1st Lemme Say Hi -Then Lets Diagnose: Mid & Lower Leaves Sick (Blotches, Brown Edges)

[GreenArmadillo]

Hello one and all. Salutations to all y’all lovely growers and tokers out there. <3
Green Armadillo here. \(^_ ^)
So happy to finally have joined the community. I absolutely love this site. It's a true goldmine.


I have a problem with my flowering girls that showed up this week. I would really, really appreciate your help.
More or less, i’m seeing some worrying yellowing blotches/mottling on some leaves, with some of these patches even going towards brownish/greyish hues. Some of the leaves have edges that are browning, looking like they’re dying or something like that. It seems that only some middle and lower leaves are affected. The top leaves are looking lovely and healthy, thank goodness.

I wanted to add the fact that I flipped these gals to 12/12 about 4 weeks ago, so this is week 4 of flower, right. But I’ve only just seen the first signs of sex over the past week. Some sexy little pistils popping up here and there. But is it just me, or is my flowering very delayed. I mean up till now, there is no clear resemblance of buds growing on my girls. Now that I think about it, could this be somewhat related to my problem? Some form of deficiency perhaps?

Pics will be attached below.


Grow Details:

-Unknown strain, grown from seeds found in bud that most likely came direct from India
- Ocean Forest soil mixed with perlite
- 3 gallon pots
- (x2) 150 watt T5 lights + (x1) 400 watt HPS floodlight
- Week 4 flower (since flipping to 12/12) : [[Vegged for 2 months]]
- Using bottled drinking water, 6.5 pH
- Using General Organics BioThrive Bloom, BioBud, and BioWeed (fed once at half recommended dosage week 2 flower, fed once at full dosage week 3 flower)
- Using Dyna Gro Pro-Tekt (used once first time last week)
- Run-off water pH @ 6.6 pH
- Temperature ranging between 20o and 29o depending on circumstances
- Humidity ranging between 30% and 52%
- My 1st grow, Indoors

[GreenArmadillo]

[GreenArmadillo]

From my preliminary research, with my limited experience, I am thinking it might be a calcium deficiency. As soon as I thought it might be a calcium deficiency I checked my bottled water that I use for watering, and lo and behold.. <1mg/litre in terms of calcium.
Absolutely NONE of the shops here sell CalMag, which sucks. But I read that if you’re not using RO water you should be okay with calcium and magnesium without using CalMag, so I took it for granted. Checking my water showed me I had made a serious miscalculation.
I scoured the shops yesterday and finally found one shop that sells one product that supplies calcium. I have attached a picture of this supplement. What do you guys reckon?

Thanks to everyone who checks this out and helps out a fellow MJ lover.
Growers love. <3

[NebulaHaze]

You've come a long way and you're getting to the home stretch! Great job on growing so far!

From the pictures, the leaves with the brown patches between the veins look like either nutrient deficiencies or possibly something going on with the environment or roots. It doesn't really look like a Calcium deficiency to me, which looks more like spots in a mostly random pattern, without stripes in between the veins of the leaves.

These are Calcium deficiencies:





If you do decide to supplement with Calcium down the road (not a bad idea if you believe your water is low in calcium), you probably don't want to use that particular Calcium supplement because you don't want to add Calcium without the right ratio of Magnesium. The plant uses them together. If you add too much of one without the other it can cause nutrient lockout. That's why it's important to get a Calcium-Magnesium supplement that's been formulated for plants.

What are you checking the pH with (pen, strips, drops)? Did anything unusual or different happen right when plants started showing symptoms?

Can you tell us a little bit about your watering practices? Have the plants been in 3-gallon pots their whole life? If so, it's possible the plants are root bound and need to be transplanted to a bigger container.

You mentioned it gets up to 29°C sometimes. That's hot, but not very hot. Do the plants seem to react poorly when it gets hot?

When the roots circle around the pot (root bound), it can cause chronic drooping and/or deficiencies:



In your pictures, some of the bottom leaves look limp, sort of like the plant has abandoned them as opposed to a deficiency. Are these leaves not getting any light anymore? If so it may just be that the plant has given up on the bottom leaves to focus on the ones that are actually getting light. If that's the case it's not really something to be worried of as long as the problem is not spreading up the plant to leaves you actually care about.

As far as your plants taking 4 weeks after the switch to 12/12 before they started showing pistils, that is a pretty long time but not unheard of. Each strain is different and especially the Sativa-leaning strains can take longer to start flowering.

Just to be safe, it's probably a good idea to double check that your plants are getting complete darkness every night, as even small light leaks during the night period can slow down or reverse flowering. If you find you continue having the problem where plants are developing slowly in the flowering stage, you might consider giving them slightly shorter days (for example a 11/13 light schedule) which "tricks" them into "thinking" winter is coming. As a result the plant develops faster in the flowering stage. However, it can reduce your yields if plants get less light each day, so you have to be careful.

If possible, can you post a few pictures of the whole plants in the setup? Sometimes that has extra clues

[GreenArmadillo]

Oh my God, Nebula, you are a QUEEN!
That was so ridiculously detailed. I officially love you! <3

The second picture you posted kind of looks similar to what's happening on a few of the leaves. I basically concluded it might be CAL deficiency after reading your plant symptoms article as soon as I saw the problem a few days ago.

I now have epsom salts and that calcium supplement bought yesterday. How should I mix them, and at what quantities, so as to give my girls CalMag?
Unfortunately NO stores in this country have CalMag. So I gotta make due.


- But your suggestions have got me thinking. Could it be a root issue, or from me adding the 400 watt HPS floodlight to the grow room 8 days ago..

- As far as i'm aware, they don't seem to be responding so badly to the higher temperature. Obviously the temps rose after I added the 400 watt HPS to the room. Before that the temps ranged between 17 and 22 actually. I try and keep the door to my grow room open for a few hours every day, so the AC from the neighbouring room can help bring down the temps.

- I am checking pH using a cheap pH pen. I also checked the soil pH using a Rapitest soil tester kit 3 weeks ago just to make sure, and the soil was between 6 and 7 judging from the colour chart.

- Well, around 3 days before I noticed the symptoms I had just given my plants their second feeding (BioThrive Bloom, BioBud, BioWeed), and this time I gave them the full GO recommended dosage. I also gave them Dyna Gro Pro-Tekt for the very first time, and at the recommended dosage.

- During veg, they only needed watering once a week (watered until plentiful run-off). I figured this out cause I had slightly overwatered them the first few weeks, so I stabilized my watering. Over the last two weeks though i've watered them twice a week, but with a smaller amount of water each time (barely any trickling run-off), and at a Feed, Feed, Water pace.
The leaves were most likely drooping because the girls were thirsty when I took the pictures. You see, i'm used to the girls being happy on one watering per week, so I was shocked when I noticed some drooping only 3 days after a watering. I used a moisture measuring tool and ALL of the girls were below level 3 (out of 10) on moisture. That REALLY surprised me. I guess they are demanding more water now. So i'm thinking maybe giving them each ~1litre twice per week (Feed, Feed, Water).

-I started the plants in half quart containers, then transplanted to 5 litre pots, then transplanted to 10 litre pots before flipping to flower.
As for the roots, i'll prbbly be getting a good look at them tomorrow, cause i've noticed one of the plants building up pollen sacs with a vigor this week.
I was gonna wait on it for a few days before deciding what to do, but my gut instinct is telling me to pull it tomorrow and be done with it. Don't delay. So if I do pull it tomorrow, i'll be getting a good idea of the root system of all my girls. It's just a shame cause this plant has the most tops, and what seem to be bud sites. Should males have what look like bud sites?


I'll get some full grow room pics today or tomorrow and post them up.
And once again, thank you ever so much. I really appreciate it. I hope you can feel the love that's coming your way and traveling all the way across the globe.

[alltatup]

RIP Calphurnia!! He's up in the cannabis bardo with Mr. Green Crack, waiting to incarnate as a female...

[GreenArmadillo]

Haha, nice one bro.
\/.........\/
.\(^_^)/. !Amen!

[alltatup]

Actually, Armadillo, I'm a sis--not a bro. ;-}

[NebulaHaze]

As far as Epsom salts, I personally wouldn't use them because I'm not sure exactly how much you want to use. Any sort of raw nutrient sources that aren't made for plants can be difficult to get right. Perhaps ask your local garden center for what they'd recommend for tomatoes, since you've noticed your "tomatoes" have a Calcium deficiency?

Did it start happening immediately after you added the 400W, because if so, maybe it's light burn from the light being too close?

When was the last time you calibrated your pH pen?

It interesting they started doing this 3 days after giving them higher levels of nutrients and a new supplement, but if that was the cause I feel like the symptoms probably would have shown up in less than 3 days.

You mentioned your plants are thirsty often. I've noticed that chronically underwatered plants can sometimes show seemingly random nutrient deficiencies, so perhaps that's contributing to this?

Right now I'm hoping they're just root bound since that's the easiest fix. Can't wait to see hear what happened when you looked at the roots!

[GreenArmadillo]

- I done some research and most people who do use epsom salts recommended between 1/2 tsp to 1tbsp per gallon. I am gonna lean towards the conservative side and try 1/2 tsp/gallon when I feed the girls tomorrow morning. And then i'll monitor and see how they respond over the week. Will it be easy to spot a response if the girls don't like that much magnesium?

- I wouldn't say so, not too sure. The first few days after adding the HPS everything seemed fine. These pictures are from two days after the HPS was added:
I personally noticed the problem another two days after that. So 4 days after the HPS was added. (Girls were also fed the day the HPS was added @ full dosage of GO nutes and DynaGro Pro-Tekt)

-I calibrated my pH pen that same day the HPS was added. I used a 7.0 sample solution.

- The thirst could genuinely be a factor, now that you mention the possibility. I checked on the girls today, and the soil was already dry, despite having been watered ~700ml each on Tuesday (3 days ago).
For thirsty plants, what schedule would you recommend? 3 waterings per week? Water until barely any run-off, or mid run-off, or plenty of run-off?

[NebulaHaze]

When it comes to watering, I've always had the best luck listening to the plants as opposed to a set watering schedule, since each plant, environment and growing medium is different.

As far as strategies, it's a good rule of thumb to water when the top inch is dry (up to the first knuckle). Some grower give just enough water for the medium the be saturated, without any runoff. This is especially common in a soil environment where you don't want to wash away your nutrients. If adding extra nutrients in the water, it can be a good idea to get up to 20% extra runoff water out the bottom every watering, to help prevent nutrient buildup in the medium.

Some growers also use the "lift the pot" method, which just means they water when the pots start feeling like they weigh less than normal.

It sort of makes sense that they might be drinking more after adding a 400W HPS. Let us know if it ends up being overwatering!

[GreenArmadillo]

Oh my days, that DOES make sense. Haha, I feel like such a fool. No wonder the girls have been getting thirsty so quickly now. I never even considered the HPS to be the reason. XD

And i'll take what you said to heart. This shall be how I water my girls from now on. =D

[GreenArmadillo]

Right, I hardened my resolve and pulled Calphurnia today (that's his name). I had hopes for this one, but he turned out to be a boy. May he rest in peace.
These are what the roots looked like.
Another 3 of my girls are in the same10 litre pots as him, whereas one girl is in a 5 litre pot.

PS. Is a male supposed to look like this, or is this guy actually budding? The reason I ask is cause I couldn't find any calyxes anywhere.

[NebulaHaze]

Yes, unfortunately it is a male plant They all look a little different in their bud structure, but this picture shows the pollen sacs clearly.

It does look like that plant was a little root-bound (or at least getting close), so that's something to keep in mind with the other plants!

[GreenArmadillo]

Would you personally recommend transplanting, or is that not a wise move to make now that we're firmly into budding?
If I recall correctly, you highly recommended against it in your article unless it was absolutely necessary.

[GreenArmadillo]

Oh yeah, forgot to upload earlier. This leaf I found on Calphurnia before I cut him down. I'm sure this wasn't here yesterday.

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And these are from one of my girls which I managed to snapshot today. I think the problem might have spread a bit more/got worse since yesterday.



I was in a super rush today to get the girls fed before lights out (got home late) but I only managed to feed Esmerelda (pictured above).
I was in such a rush I forgot to pH before i fed her. I remembered afterwards, tested the pH of the feed I had prepared, and it came out as 5.5. Oops. =(
Her run-off was 6.01

How bad of a mistake was this? Should I do anything about it?

[GreenArmadillo]

Cheers for letting me know bro. Sorted them out.

[alltatup]

I'm your sis, bro!!! ;-}

[GreenArmadillo]

Oh dear, my bad. I begz forgiveness. XD
Cheers for correcting me on that, sis. It's absolutely great to have you here helping on my little growing adventure.
Totally appreciating, from my end. ^_^

[NebulaHaze]

How are they doing now? Did the extra watering help them?

[GreenArmadillo]

Thanks for asking Nebula. Really appreciate it. <3
Actually the problems seem to not be getting any worse, which is a very relieving sign. I was meaning to pluck off all the sick leaves, so that i'd be able to notice if any new leaves develop problems. Should I do that? I feel it'll help stay on top of any newer developments, but don't know if I should be saving as many leaves as possible since i'm firmly into flowering now.
But if i'm lucky and things are as good as they seem, then the extra waterings as well as the calcium and epsom salts seem to be helping out.

I've actually been meaning to post up pictures of the grow room since like 10 days ago, but the forum was being funny with me and not allowing me to post anything.

[NebulaHaze]

I think you could go either way with the leaves. You do have lots of nice beautiful green leaves so I wouldn't worry too much about plucking leaves that are discolored

[GreenArmadillo]

Right, so here we have the room as well as the individual gals.


Gro Room

[GreenArmadillo]

[alltatup]

They are so tall and beautiful!

[Sonnyhad]

Hi, you might help yourself by putting up some reflective material on the walls. Maybe cardboard painted matte white or something.

[GreenArmadillo]

@alltatup

They are, aren't they.
Thanks for the encouragement my friend. Absolutely in love with these girls. I'm a proud father. =)


@Sonnyhad

Well I had added some aluminum foil to part of the wall, but after adding a swinging fan to the room, the foil was creating too much noise, so I took the foil down.
Painted cardboard is a pretty good idea though. I like it. Thanks for the advice. =]