Yellowing and necrosis during veg

[unbekannt]

I'm starting this thread because I think the problems are different enough now, a month later. (Here's a link to the old thread.)

Strain - Dream Queen, indica-dominant clone
# of Plants - 1
Grow Type - soil
Grow Stage - Vegetative, bought 2' clone Nov.16, (want to go into flower asap but not until I'm confident these problems are taken care of)
Bucket Size - 35lb cat litter bucket, 7 gal?
Lights - 1 200w 6400K CFL, 4" from top, on 18/6 on/off
Fans - 6" duct in, 4" duct out, 6" circulating
Nutrients - Advanced Nutrients: "Bloom, Micro & Grow"
Watering - alternating food and plainwater days, using half the recommended strength Advanced Nutrients recomments during veg. First few inches dry out quickly so been watering 1x/day. 1/2 gal on food days and 1 gal on plain days.
Medium - LECA at bottom, soil
PPM - ? no meter
PH - 6ish not great at telling between the yellow-greens, been aiming for what I think is 6.3.
RH - 10-26% according to the min/max on my cheap electric gauge
Room Temperature -75-91
Solution Temperature - room temp?
Room Square Footage - 62 x 36 x 20"
Pests - Still a few fungus gnats, still plenty of spider mites. Haven't seen powdery mildew in a few days..

It's grown a lot in the 7 weeks I've had it.

But I'm seeing yellowing and necrosis at the middle and top. The new growth, especially lower down on the plant, is shriveled, soft, then crunchy and falls away. I've been pruning away all the sick leaves. You can see how thinned out it's become at the bottom especially. A lot of the bigger fan leaves have also been cut away in attempts to improve airflow.

There were small amounts of powdery mildew that seem to be gone. I think the diatomaceous earth (the white powder you can see in the photos) has mostly taken care of the stupid fungus gnats. I've been applying the Bayer Natria insecticidal soap for spider mites for a week. It seems to be helping, but I hear I've got a couple weeks to go before I really see.

The pests aren't causing that yellowing, are they? I figure there's a nute or pH thing I'm screwing up. What is it?

I'm not giving up on this plant.

 

[gittergreen]

Get SNS spidermite spray it works! The soap and the mites can be causing your necrosis problems. Too much soap will dry anything out.
As far as your soil/coco issue goes, go over to the completed grow journal pages and find a successful journal that used the same media you are and try to mimic that for the rest of your grow. You def want to get rid of your mite problem before you go to flower. I would also give a good flush I'm talking run 7 gallons of clean r/o water through it. Then finish off with a very lite dose of nutes 1/4 strength ph the solution to what you research from other grows that are using coco/soil. I have never used coco and soil together but I know it can be done.
I also suggest getting this done in a time frame of two weeks that will give you enough time to kill the mites and their eggs. Now on to powdery mildew. Once your plant gets it that means it's living in the plant You can only control the symptoms from this point on. SNS also has a product for this that works great. I also had good success with a home made solution of 10% vineger and water.
Above all try not to stress over this! 99% of us has went through everything your going through and more. I killed my first green babies so your already doing better than I did. I just kept reading and studying everything I could find about growing cannabis and I found my groove with a mostly organic aproach.
I also found for ME that salt based fertilizers are for hydro not soil! and organic ferts are for soil not hydro! Can it be done absolutely! For me it aint easy! That's just my opinion and you know opinions are like arse holes everbody has one.
Hope this helps you some! Gittergeen

 

[unbekannt]

I'm definitely going to flush. The necrosis predates the pest treatment, but not the pests. Is the Sierra Natural spider mite spray that much better than the Bayer Natria insecticidal soap? I only ask because I'm running out of money, ha.

Can you tell me more about your vinegar recipe for PM? I've been using the baking soda recipe.

 

[gittergreen]

I can only speak for the SNS It worked for me in just two applications and I did another as a precautionary treatment right before I changed to
12/12. As far as the pm goes if the baking soda works then keep it up. I'm no chemist but it's probably doing the same thing the vin's doing creating a ph on the surface of the plants that's not suitable for the powdery mildew to thrive on. If it works let me know lol cause I would much rather put a base on my plant's than an acid. I simply eye balled 10% of the spray bottle with vinegar and filled up with water. I totally understand your money problem so do what you can. I will say this in my next adventures I will be prepared for o'l murphy's law and have all the right ammo to battle whatever come up. Good luck! feel free to ask any question no matter how small that's how I learned and still learning. If I can't answer them don't worry your at 420mag!!! somebody will chime in.

 

[unbekannt]

Great replies, thanks.

I think the Bayer oil is working, but slowly.. I'm going to see if I can plunk down the $16 for the SNS spray. The baking soda spray (Home made remedy for powdery mildew) must be working as well, because I haven't seen a spot in a while. I might just buy some RO water to do the flush with so I don't have to wait for more tap-chlorine to evaporate.

In the meantime, which of these problems are represented in this leaf? It's got the weirdest texture. Those tiny white-ish bumps aren't bugs, and they don't look like mold.. or not like any mold I recognize. It's only at the tips, and it curls them inward. (I uncurled the leaf for this picture.) A fair number of the leaf tips do this, then necrotize and crumble away like the bit on the right is about to.

What is this picture showing?

 

[gittergreen]

I'm not sure what that is honestly. I would guess it was some sort of def. I used to stress over each little leaf problem but no matter which one it is your on the right track with the flush and new lite solution. I have only three grows under my belt. The first was an outdoor grow which I used only bat guanos to feed them and it turned out pretty good no leaf problems and no phing anything. My second grow I was going to go big and give them some fancy nutes (Fox farm trio) to be exact. That grow was a night mare, I had every leaf problem there is LoL.
I spent a lot of time researching different def and the fix was always the same-flush and feed with a weak well rounded fertilizer.

I started watching a grower here named Doc bud at the time he was using a super soil with rock powders and feeding the soil with compost teas he never phed anything and his results were world class, grade A, amazing! I was sold! I gathered a few things and tried to mimic his recipe closely and the next thing you know I had some really beautiful plants.

Environment is 85% the success of growing great plants. Being able to control temps and humidity is number one. Second is your lighting.
Third is the soil and energy.
Another observation: your plant is getting way to big for the available light you have. I'm not saying you need to go out and spend 300 bucks on a great light but next round try to keep your plant smaller so that it can have enough light.

Have you considered taking clones off your plant and sort of starting over? You wouldn't be giving up at all. It would be like hitting the refresh button. Cloning is super easy and cheap Walmart sells a cloning powder for under five bucks called schults it works great for the money.
You could make a humidity dome out of a two liter bottle. I like to use the jiffy peat pop ups for the clones to root in. Also cheap. Just some suggestions but either way your on the right track. Sorry for the long winded rant lol. Thanks for the rep's!

 

[unbekannt]

I actually HAVE a 200 watt 2700K CFL that I was planning to use as soon as I could afford another fan, which I just ordered along with the SNS mite spray. That will be in addition to the 200 watt 6400K it's under now. Hopefully I can keep the heat down, but that surely oughta be enough light, right?

I ran 5 gallons through it today, I'm hoping that's close enough for now, because it was all the usable water I had. Is that close enough? I'm still seeing a couple of adult fungus gnats, but I haven't seen any more powdery mildew, and the mites are definitely hard to find now.

It's true what you (gittergreen) said about not overdoing/overthinking it. I'm just not used to doing this indoors, but more than that.. I've never had any PROBLEMS before and got a little panicky. Last time I used miracle gro or whatever was lying around, watered the things with tapwater, and everything was fine. This time I tried to be all careful and have had every problem in the book. Go figure, right?

 

[gittergreen]

Hi, unbekannt! When it comes to light the more the merrier, sounds great! 5 gallons is probably plenty for a good flush. Did you finish it off with a weak feed of phed nutes? If so step back and let her dry out until she's feels lite again when you pick her up. Also did you find a good coco grow journal to get some
tips on proper ph range? I'll try to snoop around a bit for yah. I Got nothing better to do lol can't grow anymore for a long time.

Keep us posted on your progress. Good luck!

 

[unbekannt]

I was going to let it dry out and THEN do weak nutes, was that especially incorrect? I did some Googling and am still a little confused about the right pH for my soil mix. I thought there should be relatively little coco coir compared to the amount of soil, but apparently the soil I bought HAS coir in it? (Ecoscraps potting mix)

"It is a unique blend of fruit & veggie compost, coco coir, and perlite." Oops. It's still coming out red/brown, almost impossible to pH the runoff.

It looks a lot better after all that Bayer Natria spray the past week and a half, hopefully I'll continue to see improvement with the new spray, fan, and light. It's probably a good idea, but don't really want to take clones and set the clock back. I want to get this grow over with and start again with another strain. Dream Queen is probably way too high a sativa for me, but I need some smoke to keep myself feeling okay when I start a new grow.

Thanks again for the advice!

 

[unbekannt]

I am actually having a heck of a time finding good conversations about pH in coir mixes.

 

[unbekannt]

The Sierra Natural Science 217 mite spray has arrived! It says it works with one application, so we'll see. When it says "most effective when used on a 7-14 day schedule", does that mean once every week or 2? Seems like a weird way to say it, so I thought I might be missing something.

 

[gittergreen]

Spider mites eggs take 7- 14 days to hatch so this breaks the cycle. They are the crabs of cannabis... damn it! Another good tip is to clean every thing you can think of with a diluted bleach solution in your tent. ( NOT YOUR PLANT THOUGH)

 

[unbekannt]

I gave her a REALLY thorough wetdown with the SNS spray on the 10th. Also pruned a ton of the lower growth away because it was so sickly and spindly anyway. I'm gonna give it another spraydown with the SNS tomorrow, and the new fan and lens should arrive soon. Then, when I'm confident about the pests, I can turn on the second CFL and try to go 12/12.

I'm pretty nervous and am gonna start reading.

Oh, I pH'd the last runoff as best I could with the water still being reddish, and it looked crazy high, like 8 or 9. It was pretty dark green. I'm still not 100% sure what to aim for, but that's high, so I'm gonna see what I can do.

Any suggestions on a good pH to aim for with my weird soil/coir mix would be appreciated. (Apparently even my soil is part coir? Argh.)

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

Most of the defs are P - phosphorus & by the looks of it a touch of K - potassium ... this maybe partly due to under feeding or you could source a P/K supplement & apply once a week with a regular feed normal done in flowering tho.


Going to need some info on soil/coir blend... if you could tell me brand name etc i'll do a little research on it


Pure coco coir compost, nutrients are general applied at PH 5.8 or between 5.6 to 6.2 the coir it self roughly ranges between PH 5.6 to 6.8 so ye its mildly acidic pushing nuetral in PH value.

As its mixed with soil, Mmm well it kind of makes things a lil harder to decide what is best beyond the normal growing mediums used... i'll get back to ya on this once i know what compost brand is after some research.



A little story... peat based compost will eventually be outlawed or banned from use 2020 i think, only so much peat bogs in the world and a dwindling supple in due time... so alternative's need to be found which coco coir appears to be a good choice, many new compost are showing on the market with coir/soil blends for trial 'n' testing.

 

[unbekannt]

It was heavily root bound in whatever soil the store used when I bought it at 2 feet high (2 months ago). I transplanted it into coir, in which it rooted, and then repotted again into the Ecoscraps potting mix, which is apparently some kind of compost/coir mix? I'm not even sure anymore. It's kind of a mess, I guess.

A little story... peat based compost will eventually be outlawed or banned from use 2020 i think, only so much peat bogs in the world and a dwindling supple in due time... so alternative's need to be found which coco coir appears to be a good choice, many new compost are showing on the market with coir/soil blends for trial 'n' testing.

That's interesting and makes sense. I didn't know. Thanks!

Any tips you might be able to give me about my terrible frankenstein chimeria growing medium would be great, thank you. I've probably been bouncing between under- and over-feeding. Right now I'm doing 1/4 strength Advanced Nutrients grow-bloom-micro veg stage because I had the impression I was overfeeding.

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

Ye the peat ban is mainly aimed at the UK (united kingdom) might go across europe in due time... environmental issues in the long run & a long story !


Well back to the plants ah...

Mmm ye they look pretty alright in general apart from the defs, ya gonna run into problems when you go into flowering at current rate of application of nutrients.

The defs are only occurring due to lack of nutrients, basically means its hungry for those nutrients & certainly bump em up to full strength for a plant that size which ya will need to be running at full strength feed for flowering ! (ya gonna get stretch by the way on the plant once in flowering)

I really don't see any problems with PH problems of the growing medium other wise this would of manifested in a different symptom in general.

Its purely under feeding at present causing the problems


Ecoscraps, ye looks pretty alright to me contains a low value NPK ratio with trace value micro nutrients the coir added to it helps prevent over saturation/over watering etc that is a good thing, it would also support much microbial/bacteria life in the growing medium due to high organic content also very good news.

The medium also has a natural buffering effect which protects against PH swings in fact soil/compost do this & all, basically means its going to revert back to ambient PH value of growing medium over a matter of several hours or more... which can be observed !

Ideal PH value of soil/compost is best between PH 6 & 7

So it is more than likely that it doesn't really matter if you PH your feed up or down when feeding when in fact the soil/compost doe's it naturally for your... the really chemistry is in the soil/compost & that is purely down to PH value of it


I'd be only careful if using chemical/synthetic based nutrients which may cause a salt build up in the medium so their for a feed/water/feed regime is a good practice to use...

 

[unbekannt]

Holy cow, that's so informative, thank you! Do you think I should go to 1/2 strength before going to full, or should I just jump straight up?

Also, I'm hoping to add the 2nd CFL when I start flowering. Do you think I should do that gradually, introduce another 200 watts on top of the usual 200?

Thanks again.

 

[unbekannt]

Here are some pictures from today. I've cut away a ton of the dwindling, sickly growth you see here, but plenty remains. It's generally healthy looking at the top third and terrible underneath that. I tried to get a picture of the transition from sickly small growth to big half-decent leaves, and then close-ups of both.

I trim away the sickly leaves on a regular basis, so this growth can't be that old.

 

[David Bowman]

Unbekannt, when only a particular portion of a plant is showing issues, it can mean that the corresponding roots are damaged. I wonder if that is what's going on here.

 

[unbekannt]

Hrm, I am still seeing the occasional (what I'm pretty sure is a) fungus gnat, but very few compared to when I first started treating. I put down some more diatomaceous earth today...