Help: Plant been sick for over a month

Emilya said:
how did the plant ask for water?
Click to expand...
Emilya said:
and please help me to understand your system... are you watering to runoff each time with each plant?
Click to expand...
The plant wilts and I notice the stems of the fan leaves start to sag, from the bottom up. I also notice the pungent smell that you described in your thread. I am watering to runoff every time with each plant, but just as soon as I see it. After I notice the run off, I stop watering and I let it sit there for a few minutes draining the remaining run off. After about 10 minutes, I dump all the runoff water.
 
please don't get mad at me over these questions, but I suspect that I now know why you have been having difficulties all along, and why some things just aren't making sense. I just need you to confirm a couple of things for me. :) Let me ask another couple even though you have probably said this above somewhere, but what sized containers are these and how long have you been watering like this in them?
 
Emilya said:
please don't get mad at me over these questions, but I suspect that I now know why you have been having difficulties all along, and why some things just aren't making sense. I just need you to confirm a couple of things for me. :) Let me ask another couple even though you have probably said this above somewhere, but what sized containers are these and how long have you been watering like this in them?
Click to expand...
How could I get mad, you're just helping out! :)
Emilya said:
I also see in your schedule that you were pretty consistent with 4 days until this last one, where you went 6 days. How did the plants look when you watered, were they severely wilted with leaves hanging down toward the floor, or just wilting as usual when they need watering?
Click to expand...
My containers are 5 gallon fabric pots. They were transplanted on January 4th, at the time they were about 43 days old.

Last time I watered the plant (today) the wilting looked as usual, it didn't look worse than before but the soil wasn't as dry as it normally feels. The pictures I attached today were taken today prior to watering

My other plant is still on schedule for the most part, but I did notice I had to wait a bit longer between watering's in my last two watering's. I went from 3 1/2 days to 4 days and then to 4 1/2 days.

Definitely looking forward to your suggestion! Thank you so much Emilya
 
ok, honestly now... when you water after feeling the topsoil, you say that the container is substantially lighter. If you filled up another 5 gallon container and filled it with dry soil, would yours be THAT light? I already know the answer. I have identified you as a chronic overwaterer. You are and have been probably since you transplanted, been watering before the plants have drained the containers all the way to the bottom and dried out that soil so that it was as dry as the Sahara Desert from top to bottom. When soil is dried out properly in veg the soil will be pulling away from the sides of the container and there might even be cracks along the top of the surface. If you tried watering with any amount at all when the soil is this dry, the soil will repel the water and run out of the sides. It is actually difficult to water a properly dried soft sided container.

You have described this and aloe was suggested to help break that initial surface tension, as well as add some silicate to the feeding plan. But that isn't the problem, just an annoyance that you have to deal with every time you water. The problem is that a 5 gallon container by this time should be on a 2 day watering cycle. You are not. When you first put a plant in a 5gal and water it properly to runoff, the plant can usually go about a week before it would need watering again, but you can speed it up a bit by giving a bit of water around the outside edges every 3 days or so to send the roots out that direction. But, the first watering cycle will be quite long, waiting for that container to get so dry that you are going to think that you are killing your plants and the container gets as light as a feather, and you need to wait for that to happen. You should never water the plant to saturation in veg until this happens... and you have not done this... you are consistently watering too early, right from the very start in that container.

Roots need to see oxygen between waterings almost as much as they need the water itself. If they don't, the roots have no choice but to protect themselves from the flood waters until they recede. At first they coat themselves with a protective shield and while shielded, their ability to suck up water is greatly reduced. This causes the inability for the plant to raise its leaves above horizontal, and most of the time all of the leaves will be hanging below horizontal. A healthy plant that is able to get the water pressure it needs in the trunk of the plant can raise its leaves well above the horizontal plane, so as to point themselves at the sun. An active healthy plant moves around quite a bit during the day, but one with root problems simply lays there.

So you came along that very first time after transplanting, before the water was drained at the bottom, and you watered again, 4 days later. Because of gravity, the water that was still in that soil had collected in the bottom third of the container, an underground lake. The lower tap and feed roots were still underwater, and you watered again. You added to the lake, and much sooner than would happen with a dry container, you achieved runoff and knew the soil was once again as full of water as it can get, as I advised in my watering article, watering to saturation.

So the lower roots didnt get oxygen that time, and you repeated this over and over again, watering before the container was truly empty. Now, the lower roots have begun to atrophy... they have been unused for too long and your plant is now having a great deal of difficulty not only draining the container as it once did but also in getting nutrition.

So what is happening right now is very instructive. Your plant is still able to use water, in the top spreader roots. There are two sets of roots in this weed, the top spreader roots that hang out in the top 3-5 inches of the container, and then the bottom feeder roots. Your problem is gravity. After you fill up that soil, the plant is happy for a bit because the top of the water table is still in the top spreader root system, but about 3 or 4 days later, the water table drops down below the top root system, and since the lower roots are dying, the plant begins to wilt, as if it was out of water... and the way you have trained it to not have active lower roots, it essentially is. You are properly reading the plant in that regard, but not understanding the frequency as being a problem.

If instead you had allowed the plant to drain the water between waterings, the roots would aggressively grow out trying to find every last drop in that container before it ran out. Forcing the roots to grow makes them strong and in a cloth container they really branch out, and by LIMITING the water you can force a rootball to grow. That first watering after the transplant might take a week, but that time for the plant to drain the soil to Sahara Desert status will steadily decrease with each cycle. The next time the plant typically drains the container in 5 days... then 4... then finally down to 3 and as the roots get as strong as they can in that sized container, you should be able to settle in on a 2 day watering cycle. Imagine how much more water and nutes a plant on a two day cycle can get when compared to a 4 day plant!

To recover from this (and you really should before going into bloom) start being very stingy with that water. Every 3 days, since you have trained the plant to only use the top spreader roots, water around the outside edges of that container with about 1/2 L of water.. no more... you DO NOT want to add to the water table sitting down below. Force your plant to use all of that water in the bottom and pull oxygen down there and to the central root core. It might take 10 days the first time... but stick with it. Force that plant to activate those lower roots. Once you have achieved Sahara Desert, water again very slowly to saturation, or runoff. Use however much water it takes. Come back 20 minutes after you have achieved runoff, and see how more you can add before you achieve runoff again. Now you have really saturated the soil.

I promise, the next time it won't take 7 or 10 days, the plant will have shaved off some of that time, and it will every time you successfully go through a real wet/dry cycle. When you get to about a 3 day cycle, flip to bloom, and during stretch the roots continue to aggressively grow. By the time budset occurs, you should be on a 2 day cycle.

Let me mention this too... because there are those out there that tell you to never let an organic grow go dry, especially as dry as the Sahara Desert! You will kill your microbes they cry! If microbes were that tender life would have died out on Earth a long time ago. There are spots in the soil, little holes in the perlite and other organics where water still remains, and so do microbes. Also microbes can go into a hibernation mode when the water goes away, and they pop right back up into active reproducing as soon as the water hits again. Don't forsake proper watering practices just because some online guru is concerned for your microbes.

I hope you are able to save this grow; I know you have been struggling with this for a while. I feel confident now that this has been sorted and that you will soon be seeing recovery. Good luck, and remember... with a weed you have to be cruel to be kind. A coddled weed is a lazy weed.
 
Emilya said:
ok, honestly now... when you water after feeling the topsoil, you say that the container is substantially lighter. If you filled up another 5 gallon container and filled it with dry soil, would yours be THAT light? I already know the answer. I have identified you as a chronic overwaterer. You are and have been probably since you transplanted, been watering before the plants have drained the containers all the way to the bottom and dried out that soil so that it was as dry as the Sahara Desert from top to bottom. When soil is dried out properly in veg the soil will be pulling away from the sides of the container and there might even be cracks along the top of the surface. If you tried watering with any amount at all when the soil is this dry, the soil will repel the water and run out of the sides. It is actually difficult to water a properly dried soft sided container.

You have described this and aloe was suggested to help break that initial surface tension, as well as add some silicate to the feeding plan. But that isn't the problem, just an annoyance that you have to deal with every time you water. The problem is that a 5 gallon container by this time should be on a 2 day watering cycle. You are not. When you first put a plant in a 5gal and water it properly to runoff, the plant can usually go about a week before it would need watering again, but you can speed it up a bit by giving a bit of water around the outside edges every 3 days or so to send the roots out that direction. But, the first watering cycle will be quite long, waiting for that container to get so dry that you are going to think that you are killing your plants and the container gets as light as a feather, and you need to wait for that to happen. You should never water the plant to saturation in veg until this happens... and you have not done this... you are consistently watering too early, right from the very start in that container.

Roots need to see oxygen between waterings almost as much as they need the water itself. If they don't, the roots have no choice but to protect themselves from the flood waters until they recede. At first they coat themselves with a protective shield and while shielded, their ability to suck up water is greatly reduced. This causes the inability for the plant to raise its leaves above horizontal, and most of the time all of the leaves will be hanging below horizontal. A healthy plant that is able to get the water pressure it needs in the trunk of the plant can raise its leaves well above the horizontal plane, so as to point themselves at the sun. An active healthy plant moves around quite a bit during the day, but one with root problems simply lays there.

So you came along that very first time after transplanting, before the water was drained at the bottom, and you watered again, 4 days later. Because of gravity, the water that was still in that soil had collected in the bottom third of the container, an underground lake. The lower tap and feed roots were still underwater, and you watered again. You added to the lake, and much sooner than would happen with a dry container, you achieved runoff and knew the soil was once again as full of water as it can get, as I advised in my watering article, watering to saturation.

So the lower roots didnt get oxygen that time, and you repeated this over and over again, watering before the container was truly empty. Now, the lower roots have begun to atrophy... they have been unused for too long and your plant is now having a great deal of difficulty not only draining the container as it once did but also in getting nutrition.

So what is happening right now is very instructive. Your plant is still able to use water, in the top spreader roots. There are two sets of roots in this weed, the top spreader roots that hang out in the top 3-5 inches of the container, and then the bottom feeder roots. Your problem is gravity. After you fill up that soil, the plant is happy for a bit because the top of the water table is still in the top spreader root system, but about 3 or 4 days later, the water table drops down below the top root system, and since the lower roots are dying, the plant begins to wilt, as if it was out of water... and the way you have trained it to not have active lower roots, it essentially is. You are properly reading the plant in that regard, but not understanding the frequency as being a problem.

If instead you had allowed the plant to drain the water between waterings, the roots would aggressively grow out trying to find every last drop in that container before it ran out. Forcing the roots to grow makes them strong and in a cloth container they really branch out, and by LIMITING the water you can force a rootball to grow. That first watering after the transplant might take a week, but that time for the plant to drain the soil to Sahara Desert status will steadily decrease with each cycle. The next time the plant typically drains the container in 5 days... then 4... then finally down to 3 and as the roots get as strong as they can in that sized container, you should be able to settle in on a 2 day watering cycle. Imagine how much more water and nutes a plant on a two day cycle can get when compared to a 4 day plant!

To recover from this (and you really should before going into bloom) start being very stingy with that water. Every 3 days, since you have trained the plant to only use the top spreader roots, water around the outside edges of that container with about 1/2 L of water.. no more... you DO NOT want to add to the water table sitting down below. Force your plant to use all of that water in the bottom and pull oxygen down there and to the central root core. It might take 10 days the first time... but stick with it. Force that plant to activate those lower roots. Once you have achieved Sahara Desert, water again very slowly to saturation, or runoff. Use however much water it takes. Come back 20 minutes after you have achieved runoff, and see how more you can add before you achieve runoff again. Now you have really saturated the soil.

I promise, the next time it won't take 7 or 10 days, the plant will have shaved off some of that time, and it will every time you successfully go through a real wet/dry cycle. When you get to about a 3 day cycle, flip to bloom, and during stretch the roots continue to aggressively grow. By the time budset occurs, you should be on a 2 day cycle.

Let me mention this too... because there are those out there that tell you to never let an organic grow go dry, especially as dry as the Sahara Desert! You will kill your microbes they cry! If microbes were that tender life would have died out on Earth a long time ago. There are spots in the soil, little holes in the perlite and other organics where water still remains, and so do microbes. Also microbes can go into a hibernation mode when the water goes away, and they pop right back up into active reproducing as soon as the water hits again. Don't forsake proper watering practices just because some online guru is concerned for your microbes.

I hope you are able to save this grow; I know you have been struggling with this for a while. I feel confident now that this has been sorted and that you will soon be seeing recovery. Good luck, and remember... with a weed you have to be cruel to be kind. A coddled weed is a lazy weed.
Click to expand...
Wow, Emilya. I am not deserving of this much care and attention, but I honestly appreciate it so much!!! You have gone into so much detail, and I thoroughly understand everything you have just mentioned to me. Once again, you hit it dead on. My plant does get happy after initial watering, but it takes longer than what most people say it takes. It usually takes a full 24 hrs or so, and 48 hrs later they are really sad again. No wonder.... Only the top roots are taking it in while the feeder ones drown and die... :(

I will proceed exactly as you have told me and I will report back periodically. This knowledge that you have generously shared couldn't have come at a better time. My new plant and first ever auto grow is on her 8th day without water. I will let her get reaaaalllly dry, maybe wait a couple more days and begin cycling down.

Just like your thread on watering a plant, I feel like this post alone provides another level of understanding that compliments that initial thread. If you don't mind, I'd like to copy and paste it on your thread accrediting you - because others that stumble upon it may greatly benefit from this added perspective.

So happy and grateful for your help!!
 
parrajara said:
Wow, Emilya. I am not deserving of this much care and attention, but I honestly appreciate it so much!!! You have gone into so much detail, and I thoroughly understand everything you have just mentioned to me. Once again, you hit it dead on. My plant does get happy after initial watering, but it takes longer than what most people say it takes. It usually takes a full 24 hrs or so, and 48 hrs later they are really sad again. No wonder.... Only the top roots are taking it in while the feeder ones drown and die... :(

I will proceed exactly as you have told me and I will report back periodically. This knowledge that you have generously shared couldn't have come at a better time. My new plant and first ever auto grow is on her 8th day without water. I will let her get reaaaalllly dry, maybe wait a couple more days and begin cycling down.

Just like your thread on watering a plant, I feel like this post alone provides another level of understanding that compliments that initial thread. If you don't mind, I'd like to copy and paste it on your thread accrediting you - because others that stumble upon it may greatly benefit from this added perspective.

So happy and grateful for your help!!
Click to expand...
Thank you for your kind words and I would love it if you repost and let us know how the plant is progressing as we move forward. I am just glad that I was able to explain this to you in a way that made sense, and that now you are going to be able to get to a great harvest, not just this time, but again and again now that you understand the watering process a lot better. On your plant now getting really really dry... when they go over 3 or 4 days not yet able to drain the container, give a little drink to the outside edges just to keep the metabolism high so the plant doesn't stall out, not able to get to water, also enticing the spreader roots to spread out laterally in that container.
 
i got my white widow out just yesterday to get to work on her , after one day a deep watering with water soluble kelp at ph 6.1 she is responded fast :) quicker than i thought TBH

before
P1120570.JPG
P1120616.JPG

yesterday
P1120757.JPG



today

P1120797.JPG
 
NuttyProfessor said:
i think it should balance out , give them a week to see, those centre new leaves look like tip burn coming through also so water will be your best friend this time around
i have soft water too so more sodium and sodium doesn't help the uptake of (k) either but its not always a big problem but can happen, these hidden snags are what catch you out
i catch rain water now too for soil and use tap for coco , the rain is better for organic too as your not killing the microbes
the second plant looks like its going the same way so keep a close eye its slight but there
,
Click to expand...
I have bucket collecting water out back garden, is the water good? I was hoping better than tap Water
 
should be fine, just add an air stone to the bucket before you feed , the extra oxygen helps too
I have a large res , some tap is great some is crap, keep it circulating so it doesn't go bad
P1080651.JPG

P1080651.JPG


P1080650.JPG

P1080650.JPG

 
Emilya said:
Thank you for your kind words and I would love it if you repost and let us know how the plant is progressing as we move forward. I am just glad that I was able to explain this to you in a way that made sense, and that now you are going to be able to get to a great harvest, not just this time, but again and again now that you understand the watering process a lot better. On your plant now getting really really dry... when they go over 3 or 4 days not yet able to drain the container, give a little drink to the outside edges just to keep the metabolism high so the plant doesn't stall out, not able to get to water, also enticing the spreader roots to spread out laterally in that container.
Click to expand...
I wish I could do more than just offer kind words! You've just been so helpful. This knowledge is definitely going to help me for a lifetime. I still have a long way to go, but doing my best at applying your watering technique already shows how much better it is for my plant. I went from killing 4 seedlings, to having my autogrow actually grow at a fairly normal rate! I still have a ways to go before perfecting the watering, but with the level of understanding you have provided me - I am confident I will get it right sooner than later. I will definitely water every 3-4 days lightly around the edges to entice the spreader roots. Looking forward to providing useful updates in the weeks to come. ❤
 
NuttyProfessor said:
I hit her today with some foliar feeding , kelp ,amino and some oils for pests :)
I will post the update and how it responds good or bad in the next few days :thumb:



P1120803.JPG
P1120804.JPG
P1120808.JPG
Click to expand...
Looking forward to the updates Professor! Hope you're doing well with what's going in your life

Here are my ladies after yesterday's watering. Happy happy!! But not for long :( Going to fix them up thanks to Emilyas dead on assessment and recommendation.

20210219_092220.jpg


20210219_092226.jpg
 
Mr. Sauga said:
I'd be getting some Magnesium in her. She's missing that for sure. It's starting at the bottom and working up from what I can tell, so that rules out anything immobile. If you feel your ratios are fine then get some calmag or other magnesium supplement into her.

Outside of that she's a great looking plant.
Click to expand...
I agree that plant is looking ok
Emilya said:
ok, honestly now... when you water after feeling the topsoil, you say that the container is substantially lighter. If you filled up another 5 gallon container and filled it with dry soil, would yours be THAT light? I already know the answer. I have identified you as a chronic overwaterer. You are and have been probably since you transplanted, been watering before the plants have drained the containers all the way to the bottom and dried out that soil so that it was as dry as the Sahara Desert from top to bottom. When soil is dried out properly in veg the soil will be pulling away from the sides of the container and there might even be cracks along the top of the surface. If you tried watering with any amount at all when the soil is this dry, the soil will repel the water and run out of the sides. It is actually difficult to water a properly dried soft sided container.

You have described this and aloe was suggested to help break that initial surface tension, as well as add some silicate to the feeding plan. But that isn't the problem, just an annoyance that you have to deal with every time you water. The problem is that a 5 gallon container by this time should be on a 2 day watering cycle. You are not. When you first put a plant in a 5gal and water it properly to runoff, the plant can usually go about a week before it would need watering again, but you can speed it up a bit by giving a bit of water around the outside edges every 3 days or so to send the roots out that direction. But, the first watering cycle will be quite long, waiting for that container to get so dry that you are going to think that you are killing your plants and the container gets as light as a feather, and you need to wait for that to happen. You should never water the plant to saturation in veg until this happens... and you have not done this... you are consistently watering too early, right from the very start in that container.

Roots need to see oxygen between waterings almost as much as they need the water itself. If they don't, the roots have no choice but to protect themselves from the flood waters until they recede. At first they coat themselves with a protective shield and while shielded, their ability to suck up water is greatly reduced. This causes the inability for the plant to raise its leaves above horizontal, and most of the time all of the leaves will be hanging below horizontal. A healthy plant that is able to get the water pressure it needs in the trunk of the plant can raise its leaves well above the horizontal plane, so as to point themselves at the sun. An active healthy plant moves around quite a bit during the day, but one with root problems simply lays there.

So you came along that very first time after transplanting, before the water was drained at the bottom, and you watered again, 4 days later. Because of gravity, the water that was still in that soil had collected in the bottom third of the container, an underground lake. The lower tap and feed roots were still underwater, and you watered again. You added to the lake, and much sooner than would happen with a dry container, you achieved runoff and knew the soil was once again as full of water as it can get, as I advised in my watering article, watering to saturation.

So the lower roots didnt get oxygen that time, and you repeated this over and over again, watering before the container was truly empty. Now, the lower roots have begun to atrophy... they have been unused for too long and your plant is now having a great deal of difficulty not only draining the container as it once did but also in getting nutrition.

So what is happening right now is very instructive. Your plant is still able to use water, in the top spreader roots. There are two sets of roots in this weed, the top spreader roots that hang out in the top 3-5 inches of the container, and then the bottom feeder roots. Your problem is gravity. After you fill up that soil, the plant is happy for a bit because the top of the water table is still in the top spreader root system, but about 3 or 4 days later, the water table drops down below the top root system, and since the lower roots are dying, the plant begins to wilt, as if it was out of water... and the way you have trained it to not have active lower roots, it essentially is. You are properly reading the plant in that regard, but not understanding the frequency as being a problem.

If instead you had allowed the plant to drain the water between waterings, the roots would aggressively grow out trying to find every last drop in that container before it ran out. Forcing the roots to grow makes them strong and in a cloth container they really branch out, and by LIMITING the water you can force a rootball to grow. That first watering after the transplant might take a week, but that time for the plant to drain the soil to Sahara Desert status will steadily decrease with each cycle. The next time the plant typically drains the container in 5 days... then 4... then finally down to 3 and as the roots get as strong as they can in that sized container, you should be able to settle in on a 2 day watering cycle. Imagine how much more water and nutes a plant on a two day cycle can get when compared to a 4 day plant!

To recover from this (and you really should before going into bloom) start being very stingy with that water. Every 3 days, since you have trained the plant to only use the top spreader roots, water around the outside edges of that container with about 1/2 L of water.. no more... you DO NOT want to add to the water table sitting down below. Force your plant to use all of that water in the bottom and pull oxygen down there and to the central root core. It might take 10 days the first time... but stick with it. Force that plant to activate those lower roots. Once you have achieved Sahara Desert, water again very slowly to saturation, or runoff. Use however much water it takes. Come back 20 minutes after you have achieved runoff, and see how more you can add before you achieve runoff again. Now you have really saturated the soil.

I promise, the next time it won't take 7 or 10 days, the plant will have shaved off some of that time, and it will every time you successfully go through a real wet/dry cycle. When you get to about a 3 day cycle, flip to bloom, and during stretch the roots continue to aggressively grow. By the time budset occurs, you should be on a 2 day cycle.

Let me mention this too... because there are those out there that tell you to never let an organic grow go dry, especially as dry as the Sahara Desert! You will kill your microbes they cry! If microbes were that tender life would have died out on Earth a long time ago. There are spots in the soil, little holes in the perlite and other organics where water still remains, and so do microbes. Also microbes can go into a hibernation mode when the water goes away, and they pop right back up into active reproducing as soon as the water hits again. Don't forsake proper watering practices just because some online guru is concerned for your microbes.

I hope you are able to save this grow; I know you have been struggling with this for a while. I feel confident now that this has been sorted and that you will soon be seeing recovery. Good luck, and remember... with a weed you have to be cruel to be kind. A coddled weed is a lazy weed.
Click to expand...
this post is the best one ever!!! Great info!
 
NuttyProfessor said:
Its a great post i agree , i wanted to read it that much my head hurts now as i had to go back a few times ,, but its worth the headache :):thanks:
Click to expand...
I always read Ems posts a few times over, just to make sure I don't overlook any details in her explanations. Always glad I do, because there are times I miss a small tiny detail (with big implications) the first read over.
 

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