Yellow leaves, possible defficiency (pics included)

clang80 · Sep 10, 2007

(apologies for re-posting this. I first put it in the plant growing problems and got no responses and i'm keen to sort out my problem)

Hi, the deal is I have 6 white widow plants which are about 25 days into flowering. Recently I have laid off the nutrients because I had a dose of nutrient burn (i'm fairly sure). I left my girlfriend to water them for 2 days while I was away and now they have yellow leaves towards the lower of the plants.

I'm assuming this is some sort of difficency but I am worried about putting in more nutes in case of overfeeding. If someone could look at the pictures and please tell me what it could be.

I give them 0.5 litres of water per plant each day, feed them a 12.5/25/25 (plus 8 trace elements) fertilizer once a week and i'm growing them under a 600wHP Sodium bulb. In total they are about 50 days old. While the plants were vegging I was feeding them a 10.6/4.4/1.7 fertilizer.

After reading previous postings, one person who had similar problems was advised to give more nitrogen and now all his leaves have gone yellow. https://www.rollitup.org/marijuana-plant-problems/25429-omgad-flowering-leaves-turning-yellow.html

PlatinumKasse · Sep 10, 2007

Many problems visible here.

1. The pot it's growing in is maybe a 2-3 gallon pot at most.. those roots are like "FUCK YOU" right now. FOR SURE. Rule: 1 gallon per foot of height. And dude, give it extra.. I seriously have a strain that doesn't get much taller than a couple feeet, and it's roots eat through a 5 gallon pot.

2. You water too often, keeping the soil moist (which allows for likely growth of bacteria <mold, yay>) 600w has got some kick so keep it 18-24 inches from the top of the plant. Like I said though, you water too much, but then again now that I think about it.. that soil may dry up faster because you've got a 5-6ft plant in a 2-3gallon pot under a 600w lamp.

3. You didn't mention flushing the soil when you overfertilized. Use the fertilizer at like fucking 1/8 strength, no bullshit. Your numbers on that fert are mad high and gotta be chemical. Just stop adding nutrients at all for the love of god.

Conclusion:

The excess salts built up from the nutrients you've added (which should be flushed routinely every 3 weeks anyway) have thrown off the pH of the soil. The soil in turn, only has certain amounts of certain nutrients available to the plant at any given time. (I've included a chart that shows what amount of what nutrients are available at what pH) Ya dig? Same thing happened to me once, I flushed the medium with 1 gallon of water for every gallon the container could hold.. soo 5 gallons per pot (SUCKS) (tap water was fine, permitting it is room temperature (easy way is to get the pot in a tub... fill an empty gallon with the water, slowly feed it into the pot till you reach the necessary amount), I read the chlorine present, which it is typically advised that you let evaporate can actually assist in throwing off the over-fert issue, don't ask specifics, I don't remember, and may be completely fucking wrong, but it's not dangerous to flush with tap... trust me, it's pH is way higher than the acidic shit your plants are facing right now... besides... my tap has more chlorine in it than I've ever seen in my life... I can seriously smell it. The soil can also be made more neutral with all the waterings afterwards being with distilled water (7 pH)

To do list:
Go flush the soil bitch
Once you're done, ask yourself why the fuck it's in a mini-pot and smack yourself
Give the plants like 2-3 days to recover from flushing..
Keep humidity at like 50%
Oscillating fan = tight

Chiceh · Sep 10, 2007

I couldn't have said it better myself. lol Flush them out. That pot is too small, nute them every other week and ph test your water and soil. :peace:

PlatinumKasse · Sep 10, 2007

I've included pics of the plants I had to flush. (I spotted nute-burn on one of em and knew they all had to be flushed) (Since I did the same shit to all of em) HERE YA GO

(so ya they can recover... BUT since your stress is happening in flowering... that will reduce quality and yield)

I have vegged for 36 days and start flowering today

More like 40 days veg once the plant realizes it's fuckin being flowered :\

clang80 · Sep 10, 2007

PlatinumKasse said:
Many problems visible here.

1. The pot it's growing in is maybe a 2-3 gallon pot at most.. those roots are like "FUCK YOU" right now. FOR SURE. Rule: 1 gallon per foot of height. And dude, give it extra.. I seriously have a strain that doesn't get much taller than a couple feeet, and it's roots eat through a 5 gallon pot.

2. You water too often, keeping the soil moist (which allows for likely growth of bacteria <mold, yay>) 600w has got some kick so keep it 18-24 inches from the top of the plant. Like I said though, you water too much, but then again now that I think about it.. that soil may dry up faster because you've got a 5-6ft plant in a 2-3gallon pot under a 600w lamp.

3. You didn't mention flushing the soil when you overfertilized. Use the fertilizer at like fucking 1/8 strength, no bullshit. Your numbers on that fert are mad high and gotta be chemical. Just stop adding nutrients at all for the love of god.

Conclusion:

The excess salts built up from the nutrients you've added (which should be flushed routinely every 3 weeks anyway) have thrown off the pH of the soil. The soil in turn, only has certain amounts of certain nutrients available to the plant at any given time. (I've included a chart that shows what amount of what nutrients are available at what pH) Ya dig? Same thing happened to me once, I flushed the medium with 1 gallon of water for every gallon the container could hold.. soo 5 gallons per pot (SUCKS) (tap water was fine, permitting it is room temperature (easy way is to get the pot in a tub... fill an empty gallon with the water, slowly feed it into the pot till you reach the necessary amount), I read the chlorine present, which it is typically advised that you let evaporate can actually assist in throwing off the over-fert issue, don't ask specifics, I don't remember, and may be completely fucking wrong, but it's not dangerous to flush with tap... trust me, it's pH is way higher than the acidic shit your plants are facing right now... besides... my tap has more chlorine in it than I've ever seen in my life... I can seriously smell it. The soil can also be made more neutral with all the waterings afterwards being with distilled water (7 pH)

To do list:
Go flush the soil bitch
Once you're done, ask yourself why the fuck it's in a mini-pot and smack yourself
Give the plants like 2-3 days to recover from flushing..
Keep humidity at like 50%
Oscillating fan = tight

Hey man, thanks for your very informative (and ever so charming! ;-)

) post. I will head straight out and get some new pots and some more potting compost.

With regards to the water I give them 0.5 litres a day as that is when the soil starts drying out and the pot as a whole is pretty light to pick up. I turn the topsoil every couple of days, which hopefully gets rid of mould growing, although i'm not certain. Would adding perlite be of any use at this stage?

Thanks again for your quick response. Genuinley appreciated!

PlatinumKasse · Sep 10, 2007

Dude if you're going to transplant the son of a bitch... might as well make your soil mix like mine.

Like seriously... just start out by filling your bucket almost half way full of perlite... like 1/3 to 1/2 full of perlite... Then fill a 1/3 of vermiculite in there, and a 1/3 of peat moss. If you only have either vermiculite or peat moss, then use half of that and half perlite. You never knew what is in top soil, which is the issue... you can start locking up certain nutes cuz you never knew exactly how much of what was in the soil in the first place, so starting with neutral ingredients like the ones I've listed is a plus. Um... it's good that you're watering the plant when the pot becomes light and the top soil is dry, if you're moving the top soil around, don't... roots like to fuckin use that area to make roots!

Anyway, the part I feel you're lucking out on is that I believe you used topsoil in your current pot... which was also my first mistake

(1/3 top soil, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 pea pebbles) DON'T USE THAT MIX I JUST LISTED. lol. Anyway, I know I started to explain how to do this... but after thinking about it realized that I just wanted you to know a good medium you could use next time... cuz right now since you're so far into flowering, transplant stress could hurt you more than it helps you... I'm told that root size in flowering does not effect end yield/potency... I mean, the plant is readily trying to produce more bud to capture pollen (yay 4 us) But like I said, transplanting now would give more root growth, possibly making the plant bigger, but I doubt it'd do much more than hurt the end result... I'd wait, before transplanting, to hear testimony from someone who has transplanted during flowering and seen positive results.

clang80 · Sep 10, 2007

PlatinumKasse said:
Dude if you're going to transplant the son of a bitch... might as well make your soil mix like mine. Like seriously... just start out by filling your bucket almost half way full of perlite... like 1/3 to 1/2 full of perlite... Then fill a 1/3 of vermiculite in there, and a 1/3 of peat moss. If you only have either vermiculite or peat moss, then use half of that and half perlite. You never knew what is in top soil, which is the issue... you can start locking up certain nutes cuz you never knew exactly how much of what was in the soil in the first place, so starting with neutral ingredients like the ones I've listed is a plus. Um... it's good that you're watering the plant when the pot becomes light and the top soil is dry, if you're moving the top soil around, don't... roots like to fuckin use that area to make roots! Anyway, the part I feel you're lucking out on is that I believe you used topsoil in your current pot... which was also my first mistake (1/3 top soil, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 pea pebbles) DON'T USE THAT MIX I JUST LISTED. lol. Anyway, I know I started to explain how to do this... but after thinking about it realized that I just wanted you to know a good medium you could use next time... cuz right now since you're so far into flowering, transplant stress could hurt you more than it helps you... I'm told that root size in flowering does not effect end yield/potency... I mean, the plant is readily trying to produce more bud to capture pollen (yay 4 us) But like I said, transplanting now would give more root growth, possibly making the plant bigger, but I doubt it'd do much more than hurt the end result... I'd wait, before transplanting, to hear testimony from someone who has transplanted during flowering and seen positive results.

Ok, thanks again! After reading what you said I think I will lay off the transplanting on this grow. The plants are growing too big as it is. When i turn the top-soil I do it gently, but I will stop doing this if you think it is needed.

On another note do you know what is causing the yellow leaves, i'm fairly sure it's not nute burn as the leaves are going yellow as a whole rather than starting on the outside edges and working inwards. I just opened them today and my girls look a little worse than from last night! (see pics)

PlatinumKasse · Sep 10, 2007

If you're turning up the top soil and you don't ever see roots, that's fine, but if I ever do that, I see them immediately. Nute burn is a symptom of over-fertilizing. You have heavy burns.. and the fact that they're starting from the bottom and working their way up let's you know it's something they're suckin up. Flush the soil so that you get like 2-3 gallons of water to drain out of the bottom.. yes, this takes time and sucks.. but I spent a few hours on it, and it saved my fuckin plants

The idea is to stop it from getting worse, trust me, I wouldn't type all this shit if I wasn't certain.

PlatinumKasse · Sep 10, 2007

You're really gonna need to give me your screen name on AIM or somethin. lol. Private message it to me if you want.

clang80 · Sep 10, 2007

PlatinumKasse said:
You're really gonna need to give me your screen name on AIM or somethin. lol. Private message it to me if you want.

Hi there, i'm going to flush them through now. I don't use AIM but I check this site religiously! Thanks for your help, thinking about it now, it is logical it's something from the roots if it's happening at the bottom.

fdd2blk · Sep 10, 2007

looks like you backed off the nitrogen a little to early. they appear to be using up the store nitrogen in the leaves. i have this happen a lot. mostly towards the end. i feed bloom daily and nitrogen once a week to help cure this problem. as far as roots you should be fine. you'd be amazed how big of a plant you can grow in a small pot.

woodsmaneh! · Oct 22, 2010

It is quite common for root bound plants to start yellowing and dropping bottom leaves. Easy to check turn pot upside down and shake till plant comes out. If all you see is roots time for big pot. Simple and I do it all the time with my veged clones and moms, only way to see if they are Root Bound. If you got more than 2 weeks to go get r done boy and your results will be worth it. As to to big I take to tall? Just bend her over and tie her up, you will get more and bigger buds doing this anyway.

Yellow leaves, possible defficiency (pics included)

clang80

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Chiceh

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