Do these need food?!

I transplanted them 2 days ago and they seem to be growing again... all 4 of my plants are dying at the bottom sets of leaves... all kinds of light green color and yellowing...new growth looks fine tho. I think they need to start receiving their vegging nutes, ive got fox farm big grow, would it be alright to start feeding them now?? either 1/8 strength once or twice a week, or 1/4 strength, they are all 18 days old. The lower leaves are papery feeling and drying out, turning yellow, not sure why... temps/humidity/watering is good....

Thanks in advance!

bueller?? anyone?

Well, bro, you gots a few issues. You're gonna need more than nutes to fix you're problem. From the looks of your soil, you need to water them. Better yet, you need better soil. That stuff you're usin' don't look to hot. Get some good high quality potting soil (NOT MIRACLE GRO POTTING SOIL!!!) and transplant those puppies into it. You'll need some bigger pots, too. Water them all the way through when you transplant. You're also gonna need some better light. That shit ain't gonna cut it. Sorry, but it's the truth. CFL's are cool, but get some designed for plant growing. You also need to cut those yellow leaves off. Use a nice sharp blade. Also, you need to keep air flowing and keep it cool in the grow area. There's lots of other things we could go into, but start with those.

BTW, you're gonna have leaves near the bottom that die. I cut a few off every week. It's nothin' bad. Now if the leaves near the top do it, you got issues.

Ok, I will take a stab at it.

First off you did not say what kind of soil you used. I would say it is soil from outside your house with Perlite mixed in. See.. right now i am guessing. So I truely can not give you good advice. We need as much info as possible to go along with your pictures.. Pictures are very important also.. Just a little more information.. What soil, what lights, what temps, what PH of water, What PH of soil. Never to much Information.

squishdoggydog said:

Well, bro, you gots a few issues. You're gonna need more than nutes to fix you're problem. From the looks of your soil, you need to water them. Better yet, you need better soil. That stuff you're usin' don't look to hot. Get some good high quality potting soil (NOT MIRACLE GRO POTTING SOIL!!!) and transplant those puppies into it. You'll need some bigger pots, too. Water them all the way through when you transplant. You're also gonna need some better light. That shit ain't gonna cut it. Sorry, but it's the truth. CFL's are cool, but get some designed for plant growing. You also need to cut those yellow leaves off. Use a nice sharp blade. Also, you need to keep air flowing and keep it cool in the grow area. There's lots of other things we could go into, but start with those.

Click to expand...

The soil is moist an inch into it, hasnt been watered for 2 days. Yes the soil is from outside my house, im not sure where to get any good soil around here. About the lighting, im pretty confident that the light setup I have will do a good enough job for what im after with my first grow.. from the pictures I have seen of CFL grows this is a decent amount of light.. I have a total of 300watts with the CFL's... x8 4100k 18w, x3 45w 3000k CFL's, and a 17w 5000k CFL. As far as the fan goes, the door to the closet is pretty much open/cracked all the time since lights are 24/7 I have 3 fans circulating air.. and one extracting the air from the closet and bringing in fresh air from a nearby window. Temps are 78-80 degrees, humidity right now is 54%

squishdoggydog said:

BTW, you're gonna have leaves near the bottom that die. I cut a few off every week. It's nothin' bad. Now if the leaves near the top do it, you got issues.

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All new growth is slighty lighter green but no deformities at all.

Lord Dangly Bits said:

Ok, I will take a stab at it.

First off you did not say what kind of soil you used. I would say it is soil from outside your house with Perlite mixed in. See.. right now i am guessing. So I truely can not give you good advice. We need as much info as possible to go along with your pictures.. Pictures are very important also.. Just a little more information.. What soil, what lights, what temps, what PH of water, What PH of soil. Never to much Information.

Click to expand...

Good guess, the soil is from outside, and yeah from what I read it isnt very good soil.. I did do a soil test and it tested med/high for nitrogen, med/high for phosph. and high for potassium. Lights are listed above, ph of water is close to 7.0 as well.. im using litmus so its tough to tell. soil ph could be a little high but the runoff looks almost the same as the water on the litmus tests.


here are some more pics. the last few are from a few days ago before I transplanted them.

here, Check out what you can do with a few CFLS and a T-5 single tube light. The little plants in front were taken out of the grow about 2 weeks ago. I am seeing how much abuse they can go through. I only want two plants this time. It is to hot outside during summer here.. like 118 degrees and shit. So I just want these two plants to grow through summer, so when the temps drop I can clone them.

first two pics are from today, second two are from the 18th right before I transplanted them.

Your temps and air all seem good. Light is also good. I didn't know you had more that weren't in the pic. I think if you get some good soil and some nutes for later, you'll be alright. i would definately put them in a bigger container, perhaps 8 to 10 inches in diameter. Surely there is a nice garden center or something where you live. Those places will carry stuff like Fox Farms. I know everyone, including myself, pimps them, but their stuff is really good. It's like it was specially formulated just to grow weed. It's almost fool-proof stuff. They have a distributor search on their website. You never know, there might be some right by you. If you get them in good soil, I think everything else you're doing is good. These are my plants in Fox Farms soil.

I just dropped down to the only hydro shop I could find about 30 minutes away... place was freakin awesome, and it was stocked to the brim with all the fox farm product I could ever want... I was in heaven. anyhow, I picked myself up a milwaukee TDS and PH meter, they were 60$ a piece... and a bag of ocean forest soil. Backyard soil just aint cuttin it...

So on to the tests.. I tested my well water from my sink and it tested at PH of 6.0 and PPM of 240. This is the only thing I watered them and they were fine for the first 2 weeks. Now that they are bigger im assuming it was making it hard for the plant to get nitrogen, since it should be near 6.8 for peak nutrients to be absorbed. With the hydrogen peroxide and 1/2 strength nutes added to a gallon, the water tested at ph 6.2 and PPM of 450. which is pretty much where I want it to be I believe thats pretty good from what I have read. I think the plants problems are:

1. its bagseed
2. ph is too low.. its 6.0-6.2 it should be 6.5-6.8
3. Crappy soil ran out of nutrients.

any input?? Thanks guys I appreciate it.

You started with a PPM of 240, I think you should add about 600 PPM of Nuts to start. so you should ready 840 PPM the 240 from the original soil, plus the 600 PPM of nuts.


tHEN SLOWLY BOOST THIS AT ABOUT 10-15% each week until you hit like 1,100 PPM of nuts.

cool ill give em a boost seeing to as how they respond the the 1/5 strength nutes I gave them last watering. thanks for the response

ok, first thing is, thats not in any way shape or form, soil you're trying to grow in. THATS DIRT!!!. you can shower all the nutes you want into that dirt, and you're still going to have problems for the next ten weeks. if you found a hydro shop not too far a drive away, i cant imagine why you cant find some sort of garden centre, wall mart, or even at this time of year, lots of grocerie stores have bagged top soil, or potting mix or something. grab a couple pots too, buckets are kinda lame, your temps and ph are fine, as is ventilation. you must realize, the only benifet to adding lights is you are enlarging the canapy area that is recieving quality lumens, the lumens do not add up over the area the garden already is, if that makes sense. hope u can get back on track, good luck..

itsanecho, love that avatar. probably the best i've ever seen.

itsanecho said:

ok, first thing is, thats not in any way shape or form, soil you're trying to grow in. THATS DIRT!!!. you can shower all the nutes you want into that dirt, and you're still going to have problems for the next ten weeks. if you found a hydro shop not too far a drive away, i cant imagine why you cant find some sort of garden centre, wall mart, or even at this time of year, lots of grocerie stores have bagged top soil, or potting mix or something. grab a couple pots too, buckets are kinda lame, your temps and ph are fine, as is ventilation. you must realize, the only benifet to adding lights is you are enlarging the canapy area that is recieving quality lumens, the lumens do not add up over the area the garden already is, if that makes sense. hope u can get back on track, good luck..

Click to expand...

o i love your post, thanks.... hahah yea it is dirt I guess, i picked up a bag of ocean forest the other day, and uhhh im kinda worried to transplant them again, I just did not even a week ago, so doing it again so soon wouldnt be very good.. im going to keep the soil for the next batch I do. They have perked up considerably and have continued growing new growth all along the main stem. I pinched the bottom leaves, and they look awesome now, nice and green. Finally they started drinking at a decent pace again. Planning on doing about a week more of vegging.. the plants sprouted on 5/4 so they'd be about a month old, then ima try my hardest to get a 400w HPS for the 4 of em and start flowering.. Money has been quite tight lately. About the lumens, yes when I actually read that thread about it not "adding" just covering more area, I was quite bummed lol... I actually thought "oh shit I need more lumens, time for an HPS", in my head.. that was a dark moment... Ive spent more money so far on this setup... GROWING GIVES TO THE COMMUNITY!!!! I thought about that the other night too... while just buying off some random schmo and promoting all that scum hurts the nation, we purchase goods for our setups, stimulating the economy, all the while keeping money out of the hands of the drug pushers... niceeeee


yeah my buckets are fuckin lame as hell arent they... god damn this first grow is soo noob i freakin love it.... but wutev, I learned so much and got some great advice from fellow RIU'ers. And im satisfied. so thats whats this whole site is about...

some new pics from my crummy phone...

Don't worry that you just transplanted them a week ago. Transplant those plants again into the foxfarm soil, and watch them really take off.

do i need to add perlite to the FF Ocean Forest soil?? or is it like good to go??
If I do, ive only got MG Perlite, so im not too sure if thats cool to use, but i assume it will be alright since its already in my "dirt".

go for three parts soil and one part perlite, gives good soil air movement, yet will retain enough water for the plant for two days, depending on your ambient humidity, my humidity is at 40% at the moment, and i water every two days and feed once a week at half strength, im always paranoid about nute burn.

lord dangley bits. how many CFl's did u have on those plants u posted on the first page, wattage etc.. looks like only four. im on my first grow and i got 2 13W red, 1 42W RED and 2 27W blue. for one plant. and mine are stunted... and minimojo. i woulda started nutes a couple waterings ago.

Jtoth3ustin said:

lord dangley bits. how many CFl's did u have on those plants u posted on the first page, wattage etc.. looks like only four. im on my first grow and i got 2 13W red, 1 42W RED and 2 27W blue. for one plant. and mine are stunted... and minimojo. i woulda started nutes a couple waterings ago.

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I have a T-5 single bulb light running down the middle, with a 43 watt cfl cool light for each plant.