Chunkadelic Weekend Update
Day 56
Autoflower Problem Diagnosis/Solution Special
We haven't checked in on Chunky in a bit. When we last saw her she was just being moved down from the light as we had found some budlets starting to singe and the upper leaves were starting to go a bit yellowish. Once she had been moved down, she showed SOME improvement. But to my eye it should have been more. Also, three watering week cycles ago she drank FOUR gallons of water. Last week she only drank three. This is where I have to give
@Emilya some serious props. She has taught me, and many of us, the importance of paying close attention to what's going on with your watering cycle. One might kiddingly rib her that she's a bit fanatical about it. Lol. Hi Em! When I saw that moving Chunky to the right light level didn't fix the greening up of the top leaves enough, and then I combined that observation with the fact that her water consumption went DOWN, which at this point there is zero reason for, I realized the problem was more than just the light level. Her growth had slowed down. Needless to say that should not be happening right now. The light level would be pretty much unrelated to water consumption in a significant way, at least THAT significant - an entire gallon slower. So if you have slowed growth, which I did, and lessened water uptake at the wrong time, which I had, and if you also have leaves starting to yellow and not be the right shade of green, there's likely only one culprit - CalMag deficiency. In my case I caught this exceedingly early, and frankly I NEVER would have if it weren't for Emilya, so THANKS EM, you're the man.
This means I got it before any of the leaves start showing the next step in that deficiency, which is a whole bunch of spots and crap you never want to see.
It is worthy of note that this type of CalMag only deficiency can be very difficult to tell apart from having your plants too close to the light - a lesson I learned last grow when the scrog was in veg. Thus, having multiple reference points to diagnose a problem, and in particular any inappropriate changes to the water uptake of the plant, is a big advantage. We stopped the problem in it's tracks. With her first watering this week we gave her a tsp./gallon of the CalMag plus Iron with her nutes, then a clean watering with molasses, then just now her second nute feeding of the week. She's already back to drinking FOUR gallons a week, as the gallon I just added to her makes (2) 1 1/2 gallon and (1) gallon feeding this week. She is now humming along on all cylinders again, and I fortified her CalMag with one more dose in today's mix.
I also think I have a decent handle on these Canna nutes now, or at least a fledgling one. So just now with this gallon I did my first and only tweaking besides the boost I gave the Sour Apple a few weeks ago.
The feeding chart says week 7 for autos is (roughly) a tbsp./gallon of Terra Flores and a tbsp./gallon of Boost. That's it. So I compared this to week 9 of the photo feeding chart, as that is approximately where the 5 day auto week would translate to in photo time. In week 9, Canna gives the photos a one time only boost of a mix called PK 13/14. Not sure about going into the details of what it does as I'm not sure on sponsorship, and don't want to overstate the case. But anyway, this boost is included with the photos so I figured why not the autos too? Are they just being conservative? So then I checked out what Canna says about their own Auto feeding chart, and by their own admission it is their most conservative auto schedule ever. So I said we're going for it. This is what I just gave her in her gallon of water:
- 1 tbsp Terra Flores
- 1 tbsp Boost
- 1 tsp. PK 13/14
- 1 tbsp blackstrap molasses
- 1 tsp CalMag plus Iron
That's a frothy brew. And you won't believe this but I swear to god it's the truth - when I shook all that up and waited a few minutes and tested the Ph, it was....wait for it......6.33. I kid you not. My mouth hit the floor. First time that has happened. LMAO.
I can already see she is no longer stalled, the uptick being a result of the first watering of the week. What I just gave her will cement the solution. The buds took a significant uptick in the last 48 hours. The leaves are greening back up. And she's drinking like a big dog again. I probably cost her maybe five days, one of her weeks, of perfect growth. Oh well. Some lessons I need to learn more than once.
Here she is now. If you go back and compare her to the last picture of her, the upper leaves are clearly greener and the buds are clearly cruising like they are supposed to now. Yay.
Photographs:
The first three pictures are a bottom to top comparison set. You can clearly see the leaves getting paler and yellower as we go higher on the plant. In certain spots they are more pronounced than others, but in none of the leaves is it any worse than this and it's definitely fixed. So when I post in a week I promise she'll be as green up top as she is on the bottom, as she should be.
The fourth picture is the whole plant right after watering her that frothy brew.
The last picture is a bud closeup clearly showing several indications of complete recovery from both the light and the CalMag. You can see the upper leaves praying like demons now, as they should be. This alone is enough proof that the light issue is solved correctly. And you can see the leaves are already greening back up from the initial CalMag pump this week. The buds visibly got bigger in the last 24 hours for the first time in a week. They are now rapidly going to go nuts. She's going to be fine. Be curious to see what happens with the addition of the PK 13/14.
So there you go. I had no illusions that this was going to be a perfect, mistake free, deficiency free grow. They simply never have been yet for me, and I have a lot going on. So this is bush league stuff now. Two grows ago I would have lost this plant. Now I diagnose and fix a problem almost as if I have SOME idea of what I'm doing.
THANK YOU FORUM GROWERS, I WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO MAKE THIS POST IF IT WEREN'T FOR ALL OF YOU HELPING ME OUT AND HAVING MY BACK, AND IT'S ONLY CUZ OF YOU GUYS THAT I HAVE LEARNED ENOUGH TO SAY ALL THAT CRAP!!!!