intermediate grower with issues

[nsight]

SOIL GROW

Strain - Indica master kush
# of Plants - 1
Grow Type - Soil
Grow Stage - Vegetative
Bucket Size - 5 Gallon
Lights - 6 bulb t5's
Nutrients - age old grow, fish/seeweed kelp. Botanicare cal/mag and full power (humic)
Medium - sunshine advanced mix #4
PPM - 900
PH - 6.7
RH - 35% to 40%
Room Temperature -70-75
Solution Temperature -65
Room Square Footage - 10' x 10'
Pests - None Known

Problem: leaves curling and brown spots. Slowed growth and node spacing too close. It is a problem on 3 different strains as well. Master kush, grape stomper, and purple god bud. All indica dominant.

 

[v3gas4ce]

I was reading these forums and noticed your plant (bottom picture) looks like another picture in this thread:
Cannabis Plant and Pest Problem Solver: Pictorial

From what I see in both the pictures I would say magnesium deficiency?
The description is this:

Magnesium is one of the easiest deficiencies to tell… the green veins along with the yellowness of the entire surrounding leave is a dead giveaway, but sometimes that’s not always the case here. In case you have one of those where it doesn’t show the green veins, sometimes leaf tips and edges may discolour and curl upward. The growing tips can turn lime green when the deficiency progresses to the top of the plant. The edges will feel like dry and crispy and usually affects the lower leaves in younger plants, then will affect the middle to upper half when it gets older, but It can also happen on older leaves as well. The deficiency will start at the tip then will take over the entire outer left and right sides of the leaves. The inner part will be yellow and or brownish in colour, followed by leaves falling without withering. The tips can also twist and turn as well as curving upwards as if you curl your tongues.


I'm a noobie so I could be totally wrong.

 

[nsight]

I thought same thing but I am using cal/mag so don't see how that would be the case

 

[Marzbadrock]

Id bet your feeding too much which caused high ppm in soil causing pH imbalance. With pH being off calmag is first deficiency. Test your soil.

 

[Antics]

Excess nutrients can also cause lockout of other nutes...

It definitely looks like calcium and magnesium deficiencies to me.
Close node spacing is a good thing, but they will spread out a bit as the plant grows.

Test soil PH and verify 6.3-6.8 range. Then we can go from there.

 

[indica vet]

definately lockout ,start by flushing with ph'd water and allow about 30 seconds off run off.
allow her to dry out again and re-apply nutrients at slightly lesser dose. go from there

 

[nsight]

I am lucky all my girls don't look like these. Run off varies from 5.0-5.7 depending on plant. Going to start flushing tonight. Thanks for the help and advice. I will keep you guys posted

 

[Marzbadrock]

After flushing I'd recommend adding some microbial life back to the soil, you probably will flush everything out. You can still perform well without doing this but this is part of the magic in most soils that a lot of people just don't understand. Also, if you feed at 6.7 and your runoff is 5.7 this means your soil pH is around 4.7, also going organic in good soil there is no need to pH at all, or flush. Just get 50% runoff every watering and you will have no salt build up.

 

[nsight]

Ok, I use plant success mycorrhizae when I pot clones. I will put some of that back in. When I am flushing, my goal is to get the run off back up around 6.5 correct?

 

[Marzbadrock]

Yes, you will need to treat this grow differently though. Any buffers in the soil like lime, oyster shell, sulfur...... will be washed away so you will need to monitor your pH runoff throughout the plants life. I did some experiments with Happy Frog soil. With plain well water at 155 ppm and 7.9 pH out of the tap I watered a cup of dirt, the soil pH after watering was 6.2, two days later the soil was almost dry, the pH was 6.8. This maintained for a month. The other cup of dirt I watered with the same water only I phed to 6.5, immediately after watering the soil pH was 4.9 and gradually dropped over the month to 4.1. This is when I decided to research organic soils. There's too much to explain but I highly recommend doing some research on how soils work, your not necessarily feeding the plant so much as you are feeding the soil.

 

[nsight]

I will definitely do some reading. But a quick question, I plan on putting them into larger pots soon. When I do this and add more/new soil, it should help out with what has been washed away correct?

 

[Marzbadrock]

Absolutely!!! Give them a bit of time after transplanting to let roots expand and life to spread throughout soil. Keep in mind you will not fix damaged leaves, watch new growth and listen to your plants, they will show you what they need. Keep a journal and the next grow you will know what, when, and why to do this or that.

 

[Blueballavngr]

It's ur humic acid! I did the same And use many of the same things in a tea. The humic causes explosive growth spurts but it's basically giving the microbial life NOS(not literally). They go into overdrive and can exchange more energy and break down minerals and such a lot faster for ur root system. I only use it 3 times durring the grow but I brew it. I used 1/3 tsp per gallon and saw burning now I use as TBSP for 30 g (I use dry concentrate 100%) if u make a Foliar spray with the kelp and water (oz to a quart) it will help with stress. Idk about ur other nutes but that is exactly what happened when I first used humic and over dosed it. If u r using synthetic nutes, idk if the humic acid will help in a NPK setting. My understanding of it was to help micros (I could be mistaken, I'm still a newb), The salt in the synthetic nutes makes it harder for them to thrive. So if u flushed then renuted and over fed on the humic, it could have jump started ur Micros and cause a ph swing. (Just a theory I'm sure some of these other growers can confirm or correct my thoughts).