What am I doing wrong, and how do I correct this? Rust spots on newer plants

[thedude1337]

Hi,

I am growing in soil (Juniper Farms, professional mix), and this is my first grow. I have been giving my plants PH'd water with Biothrive grow and Root Farm Base compound. My eldest plant started showing rust spots a few days ago, so I flushed the soil, and gave her some new water with nutrients. I also made sure the PH level was 6.8 for the new water. The next morning, the rust spots had turned into full on necrosis. I noticed last night I had a new rust spot on a 2nd plant.I thought it could be a calcium deficiency because I'm using tap water, so I added some camg+ to the girls yesterday.

This morning all my plants look like a disaster. Leaves are curling and they are looking less green. Am I simply giving them too much love? Should I just sit back for a few days and let them grow? Should I flush all my plants and re-water with very little nutrients? Kind of stuck and I don't want to kill my girls on my first grow.

 

[PopTop]

just a precaution, check under the leaves for 2 spotted mites, jewelers loop 30x will show them, that 1 pic with the white spots is what to look for, hopefully it isn't. The brown tip is an indication of to much nitrogen, maybe someone more experienced at diagnosing can help.

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

the brown tips are from overwatering, usually. looks different from overfeeding. you can look at them all day...just quit doing stuff to them.
in soil i'd recommend a feed/feed/water schedule. make sure you get decent run off when you use plain water, to wash out old salts and debris. let them get good and dry before you water again. soil isn't coco and needs a dry period to let the roots breath.

 

[thedude1337]

Thank you Roger and PopTop.

These are the girls today. They have gotten much worse. Just wondering if you think I should flush with PH water and leave them until dry again... Also, do I remove the bad leaves, or leave them there?

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

you have new growth coming in burnt looking. to me thats a sign of root problems. i'd use some h2o2 the next few times i watered, see if that doesn't stop that shit. if all you have access to is the 3% stuff from the drugstore, use 20 ml per gallon.
leave the leaves alone till they get really bad looking, as long as they have some green, they're still doing something.

 

[thedude1337]

you have new growth coming in burnt looking. to me thats a sign of root problems. i'd use some h2o2 the next few times i watered, see if that doesn't stop that shit. if all you have access to is the 3% stuff from the drugstore, use 20 ml per gallon.
leave the leaves alone till they get really bad looking, as long as they have some green, they're still doing something.

Thank you Roger, though I will try to fight the temptation to do something about it. All 5 of my plants have the same issue at various stages. So I think the nutrients + whatever was in the soil was too much for the girls. It is my first grow, so I was expecting some issues, just not this soon into it.

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

hang on. there are always problems. figure them out and next time you'll recognize them when they start and deal with them sooner.
as you progress, you'll improve your room, get the environment tuned in, get your schedule down, and most of the problems will go away

 

[thedude1337]

hang on. there are always problems. figure them out and next time you'll recognize them when they start and deal with them sooner.
as you progress, you'll improve your room, get the environment tuned in, get your schedule down, and most of the problems will go away

Thank you for the reassurance. I picked this up as a hobby more than anything, and I am enjoying learning new stuff everyday. I will wait it out a few days to see how things go.

 

[Zero_OS]

So I may be completely off base here, but I give it try anyway. Based on your original post, it looks like you flushed the soil and then fed with a nutrient solution three days ago. What was the dose or the ppms of your nute solution?

Then 2 days ago (the day after your fed nutrients), you watered again with Calmag. What was your dose and the ppms of your calmag solution?

Those plants are young and probably don't need nutrients yet, so my guess if that the original issues were from overwatering like Roger said. You may have nute burned them with your nute feeding after the flush (so they were overwatered again from the flush and then nute burned). Then with your calmag feeding the next day, you overwatered them yet again, and possibly upped the salt level in the soil. When you grow in soil and have a problem, you cannot expect the result from your implemented solution to express themselves the very next day; it doesn't work that quickly in soil...it can take a week or more before you see some results.

I think it is important for you to look on that bag of soil to see what they put in it to get a baseline on the nutrient situation. If dolomite lime is an ingredient, then you probably don't have a cal or mag issue, unless your soil pH is really really low, and shouldn't have calmag'd it. If they added blood meal, bone meal, and kelp meal, then you probably never had a nutrient issue (the soil may even be hot) and shouldn't have fertilized it yet (hence the nute burn). I think Roger is right, your first issue was overwatering. Then you may have compounded the issue with more flush watering, nute burn, and more watering with calmag. Again, this is just imo based on what I could understand your sequence of events and timing was based on the info you first provided, so take it with a grain of salt. First step is to do as Roger said, and work your watering, and second step is to understand something about the ingredients of your soil, so that when you come up with a solution to a problem, you are doing it from some baseline set of info. One of the hardest things is being patient after you implement one solution before you implement the second solution when you grow in soil.

 

[thedude1337]

Thank you Zero, I think you are spot on. I know this was self inflicted. I did 5ml of Biothrive Grow, and 5ml of root farm base per gallon of water. I added 5ml of calmg+ per gallon the 2nd time.The mix is 80% Sphagnum peat moss, 20% Perlite. I added some composted sheep manure and extra Perlite to the mix because the cute lady at Home Depot said it would help it from breaking up. It is likely mixed 20% Perlite, 65% Sphagnum Peat Moss, 15% manure.

 

[Zero_OS]

Curious, when did you start feeding the biothrive and root farm relative to planting the seed and the seed sprouting?

With just peat, perlite, and the composted manure you added, your grow media is like a base mix for organic soil but without lime, so it could be on the acidic side. Plus, base mixes do not have added nutrients except what is in the compost, and they generally lack nutrients for your plants once they get beyond the seedling stage. So those initial brown spots could have also been some combo of over watering, too much salts in the media, and/or too acidic of soil. If your mix is on the acidic side (due to a lack of lime added to the mix), that could have affected some nutrient uptake even if the compost in your mix hasn't been depleted. You can run a slurry test if you have a pH meter to check the media's acidity and compare it to a pH vs. nutrient uptake chart to give you a clue on whether that might have contributed to the issue.

 

[thedude1337]

I gave them water with nutrients the day they sprouted. The PH of my soil is 6.1.

 

[thedude1337]

Thought I would give an update. The plants looked dry this morning, so I misted them with PH'd water. Their leaves perked right up. I got quite a bit of growth overnight and their color is better. So I will continue to do nothing but occasionally mist the girls.

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

it looks like it need water now, is the pot still heavy?

leavs drooping but stems still standing up is overwatering, leaves and stems both drooping needs water.

 

[thedude1337]

it looks like it need water now, is the pot still heavy?

leavs drooping but stems still standing up is overwatering, leaves and stems both drooping needs water.

The soil is still wet to the touch.The white widow likely looks like that because I pulled the top 2 leaves apart a bit so I could look at the middle under a microscope. No real reason for me to do it other than being curious. This is my first grow and I have been enjoying this more than any other hobby I have ever picked up.