Plant is literally dropping whole branches!

[MrSmokeyMacPot]

***I apologize now for picture quality.. I only have a cellphone cam**


So the 6 super skunks in my garden are grown from bagseed, they are about 4 months old and have been healthy and vigorous growers all along. They have oddly enough been flirting with pre-flowering and flowering, and now after the summer solstice 5 of the 6 are positively reverting and re-vegging.

However, I noticed two days ago that the bottom branch on one of the plants was wilted... just the one branch. So I got down to check it out and I barely touched the branch and it just fell off! Just pulled clear out of the trunk of the plant!

You can see the holes in this pic where 2 branches pulled out.

Well, yesterday, all 6 of the skunk ladies had bottom branches wilting and just hanging by a thread more or less.

It seems that the base of the the lower branches have grown what looks like a "knuckle" around where they join the main stalk.
The only thing I could guess is that this "growth" must be pinching off the flow of water and nutrients to the branch. The wilted branches that were still attached perked back up after watering, and the fallen branches appear to have healthy, woody stalks.

Here is the tip that pulled out from the plant:

The rest of the plants look rather healthy (besides the revegging stretch):

can someone please offer me a clue as to wtf is going on with my plants?

Thank You!

 

[Hash Man]

Do you have any cats mousing for you? Your stalks look good, so I'm not sure why they would all just break off. This happened to me when a feral cat population came in and took over the rodent issue on my property. I now use concrete remesh and that has stopped the problem.

Zip ties can Help in this situation too.

 

[OrganicBuds]

Looks more like a wilt problem to me. Can be caused by over watering, and choking off the roots air supply. Usually the farthest out roots will effect the bottom branches. Good luck, I am interested in what others think because this happens to me it seems once a year.

 

[MrSmokeyMacPot]

No signs of damage on any of these, neither animal nor rot... Just the odd "knuckle" growth on the base of the branches. And the branches feel "loose in their sockets"... right before they fall or get pulled out accidentally.

 

[Tonygreen]

I just had a plant I tied down that grew so hard it ripped a branch out of socket, I stuck it in and bandaged it up and it carried on just fine. I had a plant self top itself once like that too. weird. lol

 

[MrSmokeyMacPot]

Should i be bandaging the open wounds to prevent water from entering or insects making a home in there?

 

[Hash Man]

Gorilla tape, zip ties, and get some netting or a cage around them so the branches have a little support. They are too heavy. You should be dosing calmag and silica regularly to keep your stems growing along with the rest of the plant.

 

[Veg N Out]

Looks like what happens from Hemp Canker ...

 

[Capt.Ahab]

Hash Man has given good advice. If they are already dropping branches due to their weight imagine what will happen when they are supporting big fat buds.

 

[MrSmokeyMacPot]

Its not from the weight. They are wilting.... And getting loose at the base

 

[MassSuperSkunk]

Its not from the weight. They are wilting.... And getting loose at the base

What I get from your situation is that maybe those knuckles were formed because some type of animal was around your plants and knocked around your branches. You know when you bend a branch it forms a type of knuckle? When I did a bunch of bending, sometimes a huge knuckle would form and the branch would just fall right off the knuckle. This was rare in my experience but it has happened multiple times when I did a lot of bending. In your situation, the bending was actually big movement to the lower branches from a small animal that caused the knuckle to form and cause the lower branches to fall off from the knuckle. If that wasn't the problem then I would think that you have other internal plant issues that are showing their first signs. That's my take on your situation.

 

[cyat]

root rot

 

[MrSmokeyMacPot]

Well I dont think animals are getting in through the fence, however the "knuckle" looks like a callous/scar tissue that grew over where the first fan leaf (the one closest to the node on the main stalk) was severed. some fan leaves were removed at one point, we have since stopped doing this.

High winds could also be a cause, but I doubt that is an issue because it has only effected all 6 of the same strain.

 

[MrSmokeyMacPot]

root rot

if root rot were the case, wouldn't the whole plant be wilting and dieing?

this was one branch, and of the the one bottom branch on each plant that was wilted, the one that was left intact perked right back up after watering.....

 

[DemonPigeon]

that internal "knuckle" looks fairly normal to me, it's where you have a boundary between the woody and fiber growth of the main stem and the wood and fiber of the side branch, no idea why it's dropped the branch but I've seen that structure inside the stems of my plants when I've been messing around with disecting stems after harvest.

Something has caused the branch to be lost and (like when an old leaf is lost) it drops it from the boundary with the main stem, since it's a large established branch that barrier between the tissues is not just at the very edge like it is with a leaf or a small stem you've pruned off it's as close to the center of the mainstem as the branch was when it first started and that means it goes a long way in.

I have no idea what made it drop but the all the "knuckle" tells you is the plant has been stessed enough to make it lose a branch at the branches "root", not the exact cause of the dropping.

 

[MrSmokeyMacPot]

its like knuckle has constricted the capillary action or what-have-you that transmits water to the branch... Hemp Canker, I dont think it is, because there is no soft or wet spots nor any sign of fungus/mold or anything.

 

[Veg N Out]

Hemp Canker does exactly what you're describing if you read carefully in the big green book. You only see wet spots or signs of it in extreme humidity, something that we do not have out doors in Nor Cal.

 

[SunGrown]

I had this happen quite a bit a few years ago but only on the blue dreams then...I never did figure it out and they were huge so it didn't hurt yields, but maybe veg n out is right. I never looked into canker but am gonna research it now.

 

[SunGrown]

Come to think of it I had it happen the next year too and agin with blue dream and possible with a few of the Casey jones.

Here is an ic thread that was started on the topic of canker that may be of help
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=243981

None of mine looked as ugly at the branch loss area of any pics I just researched though, and the branches that always died and then I just pulled off, we're always within the bottom foot of the plant...

 

[OrganicBuds]

Every season I seem to have a branch do this as well. However, it always happens when it's super windy so I can't tell if it's the wind or not. Usually I support all my branches so this shouldn't happen, but it does. Always the bottom most branch of the plant. Never any signs of mold or damage to the main stem.