Calcium Def?

[wilhoitorwhatever]

Was hoping to get some thoughts on a few of my ladies. All four are Knows Candy (Auto) by Twenty20, soil grow, 2/3 FF OF and 1/3 Royal Gold Basement Blend. Pics were taken at day 35.
- temp has been stable at lower 80’s (f)
- humidity in lower 50’s
- been pH’ing my water between 6 and 6.5
- lights are Vivosun Aerolight A150SE’s, currently giving ~350ppfd at plant level
- watering around every 4-5 days, full soak then letting dry out

I’ve used Recharge every other watering since germination, and was planning to not add nutes during the entire run and seeing if the OF would take them through flower, but about 10 days ago two of them started getting light spots in the middle of the leaves and fading a bit. I thought it looked like it may be calcium so I added just half the recommended dose of calmag with my watering. The issue seems to just be getting worse though.

Hoping to get some thoughts on what it looks like to you all. One of the ladies makes me think calcium, there’s another that has spotting along the spine of the leaves and not sure on that one…phosphorus maybe? Also for the first time I got froggy and tried topping with my autos, I said I’d never do that but well I did, there was no sign of flower when I topped, all but one seem to be having a tough time recovering. Anyway any advice would be appeciated. I may have already torpedoed this run by doing that and if so will just salvage what I can.

 

[013]

Hey what up? I’ll take a stab at this one

Suspect watering too frequently, not enough air flow to aid evap, bags sitting on flat surface, tall bag edges prevent airflow across top of soil. Long shot but worth mentioning could be impacted by cold feet if tent is sitting on a tile floor or concrete slab.

Roll down bag edges, improvise with milk crates or small table whatevs but raise your ladies above tent floor. Put drip tray or drip pans on your table, a grate similar to oven rack or old dog crate section to keep plants above the drip pan. A 4 inch usb fan moving air under the plants, I see an extraction fan but do you have another to keep girls lightly moving in a breeze?

Wait until it’s time to water again, stop and lift each bag. Suspect they are still heavy with water weight. A plant itself weighs nothing and a bag of dry soil will be light as a feather. It’s cool no harm intended but they are small plants, they simply can’t move that much water right now. It’s overwatering but the real problem issue is not enough oxygen to root zone. Kindly suggest you add aeration like perlite, pumice or rice hulls to your soil mix. If possible perhaps a mix rice hulls & perlite or rice hulls and pumice. Both perlite & pumice are expanded porous volcanic rock but the hulls add carbon source & silica.

Dunno crap about ppfd but me thinks light is too far away. So what is food for a plant? They chew on photons, light. Yep ye old illumination.

Hope ^ this doesn’t sound harsh, a little tune up that’s all.

Gotta roll- hope it helps my friend!!

 

[wilhoitorwhatever]

Thanks for your answer, that didn’t come across as harsh at all. I never thought about the tops of my fabric pots, I’ll roll those down and remember that tip. I do have a small oscillating fan blowing down slightly out of the picture, plus those lights each have integrated fans blowing straight down into the plants. Still I think that’s a good tip and I’ll remember that!

You also are correct that my tent floor is on a concrete slab. Good call and something else that has never occurred to me. But now that you mention that, I think my grows done in my garage have always had a slower start than the ones I’ve done in an indoor room, another great tip I’ll remember.

With the watering you may be right about that, I have always tried to err to the side of underwater vs overwatering and go be weight when I decide to water, but I may need to adjust my judgement on that, I’m sure there’s plenty room for improvement.

Thanks again, I’ll make some adjustments and see how things improve in the next few weeks. I’ll also play with lowering the lights. These are new and an upgrade (in my eyes) to the cheap blurple lights I’d been using. I also have never really paid attention to ppfd but I seen some guys talking about so I got a meter and thought I’d experiment a little.

 

[013]

Good deal on multiple fans, you’ve got that covered!! Ah yes root zone temp too low, a slab stays 55 degrees year round. Boom that’s a quick fix.

Watering can make or break a grow, extra aeration will help cycle faster.

Easy peasy, you’ve got this!!

 

[SmokingWings]

I’ve used Recharge every other watering since germination, and was planning to not add nutes during the entire run and seeing if the OF would take them through flower, but about 10 days ago two of them started getting light spots in the middle of the leaves and fading a bit. I thought it looked like it may be calcium so I added just half the recommended dose of calmag with my watering. The issue seems to just be getting worse though.

Half of the recommended dose does not fix even half of the problem. Give the calcium at the recommend amount and frequency. If you do have a calcium issue then the current damage will remain but new damage should stop showing up and new leaves will look good.

...was planning to not add nutes during the entire run and seeing if the OF would take them through flower,...

Won't work. First off, the Ocean Forest only has enough added nutrients to last a couple of weeks unless the plant is small and a light feeder. Otherwise Fox Farm highly recommends that the gardener start a fertilizer program several weeks into any grow using that soil. Cannabis is one of the heaviest feeders someone can try growing. On top of all this the Ocean Forest is only 66% of the total.

The Royal Gold Basement Blend that makes up the other 1/3 of the soil mix is a Coco Coir based mix with compost and other natural materials added. A quick search of info on that soil tells me that it is like the Ocean Forest in that it will start to need a fertilizer program within a couple of weeks.

Start feeding at the dose for a flowering Cannabis plant and keep it up until harvest. There are a lot of decent fertilizers out there so pick one that matches the way you want to fertilize and you should be OK.

 

[Roy Growin]

I grow mostly autos and have experienced something like this before
Came to the conclusion that the auto is trying to flower before the root ball is sufficient to support it for any of a number of reasons
So I decided to focus on roots with kelp/root tonic with half strength feed/micros, with CaMg+Fe to ensure they were immediately available to the plant
Within a week [maybe two] your new growth will green up and overall growth should improve
Then move straight into flower nutes, PK etc

 

[wilhoitorwhatever]

Good deal on multiple fans, you’ve got that covered!! Ah yes root zone temp too low, a slab stays 55 degrees year round. Boom that’s a quick fix.

Watering can make or break a grow, extra aeration will help cycle faster.

Easy peasy, you’ve got this!!

Thanks @013 I’ve folded down to tops of my pots and raised them a bit off the floor got them a little closer to the lights. I think you’ve given me some solid advice that will help with this grow and my future grows. Many thanks.

...

Start feeding at the dose for a flowering Cannabis plant and keep it up until harvest. There are a lot of decent fertilizers out there so pick one that matches the way you want to fertilize and you should be OK.

I appreciate your reply @SmokingWings I am going to start feeding with my next watering. I have Mega Crop, I’ve used it in the past with autos but until now I haven’t needed to until the ladies were well into flower. It seemed so early to me that I’d need to feed, I’ve read a lot of other auto growers claim that for autos OF or Strawberry Fields easily took them to harvest without adding nutes, and prior to this I’ve had the approach of “less is more”. My prior runs have been for the most part easy and low maintenance so I haven’t had to put much thought into anything. You’re definitely right about the basement blend, it’s not hot soil and it says on the bag you will need to amend. My thinking was that using it as the top 1/3 would allow the seedlings to grow without getting burnt, and by the time the plant was ready for more nutes it would be reaching down into the OF.

I grow mostly autos and have experienced something like this before
Came to the conclusion that the auto is trying to flower before the root ball is sufficient to support it for any of a number of reasons
So I decided to focus on roots with kelp/root tonic with half strength feed/micros, with CaMg+Fe to ensure they were immediately available to the plant
Within a week [maybe two] your new growth will green up and overall growth should improve
Then move straight into flower nutes, PK etc

Thanks @Roy Growin what you’re describing makes good sense to me. This did begin happening right at the time they were trying to flower. I dusted the seeds with Great White and for the first time have been using Recharge as well. I was expecting to have freaking awesome rootballs but as @013 pointed out, even with it in my mind to not over water I may have not allowed the soil to dry completely before rewatering. I think I'll let them get dry as a bone, just to the point of letting them begin to wilt, before giving them another good drenching. And from this point forward I’ll begin feeding.

 

[Roy Growin]

Thanks @Roy Growin what you’re describing makes good sense to me. This did begin happening right at the time they were trying to flower. I dusted the seeds with Great White and for the first time have been using Recharge as well. I was expecting to have freaking awesome rootballs but as @013 pointed out, even with it in my mind to not over water I may have not allowed the soil to dry completely before rewatering. I think I'll let them get dry as a bone, just to the point of letting them begin to wilt, before giving them another good drenching. And from this point forward I’ll begin feeding.

Please don't do that, they are not strong enough and it will prohibit root expansion
Keep the root zone at least moist so the roots can develop and pick up the nutes

 

[wilhoitorwhatever]

Please don't do that, they are not strong enough and it will prohibit root expansion
Keep the root zone at least moist so the roots can develop and pick up the nutes

Ok, well thanks for that. I’ll make sure the soil keeps a little moisture.

 

[SmokingWings]

...even with it in my mind to not over water I may have not allowed the soil to dry completely before rewatering. I think I'll let them get dry as a bone, just to the point of letting them begin to wilt, before giving them another good drenching. And from this point forward I’ll begin feeding.

Knowing when the soil has dried out enough is an art and a science. Dry as bone might be so dry that the hair roots and smaller roots are also dry and have started to die. Even before this the leaves are not only wilting but are drying out themselves.

The best is being able to read the plant and developing that 6th sense that the wilt is just a matter of a couple of hours away from starting even if the leaves have not started to droop. And, the plant can show signs of wilting towards the end of the day and then recover so it looks OK first thing in the morning but is in trouble by mid-day when no one is around to give water.

 

[wilhoitorwhatever]

Thanks @SmokingWings that makes good sense. I feel like this grow is providing some good learning experience for me. Before this one I haven’t ran into too many snags and things have just kind of run kind on auto-pilot, but also the results have been mediocre. Thanks to everyone who’ve taken the time to give me advice.