Mid-week 13 veg: New growth yellowing sad plant

[DrGreenBudz]

Bruce Banner growing in fox farms ocean forest. I planted seed straight in to 5 gallon pot so never repotted. Watering with distilled water for whole grow with no issues. No nutrients at all were added until yellowing on new growth started 3 weeks ago.

After reading through all the post on here regarding this issue I could find (pre-flower), I Added DIY calmag (egg shells and epsom salt boiled) and didn’t help. Flushed soil with distilled water then tried adding botanicare cal-mag 1/2tsp per 1/2 gal into first watering after flush (1 week ago).

I used an auto watering system for most of the early growth then switched it off and started water by hand until runoff about 6 weeks ago. I searched and searched in here trying to find answers and that led me to believe I was over watering... so I made sure to wait until medium was dry before watering again but the issue has persisted.

The soil PH is reading 6.8-6.9 as I’m typing this. Although, to be honest, I bought a cheap PH pen on Amazon and have no idea if it’s reading correctly. I tried calibrating it with the powder that it came with but idk if I did it right.

 

[DrGreenBudz]

Edit: plant was growing under a 350W blurple light I inherited until March 1. Then switched to a new 1000w LED light I bought because I didn’t think the blurple light was bright enough to flower effectively. The lights were switched and installed pretty close to the canopy, so I thought maybe it was light burn and moved the light about 4-5in farther from the canopy and dialed the power down from 100 to about 85ish. This also didn’t change anything

 

[farside05]

Ocean Forrest will not have enough nutrition in it to last an entire grow. If you've been vegging for 13 weeks it's a wonder the problems didn't start much sooner. You need to start adding some complete fertilizer, not just some cal mag. Also are those Home Depot plastic 5 gallon buckets? If so, did you put any kind of holes in the bottom for drainage?

 

[DrGreenBudz]

Ok, thank you.

 

[DrGreenBudz]

Ocean Forrest will not have enough nutrition in it to last an entire grow. If you've been vegging for 13 weeks it's a wonder the problems didn't start much sooner. You need to start adding some complete fertilizer, not just some cal mag. Also are those Home Depot plastic 5 gallon buckets? If so, did you put any kind of holes in the bottom for drainage?

Ok great, thank you for the advice. Do you have a recommendation for a solid all purpose? Or can I use a good vegetable one from the big box store?
Yes, the bucket drains.

 

[farside05]

Ok great, thank you for the advice. Do you have a recommendation for a solid all purpose? Or can I use a good vegetable one from the big box store?
Yes, the bucket drains.

For simplicity I like Greenleaf's Mega Crop 1 part fertilizer. Can use it from start to finish, no other products needed.

 

[Reave]

Yup mega crop is easy to use for sure. Also if you calibrated your ph pen the instructions would have said to use distilled water correct? I believe distilled water is 7.0 ph so your pen should read that in distilled water.

 

[farside05]

Yup mega crop is easy to use for sure. Also if you calibrated your ph pen the instructions would have said to use distilled water correct? I believe distilled water is 7.0 ph so your pen should read that in distilled water.

In theory distilled should be 7 but I've personally had a jug test at over 8 with a freshly calibrated pen.

 

[Reave]

In theory distilled should be 7 but I've personally had a jug test at over 8 with a freshly calibrated pen.

Every jug I have had tested at 7 wonder if you just had a bad source? I think there is another way too you can use vinegar or something.

 

[013]

You said the soil ph is 6.8 to 6.9, how did you arrive at that number?

 

[013]

Hey Dr,

Found a few things that might help. You can’t read soil ph using a ph pen, the proper way to check soil ph requires a slurry test using distilled water. A ph pen is to check the ph of your water or soup mix after adding your nutes and right before watering the plant. For soil grows the ph should be 6.3ish.

There is no need to flush a straight soil grow that has had zero nutes added or only a dose or two of cal-mag whether homemade or store bought. Distilled water is not your friend since there are no micros in it, it gets them wet but that’s it. It’s good for hydro stuff but this is soil. Since you have been in 5 gallons from seed and it’s been 6 weeks since you stopped the auto watering..... that’s a large plant that is yellowing I would suspect your soil is out of gas and the plant is still hungry. IMHO you will need to nute heavy until the end and/or upcan that biotch to a larger home. Cuz if you flip her to flower now she will run for a week or two then fizzle.

Agree go with MC and skip the big box since they will only have tomato ferts or 10-10-10 for the lawn. Yes they may have some liquid fish guts but you need full range of NPK not just the N from fish ferts. Another common problem is homemade buckets, most of us have done this but holes in the bottom do not allow for proper air flow, look at cheapie plastic shrub planter pots from the big box, all of them have holes in the low sides, not the bottom. I would drill out more holes in the side near the bottom and elevate the bucket so it has a inch or two of airflow under it.

all right welcome aboard & hope something here helps