Check out KingJohnC's post, he knows his stuff.
Most definitely!
Whenever you have a problem, always check your PH first.
If you only see the problem on 1 or 2 leaves, and you remove them, and the problem almost immediately appears on the next leaves, that means there is an issue somewhere. It could be nutrient lockout due to high/low PH, or it could be a deficiency. There are also some situations where damaged roots from transplanting, and pests can cause problems to appear on leaves. Testing your PH will give you a better idea how to proceed.
The problem that you may have seen reading through this thread and my journal the last week or so is the pH level in the soil...Water goes in at nearly 7.0 & comes out 4.0-5.? in runoff...That is the result of yesterdays many many many gallon flush...
Also, by leaving damaged leaves on, you let those leaves be "sacrificed" to keep the rest of your plant healthy and looking good while you correct the problem. I leave my ugly leaves on until they can easily be removed by hand without cutting. At this time they will be yellow, and/or some brown, and are pretty much useless to the plant.
I left the decaying leaves in the pictures below on the plant for must be 4 days now and they were just too ugly to look at so I took them off last night...Cant wait to see what has happened since then!!!
Basically I go through this checklist when I see a problem:
Test soil PH. 6-6.8 ok then I know it's either nutes, or pests/roots.
Test soil PH. too high/too low, then I check how wet my soil is. Depending on the PH, and how much moisture is in the soil, dictates how strong I will mix my PH correction solution, and how much water I will use when mixing the batch.
Lets say my PH is ok, and I decide that its either nutes or pests. Do I see any bugs? Have I seen any? I watch the soil for signs of movement from larva. If I see no signs that it could be pests I move on. Nutes.. When did I last feed? What strength did I feed? How old is my plant? How well does my plant respond to different strengths of nutrients? All these things are important when mixing the strength of your nutes. If its been a while since I fed nutes, and the plant is getting huge, I mix a new batch of nutes appropriate to the plants age, life stage, and adjusted for the plant (some plants can take stronger nutes, others burn easily, this is trial and error for me, or you can research it if you're growing a common/known strain. But even plants of the same strain their tolerance can vary).
If I find that I have fed nutes recently, mixed strong enough, but I see pests, I have to identify the pest, and that will dictate how I go about eradicating it.
Once you've developed your own system (which should always start with verifying PH!) When you run into a problem you can fix it yourself easily in most cases.
