Sick Friends - Any ideas? Iron def?

[logrythm]

I put my post and pics in the wrong place I think:

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?p=873380#post873380

Should I try to move it?

Can anyone help?


Cheers

Logrythm

(Yay, it's raining outside! )

 

[Sinfuldreams]

Yeah rewrite it here.
But what are you feeding it?

Sin

 

[logrythm]

moved now...

moved now...

Hi all

My first post




As you can see I have a little prob.

This has come and gone half a dozen times or more.
It hasn't killed many plants though it does extend the time before flowering as I have to wait for it to recover.

It takes about 2-3 weeks to get like this and the same roughly to recover.
They are all my clones, sorry I have no idea what variety they are, it does not seem to occur at any particular stage or time either.

I have just recently increased their pot sizes across the board (I use three stages of pot size; clone, grow and flower) thinking that they may have been a little cramped. Until doing this I have done nothing out of the ordinary to correct this prob. I've usually had enough healthy ones to go on with

I have a very minimal setup.
Just a humidicrib with bottom heat that is off to one side of a 400w HPS.
I clone the mothers, they go into humidicrib in pots of coco peat, i use filtered water at this point.
They strike, I put em below the light in the tray with mum and they grow.
Not every time obviously :-(

About 30% on average are going like this. Most of the time none but sometimes nearly all. The mother too. I have two varieties and both suffer equally.

I found this:

The Complete guide to Sick Plants,pH, and Pest troubles!

Which is *excellent*.
My eyes got a bit blurry and some of the yellowing leaves started to look alike but I think the iron deficiency photos seem closest to mine.
Would you guys agree?

I use the cheapest nutrients, just the 2 in 1 stuff. Always have and without this prob. Pests and disease were my probs before, I seem to have them beat these days though.

If I put them outside they recover well.
I only flower them outside by the way.
My thing is to propagate/vegetate inside all year round and place them out when they are ideally about 7-9 weeks old or about 30 cm. Which ever comes first ;-)
The ones pictured would normally be placed out at that point, they will be anyway, they'll just take 3 weeks to recover :-(
They then can do this:



Aside from this my main push is with annually seeded in-situ plants anyway and the clones fill in the gap(s).

I hope I haven't rambled too much!
Can anyone help me identify the deficiency or disease these have?

TIA

Cheers
logrythm

 

[logrythm]

Yeah rewrite it here.
But what are you feeding it?

Sin

they are getting plain old 2in1 'Hi-Gen Growth Formula'

 

[Sinfuldreams]

They Finish Nice.
Only thing I can think of is they get root bound before you transplant that last time.

They get better after the transplants right?

Sin

 

[MTF-Sandman]

Can you give any more details on the nutes (NPK) and is that spelled as it's labelled on the container? I couldn't find anything on google...

How much are you feeding them, how often, what's the PH (going in and coming out)?

My initial guess is low PH locking out iron...

 

[logrythm]

Thanks for the replies Sin

They Finish Nice.

Yes, yummy. Those buds grew in Winter, I'm annoyed this prob has meant I haven't had any to go out till late this Summer :-(

Only thing I can think of is they get root bound before you transplant that last time.

They get better after the transplants right?

Sin

Not after transplants really more like only after they get very yellow. I just did transplants recently to try it out.
Any other yellowing like this of any plant of any species usually results in the leaf being lost afterwards, not with these though.

The cycle seems to be they yellow almost to white then green up again.
It has me baffled!
That same plant I photographed 2 days ago now looks like this:



The colour looks different as they are still under the HPS for this shot but you can easily see the green returning.
The plant in the bottom left is a different variety, it is the last one I have and I had given it up for dead around a month ago, it has since recovered completely; phew. It grows nicer buds than the other one too! I did nothing extra to help it recover, no transplanting since it struck, no sunlight, nothing.
The fact that these two plants are very different ages, both share the same media/water/nutes/lighting really throws me! Argh!

And now a DVD-DL disk has decided it wont work!! Not my week!

logrythm

 

[logrythm]

Can you give any more details on the nutes (NPK) and is that spelled as it's labelled on the container? I couldn't find anything on google...

How much are you feeding them, how often, what's the PH (going in and coming out)?

My initial guess is low PH locking out iron...

Hi Sandman

Maybe you are right, however sometimes there plants in the same tray as each other and they don't all suffer.

I've been a gardener (both kinds) for a long time and this is unlike anything I have seen.

The NPK is 26:11:36.
I usually give half strength (5ml/L) till they go outside. However if I increase this I don't see any real effect one way or the other.

I stopped measuring my PH long ago when I found using filtered water made it perfect, it was too alkaline by a lot before that due to the tap water. So I don't know my PH any more. I'll dig the test kit out and check it and post the results here soon.

The product is Hydroponic Generations Hy-Gen Growth, made in Australia.

Cheers
logrythm

(the police helicopter just went over )

 

[Guest]

Can you give any more details on the nutes (NPK) and is that spelled as it's labelled on the container? I couldn't find anything on google...

How much are you feeding them, how often, what's the PH (going in and coming out)?

My initial guess is low PH locking out iron...

Im confused.....

I was right with you on the iron lockout and all that.....

but iron should be more available at ph less than 6.5

The plants seem to point at iron def and the ph is probably over 7......

LOWERING ph should make a difference...

IMO....

 

[Blackvelvet]

The NPK is 26:11:36.
I usually give half strength (5ml/L)

That works out to be way too strong according to my calculations. Maybe that is the reason for the claw shaped leaves.

 

[MTF-Sandman]

Doh...I saw the word peat and assumed it was a coco/peat mix that was causing it to be acidic.

So you're running straight coco right? What brand, did you flush it?

Also, how often are you watering/feeding and how much?

The PH of your water can change drastically depending on the local climate, so never assume that it's going to be stable.

 

[logrythm]

Im confused.....

I was right with you on the iron lockout and all that.....

but iron should be more available at ph less than 6.5

The plants seem to point at iron def and the ph is probably over 7......

LOWERING ph should make a difference...

IMO....

OK, I dug out the old test kit (horrible thing) and tested the present solution which is about two days old and the Ph is around 6-7.
I kind of remembered that from when I had a much larger setup. Still no clues here :-( My girlfriend is an *actual* horticulturalist, not to mention lovely, and she too is stumped.

We will try an iron chelate spray and see what happens.

They recover fairly quick on their own so I don't know if I will definately see a change due to a supplement.
More likely using it will hopefully prevent the prob.

Still wringing my hands.

Thanks you people, hopefully we are getting there

 

[logrythm]

Doh...I saw the word peat and assumed it was a coco/peat mix that was causing it to be acidic.

So you're running straight coco right? What brand, did you flush it?

Also, how often are you watering/feeding and how much?

The PH of your water can change drastically depending on the local climate, so never assume that it's going to be stable.

Yes just coco, no brand name, no slow release fertiliser in it and flushed clear.

I feed maybe twice a week and only half strength while they are indoors, 3/4 to full strength when outside, in fact they soon go on bloom when placed out.

I have tried full strength indoors and saw no real change one way or the other.
I don't want much growth rate indoors anyway, I want to keep the mothers ticking over slowly, producing just enough new growth for cloning and the clones themselves don't get to do much while inside anyway. All the growth starts when they get outside.
My light cycle matches the longest day in this part of the world so they always flower when I put them out, just after a growth spurt that is!

Like this morning:

 

[logrythm]

You guys are great

You guys are great

We really appreciate your efforts to help us on this one, hopefully we all are increasing knowledge even further

 

[The Slickster]

Your Hy-Gen growth even though labeled as having macro elements and chelated trace elements, may be too low in iron for a coco substrate. But definitely looks to be an iron deficiency, adding it seperately as you said, should work. You could also either change the nutrient fertilizer to one more adapted to coco, or supplement the iron, possibly with some Cal-Mag, or ferrous sulphate.

 

[logrythm]

Hi Slickster

I don't use any pump or plumbing these days.

I give them 2000ml of solution till they use/soak that up.
I then wait a couple of days or so and put another 2000ml in.
Every few weeks I flush the pots and clean the tray.
In this picture you can just make out the tray, it's a standard tray size:

It is a cuttings setup more than a production one really.
If all goes well they are only in there for a few weeks after stricking, till they are 30cm/12in then bud them outside.
They only get to about 45cm/18in when finished.
Much taller and the skinny stems can't hold up.

Oh, I picked up a great bit of advice on a gardening show that helps strengthen the stems (before they go outside to bud).
Bend them, from just below the tip to down the stem a few inches.
Not much, no kinks. So the tip would hang almost over 180 degrees or so once you have finished molesting them.
Make them look like they have had a big wilt. I even spray them with water afterwards to keep the tips weighed over for a bit longer.
Weight training ;-)
They right themselves again pretty quickly.
A few days later you will notice they have gotten much stronger and resist you bending them now.
Not sure but this could increase potential yields in a high production setup.

Let me know how you go ;-)

As I've said earlier I've recently increased my pot sizes as I've wondered if the roots might be a little too wet or the crowns too close to the water level or too small a root mass compared to the leaf area etc. Having said that I have had plants in larger pots, mothers actually, go yellow so... dunno as we say here.

I hope I don't sound as though I know what I'm doing ;-)
I guess I have a lot of plant knowledge but I am making this system up as I go along.
It's been going for around 12 months now and the yield so far would say it's a success.
I know it cannot be described as optimal but if I can get it to work slightly better it will be perfect for me.
This is the *only* prob it has, I sorted the bugs out ages ago, so I'm almost there hopefully

I'm hopeful iron is the answer :wink:

Cheers and thanks for your time.

 

[logrythm]

Your Hy-Gen growth even though labeled as having macro elements and chelated trace elements, may be too low in iron for a coco substrate.

Are you suggesting coco substrate effects iron uptake? Hmmmm, interesting ;-)

And to your question on temperature, it's around 30 degrees celcius ambient.
I have no water thermometer so I don't know the water temperature, around 26-28 degrees celcius I guess.

Cheers
logrythm

 

[The Slickster]

It is more of being about a nutrient line not being specifically suited to coco. It being inert, if you do have supplemental iron, it should provide rapid uptake, maybe a little too fast, so go light and go often with the iron supplementation rather than full doses all at once. That is just how the coco is, it requires micro elements in certain proportions, which coco fertilizers provide. Since your N-P-K fertilizer has some macro nutrients along with chelated micro-elements, supplementing iron should do the trick without raising any more other micronutrient deficiencies, an organic source would be best as iron left behind for smoking is no good. There is iron glucoheptonate which will function in the formation of enzymes and serve well to transfer energy in the plant. The gluco part being the sugar (glucose) and the heptonate the chelator. All heavy minerals that can fall out of solution need chelators to keep them in solution and make them available to the plants. No energy was where the leaves were almost white, it could not get there as there was no iron for transportation of nutrient energy. Likely as your nutrient line is chelated, in coco the iron was probably used up first, leaving it short of whatever little the next feeding had before it quickly used it up too fast each time, till it was too late. You could still of course go with the ferrous sulphate better know as sulphate of iron, either way, not EDTA;

http://www.growthproducts.com/docs/fp_iron_chelate.pdf

http://www.growthproducts.com/docs/organic_iron_ag.pdf

http://www.growthproducts.com/doSearch.cfm

Yes this sugar based iron sounds just about right for flowering, but I am still trying to look into whether it really is organic as well as iron citric acid;

http://www.growthproducts.com/docs/x-xtra_iron_hort.pdf

This Iron Lignosulphonate supplement looks promising as it is OMRI certified:

http://www.uas-cropmaster.com/microboostorganic.htm

Most inorganic sources of iron when applied should not be immediately mixed with anything else (nutrients). But organics always usually meld together quite nicely like liquid seaweed and fish-mix.

Of couse if you wanted to make it easy, giving an all around micro nutrient that is organic like EarthJuice Microblast would suffice. Greensand has a high PH, but is composed of iron-potassium silicate from marine deposit origins. So a tea of it with just the right amount of fulvic acid or the like to balance out the PH with PH testing would work as well. But it is high in potassium, so you would have to really need potassium during flowering, and you would still have to spread out the dosages so no potassium (K) in large amounts locks out other micronutrients like Calcium, Zinc, Magnesium, Iron, etc.

 

[logrythm]

That all sounds very good.
I might look into coco specific nutrients.

Groovy!

 

[logrythm]

Coco specific nutrients

Coco specific nutrients

OOOOOOO-Yeah!!

I was able to buy some coco-specific nutrients and they (seem) to love it.

No more yellow!!!

This may be of use to someone who is using a substantial growth period with coco substrate or media. As their plants accelerate they may deplete the iron from the nutrients.

I think it might be because I try to keep my feeding to an absolute minimum, which is a big part of my pest and disease strategy, that I have encountered this deficiency.
If I was going for more feeding and growth/production I may not have encountered this, again I dunno for sure.

Thanks for everybody's brain space and goodwill.


See ya