gonna wait a couple days and see how the plants do once the soil dries up.

Even with higher end PH (8-9) your suggesting just doing the filter process and not attempt to drop the PH a few points?




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[Flower Child]

You're not in flower so I think a journal would still be fine- the exciting stuff is yet to come- lol.

The Brita filter puts my tap water into a good ph range simply by what it removes amazingly enough so I add nothing.
Don't even test it anymore.

 

[adept]

I may just throw these ladies into flowering phase and finish up the "first grow" learning process and start again after from seed with a single plant and a journal. I'll post additional pictures in a few days once the dry out occurs. We'll see what happens from there.

Thanks for all the help.

 

[adept]

Update: 4 days since last watering. Plants look the same (droopy) and haven't perked up yet. Leaves don't feel too dry, gonna wait a few more days.


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