Help please! Wilting/dying of lower leaves, normal or no?

Hello, this is my first "real" attempt at growing cannabis and I've encountered a problem which I hope someone will be able to shed some light on. My plants have been growing fairly normally on my roof (13 hour day unfortunately) while waiting for my HID to arrive, which should I should have had two weeks ago if not for the astounding incompetence of the people at the blub store.

Anyways perhaps a week ago I started noticing that the leaves towards the bottoms of my plants were turning yellow, and then later wilting. Perhaps this is a natural thing, seeing as most of the plant appears to be growing in good order. It may also be some kind of nutrient deficiency, if I remember correctly a lack of zinc makes the plant take the zinc in the lower leaves and run it to the top of the plant, creating yellow leaves. Again I may be remembering this wrong, I read the Indoor "Bible" but it was a while ago.

In accordance with Occam's razor my first step in solving this was to move my plants from the small pots they sprouted from into larger pots to see if this was perhaps the reason. I've yet to see if this solves anything.

I included some pictures so you can see the wilting I'm talking about and (I hope) someone, or if I'm lucky many people, will be able to tell me what is going on and how to remedy the situation. Thanks alot in advance!

Is there some way to place images inside a post on this forum? I tried HTML and it didn't work, so heres the links:

http://www.geocities.com/shadowman9283/Maladies.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/shadowman9283/Plant.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/shadowman9283/Side02.jpg

GREAT pics.

very very nice plants

not normal..

so...

obviously the 13 hour thing is NO good.. and you need to remedy that asap..

even if that means getting a few CFL's and bringing your plants indoors...

I only looked at picture ONE..

and the soil is not correct..

You need to transplant NOW..

TO A 3-5 GALLOON POT using a perlite soil mix.. Perlite is cheap

Iloveyou

You should use a 80% soil 20% perlite mix

iloveyou

your plants do look very nice congrats...

: )

when you water... water thoroughly.. then let them DRY out.. untill at least the top 2-3 inches of your soil are dry and the pot is light...

: )
and now you KNOWM

Thanks for the compliments about the plants, I'm trying real hard to get them to come out nicely. That picture you looked at isn't very good either, they've gotten noticably bigger since it was taken (maybe five days ago), you can see a better one here:

http://www.geocities.com/shadowman9283/Top.jpg

if your interested.

And yeah the 13 hour day sucks, not only is it short but it's been pretty overcast and rainy lately here in Atlanta (I can say that right? I don't really expect the police to single me out from the other 5,000,000 people around here.)

I'll be picking up the light tommrrow, a 400w HPS, nothing spectacular but I'm planning to make a scrog and keep it compact. I would have had it much sooner but the dumbass that works there piddlyfucked around for 2 weeks before finally getting it in last Friday, then told me they were closed all weekend and I could come get it Monday, thanks asshole.

If you look at the link I pasted above you'll see that I already did put them in new pots which I hope was the problem, as you can see in that picture they already look a bit more lush and that was only after a day. I'll check em out tommrrow, hopefully they'll be back to normal after being in bigger pots for 5 days.

You seem pretty nice so perhaps you could help me out with something else. I'm eager to sex my plants so I can clone the females... is the only way to do this by cloning and flowering? I've noticed a few of the plants have tiny little thick hair lookin' things comming out and winding upward out of the bud (or tight cluster of small leaves on the top if it's not a bud), kind of like this plant:

http://www.cannabis-pictures.com/can...ant-female.jpg

Except mine is alot smaller and has only a few of 'em instead of 400, looks closer to the one in the bottom of the pic except there shorter as well. So does this mean they are female? I suppose it may also mean they've started to think about flowering, which would be bad. I don't think it will be a problem though since I'll be getting them under the HID tommrrow right? 16 hour days should set them straight I hope.

hey man, im new as well but I think (depending on strain) 16 hours is not enough. To revert to veg state or keep them there you may want to go a full 24/0 light regime.

Judging by the edge burn and top tips, the plant may be having a potassium deficiency brought on by its nutritional needs switching to a bloom ratio. Of course there are 5 other possibilities or combinations. This is what makes results equal to number of grows. Everyone gets better.

Just my opinion on the situation :- I can't see how light or lack of it would make leaves at the bottom of the plant wilt. If it was light deficiency the whole plant would look sick and the more recent growth is lucious. Personally I would say that you are over watering and the soil towards the bottom of the pots has become saturated preventing the roots from getting oxygen. Looking at the quality of the soil and the stages of the plants its very unlikely a nutrient deficiency. If I was you I would not water them for a few days and see if there's an improvement. Don't take my word as Gospel but I've read alot and its most likely your problem.