Leaves drying and curling?

M

Montezemelo

New Member
So, here's my situation. This is my frist grow and I started from bagseed in mid August and topped twice, but ended up with a monster with more than 4 mains. or it seemed. All went well during veg and 3 months in I switched to flower. This was the last weekend in October. about 2 weeks later all growth slowed to a crawl, like almost nonexistent. First problem I corrected was high humidity, which had gotten up to 80%+ a couple of times because of massive amounts of rain, my ventilation system pulling outside air, and my lack of a dehumidifier. So I bought a dehumidifier and changed the ventilation and that problem was solved. I wait and keep an eye on the plant and water tank and everything looks healthy but still no new growth. Next problem I discovered is incorrect nutrients. Have been using GH Gro, micro, bloom nutes since beginning. Discovered that continuing to feed the micro during flowering results in nitrogen poisoning of the plant. so I changed my nutes and new growth started, but still seemed way too slow. In addition, i have had a large number of leaves getting dry, progressively turning more brown and then dying. May be that by this point the plant had already been way too stressed. after a little research, i think I may have a magnesium deficiency as well, but many of these leaf diagnoses look very similar.

Long story short, after extreme amounts of stress throughout flowering, I have constant growth at what seems like a reasonable rate, but it has all been on the lower part of the plant. Its like my colas just formed a little bud in the first 2 weeks of flower but then stopped completely. Now I am starting to see a couple of the leaves cup in a strange way. Wondering if anyone has seen this before or can verify my problems
 
It looks to me mainly like major overfeeding, causing leaf curl and nutrient burn. Especially way too much N. You don't mention anything about ph, but thtat obviously has to in the proper range or major issues will come up.
80% RH in veg is not a problem. Good you got it under control in time for flowering though.
 
Roots look ok. maybe a slight reddish brown color, but pretty healthy overall.

Ph has been ok. it has stayed between 5.7 and 6 for the most part but there have been times where the ph has dropped to 4 overnight. A reservoir change with a good flush of the roots and entire system helped stabilize for several days to a week, which makes sense as i read that drops like that are often caused by decaying root matter. I'm sure that the root system has let go of some of its mass to stay in balance with the leaves that it has dropped.

The thing is im barely feeding it any nutes anymore and the leaves are continuing to brown and dry out. last reservoir change i mixed 5 gal water, and 5 ml each of the bloom and gro. The trichomes are finally starting to get cloudy after what seems like an eternity so I will probably just go straight water next reservoir change.

These damn things are finicky once they get into flowering
 
Oh?? Oops. Maybe the opposite then. Phosphorus deficiency from feeding low can look similar. Or ph related tragedies.
Part of the issue is that it's barely possible to see the plant in that weird light. Could you take some in 'normal' lighting ?
Not that looking at it will necessarily tell the story at this point. She's pretty ravaged looking. But with some more info on what happened during the grow we can guess.
Generally almost all these threads relate back to feeding issues or ph
 
I keep reading that everything basically comes back to nutes or ph. And sorry, I know those LED's make everything purple. On that note, would too much light cause any of these problems? I remember now that I added a second "300w" LED (~130w actual draw) to my setup about 2 weeks into flower, which is when most of my problems began. at this point I had two 300w (130w actual) LED's and three 30w cfl's
 
Like I said, ph has been ok for the most part. it was around 6-6.2 during veg and then i tried to keep it closer to 5.8 but there have been swings. probably the worst it got to was to 3.5 but it couldn't have been there for long as i had checked it less than 24 hours prior and it was in the high 5's. I did feel like i was fighting with the ph more than I should have been.

The reason for this may be partially explained in my first post. I did not flush my system as often as I should have as every time i changed my reservoir the plant looked like it was going to die for several days. so stopped changing water and began topping off the tank every few days. maybe once a month i was taking the system completely apart and cleaning. So I can see how this would cause a buildup over time of dead root material causing the ph to drop.
 
Lots of roots. They don't look rotten.
Those ph swings can be a killer though. When you consider that the scale is logarithmic. So if you were aiming for a ph of 6 (actually you want to be a little bit lower but I'm trying to simplify the math :laughtwo: ) then 3.5 is a five hundred times as acidic as your sweet spot. That's a monstrous difference and a very toxic situation for the plant- even if it didn't last long. I've done that ph fluctuation thing with DTW. external reservoir so the plants aren't immersed in it- but ph in the 4.5 range screwed them up pretty badly
So it could be largely/completely a ph issue. Anything else funky going on that you can think of?
 
He claims he hasn't been feeding them much. My first thought was classic nute burn though.

I would start planning the next grow and how to improve the environment next time. Good medium, reasonable nute schedule, ph control, etc.
 
one thing that i haven't mentioned is the uppermost leaves like on the plant have yellowed but in a blotchy way. like it's checkered green and yellow. I would be seriously surprised if it was nute burn. I don't think i ever gave more than half the GH recommended amounts.

on the lighting, my 2 130w LED's are each 20" from the closest leaf on opposite sides over the plant. they had been closer at times but never caused any problem earlier in the grow. About a month and a half ago when the upper leaves started discoloring and the lower ones weren't i thought the lights may be too close so i moved them to 20". before they were 10-15" as the plant grew. Could this still be problematic?

This has all been a learning experience and am definitely taking notes for the next one. One thought was that a larger reservoir would provide a better buffer for ph swings so i will probably double the size. and will have some cal-mag on hand which i do not currently.
 
From your practices it doesn't sound like nute burn- but there are obviously multiple issues and it's impossible to unravel them all. There is rarely ever just one issue. Some deficiencies caused by ph problems appear in the areas closest to the light. Deficiencies almost always cause other deficiencies and quickly pile up on each other.
As long as your environment is good- you won't have these problems- or they'll be subtle enough that you have a chance of catching them.
A larger res will help. Do you have a bubbler in yours? I put in a couple and it helped a lot to stabilize ph.
 
That plant is sick as a sick can be. What went wrong? I would say everything. Better luck next time.

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