Repeating the same mistakes

scruffy301 · Apr 26, 2015

Hi,

I have been growing for about 4 months now, and my plants appear to look well, but when they're about a foot tall they start turning yellow from the bottom up and eventually die. Here's a picture I took of my plant yesterday:

I saw a similar post somewhere and the problem ended up being not enough nitrogen. I've been worried about too much nitrogen because I have damaged a few plants that way, giving them really bad claws and killing the leaves. So I added some Miracle Grow yesterday, 2 capfulls of the diluted easy-to-use stuff (based on the plant's pot's size, it recommended 1-3 capfulls). I also repotted it into a 5 gallon bucket today. Here's what the plant looked like right after I transplanted it:

It appears I added too much because the tips of the leaves became a little more elongated and curled under a bit. Also it wasn't limp before I repotted it so hopefully that's just temporary until it is properly hydrated.

Here are some details on the environment: It is growing in a tent that is 2x4x5 feet. Light source is a 300-watt MH light on an 18 hrs on/6 hrs off cycle. The light is about a foot away from the top of the plant. I need to get a thermometer, but when the light is off it's probably about 65 degrees F, and when the light is on it's probably about 75-80 degrees F. I'm using a fan to get it down to this temperature. It has been a little humid due to some other plants that were in the tent, but now that they're out, the air feels mostly dry. The soil is a mixture of perlite, Black Gold Cocoblend potting soil, worm castings, and sphagnum peat moss. The only nutrients I have added was the Miracle Grow yesterday.

Anyway, I wonder if the original diagnosis of not enough nitrogen was wrong. Also, anything else you notice that's wrong would be appreciated, because I don't seem to be learning from my mistakes very well.

Thanks!

mr sunshine · Apr 26, 2015

You might be over watering them.

scruffy301 · Apr 26, 2015

Thanks, I think I have been. I recently started making sure the soil felt dry before watering, but I guess it's not been dry enough. I was going try giving it water now at the bottom of the bucket and let it absorb up through the holes to see if I have more luck with that.

green217 · Apr 26, 2015

scruffy301 said:
Thanks, I think I have been. I recently started making sure the soil felt dry before watering, but I guess it's not been dry enough. I was going try giving it water now at the bottom of the bucket and let it absorb up through the holes to see if I have more luck with that.

I let mine get real dry, just lift it to see how much water is still in the pot. when the pot is dry and light water until you see it coming out the bottom of the pot(allows roots to get oxygen, and helps flush out the salts in the miracle grow fertilizer), remove water and repeat next time it gets lightweight. I don't give my ladies fertilizer until the fan leaves look like they need it (they begin to get a little lighter). good luck!

scruffy301 · Apr 28, 2015

green217 said:
I let mine get real dry, just lift it to see how much water is still in the pot. when the pot is dry and light water until you see it coming out the bottom of the pot(allows roots to get oxygen, and helps flush out the salts in the miracle grow fertilizer), remove water and repeat next time it gets lightweight. I don't give my ladies fertilizer until the fan leaves look like they need it (they begin to get a little lighter). good luck!

Thanks! I aerated the soil some and let the temp get up a little higher to try to evaporate more water because it is still pretty wilted today.

green217 · Apr 28, 2015

scruffy301 said:
Thanks! I aerated the soil some and let the temp get up a little higher to try to evaporate more water because it is still pretty wilted today.

In my experience mj likes to dry out in between watering. It causes the roots to grow in search of water, not to mention the roots need some air also. I've looked into hydro some and seems the more air you get to the roots, the better. In soil when you allow run off and pour out the excess water it cause capillaries to form allowing your roots to get air in soil.

rkymtnman · Apr 28, 2015

what is the NPK ratio of miracle gro?

scruffy301 · Apr 28, 2015

rkymtnman said:
what is the NPK ratio of miracle gro?

It was Pour and Feed .02-.02-.02. It said for plants that size to give 1-3 capfuls, and I gave it 2. It wasn't time release (made that mistake 2 plants ago). I couldn't find anything around 7-9-5 that I read someone else used with the cocoblend soil, so I tried to do something that I thought would not make it worse but would provide some nitrogen (originally I though nitrogen deficiency was the problem but I was worried about adding too much because I've done that on all my previous attempts.)

scruffy301 · Apr 28, 2015

green217 said:
In my experience mj likes to dry out in between watering. It causes the roots to grow in search of water, not to mention the roots need some air also. I've looked into hydro some and seems the more air you get to the roots, the better. In soil when you allow run off and pour out the excess water it cause capillaries to form allowing your roots to get air in soil.

I didn't want to stress the plant out worse but the mix seems to be holding water pretty tight so I re-repotted it, removing some soil and adding more perlite in. I think it has perked up a little. I will post a pic later. Thanks for the advice!

rkymtnman · Apr 28, 2015

i'd switch nutes if i were you.

since you are in coco (kinda), i'd look at H3AD's formula for Coco. general hydro micro and bloom and epsom salts. google it and you'll see what the ratios are for each.

it's for MJ specifically unlike miracle gro which tries to cover every plant imaginable.

greasemonkeymann · Apr 28, 2015

scruffy301 said:
Hi,

I have been growing for about 4 months now, and my plants appear to look well, but when they're about a foot tall they start turning yellow from the bottom up and eventually die. Here's a picture I took of my plant yesterday:

I saw a similar post somewhere and the problem ended up being not enough nitrogen. I've been worried about too much nitrogen because I have damaged a few plants that way, giving them really bad claws and killing the leaves. So I added some Miracle Grow yesterday, 2 capfulls of the diluted easy-to-use stuff (based on the plant's pot's size, it recommended 1-3 capfulls). I also repotted it into a 5 gallon bucket today. Here's what the plant looked like right after I transplanted it:

It appears I added too much because the tips of the leaves became a little more elongated and curled under a bit. Also it wasn't limp before I repotted it so hopefully that's just temporary until it is properly hydrated.

Here are some details on the environment: It is growing in a tent that is 2x4x5 feet. Light source is a 300-watt MH light on an 18 hrs on/6 hrs off cycle. The light is about a foot away from the top of the plant. I need to get a thermometer, but when the light is off it's probably about 65 degrees F, and when the light is on it's probably about 75-80 degrees F. I'm using a fan to get it down to this temperature. It has been a little humid due to some other plants that were in the tent, but now that they're out, the air feels mostly dry. The soil is a mixture of perlite, Black Gold Cocoblend potting soil, worm castings, and sphagnum peat moss. The only nutrients I have added was the Miracle Grow yesterday.

Anyway, I wonder if the original diagnosis of not enough nitrogen was wrong. Also, anything else you notice that's wrong would be appreciated, because I don't seem to be learning from my mistakes very well.

Thanks!

hold off on any diagnostics until the plant acclimates from the transplant.
Depending on how much physical trauma it has endured it may be pissed from that.
Ditch the miracle grow man... You can do so much better... keep in mind I am an organic grower so it's sorta philosophy to me.
You may want to train that lady to max your yields too, keep in mind an untrained plant when triggered will go, and go..
Make sure the light isn't too close, a MH gets hot, your plant doesn't exhibit any heat stress though.
How big was the old container? Your plant looks like it may have simply been rootbound.
Wait about 10 days, and you should see some encouraging growth.
Also, try not to feed nutrients and transplant too close to each other.
Get a thermometer that read humidity as well, and get the remote sensor as close to the tops of the plant as possible, it's pointless to measure heat at a cooler source, you want to make sure it's ok at it's hottest area.

green217 · Apr 28, 2015

Yeah u can do better than miracle grow for sure. I use general hydroponics stuff.
I ran the " GO box my first run and was stoked with the final results. It is a lot harder to mess up with organic, hard to burn your plants.

old shol4evr · Apr 28, 2015

greasemonkey is right,
i have a suggestion for you it might help it did me when i first started.everyone said to lift your pots to judge if you need to feed ,well i like to put river rock in the bottom 1 in of my pots for air to roots and to keep bottom of pot out of my runoff ,i also drain all runoff after feeding and clean my catch tray,but with the lift method as the plant mature the weight does also. so what i did was have a pot same soil ,rocks setting in my room and when im giving the girls some loving / i reach over and lean over my mock up pot and judge the empty one to the planted one, you will be able to judge the weigh better this way. when you get use to the feel of leaning the pots you will never look back, also it would be better to feed tea than miracle grow,flora nutrients are cheap and they do the same job as the high dollar ones,you learn to read and listen to what the plants tell you,there is no miricle nutrient out there it is all in your tecnic,anyway hope this will help you out a little

scruffy301 · Apr 28, 2015

greasemonkeymann said:
hold off on any diagnostics until the plant acclimates from the transplant.
Depending on how much physical trauma it has endured it may be pissed from that.
Ditch the miracle grow man... You can do so much better... keep in mind I am an organic grower so it's sorta philosophy to me.
You may want to train that lady to max your yields too, keep in mind an untrained plant when triggered will go, and go..
Make sure the light isn't too close, a MH gets hot, your plant doesn't exhibit any heat stress though.
How big was the old container? Your plant looks like it may have simply been rootbound.
Wait about 10 days, and you should see some encouraging growth.
Also, try not to feed nutrients and transplant too close to each other.
Get a thermometer that read humidity as well, and get the remote sensor as close to the tops of the plant as possible, it's pointless to measure heat at a cooler source, you want to make sure it's ok at it's hottest area.

Yes, it was root bound (had to google it, didn't know what it meant, I'm a complete gardening noob). The container it was in previously was probably about a gallon. The roots were coming out of the holes in the bottom.

I am encouraged that it hasn't gotten any worse because the same exact thing happened to my last plant, only it kept getting more and more yellow. There hasn't been a remarkable change yet, but I do think the leaves on the bottom have gotten slightly greener than yesterday, and it's not wilting any worse than it was. By this stage last time, every day another row of leaves was turning yellow.

I just ordered a thermometer/humidity reader. I should be able to suspend it near the top of the plant. I have held my hand under the light next to the top of the plant and it doesn't feel too hot. I will need to change the light fixture to one that is air-cooled soon because it is probably only a few more inches until it approaches too much heat. Also up until about a week ago there were a lot of other plants in there (not MJ plants), and they were making the tent really humid. I eventually set up a fan but I guess the humidity would have been keeping the soil from drying and all the oxygen must have been depleted around the roots. Now my plant has the space to itself.

scruffy301 · Apr 28, 2015

green217 said:
Yeah u can do better than miracle grow for sure. I use general hydroponics stuff.
I ran the " GO box my first run and was stoked with the final results. It is a lot harder to mess up with organic, hard to burn your plants.

I was hoping that the worm castings mixed in would make it so I wouldn't need to use nutrients but I guess that was naive. I'm thinking I need to do whatever is simplest with nutrients since the most basic things like watering are giving me trouble. I will try and research this. Should have a little time while the plant is recovering.

scruffy301 · Apr 28, 2015

old shol4evr said:
greasemonkey is right,
i have a suggestion for you it might help it did me when i first started.everyone said to lift your pots to judge if you need to feed ,well i like to put river rock in the bottom 1 in of my pots for air to roots and to keep bottom of pot out of my runoff ,i also drain all runoff after feeding and clean my catch tray,but with the lift method as the plant mature the weight does also. so what i did was have a pot same soil ,rocks setting in my room and when im giving the girls some loving / i reach over and lean over my mock up pot and judge the empty one to the planted one, you will be able to judge the weigh better this way. when you get use to the feel of leaning the pots you will never look back, also it would be better to feed tea than miracle grow,flora nutrients are cheap and they do the same job as the high dollar ones,you learn to read and listen to what the plants tell you,there is no miricle nutrient out there it is all in your tecnic,anyway hope this will help you out a little

Thanks

. I searched and found some feeding schedules for those nutrients, looks like maybe once I get the basics down of not overwatering then that shouldn't be too hard to add in.

green217 · Apr 28, 2015

scruffy301 said:
I was hoping that the worm castings mixed in would make it so I wouldn't need to use nutrients but I guess that was naive. I'm thinking I need to do whatever is simplest with nutrients since the most basic things like watering are giving me trouble. I will try and research this. Should have a little time while the plant is recovering.

you may have trouble getting your soil "alive" if you have been giving it salt based fertilizer (MG). I say living because when you give your soil organics nutes you have lots of benificial living things in it. The salt in Miracle Grow or any fertilizer that isn't organic is going to kill most of those beneficial. Only way I see you getting around that is if you have a lot of new soil that hasn't been dosed with the MIracle Grow when you transplanted them. I would not use Miracle Grow myself with mj, but I have seen some people on here use it with some success. But you see a lot more new guys such as yourself not do so well with it on their 1st grow or two. I agree that you should start with the "easiest way" to avoid harming your plants. IMO that would be going organic. Like I said before it's harder to harm your plants with organic nutes compared to salt based. I would recommend bottled organic nutes. Also does that MG have Calcium and Magnesium in it? These are most important micro nutrients for growing MJ IMO. Make sure your plants are getting some if not. Symptoms of CalMag deficiency are yellow/brown spots on your leaves.

scruffy301 said:
Yes, it was root bound (had to google it, didn't know what it meant, I'm a complete gardening noob). The container it was in previously was probably about a gallon. The roots were coming out of the holes in the bottom.

I am encouraged that it hasn't gotten any worse because the same exact thing happened to my last plant, only it kept getting more and more yellow. There hasn't been a remarkable change yet, but I do think the leaves on the bottom have gotten slightly greener than yesterday, and it's not wilting any worse than it was. By this stage last time, every day another row of leaves was turning yellow.

I just ordered a thermometer/humidity reader. I should be able to suspend it near the top of the plant. I have held my hand under the light next to the top of the plant and it doesn't feel too hot. I will need to change the light fixture to one that is air-cooled soon because it is probably only a few more inches until it approaches too much heat. Also up until about a week ago there were a lot of other plants in there (not MJ plants), and they were making the tent really humid. I eventually set up a fan but I guess the humidity would have been keeping the soil from drying and all the oxygen must have been depleted around the roots. Now my plant has the space to itself.

humidity is ok during vegging, just wait longer to water

researching · Apr 28, 2015

I feel repetitive but a PH meter and a TDS meter are cheap investments to help guarantee success. Also get rid of miracle grow. For the same money you could go to home depot and get Alaska fish fertilizer. Way better and you can't burn your plants. I'd say you need a little more nitrogen. With the mix having coco calmag is a great idea as well.

scruffy301 · Apr 29, 2015

green217 said:
you may have trouble getting your soil "alive" if you have been giving it salt based fertilizer (MG). I say living because when you give your soil organics nutes you have lots of benificial living things in it. The salt in Miracle Grow or any fertilizer that isn't organic is going to kill most of those beneficial. Only way I see you getting around that is if you have a lot of new soil that hasn't been dosed with the MIracle Grow when you transplanted them. I would not use Miracle Grow myself with mj, but I have seen some people on here use it with some success. But you see a lot more new guys such as yourself not do so well with it on their 1st grow or two. I agree that you should start with the "easiest way" to avoid harming your plants. IMO that would be going organic. Like I said before it's harder to harm your plants with organic nutes compared to salt based. I would recommend bottled organic nutes. Also does that MG have Calcium and Magnesium in it? These are most important micro nutrients for growing MJ IMO. Make sure your plants are getting some if not. Symptoms of CalMag deficiency are yellow/brown spots on your leaves.

humidity is ok during vegging, just wait longer to water

I only gave it MG once. That was before I transplanted it, and I tried to remove as much dirt from the roots as I could without damaging them while transplanting. There were maybe 3-4 cups of soil in the root ball when I transplanted I think. It's still wilting about the same as it was after the transplant, but no more leaves have turned yellow. I thought they looked a little greener today, but hard to tell.

I ordered Fox Farm liquid nutrient trio. It had good reviews and the feeding schedule looked simple enough. It should arrive this week but I won't feed it until I post some more pics and get the go-ahead. Thanks!

scruffy301 · Apr 29, 2015

researching said:
I feel repetitive but a PH meter and a TDS meter are cheap investments to help guarantee success. Also get rid of miracle grow. For the same money you could go to home depot and get Alaska fish fertilizer. Way better and you can't burn your plants. I'd say you need a little more nitrogen. With the mix having coco calmag is a great idea as well.

Thanks. I remember seeing fish fertilizer at the garden shop and I wish I had gotten that instead of the Miracle Grow! Also ordered a pH meter yesterday.

Repeating the same mistakes

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