Nitrogen Deficency? Maybe Something else?

High Everybody,

Hopefully someone can help me out, I'm growing 2 plants in my loft (only space available), both plants are currently in veg, I found and filled in a plant problem questionaire (thanks to google and icmag), as I spend all of my time on RIU I wanted to ask you guys but the questionaire looked useful.

I have been trying to grow since the end of June but the first 3 plants died on me because of my n00biness and I'm now trying with plant 4 which is 5 weeks old and plant 5 which is 4 weeks old.

I have started to treat what I have so far believed is a nitrogen deficiency but I may have been wrong all along, any help you can give is greatly appreciated.

Plant 4 is looking the worst, the bottom set of leaves are very shrivelled and dead, I have thought about removing them but I don't want to make things worse, the next 3 sets are at varying stages of yellowing and the problem can be seen less the further up the plant you look. The rest of the plant is very dark green (too dark maybe?), a couple of higher leaves have got what look like burn marks on the very tips, though these weren't there before I started feeding her and I'm wondering if the burnt tips are because of slightly too much food being given to fix the original problem. She doesn't seem to be growing much in height recently but there are lots of new branches and leaves growing all the way up her, these look healthy even at the bottom of the plant where the yellow older leaves are and her stem is thickening up nicely.

Plant 5 is showing some early signs of developing the same probem, some of her lower leaves are curling downward and looking slightly yellow, I'm worried that she may end up like plant 4 in another week. She is a much lighter shade of green than plant 4 and I'm not sure if that's because of the different strains or a health issue with one of them.

Here's my answers to the sick plant questionaire:

How long has this problem been going on? Plant 4 problem started 13/8/09 - 2 weeks, lant 5 problem started 20/8/09 - 1 week

What STRAIN are you growing? Plant 4 Skunk #1, Plant 5 Northern Lights

What was the establishing technique? (seed or clone?) Feminised Seeds

What is the age of your plants? From the day the germinated seed was planted, plant 4 day 36, plant 5 day 29

How long have they been in the soil mixture they are in now? Since day 1, I planted them in the Jiffy pots and then put them straight into the big pots with the extra soil to stop the jiffy pots drying out too quickly as seemed to happen with my first 3 failed plants, while at the same time trying to give the new plants the small pot they need.

How Tall are the plants? Plant 4 21cm, plant 5 15cm

What PHASE (seedling, vegetative or flower) are the plants in? Veg

What Technique are you using? (SOG, SCROG etc) Nothing Extra

What size pots are you using? (Include how many subjects to pot) 10" pots, 1 plant per pot

What substrate/medium are you using? What brand of soil mixture are you using?(percentage of perlite, vermiculite...etc?) 65% New Horizon Organic & peat free compost 35% Perlite.

What Nutrient's are you using? Chempak No. 2 High Nitrogen Feed NPK 25-15-15 + 7 trace elements.

How much of each nutrient are you using with how much water? *Knowing the brand is very helpful* Last 4 Waterings - Plant 4 about 1.25 Litres each watering - plain Rain water, rain water + 1/4 recommended dose, rain water + 1/3 recommended dose, rain water + 1/2 recommended dose. Plant 5 about 0.75 Litres each watering - plain rain water, plain rain water, plain rain water, rain water + 1/4 recommended dose.

How often are you feeding? I only started feeding when the leaves started to turn yellow but it has been every watering since then and I have been increasing the dose each time for plant 4, plant 5 has only had 1 dose.

If flowering, when did you switch over to using Bloom nutrients? N/A

What order are you mixing your nutrients? (example: veg nutes 1st, bloom 2nd ect) N/A

What is the TDS/EC/PPM of your nutrients used? Unknown

What is the pH of the "RUN-OFF"? 7.0 to 7.1

What method of pH test was administered? Using Strips? pH pen? pH Meter

How often are you watering? Roughly every 5-7 days

When was your last feeding and how often are you feeding? 3 days ago and every watering because I'm trying to sort out the leaf yellowing problem.

What size bulb are you using? CFLs 8 x 30w 6400k & 2 x 30w 2700k - 300w total, I've turned off another 70w of 2700k to keep the temp down a bit. Lights are on 6pm-Midday 18/6

What is the distance to the canopy? About 8cm

What is your RH Factor? (Relative Humidity) Between 32% and 65% I fill water bowls to increase humidity when needed, currently 54%.

What is the canopy temperature? Currently 25.8c

What is the Day/Night Temp? (Include fluctuation range) Day 24-34c Night 19-25c because it's hard to keep the temps down in my loft.

What is the current Air Flow? (cfm etc.) 12" oscilating desk fan hanging from the ceiling

Tell us about your ventilation, intake exhaust and when its running and not running? 9000 BTU aircon unit venting out of the loft hatch running 6pm-10pm and 9am-midday, 80cfm extractor fan exhausting out the loft hatch and a CPU fan exhausting into the loft both running 24 hours, 1 large passive air intake and I've been leaving the door open slightly to help when needed.

Is the fan blowing directly at plants? Yes from above and oscilating

Is the grow substrate constantly wet or moist? Trying to do a dry moist cycle but I'm not sure how good I am at measuring this, I'm doing the finger test but I've started to wonder if I've been leaving it too long and dry soil has been causing some of my problem.

Is your water HARD or SOFT? Hard

What water are you using? Reverse Osmosis (RO)? Tap? Bottled? Well water? Distilled? Mineral Water? Rain Water from the garden waterbutt

Are you using water from a water softener? No

Has plant been recently pruned, cloned or pinched? No

Have any pest chemicals been used? If so what and when? No

Are plant's infected with pest's? Not that I know of.

Hi man and how are you doing, and welcome to the site.
Your plants dont look bad, pic 1 & 2 look a little low on ''N'' so your prob just a little low with your nuits so id just top up with your feed '' not much'' just a small amount ok, the rest of your pics also look ok, looks like you had probs but you seem to be getting the balance right now as you have nice new growth on them, the only thing is they seem low down in the soil so you will have to pot them on very soon into bigger pots, when you do this put a good few inches of new soil in the base then place in your plant and add soil around the plant to take up the room, top up the soil aswell to just under the leaves, i would remove any of the bad leaves etc and do this with a razzor etc, dont just pull them off, try and get into a good routine with your feeding, like the same time every 3 / 4 days, most people seem to go for around an hour before the lights go out, have your feed pre made up so its ready to go if and when you need it and try measure it so you know what they are getting, its always better to under feed than over feed and dont flood them, i can see with your pics you have trays at the bottom so when you feed do it slowly and once you see run off into the trays thats when you stop pouring, plants can draw up from the tray what they missed but whats left in the tray after about 20 / 30 mins the plant does not want, so dont have it standing in nuits, try and have a fan turning the air around your grow room / area a nice breeze does them wonders, but they dont look at all bad and nothing really to worry about, but as ive said before try and get into a routine when feeding them and build up the nuits ok, when you feed your plants its common for the leaves to droop a little but they will perk up as they use their feed, its always a good pointer to lift the pot when you think they need fed to see how light the pot is, when its light to lift and the soil is getting dry ''not to dry'' then they are in need of another feed, i hope this is of some help to you and welcome to the site.

Nothing wrong with this, just a ''little'' low on nuit strength and not in enough soil, apart from that its fine.

Hi RB, thanks for your help and warm welcome

I was hoping to wait until the plants got a bit taller and then to fill the pots up more with compost and perlite because those are the biggest 2 pots I have, I should have put more mix in to start with I could buy another pot and use that to transfer and fill up the pots properly. Do you think it will help a lot to change things now and do they need to go into bigger pots than that before flowering, I was hoping not if I filled them up properly when I could? I hadn't been too worried about that but you might be right.

When the lights come back on I'll see if I've got the courage to cut the worst leaves off. I think you're right about watering every 3-4 days, I'll check them in the morning because they are still quite damp at the moment. I can't do an hour before lights out during the week cos of work but I'll get as close as I can when they need it.

You could try getting them out the pots they are in just now and putting in more soil in the bottom then replace them, as the roots just now must be almost at the bottom of the pots with no where to go. just a thought.

You really need more soil at the bottom not the top, '' for root growth''

see what i mean ? its also good to have some clay balls at the top, they will then not dry out as quick with the heat from the light / lights.

ROBINBANKS said:

You could try getting them out the pots they are in just now and putting in more soil in the bottom then replace them, as the roots just now must be almost at the bottom of the pots with no where to go. just a thought.

You really need more soil at the bottom not the top, '' for root growth''

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It may sound silly but I'm scared of dropping or damaging the plants taking them out of the pots, I see other people posting root ball pics all the time but I just think I'd mess things up disturbing them. What you said about the soil being needed more at the bottom makes total sense I'm just being a n00b scaredicat lol,

ROBINBANKS said:

see what i mean ? its also good to have some clay balls at the top, they will then not dry out as quick with the heat from the light / lights.

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That's a good idea, is there anything I might have in the house already that might do the job? If not, I'll get something from the garden centre next week but I'm a bit stuck for transport at the moment.

No probs fella its your call.

Going by your pics it would be cool to remove them one at a time from their pots put in more soil and just replace them on top of the new soil and top it up a little aswell, i do it all the time, your just giving the roots more of an area to move through, they will thank you in the end, i pot on 3 times, its no big deal for them, when i pot on to a bigger pot i also just give water as there is enough goodness in the soil for them, then i give a weak nuit feed and build up, by doing this your not putting them in any danger, your just giving them more room.

The soil in this plant pot is way to shallow for its root size, it really does now need more depth for the roots.
I would have the bottom leaves at the top rim of the pot giving the roots more depth to move and spread.

Silly stoner, I typed a message and forgot to post it earlier! Update coming soon.

A few hours ago I snipped off the bottom 2 sets of leaves because they were the worst affected, I've just checked on her and she still looks quit droopy with the lights on but hopefully she'll perk up soon.

evilsheep said:

A few hours ago I snipped off the bottom 2 sets of leaves because they were the worst affected, I've just checked on her and she still looks quit droopy with the lights on but hopefully she'll perk up soon.

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If your pot is well soaked thats going to happen, let it dry out ok, she'l perk.

When the pots get dry and light to lift your only pouring in till you see a slight run off at the bottom, the plant should also draw up the run off on its own after about 20 mins.

I didn't water them until this morning, I guess she was recovering from losing the leaves. The lights go on in 5 minutes, I'll check them out, hopefully she'll be looking better.

soil depletion. repot with fresh soil youll be amazed

The plants are looking better now, thanks for the help. I'm probably gonna wait until my mate comes by to help out with the repotting but hopefully that will be sometime this weekend. I've got more compost and perlite ready to mix fresh for them, I'm just not a gardener and don't wanna do it on my own the first time.

evilsheep said:

The plants are looking better now, thanks for the help. I'm probably gonna wait until my mate comes by to help out with the repotting but hopefully that will be sometime this weekend. I've got more compost and perlite ready to mix fresh for them, I'm just not a gardener and don't wanna do it on my own the first time.

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Good news dude, dont ever be afraid to trim ok, very good people on this site have wrote alot of stuff on topping etc, but to trim from the bottom is a good thing ok, but am glad they have picked up, learn to read when they need fed, its easy stuff to learn.

Agh I've been trying to post messages today by doing a quick post, not realising that the page had expired and that it failed to post, it's so frustrating, must pay more attention!

PLEASE REMEMBER they are weeds !