Please help me!

[Wobster]

- Power plant growing indoor
- Biobizz all-mix soil with 30% perlite
- Ph roughly 6.5
- Tap water with a few drops of vinegar to lower Ph
- Plant about 3 months from seed
- Baby-bio fertilizer at 5 drops per liter
- Fertilized every other watering
- 3 x 20w energy saving cfl 3 inches from plant
- room temp about 72 degrees 24/7
- relative humidity unknown but it should be low
- 1 fan venting air into bottom of closet with a hole at opposite end at the top for air to escape


I don't know wether it helps at all but I've included a diagram of my grow environment. I have 2 closets within an shed. The shed is completley insulated and there is no system for bringing fresh air in. every other day I open the door and window to allow the stale air to escape and let fresh air in.

My main concern is the larger plant in veg that you can see in the pics. I know some of the damage that you can see might be nute burn which is my fault. there are small brown spots on a lot of the fan leaves and some strange marks on the new leaves at the top of the plant. The new leaves are also becoming deformed and sort of growing to the left instead of bieng symetrical.

I have a web document called sick plant HQ and the spots resemble the pics of a plant with calcium def but before I start adding stuff to the soil I wanna ask you for advice. I'v mis-diagnosed things before and ended up doing more damage.

The brown spots are also appearing on one of my clones and another of my clones is showing the un-symetrical sweeping leaf-a-mejig. Thanks for any help!!

[Wobster]

more pics

[Rusty Trichome]

Perhaps calcium, but my guess is possible overwatering. Roots start to rot if kept too wet for too long. Have you flushed them more than once (back to back) in a effort to reduce the nute burn?
Speaking of which...how often is "fertilized every other watering". If watering every other day, it may be too much.

It's happening to clones, in other pots, too? Did you use fresh soil for the clones? Shouldn't be a calcium def in those unless problem had already showing before taking the cuttings.

Would wait for others responses, tho...

[Wobster]

I usually water every 3 to 4 days depending on how dry it gets. I have a moisture tester so I can gauge when it's ready for watering. I have had to flush it a couple of times but not back to back. I looked at the roots a couple of days ago to see if it needed re-potting and they looked healthy and white

[Weedhound]

I'd check the ph of your soil runoff.

[Wobster]

I always ph 5 liters of water and keep it in a bottle for watering my plants with. I think the soil ph should be around 6.5 but I'm going to go and check for sure. I struggle with the liquid test kit that I have cos I find it hard to match the colour (my eyes are usless) so I need to get a digi one soon.

I got a bottle of volvic which is ph 7 and another type of bottled water that is ph 6.4. I mixed 50ml of each thinking that I should end up with 100ml of ph 6.7 water. I kept this in a test tube to compare soil run off to. The water mixture that should be 6.7 though doesn't look like 6.7 should on my colour card, it's more like 6.4.

If bottled water says it is 6.4 at source, does that mean it will be 6.4 when I buy it?

[Wobster]

Checked the Ph of the run off...
The big plant had a ph run off of about 6.3 which I brought up to 6.7
The clone had a ph of about 6.5 so I also raised it to 6.7

[Wobster]

Hi people. I think i sussed it out.

A couple of weeks ago I had a problem with my plant in the flower room where the leaves were yellowing. It was an N def but I mis-diagnosed it at first with an Mg def. I couldn't get access to the web to ask advice so thinking it was Mg I made a foliar spray with some epsom salts and a bit of bloom fert.

I hate waste and as I had a bit of this (probably poisonous concentration) of spray, I gave all my plants a spray. I despair at my own stupidity sometimes.

The spray did nothing to the flowering plant. I asked on here and found out it was a N def. I applied a mild veg fert and the plant re-gained health. The leaves I sprayed earlier with the mg/bloom crap dropped off and I forgot i'd ever sprayed all my plants with it.

I was scratching my head over this prob because it looked so much like a soil ph issue but my ph was not that bad... 6.3 at the very least. I scoured the Marijuana Horticulture Medical Growers Bible by Jorge cervantes and found some clues.

<quote>

"Foliar spray concentration is cumulative. nutrients delivered via the foliage can cause a buildup of salts in and around the leaves. This is similar to the way the salts accumulate in the soil"


Do you think this is a possible cause for all this damage??

I sprayed all my plants (apart from the one in flower) with plain water today to try and rid them of any residual crap. Is this sufficient?

[stinkyattic]

I think that you have a multi-fold problem with the big plant (s?).
Check the runoff of the soil for pH problems (would be low by the looks of things) and flush to rid it of toxic salt buildup from all the troubleshooting you had already done. Then next time it dries out, transplant it to a larger pot. That pot is too small to support a healthy plant of that size. Go REAL easy on any foliar sprays next time. When in doubt, mix them WEAK!!!

[Wobster]

Hmmm, right. These are my 2 clones that i had a few spots appear on about a week ago. I haven't really changed anything that I was doing cos I still don't know whats wrong. I get myself a big water container and fill it 90% with tap water. My tap water is ph 7.2 or above. I add vinegar (about 2ml does it) to bring the ph to what looks like ph 6.7 on my color chart. I use this water for my ladies. I've gone really easy on nutes, roughly a tenth of what it says on the bottle.


Clone C-1 has got red petioles. It has small yellowish spots on the older leaves. The spots look yellow in the photos, it's the way the flash catches them but to the naked eye under flouros they definaltey look a lot more brown.



I just know you're gonna say ph....

[Wobster]

Clone c-2 is from a different mother but the same strain (PP). c-2 is a much more squat plant. It doesn't seem to have the same spots but it has a different sort of pattern. the older leaves look textbook healthy but the new leaves are sooooo blotchy.

[stinkyattic]

Potassium is locked out, likely by.... low pH!
Check and adjust if needed. Try foliar feeding to keep it from getting worse while you fix the soil situation. Use a complete grow fert with K and micros, mixed up kinda weak, like 1/4 what the bottle says.

[zebulon]

Hey Wobster.....i am no pro, but i think you should put something under those pot....it is winter and floor can be pretty cold....and the roots don't like cold...and this can cause some strange symptoms... use some styrofoam or some old newspapers or what you like....it costs nothing...
well anyway nice work so far....:thumbsup:

[Wobster]

Thanks again people. I'll see if I can sort it out with this info. Cheers Zeb, I lifted the plants out of my grow cabinet to take the pics so normally they are elevated and in a nice warm room :D

[Wobster]

Hi peeps.

The plants are showing the same symptoms. The other day I refilled my water bottle for my plants. I Ph'd the water down using vinegar to about 6.7. I watered the plants. A few days later I decided to check the water again with my test kit. The ph of the water had gone back up to about ph 7.1. :wtf:

I made a jug of water and put a little vinegar in. I mixed it thoroughly. I tested the water and it came in at about 6.4. The liquid in the test tube was light green. I shook it vigorously for a few seconds and the liquid had gone from light green (6.4) to pale blue 6.9.

Which reading do I trust?

How long does it take for the neutralization to complete?

It feels like I'm on the edge of solving this problem.

I know it's ph...

[stinkyattic]

Use proper pH down, Nitric or Phosphoric acid. Acetic and other organic acids aren't necessarily going to hold your pH stable in and aqueous solution in the presence of other compounds.

When you shake it you are allowing whatever is in the atmosphere to react with the contents of the liquid. Trust the first reading. I hope you are cleaning out the test tube (rinse 3x and then pre-rinse with the liquid to be tested) between readings.