going downhill fast

This happens every time i grow from seed, i will let the pictures speek for themselves, but at week 2-3 in flwr. the fan leaves turn yellow/patchy yellow and finally fall. bud devolopment seems fine but probebly not as good as it potentially could be. Theese are 3 weeks into 12/12 and has started like this about 5 days ago. Happens every time when growing from seed, In a mix of 3parts coco brick, 3parts peat, 1part wc, 1part perlite, and dolo. lime. Fed with pbp, LK, and molasas. ph is at 7, checked with a digi ph pen, temps are at 80 and humidity is at 60%. I just fed with a heavy dose of -N -2 days ago with no change i can see. WTF this is frustrating.

any chance you from the dakotas?

Well I grow in straight coco and I don't even know what the "wc" in your "1 part wc" means. I think you're on the right track with the nitrogen thing but if you're using a more or less hydro medium and not soil, I don't think giving it more N is going to help. Nitrogen gets locked out in soilless mediums at a pH over 6.5. If you're not using soil, you need to get your pH in the 5.5-6.5 range. I feed at 5.8 in straight coco. If I were you, and this is just a suggestion on how to get your pH down, I'd flush the plants with straight pH'd water at about 5.8, stop with everything except a good NPK nutrient and wait till your plants recover before you start adding stuff back. But then I wouldn't use anything besides a good well rounded NPK nute in pH 5.8 water for the entire rest of your grow, unless you wanted to hit it with a good PK booster every couple of weeks or so. With all the stuff you're putting in there and all the different ingredients in your medium it's hard to say what really is the one, or two, or three things that are screwing up your grow. I use coco and coco only just so I won't have to figure it out. I do think peat screws pH around a little. At 7.0 your calcium is also locked out if you're not using soil. Tough to tell with all the factors in your medium and your nute regimen just what the problem is. Flush with two or three times the capacity of your pots and use a well rounded NPK nute mix. pH of the water needs to be kept in the 5.5-6.5 range preferably around 5.8 if you're not using soil. IMHO.

BTW, is your ph at 7 in the water you feed with or in the run off after you water. If it's pH 7 in your feed water, you need to check and see what it is coming out the bottom of your pots. Set the plants into a catch basin and catch the first water coming out. That'll tell you what your roots are living with.

Hope the suggestions help,
Peace and Good luck

I agree with Mojo

I agree with Mojo

You have a Hydro Medium that you water by hand.
You only have the Peat Moss to hold the nutes for any Length of time.
If your run off is 7Ph thats too high.
I understand the roll of Dolamite Lime.. but not sure its needed in this case.
Coco holds very little water and nutes along with the perlite the water runs right thew I bet.

How often do you feed?
Any standing water after?
This is one reason I moved to Orgainic Soiless Mix when growing Dry
Mix it in and just use plain ol' water, and mabe some bloom enhaners at the end. Easy as heck!

In my opinion you should get a better Soiless Mix going. Cut back on the Coco, I think 1 part wc is "Water Crystals"? Don't need em. So I'd drop those too. But nothing wrong in using them.

Sin

not from the dakotas, wc is wormcastings, ph is tested from runoff, it is about 6.5 going in, but the dolo lime just buffers it back to 7 no matter how low a ph i put in. I thought N got locked out in too low a ph? maybe the high ph is my problem? anyways thanks people, keep em coming.

yeah it's the ph. flush out all that lime till you get it down to around the 6.0 range. Like mojo said, you're cal/mag is probably locked out too. I made the same mistake when I went to soil-less from soil. Had plants looked just like that.

I will go out on a limb and say they might need magnesium. PBP is low in cal mag. It requires cal mag plus or something to be comeplete. This is especially true if you have not repotted in a while and added dol. lime. It runs out. I can't get a close look at the deficiency but investigate this. Try 1-2 teaspoons epsom salts per gallon of water once.

Bottom leaves with green veins and yellow leaf = magnesium def. Totally yellow leafs with no burn = magnesium def. Got the picture? Check it out.

Go the full 2 teaspoons epsom per gallon once.

I am really trashed.

It's another lonely evening
And another lonely town
But I ain't too young to worry
And I ain't too old to cry
When a woman gets me down
Got another empty bottle
And another empty bed
Ain't too young to admit it
And I'm not too old to lie
I'm just another empty head
That's why I'm lonely
I'm so lonely
But I know what I'm gonna do -
I'm gonna ride on
Ride on
Ride on, standing on the edge of the road
Ride on, thumb in the air
Ride on, one of these days I'm gonna
Ride on, change my evil ways
Till then I'll just keep dragging on
Broke another promise
And I broke another heart
But I ain't too young to realize
That I ain't too old to try
Try to get back to the start
And it's another red light nightmare
Another red light street
And I ain't too old to hurry
Cause I ain't too old to die
But I sure am hard to beat
But I'm lonely
Lord I'm lonely
What am I gonna do -
Ride on
Ride on, got myself a one-way ticket
Ride on
Ride on, going the wrong way
Ride on, gonna change my evil ways
Ride on, one of these days
One of these days
Ride on
Ride on
I'm gonna ride on
Ride on, looking for a truck
Ride on
Ride on, keep on riding
Riding on and on and on

Click on it to make larger.

Blackvelvet's Clubhouse

Blackvelvet's Clubhouse

Hahhahhahhah I love mag def. It's so easy. Okay, all you lurkers...time for you to check in and give comments. Did you see what I saw? Now your learning. mtf sandman please feel free to chime in. Stich, where you at gal?

Dakota, I know it's confusing man. This person says do this and another something else. Then someone pops up and says you're all wrong, I found the real problem.

Short answer, until you get your pH DOWN and feed the plants again in an environment they can absorb nutes in you're gonna keep having this problem. And really, dude, it doesn't matter whether it's clones or seedlings. If it's happening every time it's something your doing every time. Time to adjust your method, don't you think?

FLUSH with the purist water you can, preferably RO water, tap if you have to (but tap waters got salt in it already). Adjust the flush water to a pH of 5.8 and flush till your runoff is 5.8 and then flush some more. Once you've cleared out all the built up salts from the nutes the plant's not been absorbing, feed it with the simplest food you can, i.e. A+B 6mL/gal and let your plants eat their first meal for a while and watch them recover. In the medium your growing in, you need to water at least every day and water till you get a significant amount of run off. Measure this run off the first few times you feed until you're comfortable it's staying where you want it to and then back off to checking it once or twice a week. pH of run off if you do this should stay at about 5.8 and the ec of your run off should be 50%-75% of what you're putting in. If the ec builds up, salts are building up and you need to raise the amount of run off to keep the water retained in the pot by the coco, and whatever else you're sticking in there that you don't need, cleared out.

Until you do the above, you can listen till everybody in these forums has expressed their thoughts and meanwhile your plants will have ceased to breathe in and out. Keep it simple!!! Flush out the problem and feed your plants at a pH where they can absorb the nutes. In a soil less medium that's a pH of 5.2 to about 6.2. Most of the coco growers like myself try to keep it at 5.8.

BTW, if you'd like, visit the coco forum and find out for yourself just how simple growing in straight coco is.

I hope you do the above and that you have success. Nothing feels quite as good as rescuing your plants and it's so easy in coco. I've done it several times by doing the above. Next time, try leaving out all the extras in your medium. Less there is in there, the less there is to go wrong.

Peace and good luck.

Edited: Forgot to give credit where credit's due. I don't know all the above because I'm some sort of genius at growing. I learned it all from the coco growers out there who were kind enough to help a measley fucking newbie like me. In particular, gaiusmarius the moderator of the coco forum. gaiusmarius is arguably the best authority on growing in coco and if he told me to set my plants on fire to get rid of mites, I'd probably think about it for a while and then go ahead and do it, lol. oldpeculiar has helped too along with too many for my feeble mind to pull up right now. Long and short of it is, coco is an extremely easy and forgiving medium to grow in and you don't need to throw any other medium materials in there. When you do, you take away coco's simplicity. Good luck on your rescue efforts. Success or failure at this point depends on your ability to not panic and listen to what's been done by those who've got the most experience in your coco grow. Your choice.

How close are these girls stacked together?

Looks like poor air circulation to me. Yank down on those yellow useless leave to remove them.

I know I say this all the time but I will again. Give those girls 1 drink of Kelp or Fish juice and get some Hygrozyme or (some zyme)...

Blackvelvet said:

Hahhahhahhah I love mag def. It's so easy. Okay, all you lurkers...time for you to check in and give comments. Did you see what I saw? Now your learning. mtf sandman please feel free to chime in. Stich, where you at gal?

Click to expand...

Yeah, I see what your talking about...but I think his PH is causing the uptake problems personally. Coco is notorious for mag defs if you don't use an additive like Cal-Mag, but the main problem is N uptake IMO - probably from the PH being off. If it is PH that's causing the issues, it's not very bad as there isn't any spotting along the veins of the leaves, so it could just be a simple nute def.

Dakota - How much PBP are you using and which flavor of PBP is it? They make a soil/coco and a hydro version...

Been feeding at about 14ml fer gallon of pbp for soil, and the liquid karma, every other watering, and using the molasas and straight water in between. its about 3 days in between waterings or when they feel somewhat dry. Some times i give straight water depending on whats going on. I think they are getting plenty of mg because we have very hard water where were at, there is the dolo. lime in the soil, and there is ca, and mg in the molasas i use. About the ph thing, why does it take over 2 months for it to show any issues? they were in veg for 1.5 months and 2 weeks in flwr with no problems they were very healthy. first couple of pics where 1 week into flower the rest were taken today

i have the same sympthoms every grow....but with me it always starts around the 4th week ? i use canna soil products...could it be just 2 much food?

I agree with the post before. Make sure the ph is good for the medium your using. That's probly where all the problems start, and feeding to much.

They look fine to me. Yellowing of leaves is normal and desired during flowering. The plants are putting all there growth energy into the buds. Sometimes a plants genetics can make it yellow more but they still flower OK. Chill Winston and carry on as normal.

I give up.

dakota said:

its about 3 days in between waterings or when they feel somewhat dry. Some times i give straight water depending on whats going on.

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NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!. Not watering everyday is causing a cal/mag lockout. That and the ph are your only problems. The ph, you have to get it down to 6 at least. The first thing you need to do is fix the ph. Then the cal/mag can be dealt with after you have flushed everything proper. Main thing is do NOT treat this like soil. I know it SEEMS wrong to water everyday till you get 10-20% runoff. But this is NOT soil. Trust us on this. Start full on waterings everyday. The nutes you can try every other day if you like, but if you do any reading in the coco forum you'll notice we all fert our plants damn near every day. The only time I don't feed mine is to give them a clearex flush once in awhile, and as soon as the at drips thru I hit them with nutes........THE SAME DAY!!!!!!!!!! Start with a low dose and see how they respond and increase it as needed. Again, damn near everything you know about growing in soil, throw it out the door. Very little of it applies to coco.

Never use epsom salts in coco. The results will make you cry.

Again, your pot sizes are about 3 times as big as you need. 1 gallon would have been fine.

mojo said:

I give up.

Click to expand...

LOL...I hear ya mang. You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to mojo again.

buffoon....no plant 21 days 12/12 should be that yellow. Period. It's normal for thewm to yellow up late, but this is not normal this early.