Once beautiful plants are starting to look bad.

Help! My plants' leaves are starting to wither away and I am not sure what the problem may be.

At first only the lower leaves were showing any problematic signs but more and more leaves are wilting and dying off. Anyone have ideas to what my problem is?



H=Answer if you grow hydro or aero
C=Answer if you grow coco
S=Answer if you grow traditional soil
L=Answer if you grow soilless other than coco (Promix, Hyponex, SunshineMix)
R=Answer if you grow in RockWool
T=Answer if you grow in HydroTon
D=Answer if you run any type of automatic drip system, including into soil or soilless
E= EVERYONE needs to answer lol!


E-indoor or outdoor- Indoor
E-soil, soilless, coco, aero, or hydroponic- Soil
E-specific medium- Miracle-gro Potting Mix(.21,.07,.14)
CSL-Soil type/brand- See above
HCL-Hydro/aero/soilless system type
SCL-Anything you have added to the soil
SCLR-Soil or slab runoff pH
E-Water source- Pur filtered tap water
E-Source water pH- Cheap ph meter i bought at lowes says about 7 but I am not sure if i can trust it.
HRT-Source water EC (if hydro)
E-Age of plant- about 45 days
E-Type of fertilizer-Peters All purpose plant food (.24,.8.16) I have only just started using fert. at a little less than .5 tbsp/gal. The instructions suggested 1tbsp/gal.
E-Rate of application (if hydro, this is your PPM number, preferably after each component is added)
E-Lighting source and distance from plant- 6x40watt florescent tubes in shop fixtures. About 2-3 inches from the top of the plants
E-Air temperature (both day and night if you are running a dark period) Around 80 degrees depending on what time of day it is and how intensely the sun is heating up my house.
HD-Reservoir temperature
E-Air % Relative humidity- I do not know yet
E-Lighting schedule- 24hrs
E-Type of ventilation your room has-a fan or two directed at the lights and partly at the plants.
TR-Did you pre-soak your media in pH corrected solution?

overferted, poor ph and most likely rootbound. Flush at the correct ph until the water coming out the bottom is also in the correct range. Then water with 1/4 strength ferts only at the correct ph for soil OR transplant into some quality soil (like Fox Farms) in a larger pot as soon as you can.

good luck.

I have not been fertilizing them and they were transplanted into 3 gal pots 2 weeks ago.

Do your pots have the drainage trays on them? If so get rid of them.

I had plants with similar symptoms that had drainage issues and were root bound.

how did you fix your problem?

Re-potted in larger pots (which you already did, but I would guess the damage was done by then)

To fix the drainage, I took the drain trays off my pots and drilled holes on the sides near the bottom of the pots.

To keep my life easy, I got a few baking trays from Gordon foods and put the pots in there so they could drain without causing a mess. Once I water, I wait about 20 min and then empty the baking trays. They run like a dollar each for the tray.

I would bet that Stinky would say the following:

Get perlite!!!!

The potting mix i used for my last transplant had between 1/4-1/3 perlite in it because i was concerned about drainage.

Is there anything i can do about it now or am i fucked?

Itll be fine, the plant is resillent. Get some better drainage set up though, just drill a few holes in the bottom of the pot. I did 4 sets of 2.

4 - near the very bottom of the pot spread evenly around the pot and 4 about a 1/4 inch above that.

Do you think it is really a problem of drainage? I will drill holes still because i have been meaning too but will have to go pick up some cookie sheets :).Could the problem be the soil or something else though? I really don't want my plants to all die off.

Listen to the trig guy :D

Those drain catch trays block drainage so badly that the lowest part of the soil zone becomes waterlogged, anaerobic, and useless to the plant, and may contribute to root rot. So even though the nominal volume is 3 gallons, you may have MUCH less usable soil. Power tools are your friend! 1/2" paddle bit, zing zing and you're done. Then give a nice flush with tap water, and feed immediately with a 1/4 strength grow solution.

Box store pH meters don't give accurate results in water (or soil, often, for that matter!). But tap water is almost ALWAYS safe to use. Unless you are super unlucky and have a really minerally well or municipal water source.

thanks guys, here is to hoping this fixes the problem. Will update on it soon.

what is causing the leaves on two of my plants to wither and die in the "claw" shape?

So far i have 5 plants, two of which are looking pretty bad with claw leaves, two are losing leaves after they spot for a day or so before spreading and killing off the leaf, and one seems to be doing fine.

When the edges are included in the turned-down shape, and not just the tips, that points strongly to either Nitrogen overdose, or insufficient useable root space, or both. In your case, flushing and re-potting into light, airy soil with improved drainage will solve both.

Ah soil is killing me, i replanted them 2 weeks ago. Do i need to get larger pots already? they are growing in 3 gals right now.

What is the best way to check for plants being root bound without disturbing the plant or hurting the roots much?

There is a hydro shop opening in my town today actually and they sell fox farm ocean mix. Would it be a good idea to switch and if so how do i get rid of the lower quality soil the plants are already in?

I am not sure how they got an exess of N. They only fertilizer I have been giving them has been every other watering with 1tsp per gal of water.

Also what would you recommend as a good airy soil mix?

My previous soil mix, due to lack of quality premixed soil available at the time, for the last transplant was a mix of 2 parts hummus and manure, 1 part perlite, and 1 part vermiculite.

That soil mix (humus, manure, lighteners) you were using before was great. Your problem, and the solution to it, is explained in post #10.
Also, adding fertilizer when you are already using a pre-ferted soil with an N value of 0.2, you don't know how much N is left in the soil and may have overdosed. But it could just be the rootbound. Please re-read my posts in this thread, because it's explained carefully.

Thats' funny.....you said you had not ferted them but in your q and a's you said you did. Which is it?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stinkyattic

That soil mix (humus, manure, lighteners) you were using before was great. Your problem, and the solution to it, is explained in post #10.
Also, adding fertilizer when you are already using a pre-ferted soil with an N value of 0.2, you don't know how much N is left in the soil and may have overdosed. But it could just be the rootbound. Please re-read my posts in this thread, because it's explained carefully.

---

I cant really follow this guys posts Stinskter.......yes, no, maybe. Good luck and I'll leave it in your VERY capable hands.

Thanks i am going to go eat some lunch and go check the bottom layer of soil. What you said makes a lot of sense. I switched to non peat moss soil but can imagine the manure mix would compact down quite a bit.

Weedhound, i had be starting to fertilize but stopped after reading a previous thread a week or so back. My q/a must have not been updated properly. update, my q/a indeed was not properly updated. I am pretty sure i was high and freaking out when I posted this thread with a copy and quick edit of my previously used q/a section. Please excuse any discrepancy.

I still am confused....sorry but I'll butt out.....Good luck chenman and you are with the best with Stinky!! ;) :thumbsup:

I just check two of the five plants and neither were root bound. In fact the roots were not even close to filling in the whole pot yet. It seems like there has not been a large amount of growth in the roots since the last transplant.

Again... poor oxygenation means that there will be a discrepancy between nominal pot size and useable pot size.

Flushed the plants and got rid of the stock drainage attachments.

I noticed several small bugs crawling over the surface of the soil after i had flushed the soil. I can try to get a picture but they are about the size of a pin head and remind me of seed ticks. I cannot give more details at the moment due to lack of a magnifying glass or eagle eyes.

Any idea what this bug may be and how it will affect the plant? Any safe way to eradicate them?

Adult thrips may often be found on the soil surface.
If there is a very wet condition, like the trays could have been causing, you are creating conditions for fungus gnats. Dry out their homes, and they go away.