Dark green leaves curling down, brown spots & streaks, drooping plant

[herbfanatic]

I must have messed up with my ph or watering at some point because the plant has been showing odd symptoms for the last few days... Overall droopyness, curling inward of the fan leaves at the tips, brown necrotic spots or streaks on the leaves, the leaves affected have become pretty dry and brittle but still green...been looking all over and can't really find an answer for what went wrong. Any advice or experience would be awesome. I made sure to flush it with 6.5 water with just a bit of cal/mag right when I noticed the issue. Hopefully it bounces back well.

 

[Emilya Green]

looks like overwatering by watering too often. These plants need to dry out all the way to the bottom every time before you water again. Your lower roots are not seeing any oxygen and are shutting down, hence the constant droop. The calmag is a good call though, keep giving that each time.
Please read my work on how to properly water a potted plant... it has helped save many grows, and now I hope it will save yours too.

 

[herbfanatic]

looks like overwatering by watering too often. These plants need to dry out all the way to the bottom every time before you water again. Your lower roots are not seeing any oxygen and are shutting down, hence the constant droop. The calmag is a good call though, keep giving that each time.
Please read my work on how to properly water a potted plant... it has helped save many grows, and now I hope it will save yours too.

Thanks for the reply Emilya! I don't think it's overwatering...I am good about using the weight method to judge when things need water. I suspect that I may have not watered enough, actually, because I was concerned about overwatering. My theory is that I under watered enough over the plant's lifespan so that there is some concentration of salts at the bottom or some compaction of soil that is preventing the roots from doing what they need to do. I checked the PH of my runoff the other night when I flushed too and it was pretty high... I think I have been watering around 7.0 (hard to tell with the darn dropper kit haha) so I definitely know I need to be giving the plant low or mid 6's from now on.

 

[herbfanatic]

looks like overwatering by watering too often. These plants need to dry out all the way to the bottom every time before you water again. Your lower roots are not seeing any oxygen and are shutting down, hence the constant droop. The calmag is a good call though, keep giving that each time.
Please read my work on how to properly water a potted plant... it has helped save many grows, and now I hope it will save yours too.

Holy smokes...reading your tutorial on watering now... AWESOME info in there! Thank you for directing me to that!

 

[Emilya Green]

You have the pH thing all wrong. First, your runoff measurement is meaningless and a total waste of time. It tells you nothing about the soil pH. If you try to adjust your incoming pH of your fluids to somehow compensate for what you think you are seeing with that measurement, you are shooting yourself in the foot. Water at the proper pH each time. This forces the pH of your container to assume the pH of this fluid... the soil suspended in there has no choice but to be the pH of the water that so massively outweighs the soil in that suspension. As the soil dries out, it drifts toward the base pH of the soil, sending the pH of your nutes through the entire range of 6.3-6.8, assuming you started at the low end of that scale with your water.
If you have been watering at 7.0 and then the soil also drifts up toward that end, your plants never see the pH in that container that they need for the nutrients to become mobile and be able to uptake into the plant.
So back to the watering frequency... how often do you water then? Is the time decreasing between each wet/dry cycle? Are you watering when it just feels "lighter" or when you can discern absolutely no water weight at all and really think that you must be killing the plants it is so dry? The later is the correct way to grow a weed.

 

[herbfanatic]

Good to know about the PH stuff! Do you try to PH around 6.3 each time you water then or do you vary it?

You might be right about the overwatering...I do just go by when it feels light but I suppose there still could be some water at the bottom. Do you like to wait until you see the plant begin to droop a bit? I'm not sure I know any other method of knowing that there is really no water in the pot. Thank you for the help with this, I really appreciate your input and knowledge!

 

[Emilya Green]

When I ran synthetic nutes I religiously adjusted the pH of every fluid to hit my soil to 6.3 or even 6.2 in the later stages of flower. I knew that my soil would take it from there and the pH would drift upwards through the entire range on every wet/dry cycle.
The best way to get good at the lift method is to fill up a similar container with the same dry soil that you are using. Lift it up and compare that to your container with the plant in it. If you can tell a difference, it is not time to water.
You would think that the plants would wilt dramatically when you get your container as dry as the sahara desert, but these are weeds and they will surprise you just how hardy they are. It is usually at least a day after a human can no longer feel water weight before they will begin to wilt and this happens about 12 hours before all of the water actually disappears from the container. As the feeder roots begin to go dry the lowest leaves will begin to droop and over the next 12 hours this drooping will extend up the trunk to each of the next higher leaves, until right at the end the plant will no longer be able to keep enough water pressure in the trunk and it will begin to wilt too. You don't want it to get this far, but the plant will quickly recover if you catch it at this point and give it the water it needs. Also, if you carefully smell your plants when that first bit of droop happens in the lower fan leaves, the plant also sends out a perfume pump at this point... it is her way of saying, water me.
I am happy getting them to the point that I can lift them and not feel any water weight, and I don't wait the extra time for any wilting, feeling this is probably stressful to the plant. You will get better at this judgement, and I can now even nudge my bigger containers on the floor with my toe and judge if they are this light by whether or not I can move them. If the container is larger or under a SCROG and impossible to test this way, a moisture probe or even a wooden stick can show you where the wet/dry line is in that container, and when that water table gets down into the last inch or so of container, it is time to water.

 

[herbfanatic]

Right on!! I shall be doing this from now on! Hopefully I will have a nice recovery picture to post soon . Thanks again!