Help!!! Flowering plants, what's happening?

[Themagnata]

The plants in my flower tent are showing symptoms and I don't know what it is... At first I thought it was nutrient burn but is weird because I've been giving 1/3 of the nutes.. can someone help me identify what Is wrong?

Details:
Light Cycle : 12/12
600 watt HPS
Organic grow using biobizz Nutrients and compost teas

 

[negative37dBA]

Have you scoped for any pests? Get out your loupe and do some looking. What is this Organics you speak of...??? haha. I am a Jacks grower....it just kills it. Do you ever check ph or no with the big O style? A lot more info would be helpful. No strain or how far along....what size pots, 1 plant or several...good airflow?? What medium, how long since last tea or Biobizz application.
I see some leaf curling and some spotting....my first check is for pests. Do you use any preventatives?
Have a good one. Peace, negative.

 

[Themagnata]

Have you scoped for any pests? Get out your loupe and do some looking. What is this Organics you speak of...??? haha. I am a Jacks grower....it just kills it. Do you ever check ph or no with the big O style? A lot more info would be helpful. No strain or how far along....what size pots, 1 plant or several...good airflow?? What medium, how long since last tea or Biobizz application.
I see some leaf curling and some spotting....my first check is for pests. Do you use any preventatives?
Have a good one. Peace, negative.

Yes as far as I know I have thrips, but I have been spraying Neem oil and another product that I bought that's supposed to be organic.. the thrips we're almost gone after the 1st application but they keep coming back in much lesser Numbers, I sprayed yesterday again..

I never check PH and my plants have been doing good as far as I know, the vegging plants look healthy and I never check PH..

They are in 10 gallon smart pots and I also have some clones that i began flowering last week in 1 gallon pots.

I'm using Biobizz lightmix soil mixed with 1/4 worm castings

I have over-watered the plants a bit so I think the leaf Curling is from that

 

[GoatCheese]

I was battling thrips for months and my plants started looking like shit after all the spraying. Neem oil+soap and a Spinosad spray messed the leaves on my plants the most and the leaves on my plants looked even worse than your’s.

You have to keep spraying persistently for atleast two-three weeks till you get rid of them = as long as you’re sure you killed them all. IT’s better to keep spraying your plants two weeks too long than stop spraying too soon.
IT took a good while cause at first i stopped spraying too soon and some of them managed to stay alive.

Spraying your plants is ofcourse problematic when your plants are budding and it would be better to get rid of thrips while your plants are still in veg.


In time Thrips develop a tolerance to Pyrethrums and Spinosad etc. so you have to spray different stuff on them every week or two.. Neem oil messes up their hormone system, thru which it lowers their ability to develop a tolerance to bug sprays.

It seems i finally got rid of them. fingers crossed.
How i managed to do it was;
- I threw alot of plants away but luckily i didn’t lose any keepers. It’s sad when you have to cull flowering plants but sometimes you just have to.

- I used natural pyrethrum every 3-5 days at the start for three sprays. Then changed the pyrethrums to spinosad – then back to pyrethrums after three sprays.
..and the whole time i sprayed Neem oil every other spray = Pyrethrum – Neem- Pyrethrum- Neem- Pyrethrum -Neem -Spinosad- Neem-Spinosad-Neem and so on till i got rid of them.

Bacillus thuringiensis is apparently also a good stuff to spray on thrips but looks like i managed to get rid of them without BT.

 

[HempKat]

More often then not when you get signs that look like nutrient issues but you're fairly confident it's not a nutrient issue then it's usually a PH issue. PH issues can give out signs that look like all sorts of other problems and is probably more responsible for misdiagnosis then anything else. Given that you say you never check you PH I'm inclined to think that's the cause of what you're seeing. If it is a PH issue I think it was a brief problem that has maybe corrected itself because I'm not seeing a wide spread issue. For th e most part your plants look to be in decent shape and so I suspect you had a brief period where the PH got out of whack. There are a number of things that can cause a ph shift temporarily, including a change in the water from your water source.

I would suggest that you keep an eye on things to see if the problem has stopped or if it's continuing and at the same time start checking the PH of your run off. If you're doing things right you can often get away with not checking PH but all it takes is a once in a while change in PH and suddenly you'll get these weird symptoms that don't seem to make sense. I mean if you're getting your water from a well and you go thru an extended drought, that can cause the PH of your water to change. Conversely if the rainfall in your area is scarce and then you get a sudden downpour that can cause a PH shift. So it's really a good idea to just keep in the habit of monitoring the PH even if it's almost always good, it can save you from banging your head against the wall trying to figure a sudden problem out that doesn't make sense. If it was a PH problem it was probably not too far out of whack given that it doesn't seem particularly widespread. You say you've overwatered the plants and that can lead to leeching and that may have interfered with your potassium uptake and some of those signs could be from a problem with potassium which is an important nutrient during flowering. So if you have often over watered but you didn't see any signs until flowering that would make sense since potassium is much less important during veg then during flowering. Another good potential for the signs you have is a problem with calcium that can also result from over watering. In fact calcium is more likely since it would take a pretty big drop in PH to lockout Potassium but a fairly small drop of PH from say 6.5 to 6.3 or 6.2 could start causing calcium issues to develop.

 

[Vandenberg]

It looks like it possibly Could be "leaf Septoria" which can be treated with foliared potassium bicarbonate solution or their is a product called Serenade with Bacillus subtilis strain QST 713 which controls the growth of certain harmful bacteria and fungi, presumably by competing for nutrients, growth sites on plants, and by directly colonizing and attaching to fungal pathogens. That also is applied as a foliar.
There are copper based fungicides that has a possibility of toxicity to plant and person when improperly applied at inappropriate times or methods. Bonide brand is commonly available in the U.S..

 

[bsgospel]

Based on your pics, looks like normal senescence to me. Maybe a little prematurely, could be a residue/phytotoxicity of whatever you sprayed for thrips or maybe just demand for K or Ca in other parts of your flower. If that were my plant, I wouldn't change anything drastic at all unless it started to creep up the plant and onto newer growth en masse. Let us know if it gets worse but that looks reasonably normal to me.

 

[Roadblock]

I think your plants are treading water and not really thriving, Id start at the root system it's super important to get that well established, look at your environment I think your problems are coming from the free elements air quality and volume, temperature-humidity, water quality, if those are dialed in I find plants rarely problem with basically any complete hydro food.

I honestly think 99% of the problems is because the plants metabolism is bogging down because of the free elements not being right and most growers will start giving all sorts of concoctions when it only compounds the issues, if your environment is on the edge they grow sort off ok and adapt to it as they get bigger so people think their concoction worked, people show close up pics of the nugs and think they great but the plant is only running at 50% maybe, it will still make nice nugs that's its genetics, but the plant will be sparse for how it is when its a 100%.

I just had a few struggling crops and couldn't figure out what was going on, the issues were slow plant growth, weedy thin growth, lower yields, root problems, spider mites and fungus gnats were both thick and causing problems, tried lots of things including different systems DWC, Rockwool, Coco, NFT, tried different nutrients and additives, different water, fitted UV sterilizers and nothing stopped the problems.

Looked at the rooms and the temp-humidity were in check it was winter so I never had a heat problem, looked at air there were loads of fans moving a lot of air, but here was the problem, because of how I set up the air so that the hot side would vent to the cold etc I actually created a lock on the air exchange like sucking through a straw, as soon as I corrected that airlock plants have just powered up 10 fold with beautiful white massive root systems, and guess what not a spider mite or gnat to be seen.

Look hard at your environment before anything else, you want to be able to stand in your room close your eyes and it feel like youre standing outside on a nice sunny spring day with fresh slightly humid air like at the beach.

 

[Themagnata]

I think your plants are treading water and not really thriving, Id start at the root system it's super important to get that well established, look at your environment I think your problems are coming from the free elements air quality and volume, temperature-humidity, water quality, if those are dialed in I find plants rarely problem with basically any complete hydro food.

I honestly think 99% of the problems is because the plants metabolism is bogging down because of the free elements not being right and most growers will start giving all sorts of concoctions when it only compounds the issues, if your environment is on the edge they grow sort off ok and adapt to it as they get bigger so people think their concoction worked, people show close up pics of the nugs and think they great but the plant is only running at 50% maybe, it will still make nice nugs that's its genetics, but the plant will be sparse for how it is when its a 100%.

I just had a few struggling crops and couldn't figure out what was going on, the issues were slow plant growth, weedy thin growth, lower yields, root problems, spider mites and fungus gnats were both thick and causing problems, tried lots of things including different systems DWC, Rockwool, Coco, NFT, tried different nutrients and additives, different water, fitted UV sterilizers and nothing stopped the problems.

Looked at the rooms and the temp-humidity were in check it was winter so I never had a heat problem, looked at air there were loads of fans moving a lot of air, but here was the problem, because of how I set up the air so that the hot side would vent to the cold etc I actually created a lock on the air exchange like sucking through a straw, as soon as I corrected that airlock plants have just powered up 10 fold with beautiful white massive root systems, and guess what not a spider mite or gnat to be seen.

Look hard at your environment before anything else, you want to be able to stand in your room close your eyes and it feel like youre standing outside on a nice sunny spring day with fresh slightly humid air like at the beach.

thank you for your reply, i am a bit overwhelmed with all the answers.. it could be so many things..

I will start off by giving them just water, my environment is not 100% right because of heat, the temperature is too high all the time (29-32C°)

i definitely need to correct this, I'm thinking about buying a cool tube for my 600W HPS Lamp..

Im also going to buy a humidifier

After this I think the environment should be dialed in..

 

[HempKat]

thank you for your reply, i am a bit overwhelmed with all the answers.. it could be so many things..

I will start off by giving them just water, my environment is not 100% right because of heat, the temperature is too high all the time (29-32C°)

i definitely need to correct this, I'm thinking about buying a cool tube for my 600W HPS Lamp..

Im also going to buy a humidifier

After this I think the environment should be dialed in..

Yeah, that's the problem when the plant is only just slightly showing signs of a problem there are so many things that could be due to a number of different issues yet produce the same signs. Naturally as growers we want our plants to do as well as possible and so the tendency is for growers to panic and over react. Unfortunately if we misdiagnose the issue and apply the wrong treatment we can end up making the problem worse. The worst possible thing to do in a situation like this is to hit your plants with multiple treatments because then you can never be sure what fixed the problem if it does seem fixed and then all the different treatments start causing other problem a short while later. So the best thing to do is look at the most likely issue and then test for that and try to correct one at a time. That's why I came to the conclusion I did, you said that you never check the PH and you said you've over watered a few times. Like I pointed out, over watering can cause leeching and the leeching can cause a PH imbalance. The other issues you mentioned in this post I'm replying to could be a factor and even without problems showing those are good issues to get on top of to have a well dialed in grow. You mention you've been fighting thrips and that could be a result of a less then ideally dialed in grow. Grows with ideal temps, ideal humidity and good air circulation rarely have pest issues. So by all means work on the two things you mentioned (temp and humidity) and while you're at it, it can't hurt to check the PH of your run off. If that ends up being proper then you've ruled out PH issues and you can then focus on other potential issues.

 

[Creeperpark]

The problem is not the plant, it's YOU for not buying a cheap pH meter. Also, you need an EC meter to read the incoming water and check the run-off EC. If you had those meters you would know what's wrong right now. Most people who give you answers on this thread, use them and that's what they base their knowledge on. When you get some meters and test everything you will know what you are doing like them..!

 

[Creeperpark]

Remember that pH always changes and when your plant lives in the same pot for 3 months, expect changes. If the pH in the root zone drops too low you can raise the pH with the incoming water. Or if it goes too high from using tap water, you can lower the incoming water pH before it locks out iron and other trace nutrients. You need a pH meter too know. Happy gardening.

 

[Roadblock]

thank you for your reply, i am a bit overwhelmed with all the answers.. it could be so many things..

I will start off by giving them just water, my environment is not 100% right because of heat, the temperature is too high all the time (29-32C°)

i definitely need to correct this, I'm thinking about buying a cool tube for my 600W HPS Lamp..

Im also going to buy a humidifier

After this I think the environment should be dialed in..

It can be overwhelming but it need not be, you don't need fancy additives just get the basics right, dial-in your air flow-exchange, temps-humidity, keep you PH stable, EC a little on the mild side and you will grow very good plants using just about any method DWC Coco NFT they all work fantastic for lots of people, the problems people have is coming out of more in the basics being off, and not the system, you see it all the time " I did exactly as you said, its the same as your system my numbers are the same as yours, but mine are dying, I must be cursed " its the basics that is causing the issues most of the time, its after the basics are gotten right can you start fooling around with additives, for now just use a basic A-B feed and nothing else, watch your feeding so they not too wet not to dry and they will power, once you get there you know how to grow a good plant knowing what it looks like, lush green with leaves like velvet, from there now you can actually progress to growing a plant to itsfull potential and finding out what works and what doesnt.

Good luck.

 

[Themagnata]

The problem is not the plant, it's YOU for not buying a cheap pH meter. Also, you need an EC meter to read the incoming water and check the run-off EC. If you had those meters you would know what's wrong right now. Most people who give you answers on this thread, use them and that's what they base their knowledge on. When you get some meters and test everything you will know what you are doing like them..!

Go read something about organic growing instead of coming here acting all superior...

Anyways if it's pH why do my clones and mother plants look as good as they look?? I will post a picture later so you can see... I never measure PH with those plants and I don't see a single problem with them
​​​​

 

[Themagnata]

Remember that pH always changes and when your plant lives in the same pot for 3 months, expect changes. If the pH in the root zone drops too low you can raise the pH with the incoming water. Or if it goes too high from using tap water, you can lower the incoming water pH before it locks out iron and other trace nutrients. You need a pH meter too know. Happy gardening.

I'm getting so confused with this PH thing... People who grow organic tell me not to worry about PH.. now you guys say i must read PH..

Remember that I'm growing organic and not with chems

 

[Themagnata]

Yeah, that's the problem when the plant is only just slightly showing signs of a problem there are so many things that could be due to a number of different issues yet produce the same signs. Naturally as growers we want our plants to do as well as possible and so the tendency is for growers to panic and over react. Unfortunately if we misdiagnose the issue and apply the wrong treatment we can end up making the problem worse. The worst possible thing to do in a situation like this is to hit your plants with multiple treatments because then you can never be sure what fixed the problem if it does seem fixed and then all the different treatments start causing other problem a short while later. So the best thing to do is look at the most likely issue and then test for that and try to correct one at a time. That's why I came to the conclusion I did, you said that you never check the PH and you said you've over watered a few times. Like I pointed out, over watering can cause leeching and the leeching can cause a PH imbalance. The other issues you mentioned in this post I'm replying to could be a factor and even without problems showing those are good issues to get on top of to have a well dialed in grow. You mention you've been fighting thrips and that could be a result of a less then ideally dialed in grow. Grows with ideal temps, ideal humidity and good air circulation rarely have pest issues. So by all means work on the two things you mentioned (temp and humidity) and while you're at it, it can't hurt to check the PH of your run off. If that ends up being proper then you've ruled out PH issues and you can then focus on other potential issues.

also someone told me that PH down can damage the bacteria in the soil..

 

[TanzanianMagic]

The plants in my flower tent are showing symptoms and I don't know what it is... At first I thought it was nutrient burn but is weird because I've been giving 1/3 of the nutes.. can someone help me identify what Is wrong?

Details:
Light Cycle : 12/12
600 watt HPS
Organic grow using biobizz Nutrients and compost teas

These plants are in all kinds of pain - potassium, nitrogen, calcium, magnesium, because they're flowering and growing. I would say nutrient deficiency.

They need a much larger pot. The bigger the pot, the fewer nutrient deficiencies you run into.

This year is the first time I cloned a (super-) autoflowering plant, and put it directly into a 10 gallon square tub. Combined with low stress training (keeping the plant as low as possible as long as possible), it is not running into any nutrient deficiency, even in late flowering. The most problem free and productive grow I've seen in 18 years.

 

[negative37dBA]

They need a much larger pot. The bigger the pot, the fewer nutrient deficiencies you run into.

This year is the first time I cloned a (super-) autoflowering plant, and put it directly into a 10 gallon square tub. Combined with low stress training (keeping the plant as low as possible as long as possible), it is not running into any nutrient deficiency, even in late flowering. The most problem free and productive grow I've seen in 18 years.

OP is in a 10 gallon pot so not sure what you mean here...???
Have a great day all.

 

[HempKat]

also someone told me that PH down can damage the bacteria in the soil..

I never said you had to use PH down. All I said is you should check your PH. I get that some people want to go the pure organic route and there are ways to organically control your PH. I'm not saying it is definitely 100% a PH issue but with the signs you're showing it could be. If it is it looks to be a mild one and it may have even already cleared up. As I pointed out based on your admission that you've overwatered at times, that can lead to leeching which can cause some of the problems you're seeing. Yes it's true that if everything is properly dialed in you can go without testing your PH and never have a PH issue. I've had plenty of grows where even though I tested the PH it was always where it was supposed to be and so I never had to adjust it. Testing is just a precautionary thing.

Look at it this way, a PH issue can cause symptoms that look like a nutrient deficiency. If you assume it's a deficiency though just because someone said you should never have to test the PH and you try to correct it by adding more of whatever you think is deficient, you can end up with a toxicity issue. Which is smarter, to assume what the problem is and risk more problems by throwing the wrong fix at it or do a simple test to confirm what the problem is and then give it the right fix? If you have a deficiency there are two possible problems, either you are not giving enough of what is deficient or the PH is off and what appears deficient is actually locked out. Doing a PH test will tell you whether it's one or the other.

If you don't want to PH test that's fine by me, it doesn't effect me if you don't test and continue to have problems. I'm just trying to provide the help you asked for based on my experiences as a grower. As for why your clones or vegging plants all seem fine, well it could be that since they are in a different phase of growth the issue doesn't show up because their needs are different. I pointed out that some of the signs you're showing could be related to not enough potassium but plants in the veg state don't require much potassium so it would make sense that if all plants were not getting enough potassium that it would mainly show on just the plants in flower since it's in flower where potassium becomes more critical. If it is a potassium issue though then the problem is more likely in what you're feeding the plants because if the PH was off enough to lock out potassium then it would also lock out all the macro nutrients and then it would be showing on all your plants if that were true. That's why I said it could be a calcium issue because some of the signs you have could also be related to a calcium deficiency and calcium deficiency is a fairly common problem, and could be caused by a much more subtle shift in PH. More likely though it was a transient problem caused when you over watered and if you're not still overwatering the problem may have corrected itself. All of which would be consistent with the fact that your plants only show a slight, isolated problem and not a larger more widespread problem.

 

[TanzanianMagic]

OP is in a 10 gallon pot so not sure what you mean here...???

https://www.icmag.com/filedata/fetch?photoid=17952193

You need a bigger pot.

Organics isn't like hydro. You can't have a tiny pot filled with soil and have roots proliferate like they are growing through water. Also, low stress training keeps plant development focused on flowering, which focuses the use of nutrients towards flowering.