Help with Deficiencies in Flower

RANGERTHEDOG

Active Member
Hi all,
I've been starting to see some slow deficiencies coming on in my grow and hoping some of the team here can help me confirm or set me straight on my plan of action. I started out in a soil mix of potting soil from local grow shop mixed with generic top soil. The soil lasted until about week 3/4 before they started to look hungry and then I started feeding them their veg feeds and everything went great through veg. I vegged them 6 weeks and then flipped to flower about 4 weeks ago. Now I have started to notice a general yellowing of the new growth on some colas as well as some leaf symptoms(pics attached) that I think are phosphorous, potassium, Calcium deficiencies and maybe Magnesium as well. I think I am generally underfeeding right now for the size of the plants and so my plan is to increase my feeding schedule.

Symptoms I see(Pics are attached and inline below)
  • interveinal Chlorosis on new growth(mild)
  • Brown/rusty leaf tips and spots on leaves
  • Yellowing leaves that peel off easy(lower leaves about 1-2 per week)
  • other brownish/grey spots on leaves that are older but exposed to light.
  • Edit: Red Stems on leafs exposed to light.
Most of my leaves still look good but you can see the general color going from green to yellowish on new growth tips especially and I can tell its all heading towards what these first leaves are telling me their issue is.

I feed once a week on Tuesdays and then just plain water on Saturdays. For Nutes I use General Hydroponics Flora Trio 8 Litres mixed to the Drain to waste Schedule(Pic attached). I have been also using Sensi Cal/Mag Xtra at half dose since I heard soil grows don't need as much added Cal/Mag, but I've now since read that LED lights can cause plants to need more Cal Mag so I'll be upping this to full strength.

My AVG Feed strength is about 750-800 PPM my water is hard at about 200ppm out of the tap, I sometimes dilute it by 50% with distilled water to bring that down to put more feed in.

My proposed actions
I am thinking to add a second feeding instead of Saturday being just water I will add in a full strength Cal Mag feeding with a 1/2-3/4 dose of the GH trio. Anybody have any other suggestions. I also have some organic Gaia green Bloom ferts that I could top dress with if you all think that might help. Want to get them back on track ASAP.

General yellowing June 16 vs yesterday July 1, its a little more obvious in person. There is 4 plants in there.
June 16.jpegJune-July 1.jpeg

Leaf Chlorosis? new growth.
Newer Growth 2.jpgInteveinal Chlorosis plus brown.jpg

Some of the older leaves.
Early signs of issue June 23.jpegBronze spotting Jluy 1.jpeg

Older bottom leaves yellowing
Old Fan Leaf Yellowing - Nitrogen def.jpeg

Trunk and buds close up
Trunk and nitrogen leaf.JPGBud.jpg

Feed Schedule: Last feed was 5ml Micro, 1ml Gro, 6 ml bloom per gallon of water. and 5ml Cal/mag per gallon which is a little over half strength.
Feed Schedule..jpg
 
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Buddernugs

Well-Known Member
Cal mag mABY or she’s a tad bit hungry first before you do anything what’s your ph in and ph out?
 

RANGERTHEDOG

Active Member
Cal mag mABY or she’s a tad bit hungry first before you do anything what’s your ph in and ph out?
Yeah - I ph everything to ~6.5 with a good quality pen and calibrate it ever week or so. I haven't checked the PH going out, but will do that on Sat when I feed.

I do check ppm going out on the water feeds so going in ppm is about 200 ppm and out is about 440.

And Yeah the 4 way is the way to go, I top at 5 nodes back to above two and then LST to open up the growth sites and it works great. This is my first grow and I tried three dif topping techniques and even just did one plant only LST - It's growing like a spiral around the bowl which is cool but it was a lot more work and a lot harder to work with than the 4 way... in the future it will be 4 way everytime... I also think they will ultimately yield better as well from what I can see from budsites and colas now.
 
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RANGERTHEDOG

Active Member
Cal mag mABY or she’s a tad bit hungry first before you do anything what’s your ph in and ph out?
I did my actions today. I think hungry and low cal/mag was what was showing up, I also noticed since my last feeding some purpleing on lead tips on a couple plants and the look of some phosphorus deficiency in some lower growth.

I did a stronger feeding by mostly just upping the Cal/Mag to full strength and applied another week 4 feeding of the GH Flora Trio. Results showed the feeding from Tuesday had been almost completely consumed. I fed 9 liters of water per plant and got about a litre of more of run off in each.

Results
PPM in: 945
PPm out: 950 was lowest, 1050 was highest and the rest were in the 960's

PH in 6.75 - kept on the higher side in case my soil had acidified due to calcium def.. I usually PH to 6.5
PH out - ranged from 6.5-6.8

They already looked like the feeding from Tuesday had helped and some my new growth and sugar leaves were looking healthier, I've trimmed off almost all damaged leaves and will keep watching for signs of deficiency or excesses but I think its safe to say they were hungry, now we'll monitor run off for the rest of the grow to see if it continues to need two full strength feeds per week.
 

RANGERTHEDOG

Active Member
Try a nice heavy deleaf, usually leaf pick 1-2 times during flower to my knowledge. No need for all those fan leaves, just one per budsight.
I did defoliate prior to flower because I had air flow and humidity issues and was going to again at 3 weeks in but then when I started seeing issues showing, I didn’t want to add further stress. But I think I will clean up the canopy as I am starting to get water on leaves from crowding in the canopy.
 
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