Help is this over-watered or bugs?

[Ironmike340]

Just noticed tonight new growth leads are shiny and curled down. Don’t look right.
Buckets are heavy may have overwatered some. What does this look like.
Ocean forest 4 weeks no other nutes.
Ro water cal mag added. Water about 2 liters every couple days. Lights have changed.

 

[LED GROW GUY CANADA]

That looks like overwatering to me, when you over water plants they suffocate at the root, that a also why the leaves curl downward and appear wrinkled

 

[Ironmike340]

It’s is overwatered how to I fix it. 5gallon smart pot

 

[LED GROW GUY CANADA]

Just make sure it has lots of heat and air flow, and wait till about the top inch of soil has completely dried out. If your not sure if it needs to be watered lift the pot and it should feel light

 

[Emilya Green]

please read my sticky thread on how to properly water. I suspect it will help a bit, just as it has the 69k+ people who have read it and the many who link to it in their signature lines.

You are watering completely wrong for a plant in veg. You are not watering enough when you do water and you are watering too often, and as a result your lower feeder roots are starting to shut down to protect themselves.

Watering correctly is very confusing to most new growers of weeds, and as a result you get advice such as above that is very contradictory. Greetings to you by the way @LED GROW GUY CANADA and welcome to the forum, but you too could use a good reading of this watering article. Sticking your finger in the top of the plant to determine if the top inch has dried out is NOT the proper method for watering a weed... in fact, doing it this way can kill your plant... I have seen it many many times. The second part of your advice is correct though, and the lift the pot method is by far the best way to know when to water a potted weed... it is imperative that the bottom feeder roots see dry soil regularly. If you lift the container and can feel any water weight at all, it is NOT time to water a vegging plant.

at 69,000+ reads so far, I proudly present:

The Proper Way To Water A Potted Plant

The Proper Way to Water a Potted Plant Also covered: the importance of pH and why we successively up-pot How to Water Over the last several years I have put a lot of study into this, and I feel that I can now define the proper way to water a potted plant. Keep in mind that this discussion...

www.420magazine.com

 

[LED GROW GUY CANADA]

Ya greetings to you too mr know it all....

 

[Emilya Green]

Ya greetings to you too mr know it all....

Miss Know-most-of-it, thank you. Been doing this most of my life, and yes, I have picked up a few things along the way. Please read my article and see that almost 10 years ago I put in that reference to knuckle waterers, just because so many backyard vegetable gardeners try to bring that technique to the weed garden... and it just doesn't work.

 

[Ironmike340]

I know I overwatered. 5 gallon smart pots and the tops do dry out but the bottom of the pots are soaked and heavy . I believe the plants are to small to reach that water. I haven’t watered in three days and have a fan direc on pots now.

 

[LED GROW GUY CANADA]

The roots are about as big underground as the plant above, hopefully it works out for you

 

[Alafornia]

I know I overwatered. 5 gallon smart pots and the tops do dry out but the bottom of the pots are soaked and heavy . I believe the plants are to small to reach that water. I haven’t watered in three days and have a fan direc on pots now.

Are your pots elevated? They should be in a smart pot so the bottom gets air.

 

[Emilya Green]

I know I overwatered. 5 gallon smart pots and the tops do dry out but the bottom of the pots are soaked and heavy . I believe the plants are to small to reach that water. I haven’t watered in three days and have a fan direc on pots now.

The first purpose, the prime directive of any weed in a new container is to find the bottom. We have named the root that does this appropriately as the tap root... it "taps" the bottom. This happens very quickly and even in a seedling placed in a huge container, the plant first has to find the bottom before much of anything else happens.
So, your small plants have found the bottom and sent their strong feeder and tap roots down to see what they can find. What they found was a permanent lake. This is a surprise to a plant that is not used to being in a container, and they can only stand being in stagnant water for a little while before they are forced to protect themselves and wait for the flood to drain away. These roots that find themselves underwater for an extended period of time encase themselves in a protective coating and the uptake from these roots drastically slows down.
This is where you are at right now. The fan helps a little bit and probably adds another 1 or 2% of water loss from your container through evaporation, but it really helps the plant throw off any water it can bring up to the leaves. Slowly but surely the plant is throwing out new roots within that container, trying to get nourishment. The upper spreader roots that spread out just under the surface to steal rain water from the surrounding plants are your key to helping the plant through this phase. Water the top every few days with just enough water to soak down through the first 3-6 inches, but not enough that it will fall all the way to the bottom where that stale water table is still sitting. This keeps the top set of roots from drying out and going into a hibernation mode, while you wait for the lower roots to eventually use all that water sitting in there.
It might take a while to get the bottom to dry out since the little plant can't use that much water, but you must be patient and let it happen, or those lower roots will never reactivate. Use the lift method, and try to determine when this finally happens, whether it takes a week, 10 days or longer... just keep watering the top every 5 days and things will sort themselves out eventually. Once you finally achieve a dry bottom, try completely watering the entire container again, and see if you can get a total drainage much quicker the next time, still keeping the metabolism high by watering the top every 5 days. Soon, you should be able to sync up the top and bottom and do away with this double watering nonsense. The next time you hear that you should just start out in a large container, think about this experience and wonder if you would have had a stronger plant by this time by doing normal successive uppotting into not so big of a container, working up to this size.