Are You Overfeeding Your Girls?

Oldbear

Well-Known Member
I found a couple of articles on over feeding. Hope it helps people.

As one who seems to have a problem with overfeeding I can give a few symptoms to look for.
1. Spots on the leaves
2. Discolored (yellowing) leaves
3. Leaves curling downward
4. Browning and loss of foliage

It's really easy to over feed and quite often the symptoms of overfeeding look very similar to the symptoms of underfeeding. I've found that if you are using any kind of Nutes, cut the dosage down to about 1/4 of the recommended dosage. If any of the symptoms (described above) are visible stop fertilizing and start flushing with good pH adjusted water for a couple of days. Once positive, healthy green growth is visible again resume the reduced nutrient feedings. Hope this helps...

Do Your Marijuana Leaves Have Nutrient Burn?

Quick Summary: Nutrient burn is one of the most common beginner cannabis growing problems. The yellow or brown leaf tips are caused by too-high levels of nutrients accumulating in the leaves.

(Nutrient burn is often called "Nute Burn" in the cannabis growing community).

When the roots take in more nutrients than a cannabis plant can use, the overabundance causes a brown or yellow "burn" on the tips of your leaves. If nutrient levels are not lowered, the burnt tips start traveling inwards and the ends of leaves start becoming crispy and twisted.

As nutrient burn progresses, the tips start getting bronze, crispy, curled and sometimes twisted. Although you can stop nutrient burn from getting worse, the burnt appearance won't go away on the leaves that were already affected.

Nutrient burn is most common when feeding cannabis too-high levels of bottled nutrients and especially chemical or mineral nutrients. This is what you'll find in most non-organic plant food.

Mineral-based nutrients can help increase cannabis growth rates and yields compared to organic-based nutrients due to the fact that these nutrients are so easily absorbed by the plant roots. The plant doesn't have to do any "work" to get the nutrients. The downside is your plant can easily take in more than it can use if the nutrient levels are too high.

Nutrient burn affects the tips of marijuana leaves. You may just see it on one or two leaves, or it can appear all over the plant.

Nutrient burn can also happen when plants or seedlings are grown directly in soil that has a high level of nutrients (a "hot" soil or growing medium) such as fresh compost, manure or a nutrient-amended soil mix. This usually happens to young seedlings, and they will "grow out of it" as they begin to use up all the nutrients in the soil, as long as more nutrients are not added.

In general, plants use overall higher levels of nutrients as they get more light. Therefore plants in relatively low light conditions can get nutrient burn at lower levels of nutrient than the same plant would under bigger grow lights.

Each cannabis plant is different, so you might have just one out of many plants get nutrient burn! That is completely normal.

Sometimes you'll also see nutrient burn leaf tips also curl or "claw". The clawing can be caused by an overabundance of Nitrogen (Nitrogen Toxicity), which is common for plants that are experiencing nutrient burn from overall high levels of nutrients.


Problem: You will notice the tips of your marijuana leaves showing the first signs of nutrient burn by turning yellow, tan, gold or brown. A light case of nutrient burn will only affect the tips of your leaves.

The yellow tips will eventually turn rusty brown and crispy. If you do not correct the problem, you may also notice the burn slowly spreading from the tips to the whole leaf. At this point, if you haven't done so already, you should immediately treat your plant (directions below) before there's more damage.

Nutrient burn can also manifest itself as brown or bronze spotting around the edges of the leaf serrations (often when there's a problem with proper absorption of potassium), or with leaf tips curling downwards (tips pointing down is often associated with too much nitrogen).

Why Growers Should Try to Prevent Marijuana From Getting Nutrient Burn

I have heard some growers say that a little nutrient burn is actually a good thing, because it means that you are giving your plant the highest level of nutrients it can use. A lot of growers have the mistaken idea that nutrients are somehow "food" for your cannabis plants, and so more food = more energy = bigger yields.

This is wrong, instead nutrients are more like a multi-vitamin for your plant. Just like you can't give a child 10 multivitamins a day to make them grow faster, you can't give your plants 10x the regular does of nutrients and expect anything good to happen.

The real "food" for your plant is light. Your plant produces energy from light through a process known as photosynthesis, which is most effective when the plant has healthy green leaves.

Learn what yields to expect based on the type of grow light you have!

Your leaves are like solar panels, and the energy produced by the leaves is used as energy for the whole plant. You need the leaves to be in tip-top shape to get the most energy from the lights, so your plant has plenty of energy to grow and produce buds.

Therefore, the biggest problem with nutrient burn is the fact that you are losing leaf mass and overall leaf robustness on your cannabis plant.

A little nute burn won't slow down your plants much, if at all, but if nute burn is left out of control, you will begin to lose serious leaf mass and it will dramatically slow down plant growth and reduce your overall yields.

What's worse, if excess nutrients are not flushed out of the plant's system before harvest, the buds may contain trace amounts of extra nutrients, giving the buds an unpleasant chemical-like taste. Speaking of the flowering stage...

Nutrient Burn is More Serious in the Flowering Stage

Cannabis plants spend the beginning part of their life in the vegetative stage. When cannabis plants enter the second part of their life, the flowering stage, they stop focusing on making leaves and stems, and put all their focus on making buds/flowers.

The flowering stage is the most vulnerable stage for cannabis plants, because they don't have much ability to bounce back from any problems.

The further you get into the flowering stage (and the closer you get to harvest), the less likely the plant will replace a leaf that is damaged or dies. By the time harvest is around the corner, your plant basically stops making any effort to recover from leaf damage, and its complete focus is on fattening buds.

That's why budding cannabis plants need extra care to thrive - in the flowering stage, a little bit of nutrient burn will probably be okay, but too much nutrient burn can seriously hurt yields because the plant will not be able to recover. If you are adding nutrients to your water, it can be very easy to burn your plants in the flowering stage (even with nutrient levels it was fine with before) as different strains have different needs throughout budding.
 
Does anyone have any tips or tricks they can share regarding when to feed and how much to feed their plants?

Are people using soil test kits?

Given all the care that goes in to lights and watering, this variable seems very imprecise if its based on time alone.
 
Back
Top Bottom