Why are my plants dying?

[Guest]

I made a thread a few weeks ago focusing on the exact issues I was having then and continue to have now. At the time, I was growing in Miracle Grow Organic Choice. I am currently growing in moonshine mix. My plants are just not growing. Period. They are over a month old from sprout right now, and are all under 2-3 inches. They are constantly drooped over and the bottom set of leaves continualy yellow up and drop off. At first I was told it was an N deficency. Then overwatering. I water every 2-3 days when the cup is BONE dry and light. Again, moonshine mix soil. Water is tap with a p.H around 6.8. Some of the leaves besides being extremely yellow with droopiness have turned red in certain spots. Still mostly yellow. Heat is about 85-87 lights on, 75ish lights off. Casey Jones is strain. All are 2-3 inches under 200 watts of CFL. 12 in total, all cease to grow. Opinions? Thanks.

 

[JonnybeGood]

have u overwatered it a lot in the past. or have u always been letting it dry out good before each watering?

i think it might be rootrot.. if its been a whole month and no more growth.
check if its rootbound too. they are pretty small but you never know..
also see if u cant get the temp down like 5 degrees. that would probably help.

what do you feed it with every watering?

 

[NorCalChron]

moonshine uses just water..

id try taking a look at the roots.. maybe a transplant is in order.

 

[Guest]

Temps were around 95 when they were started and growth was fine the first week or two prior to me dropping the temp even more to 85ish max. Also, these were all just transfered into these cups around 2 weeks ago from their miracle grow soil. They started greening up and looking heathier, then went downhill yet again.

 

[Guest]

Are the leaves crispy?

 

[Guest]

A few leaves that fell off were curled up,yellow/brown, and essentially dead. Its hard to judge if the GREEN leaves are "crispy" to the touch as they are drooped so much.

 

[Guest]

Still no change in the plants, probably worse off than they were a few days ago.

 

[Bliss]

too hot, too close to the light. back off a bit. Sounds like what was happening to mine. Is there a fan? If not add it.

 

[HeadyPete]

Have you checked runoff ph? If there is lime in that mix then your soil could be high ph and 6.8 water is not low enough to bring it down. What are you using to test ph?

They don't look too bad there, they look like N def, but I don't think it is from inadequate feeding. Perhaps lockout. What exactly is in your moonshine mix?

 

[Guest]

Fox Farms Potting Mix, Black Gold Potting Mix, Fox Farm Ocean Forest, Coco Brick, and Light Warrior. I fed them some fish fert last night, but this morning they are still the same. I would classify the leaves as "brittle" to be honest - they are basically stuck pointing down and seem fragile. Going to transplant, but I'm not sure about root rot.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

my opinion, for whatever it's worth, strongly stands for your
symptoms being caused by low pH of your medium. the leaves tend to stay curled down, sometimes looking like overwatering, and have a mottled structure. also, most municipal tap water has a sodium content that will build up in the medium over time. remember these pointers and best of luck.

 

[SouthernSmoker]

tell us more about your enviroment please
humidity and air circulation are there fans can you cool the room better just a little more info please !!! thanks

 

[Guest]

Humidity ranges day by day. Never gets higher than 65%ish and usually never below 35%. Averages 40's. I had a small fan blowing over the canopy previously. I am also using 2 75 cfm computer fans in a passive intake/negative pressure system. Day temps are around 85ish on the hottest days then as the peak of the day goes by around 80-85 until night when it dips below 75.

 

[SouthernSmoker]

are they in a cab or a grow box and why did you stop using the fan ?
try turning the fans around and making them remove air and make the intake passive .

 

[Guest]

LAWHATTT

Why did you cut the tops off your plastic cups? Was there some reason you wanted to limit the volume of soil that your roots could grow into? Man, I always fill my 16 oz. cups all the way to the top .....and with great results.

Look.........stop messing around with making your own soil mix. Remember, KISS (keep it simple stupid)......
Take some of that FFOF soil, toss in a small handful of perlite and transplant all your babies into 1 gal. pots. Do not fert for 10 days to 2 weeks. I'll bet within 1 week the kids will be doing much better........betchya!!

Les

 

[Guest]

The intake is passive.. my bad on the mess up. I have a PASSIVE exhaust, and 2 75 cfm fans exhausting air. This is a grow box. Dimensions are 2x3 for the entire grow box. I also have a fan inside blowing air around, but today I purchased a stronger fan to help inside.

I cut the tops off of the 16oz cups because it was easier to tell when they were light and needed watering. The cup seemed like overkill as they were growing from seed and I've seen people take plants up to 6+ inches in these cups. The soil should be fine, it is tried and tested beyond what my own soil mix would recieve as far as testing. I just finished transplanting into large pots, although they do look very very small for the pots. The plants had alot of root at the bottom and they looked heathy.

 

[HeadyPete]

Well after all this info I am gonna say that first that soil mix is way hot on the ferts in it, plus the added fish fert now. Overfeeding (nitrogen toxicity) stunts growth and droops plants, the high fert content literally pulls the moisture from the plant.

Second, 200 watts of CFL is too much in a box for those small plants. I imagine it gets pretty warm in there under the lights.

Also, I'd bet your ph is low, fish fert is acidic and you didn't add any lime to the mix. You need to adjust your fert solution up or down to get your runoff to 6.6 ish. If your water is 6.8 than I think the soil ph is low.

So, transplant into coco soil with no fert in it, when plants pick up feed some half strength liquid grow. Also unscrew half your lights until the plants get bigger. Keep the ph properly adjusted.

When they really start growing again you can use your soil mix there and turn on all the lights and start regular feed program.

 

[igrowdadankest]

This Kinda looks like what is going on with one of my plants its in mg organic and i was using tap water and the leaves were yellowing then turning white and would dry up and just fall of so i checked the ph of my water run off and it was 9.0 way too alkaliney i addes some pickling lime and flushed my container and it seems to be getting better ill keep you updated.

 

[HeadyPete]

Igrowdadankest,

Why would you add lime if your runoff is high? Lime is alkaline.

I'd flush/transplant to new soil quick, then use ph down to lower your nutes enough to counteract your high soil ph. Nutes may have to be 6 or lower to get your soil to a nice 6.6ish.

 

[sativalicious]

Hi HeadyPete and others.

I have been dealing with a similar problem. I was not measuring my input water for my first two months of watering. I was simply bombing my 100% FFOF soil with a pH between 8.8 and 9.0. Interestingly, my tap water has a seemingly low PPM, at just 23-25.

Of course, I leeched the soil a lot with pH adjusted water (between 5.8 and 6.5). I believe this helped bring the pH of run-off down considerably, from somewhere well above 7 to just below 7.

(Is this "buffering" in action? I should read about that. So much to learn, it seems. External links would be helpful for such things as linking to information, elsewhere. How do people in this forum refer peeps to info elsewhere?)

So headypete, are you saying that a person wanting to modify the pH of their soil should not be feeding with a 6.5 solution but instead a lower pH of like 6.0? Will this make the soil's pH swing down faster? Would watering with pH of 5.9 or 5.8 make it swing to 6.5 even faster?

I believe I noticed a slight mottling color in the leaves, which might be due to the swings in pH I have been creating. (cuz I was trying to do the same thing, thinking it was like a momentum/balance thing. Clearly, chemists everywhere must be laughing at me). But, I did not get serious mottling. It was barely perceptible, unlike the typical "sick plant photos" of same.

Could I get the same "soil pH adjustment" result by consistent feeding with a 6.5 or 6.6 solution? (instead of a dramatically lower value)

Thx!
sat

PS: BTW, I purchased AN "pH down" to adjust my water when the nutes don't do it enough. At the rate I am using it, the bottle should last me about 20 years. It's so powerful! And so heavy too! Freaking amazing!