Help!! New grower...week 5 of flower plants are sick

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Littlebeezy

Member
I'm a new grower...this is my 3rd harvest, still learning as I go.

So..I'm growing in soil. 8 plants in 5 gal buckets under 1000w hps. Barry white strain using "age old and buddha grow" nutes. (Grow and bloom)

So everything has been going great no problems. 4 weeks into to flowering everything looked great. Now week 5, plants are showing what appears to be nitrogen toxicity, dark green leaves, extra foliage, weak stems, clawing leaves (not extreme clawing but leave tips are pointing down) there are no signs of nute burn. They're just just a little droopy...and the claw leafs seem to be random. The flowering nute Is extremely low In nitro so Im not sure if it's nitro tox...but I can't find anything else that explains the symptoms. Also, my soil ph suddenly jumped up to 7.8 at the same time the leaves started to claw. It had stayed very close to 7 the entire grow up to this point I'm freaking out...I didnt give them any nitro on their last feeding. I have no idea whats wrong. Could it be nute lockout? Root rot? Over/under watering?Some other deficiency? Any help or advice would be appreciated.
 
L

Littlebeezy

Member
No. I feed every other time I water. They get fed once a week. I'll post pics tomorrow. They are still looking pretty good overall, but something is wrong
 
blackforest

blackforest

Well-Known Member
"age old and buddha grow" nutes. (Grow and bloom)

I would say this is your problem, or part of it. When in flower, at least using a 3 part, you don't use much 'grow' if any. 'grow' formulas have high N in them, hence your N toxicity. Micro and bloom are more needed in flower. PH doesn't really make sense to be that high with soil, I take it you are checking the runoff when you say the soil ph is 7.8? Or some kind of a soil ph meter? Can you check your ppm/ec runoff? Soil stores dried up nutes. Does not sound like you are feeding too much, but if your ph is off, your plant is not absorbing key nutrients and most likely leaving them in the soil until the next time you water. Check your runoff ec and ph, that should really tell you what is going on.
 
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Littlebeezy

Member
Yeah I know I need to get my nutes straightened out. I havent used any grow nutes during flower. The age old grow is great, but imo the age old bloom has too much N. I also have the buddha bloom and grow but they are very weak compared to other products. Anyway i used 5-10-5 age old bloom for the first 3 weeks of flower...gave them 1/2 dose of 5-10-5 on week 4...(probably a mistake). I was planning on using the age old bloom throughout flowering...but after researching i realized it has too much N for late flowering. I now am feeding them buddha bloom 0.5-2-1 at double (recommended) strength with a bone meal supplement. I've just been checking the ph of the water and the soil...haven't been checking the runoff. Would it be a mistake at this point to use ph down or lemon juice to get my soil ph lower?
 
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Littlebeezy

Member
Ive only used bloom nutes during flower. I have a soil ph meter that works on water also. I've never had a ph problem in my previous grows. I should be able to check the runoff...not sure what ppm/ec is. I'll research it. Sorry if I'm repeating myself, I was having issues editing my previous post. I used age old grow for veg, age old bloom for flower...but I think there is too much N in the age old bloom so I switched to buddha bloom.
 
bird mcbride

bird mcbride

Well-Known Member
PH'ing the water,6-6.8 PH certainly wouldn't hurt. I would stay clear of non-composted organics due to the possibility of bugs. Get a liquid PH down.
 
L

Littlebeezy

Member
Cool man. Thanks for the help. I'm ordering some ph down...but it takes time to arrive so I was considering using lemon juice as a stop gap. I appreciate you taking the time to help me out. I'll let you know how it goes!
 
J

JungleTime

Well-Known Member
Well there could be a couple of another possibilities. If the light isnt penetrating the canopy then leaves are going to die off, especially in flower. During week 5 in flower the plants pulls nutes from the leaves leaving them to dry up (usually from bottom to top of the plant) which is perfectly normal. If its specifically happening at the very top of the canopy at week 5 then I would worry, if not then I wouldnt worry about it. If you could post a pic or just look it up, its easy to tell the difference from self cannibalization to nitrogen toxicity.

But your in soil, you dont need to ph your water at all. People have tested ph'ed water vs regular tap water and regular always yields more. Your soil is alive and will correct the ph itself. It would be a different story if the growing media is a inert media such as coco or rock wool.

If you could upload a picture you could get a definitive answer instead of guesses, my two cents, best of luck!
 
tropicalcannabispatient

tropicalcannabispatient

Well-Known Member
Littlebeezy said:
Yeah I know I need to get my nutes straightened out. I havent used any grow nutes during flower. The age old grow is great, but imo the age old bloom has too much N. I also have the buddha bloom and grow but they are very weak compared to other products. Anyway i used 5-10-5 age old bloom for the first 3 weeks of flower...gave them 1/2 dose of 5-10-5 on week 4...(probably a mistake). I was planning on using the age old bloom throughout flowering...but after researching i realized it has too much N for late flowering. I now am feeding them buddha bloom 0.5-2-1 at double (recommended) strength with a bone meal supplement. I've just been checking the ph of the water and the soil...haven't been checking the runoff. Would it be a mistake at this point to use ph down or lemon juice to get my soil ph lower?
Click to expand...
I believe bone meal is high in n, plus all the other n in nutrients itself i think thats the problem, i will discard the bone meal
 
L

Littlebeezy

Member
Here is a pic...hard to get good pictures of the canopy but I'm doing a scrog and most of the tops look like this. My soil probe ph meter is registering near 8. It's a cheap one but it's always worked before and gave me a reading of 7. All the noticeable problems coincided with the ph rising....been about 2 weeks and it hasn't dropped so I'm worried about it...I ordered a ph kit with ph up/down and strips to measure run off. They haven't had hardly any nitrogen in the past 2 weeks either. I don't know what caused the ph to get so high.
 

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J

JungleTime

Well-Known Member
Littlebeezy said:
Here is a pic...hard to get good pictures of the canopy but I'm doing a scrog and most of the tops look like this. My soil probe ph meter is registering near 8. It's a cheap one but it's always worked before and gave me a reading of 7. All the noticeable problems coincided with the ph rising....been about 2 weeks and it hasn't dropped so I'm worried about it...I ordered a ph kit with ph up/down and strips to measure run off. They haven't had hardly any nitrogen in the past 2 weeks either. I don't know what caused the ph to get so high.
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There's no problem with your plants in the picture you posted. Looks perfectly fine to me. You honestly dont need to cut the N completely out. People say that you cut N out completely but in reality you dont, you just give less of it. For an example the lucas formula uses a fair bit of N at the 0-2-3 ratio. Which results in 0-8ml-16ml per gallon. The micro (8ml per gallon) has enough N to go through flower without too many leaves drying off and dieing.


tropicalcannabispatient said:
I believe bone meal is high in n, plus all the other n in nutrients itself i think thats the problem, i will discard the bone meal
Click to expand...
As he replied that his bone meal is 0-8-0
Littlebeezy said:
It's a liquid bone meal nute 0-8-0
Click to expand...
it has no N.


I personally think that your fine. The ph of your soil really doesnt matter. Your run off is what matters. How I feed is that I water slowly till there is about 10-15% run off then test the ph of that water. If its drastically different your beneficial bacteria is absent. This could be a couple of reason, if you dont de-chlorinate the water or what you feed is killing off the bacteria.
 
L

Littlebeezy

Member
Ya they are doing ok...but something definitely changed for the worse. Hopefully they bounce back and finish strong. The buds were swelling and the leaves looked great...now it seems bud growth is stunted and leaves are drooping/clawing. The pic I posted is of a very small bud on the edge of the canopy...I couldn't get any good pics of the big colas because the light was on.

So soil ph being so alkaline is no big deal? I have a ph kit coming, I'll be able to get a better idea after testing the run off. Should I just not mess with it? Or ph down the water?
 
DesertGrow89

DesertGrow89

Well-Known Member
Littlebeezy said:
Ya they are doing ok...but something definitely changed for the worse. Hopefully they bounce back and finish strong. The buds were swelling and the leaves looked great...now it seems bud growth is stunted and leaves are drooping/clawing. The pic I posted is of a very small bud on the edge of the canopy...I couldn't get any good pics of the big colas because the light was on.

So soil ph being so alkaline is no big deal? I have a ph kit coming, I'll be able to get a better idea after testing the run off. Should I just not mess with it? Or ph down the water?
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Get your ph down to 6.5-7. You don't need that much P until maybe the final two weeks of flower. There are plenty of people who have used DG foliage pro 9-3-6 throughout veg AND flower with excellent results...

What is in your soil mix?
 
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Littlebeezy

Member
1/2 strength feeding...only fed them once so far starting week 5 of flower in conjunction with buddha bloom 0.5-2-1 + micronutrients
 
L

Littlebeezy

Member
I re used some of it from my last cycle to use in small pots during veg...when I transplanted into 5 gal I added new soil...so it's mostly new stuff. But I've been using the same brand/type of soil all along
 
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