Newbie probs with spotting/brown tips

[buzzboy]

Hi, my plants are about three weeks old. I have not been giving them any kind of nutrients as they are in a MiracleGro potting soil that I believe already has nutrients in it. I water about every 3 days using well water on my property. The water is very strong with minerals and by taste I would say has a very high iron content. I keep them outside on my back porch in an area where they get direct (morning) sunlight for about 2-3 hours. I have not been monitoring the Ph of these plants, as I do not know the method or what is used to perform this test. (Ph paper?) These plants were started from bagseed, so I do not know the strain. I apologize for my ignorance and my departure from what I have learned is normal grow procedure. This is my first grow, (other than in a Phototron many years ago,) and I promise that next year I will obtain seeds from the seed bank and do this properly. For now I would like to determine the severity of my problems and if they can be corrected.

As I hope you can see in the picture, my plants seem to be afflicted with a yellowish/white spotting of the leaves and some slight browning of the tips and edges of some leaves, with one plant showing some serious browning on the tip of one leaf. I have inspected these plants closely with a magnifying glass and see no insects or larvae, but I did notice a few small, compact-bodied black flying insects buzzing around the tub when I brought them in for picture taking.

Please see the following photos and see if you can help me identify the trouble. I have compared my plants to the photos in the sticky thread above, but was unable to come to any conclusion -->

Yellow spots on leaves and slight browning of the tips:

More pronounced yellow/whitish spotting of the leaves. Not really any browning of the tips here. This is the only pot that contains "Jiffy" seed starting mix instead of Miracle Gro potting soil:

Slight browning of lower leaf tips:

Slight browning on edges of lower leaves, rounding on tips of lower leaf sets (?):

More pronounced browning of leaf edges and severe browning of some leaf tips:

 

[buzzboy]

So, after reading around... maybe nute burn because I used the MG potting soil with time-released nutes? I don't know... Maybe someone could point to a forum for noobs, so that my ignorance and inexperience won't be so out of place.

 

[Lil Neutrino]

Hi, my plants are about three weeks old. I have not been giving them any kind of nutrients as they are in a MiracleGro potting soil that I believe already has nutrients in it.

I'm not too experienced myself, at least not with these particular plants...everything I have read on here about MG soils indicates there are time release nutrients which most consider to be a bad thing and probably rightfully so especially due to the control you need to have over the nutrients.

I water about every 3 days using well water on my property. The water is very strong with minerals and by taste I would say has a very high iron content.

Have you read the following thread yet?
Cannabis Plant and Pest Problem Solver - Pictorial

I keep them outside on my back porch in an area where they get direct (morning) sunlight for about 2-3 hours. I have not been monitoring the Ph of these plants, as I do not know the method or what is used to perform this test. (Ph paper?)

How hot does it get outside where these plants are at? As for testing the pH you can get an electronic soil tester (Boss or McBudz, can't remember which, recommends the Milwaukee pH-600 which runs around $20-30 online. Right now I am using a liquid pH test kit like the kind used to test pond water, it was only $6 and is very easy to use although not as accurate. To use this method I capture the run-off from the bottom of the pots after watering, put the appropriate amount in the supplied vial, add the recommended number of drops of ph testing solution, and then compare the color of the water to the provided color chart. Not the best method but will get you in the ball park. You can also test your well water's pH with it. My tap water is around the 8-9 range so I just buy distilled water for now instead of trying to adjust the pH balance of the tap water.

[quoe]These plants were started from bagseed, so I do not know the strain. I apologize for my ignorance and my departure from what I have learned is normal grow procedure. This is my first grow, (other than in a Phototron many years ago,) and I promise that next year I will obtain seeds from the seed bank and do this properly. For now I would like to determine the severity of my problems and if they can be corrected. [/QUOTE]

No sense in spending a bunch of money on seeds that potentially may not get past customs until you've got the technique down, I'm using bagseed right now myself although I have been collecting seeds from purchased bags that I thought had a great buzz. No need to apologize, everyone has to start somewhere...I don't think anyone is born knowing how to do this! Hope someone can help you out more with your problem.

Are those pics current pics of the plants at 3 weeks? If so I'd say they really need more sunlight, any chance you can supplement them with some 6500k (day light) CFL's indoors when the sun is not shining on them?

 

[buzzboy]

I'm not too experienced myself, at least not with these particular plants...everything I have read on here about MG soils indicates there are time release nutrients which most consider to be a bad thing and probably rightfully so especially due to the control you need to have over the nutrients.

Unfortunately, I did not find these forums until after I had started my grow. I didn't realize that most commercial chemical fertilizers were too strong for these plants. I'm wondering if flushing will help.

Have you read the following thread yet?
Cannabis Plant and Pest Problem Solver - Pictorial

Yes, I did read that thread and I didn't see anything that I thought really looked like my plants, though I did consider nute burn.

How hot does it get outside where these plants are at? As for testing the pH you can get an electronic soil tester (Boss or McBudz, can't remember which, recommends the Milwaukee pH-600 which runs around $20-30 online. Right now I am using a liquid pH test kit like the kind used to test pond water, it was only $6 and is very easy to use although not as accurate. To use this method I capture the run-off from the bottom of the pots after watering, put the appropriate amount in the supplied vial, add the recommended number of drops of ph testing solution, and then compare the color of the water to the provided color chart. Not the best method but will get you in the ball park. You can also test your well water's pH with it. My tap water is around the 8-9 range so I just buy distilled water for now instead of trying to adjust the pH balance of the tap water.

It gets into the low 90's in the daytime --around 70 at night. I'm going to pick up a liquid pH kit today. I'll test my well water and then test the runoff from the plants. When I grew in the Phototron I always used distilled water. I've looked for distilled water around here and am surprised at how hard it is to find. Even in Wal-Mart it's mostly all drinking water.

Are those pics current pics of the plants at 3 weeks? If so I'd say they really need more sunlight, any chance you can supplement them with some 6500k (day light) CFL's indoors when the sun is not shining on them?

Yes, those pics were current at the time I posted. I'm not able to supplement lighting but I could put them in full sun all day if that would help. The only reason I've restricted their exposure to full sunlight is because I was afraid it might damage them in their current state.

Hey, thanks for the reply -- reps sent.

 

[Lil Neutrino]

Thanks!

If it IS nute burn then flushing won't harm them any further and should help rid the soil of excess nutrients. I'd say give it a shot. I'm surprised Wal-Mart doesn't have the distilled water, crazy. RO (reverse osmosis) water is supposed to work great too, might find that easier...I know some fish stores carry it, it'd be a little more expensive but still an option. It would be really beneficial to know what's in your well water as some people have the good fortune of having a great supply of natural water and others have poor quality well water (for growing anyway).

I would have to agree that with the apparent lack of chlorophyll due to the yellowing that too much sun may not be the best idea as without the green coloring they're going to have a hard time photosynthesizing. 90F is a tad on the hot side, especially if they are an indica strain. I read somewhere, don't recall if it was on here or a book, that at 85F and up their growth is severely retarded or stops completely as the plant essentially goes in to self-preservation mode. This may not be the case with sativas and when adding CO2 to a grow room higher temps are ok to an extent.

 

[buzzboy]

I'll try the RO water... it's about $.33 a gallon. Too bad I can't do anything about the heat, and it's only going to get hotter before the summer is over. These seeds most likely came from an outdoor grow in Mexico. The high is not the couch-lock type like they say indica gives, but a more energetic high. (Hey, I'm just going by what I read... I just smoke the stuff.) So anyway my best guess would be a sativa strain.

 

[Lil Neutrino]

Can you give them some shade during the hottest part of the day and then when they recover readjust them back to full heat-of-the-day sun? Hope you can get them to recover!

 

[Lil Neutrino]

How are the plants doing? I always like to hear follow-ups...I find waaaaaay too many posts where people have problems and get responses as to what is wrong/how to fix it but then no response to let us know if it worked or not.

 

[Filter52]

Had the same problem this year on all of the plants. They were kept indoor for few weeks after germination where plants did not get much sun.
2 days after planting them outdoors leaves were turning white like that. Figured out it was all about stress. Mostly too much sun.

This is how those plants looked like

I actually did nothing to fix this , in about a week all plants showed normal growth.

Actually all of these had to much stress or some root damage after transplant and looks like some sort of deficiency or pests.
Leaves turned white after transplant

From what i ve read, same signs can be seen from ph fluctuation.

 

[buzzboy]

I've got them culled down to the three "best" plants (as far as I could tell.) They are going in the ground this morning. They're looking better now... I flushed them with RO water. Don't know if that really helped, but they do look a little better. I've had them in full sun now for a week and they seem to be taking to it well. I'm going to try to up some pics... we'll see how that goes. I have satellite internet access and I've already gone over my bandwidth limit, so now my connection is kind of spotty.

When I transplant these to the ground I will use some Vigaro root stimulator on them and oh! I found a source for Fox Farms nutrients about 70 miles away. I will be going this weekend to get some Grow Big and some Tiger Bloom (I think there was another one for early flowering stage... Big Bloom? I'll have to research this.) Also, I did find a low quality pH tester for $20 at ACE Hardware. I'm not to confident in its accuracy, but it did show that my plants a little less than 7.0 and my well water to be a little on the alkaline side.

OK, I'm going to get to work now on those pics.

 

[buzzboy]

I forgot to mention... the soil they are going in is a good black loamy soil that drains well. I'm still going to amend it with sphagnum moss, humus and a little vermiculite. The only perlite I could find was MG and had nutrients in it. (What is it with those guys anyway?)

 

[buzzboy]

OK, here are some close ups of the final three:

 

[buzzboy]

They're in the ground now -- man was I wrong about the soil. Yeah, the soil in my veggie garden is black and loamy, but the soil I dug in today was black and hard. It was like dried clay. Hope it works out well.

I'm going to copy my posts from this thread to my grow journal, if anyone is interested in following it.

Thanks for your help.