Sick Plant Question

PacificPeach

PacificPeach

Well-Known Member
Hello,

I have done a couple of indoor grows. But I am still a newbie. This summer I planted 2 Fast Buds LSD 25 seeds outside. They are about 6 weeks old now. I have fertilized them about 1-2 times per week according to the Fox Farms soil schedule with Big Bloom, Grow Big, and Tiger Bloom.

One of them - the first picture - is doing fine. The second plant started about 10 days ago to have a weird yellow discoloration on the inner part of the leaves and some buds. At first it was really bright yellow but you can see in the last few pictures that it's turning into a lighter yellow with purple veins. Has anyone seen this before? What would you suggest?

Thanks so so much for all your help & support

Namaste,
PacificPeach


Healthy LSD 25 plant:
IMG_270525.JPG


Sick Plant one week ago:

IMG_270728.JPG


Sick Plant yesterday:

IMG_272115.JPG
IMG_272217.JPG
 
Yikes! Those shots could be out of a plant pathology textbook!
They look like shots of Iron and Zinc deficiency that I have seen.
What's weird is that you're feeding them a balanced diet of a name-brand fertilizer. That would make me think the most likely cause is too much of a good thing so nutrient excess.
What's also weird is that you have other plants of the same strain that look OK?

Not really knowing what's going on, I'd suggest:
  • Check and correct your soil pH. This might be important here. You should really do that. You can do that with a soil test kit or by watering the plant and then digging down and taking a sample of the water after a few minutes. (Measuring soil pH is a bit of an art...)
  • Go to a good garden center and buy a soil test kit and see what your NPK values are.
  • Reduce the nutes to 1/2 strength. (Manufacturer's recommendations can be on the high side).
  • Your soil looks pretty awful--like glacial moraine, with lots of clay and gravel (though it's hard to tell from a photo).To the extent possible (probably not much at this point), work on your soil. Adding chemicals to poor soil can do a lot, but only so much. Amending your soil with perlite for drainage and some more organic material and less clay/sand/rock would be good. (If that soil is as bad as I think, you might consider growing in pots or digging a hole and filling it with good soil.)
  • If you haven't done so already, you might want to Google "cannabis nutrient deficiency chart." I think Jorge Cervantes' is best. (But reading those charts seems to throw a lot of people off, thinking they have something exotic like a boron or manganese deficiency. Remember that people take university degrees to diagnose problems like this, so just looking at a chart is often more confusing than helping...)

Those are my generic, first-aid-for-a-hemorrhaging patient suggestions. Maybe someone else will have the "OMG, I've seen that before, do X" solution.

Good luck! Like I said, that healthy plant shot looks awesome. I hope you can get back to that soon. I think the take-home lesson here might be to definitely get better soil, test and correct pH, and make sure you're not overfertilizing.

That's my .02....
 
Hey Scientific,

Thanks so much for your help. I agree with you that the soil is not good. I will take your advice and try to amend the soil. I will also be careful with the fertilizers. I just read the Tiger Bloom has zinc and iron. I will also look for a soil PH kit. I have a soil PH probe but I don't think it's very accurate.

Do you think I should cut off the yellow buds and then hopefully the remaining green buds will develop more? Or is it too late to make such a drastic move?

Namaste,
Pacific
 
The Fox Farms three-bottle fertilizer solution should have (according to the label does have) all the trace elements like zinc and iron, just like the three-bottle General Hydroponics stuff that I use. And a top quality product like FF doubtless has nutrients both in various chemical forms and chelated so that they can be absorbed across a broader range of pHs, so it should be able to do the job very well in a variety of circumstances.

Soil testing, a pH meter, and an EC meter (aka a PPM meter) are great tools to have on hand. Knowledge is power! (Those push-in probes are worse than nothing in my opinion, as you seem to suspect.)

One possible problem that comes to mind after thinking about it for a while is that you might have mixed your nutes wrong. I'm meticulous to a fault, but I still goofed up mixing my nutes not once but twice in a twelve week grow. Fortunately, I was measuring the pH and PPMs and was able to figure out that I'd done something wrong before over- or under-dosing my plant. Just a moment's inattention...

Amending the soil after the fact seems like a tricky business. I know people "top dress" with lime and with chicken manure and stuff like that, but that's an art I have yet to learn... The big thing for me lately has been learning how important soil drainage and oxygen to the roots are, neither of which you get without a lot vermiculite, perlite, or even sand. (Our soil here is awful, so I buy it by the bag, or lately have just been skipping soil and going with coco coir...)

I remove damaged growth just because it hurts my pride to look at it. I think it might kinda maybe sort help to encourage some new growth to appear, but that's probably wishful thinking.

Your plant's problem certainly wins the "most dramtic symptom" award. I'd love to know what happened. In any case, I hope your plant recovers quickly!
 
Wow...that's strange Indeed

I use Fox Farms nutes and never over half strength

Did you by chance water the plants from the top straight down the stem?

Ya that is a weird one indeed
 
Scientific said:
Yikes! Those shots could be out of a plant pathology textbook!
They look like shots of Iron and Zinc deficiency that I have seen.
What's weird is that you're feeding them a balanced diet of a name-brand fertilizer. That would make me think the most likely cause is too much of a good thing so nutrient excess.
What's also weird is that you have other plants of the same strain that look OK?

Not really knowing what's going on, I'd suggest:
  • Check and correct your soil pH. This might be important here. You should really do that. You can do that with a soil test kit or by watering the plant and then digging down and taking a sample of the water after a few minutes. (Measuring soil pH is a bit of an art...)
  • Go to a good garden center and buy a soil test kit and see what your NPK values are.
  • Reduce the nutes to 1/2 strength. (Manufacturer's recommendations can be on the high side).
  • Your soil looks pretty awful--like glacial moraine, with lots of clay and gravel (though it's hard to tell from a photo).To the extent possible (probably not much at this point), work on your soil. Adding chemicals to poor soil can do a lot, but only so much. Amending your soil with perlite for drainage and some more organic material and less clay/sand/rock would be good. (If that soil is as bad as I think, you might consider growing in pots or digging a hole and filling it with good soil.)
  • If you haven't done so already, you might want to Google "cannabis nutrient deficiency chart." I think Jorge Cervantes' is best. (But reading those charts seems to throw a lot of people off, thinking they have something exotic like a boron or manganese deficiency. Remember that people take university degrees to diagnose problems like this, so just looking at a chart is often more confusing than helping...)

Those are my generic, first-aid-for-a-hemorrhaging patient suggestions. Maybe someone else will have the "OMG, I've seen that before, do X" solution.

Good luck! Like I said, that healthy plant shot looks awesome. I hope you can get back to that soon. I think the take-home lesson here might be to definitely get better soil, test and correct pH, and make sure you're not overfertilizing.

That's my .02....
Click to expand...
Hey if I post some pics of my plants with drooping leaves think you could help me get them healthier
 
Hi everyone,

I wanted to give an update on how my sick plant made out. I will purchase a soil PH meter as recommended but I haven't done so yet. I ended up assuming that it was an iron deficiency so I looked on the fertilizer bottles to see which ones had iron. Big Bloom & Tiger Bloom both had it, so I gave it a weak solution of those plus some cal-mag a few times. The yellow started to fill in a little, but those areas seemed damaged so I cut most of them off.

Scientific also sent me a link which looks EXACTLY like my problem. How to Fix a Cannabis Iron Deficiency | Grow Weed Easy
I must have caused PH lockout. I feel kind of stupid about that!

Anyway, I will upload a few updated photos and post them shortly.

Thanks so much again for all the support. Namaste,
Pacific
 
PacificPeach said:
Hi everyone,

I wanted to give an update on how my sick plant made out. I will purchase a soil PH meter as recommended but I haven't done so yet. I ended up assuming that it was an iron deficiency so I looked on the fertilizer bottles to see which ones had iron. Big Bloom & Tiger Bloom both had it, so I gave it a weak solution of those plus some cal-mag a few times. The yellow started to fill in a little, but those areas seemed damaged so I cut most of them off.

Scientific also sent me a link which looks EXACTLY like my problem. How to Fix a Cannabis Iron Deficiency | Grow Weed Easy
I must have caused PH lockout. I feel kind of stupid about that!

Anyway, I will upload a few updated photos and post them shortly.

Thanks so much again for all the support. Namaste,
Pacific
Click to expand...

You might just have crappy, iron-deficient soil!

I'd recommend a soil test kit, not a meter. Watch out for the"soil pH meters" you find at the garden center (especially the cheap 3-in-1 meters). They are worse than worthless! Instead, I think it's better to take a sample of water from your root area and measure with a pH pen. (A pain I know.)

I think "pH lockout" is less common than people think, especially with modern, chelated fertilizers. Iron wants acidic conditions according to the charts, so maybe your soil is quite alkaline by nature? For your next outdoor grow (if any ;)), try using a big pot or digging down a couple of feet and heavily conditioning your soil with compost, chicken poo, and other goodies.
 
Hi,

Ok, I will look for the soil test kit. Sounds like it would be very helpful to have.

Here are a few pics. In the last one, I had cut off most of the yellow leaves/buds and the rest of the plant matured without any more problems. Cut down yesterday due to mold. Final yield is still to be determined:

IMG_271817.JPG
IMG_285417.JPG
 
PacificPeach said:
Ok, I will look for the soil test kit. Sounds like it would be very helpful to have.
Click to expand...

I'm reminded of my college pal Jerry the agronomy major analyzing soil (he's the one who taught me not to call it "dirt" ;)) in the lab. You are crossing over into the hard core region when you start testing your soil. (And I think there might be lots of room for error--be careful and methodical about that...)


Here are a few pics.
Click to expand...

Your plant definitely wins the most dramatic symptom award!
 

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