looks like over watering, but might be nute burn/stress?

Okay, so I am bad about over watering. I've been getting better, but last night my big plant was wilted and saggy from over watering. I let him dry out, and today he was perked up like a hard on.

But then right before my lights went off, I noticed he was saggy again. I haven't watered today at all, but there's still a tiny bit of moisture in the bottom of the dirt, but like I said he perked back up but then started sagging again without giving more water.

I gave him his first dose of full strength nutes about 2 or 3 days ago. I started with small concentrations (less than 1/4 of the directions) and he hasn't shown any stress other than over watering and a little heat stress (the shiny leaves). What do you think?

It looks underwatered to me... Are you positive it's over watered?

How much water are you giving and how often?

Honestly, I haven't really been measuring the amount of water I give them. I have about 13 plants, most of them seedlings and so I fill up a 32 ounce bottle and water those, which are in different stages/sizes and different pots.

But I have 2 plants in the 45 ounce butter dish, I probably water them every other day, about 25 ounces or so.

I hope you're right about the under watering. I just gave them each about a half a Gatorade bottle, enough to drain out the bottom. And then I poured the other half in each one (so one whole bottle a piece). It will be surprising if it is under watered, seeing as how it just recovered from being over watered earlier today it seemed like. Maybe it was just the onset of dehydration, and then perked up for a bit but kept getting drier and worse.

Well see how the watering goes. Got any tips for watering schedule? I usually just wait until its almost bone dry, stick my finger way down in the soil and see if it feels cool/moist.

Stop jamming your finger in the soil and go based on the weight of the pot . In addition to recognizing the weight of the pot you will also be able to tell when to water by looking at the soil. There are different stages of "dry" and you appear to be using a sphagnum peat moss and perlite mix (looks like pro-mix to me) which actually becomes dusty when it's really dry. When the peat becomes dusty you are in danger of root damage from under watering. You can't overwater your plants from one watering, over watering means continually topping off the already drenched soil to the point where the roots die from rotting. If your peat soil has already severely dried out it can lose its water wetting properties and can be hard to re-hydrate (the water can go right down the edges of the pot and out the bottom without soaking into the soil).

Ahhhh, OK thanks man. I'm using this hummus stuff mixed with perlite right now, but my first plant has a mix of like 60% miracle gro soil (thats sifted with a window screen to get the food balls and mulch out) and then the rest in hummus. I hadn't bought the perlite yet, so it doesn't have it all the way through but I did try adding some to the soil to help it drain (the fluffy soil left from the miracle gro holds water like crazy).

Thanks a bunch guys!! I guess I had just gotten so used to avoiding over watering that I, naturally, wound up letting her get too thirsty. Woke up this morning and walked into my grow room, and I as soon as I got in front of the closet my plants said "UH-TEN, HUT!"

Its hard to recover from underwatering vs overwatering good thing u didn't let it progress.

you may wish to consider using Cal-Mag....I see some yellow on the bottom leaves

You cant overwater if you have good drainage. Water them until you see runoff coming from the bottom of the pot. Then water again when the pot feels light.

Dont fertilize just because. Know what your giving the plant and why. Is your soil amended with nutrients out of the bag? If so, adding more can cause problems. With Fox Farms Ocean FOrrest, I can grow healthy green plants for several weeks without fertilizing.

Also, most tap water contains enough Ca and Mg to sustain a plant that size. I wouldn't add cal-mag unless youre water is lacking. C and Mg are micronutrients and show up in new growth first, yellowing of bottom leaves is probably not caused by deficiency in either.

Yeah, ol' Larry's had a bit of a tough life. Suffered from heat stress before I got my temps under control and was over watered as a seedling. He's almost 3 weeks old and definitely not as big as I'd like him to be, but I'm doing my best to keep him healthy.

He's my "learning" plant, so I can avoid as many mistakes as possible on my good seeds. I have a couple close friends who are total pros at growing, unfortunately I live in an area where the government is not so kind to *all* gardeners, and the only way I can get in touch with them is through mail

Needless to say, this place has been invaluable for me.

MYOB said:

You cant overwater if you have good drainage. Water them until you see runoff coming from the bottom of the pot. Then water again when the pot feels light.

Dont fertilize just because. Know what your giving the plant and why. Is your soil amended with nutrients out of the bag? If so, adding more can cause problems. With Fox Farms Ocean FOrrest, I can grow healthy green plants for several weeks without fertilizing.

Also, most tap water contains enough Ca and Mg to sustain a plant that size. I wouldn't add cal-mag unless youre water is lacking. C and Mg are micronutrients and show up in new growth first, yellowing of bottom leaves is probably not caused by deficiency in either.

Click to expand...

Cool, yeah I added the perlite to help drainage and so I can flush effectively when necessary. However, my soil mix holds water like crazy; I might have to add a little sand in with the perlite the next time I use this hummus. Its nice and rich, but apparently not too hot to start them out on BC my seedlings to great in it. It has a lot of the organic stuff (obviously, its hummus) like worm castings and whatnot. I definitely plan on picking up some fox farms ocean forest as soon as I go to transfer. I can get some local, thank god. BTW, anyone ever tried their red label stuff, original maybe?

And I've definitely heard mixed results on adding cal-mag. But, a lot of the people who seem to know what they're talking about on here say that the product is a waste of money (like a 6 ounce bottle is 40 bucks at my store, or something crazy).

Was considering ordering calcium nitrate online, its super cheap and would also give it nitrogen for my veg.

ThorGanjason said:

Cool, yeah I added the perlite to help drainage and so I can flush effectively when necessary. However, my soil mix holds water like crazy; I might have to add a little sand in with the perlite the next time I use this hummus. Its nice and rich, but apparently not too hot to start them out on BC my seedlings to great in it. It has a lot of the organic stuff (obviously, its hummus) like worm castings and whatnot. I definitely plan on picking up some fox farms ocean forest as soon as I go to transfer. I can get some local, thank god. BTW, anyone ever tried their red label stuff, original maybe?

And I've definitely heard mixed results on adding cal-mag. But, a lot of the people who seem to know what they're talking about on here say that the product is a waste of money (like a 6 ounce bottle is 40 bucks at my store, or something crazy).

Was considering ordering calcium nitrate online, its super cheap and would also give it nitrogen for my veg.

Click to expand...

cal-mag is a waste of $$ if you dont need it. If you are using RO water that contains none, you will need it. If you are using "soft" tap water you will also need it. Most tap water contains Ca and Mg and just using it to water your plants provides enough.

I wouldn't add anything unless my plants were deficient or undergoing a change like flowering or rooting.

It is important to know not only what your soil contains but what nutrients those elements provide for a plant. If your soil is rich in nitrogen then adding more nitrogen is unnecessary and can be detrimental.

FFOF is organic and contains plenty of nutrients to sustain a plant during its vegetative stage. I mix a bag of OF with a bag of Light Warrior. I also mix diatomaceous earth in with that.

I think the OF can get a little compacted by itself. The light warrior is more airy and helps drainage. It is also organic and contains beneficials and nutrients. If your tap water contains Ca and Mg, you will be fine with no extra feeding until flowering.

If you feed only what the plant needs, you wont have to flush.

Yeah, I have to admit I've totally been slacking off on my research lately. Between work and school I've barely had time to tend to them, which has helped me as an excited newb from doing anything too detrimental. I learned a lot in a short period of time, but now I'm starting to feel lost again and so this weekend I plan on putting some hours into studying more up on my nutrients.

I'm using natural organics Buddha grow formula; since these first few are bag seed, I'm wanting to push them to help learn the limits, and so I kind of have several mini experiments going on with my 13 plants where I am giving some nutes, some just water, some were started in bigger pots, some in smaller, etc.

My main goal with my grow is quality. I do plan on experimenting with topping/fimming and LST to give me a few extra colas, but I would be much happier with 1 ounce per plant of dankola than 6 ounces per plant of airy, stringy buds with no flavor or high.

So I am definitely gonna try and start by giving them too many nutes, lol. At least to learn what to avoid, or what it looks like so I can catch it sooner with my good plants.

And I had been wondering about the yellow spots. I was guessing they were either calcium/magnesium deficiency (heard they are hard to discern), but it hasn't progressed so I've let her keep going.

Also, I was considering taking the yellow leafs off of the bottom, but most of the leaf is still healthy and I'm pretty sure the leaf is still doing more for the plant (in terms of collecting light) than it would by making the sacrifice and having the nutrition it would be using go elsewhere.


BTW, the bottom leaves are yellowing, but when I talk about the cal/mag deficiency, or whatever is causing the yellow circles, its happening on a leaf higher up. I'll try and get better pics when I get off work.

I know so many highly experienced growers that use Cal-Mag as preventative maintenance....proactive rather than reactive

The softer your water the more it requires it.....and honestly it's not expensive, 5ml per 4 litres is mere pennies......

but it's all about your situation and what will work best for you....but for me, Cal-Mag is essential.

And by the way, what does RO water stand for?

Regular 'ol water?

Sometimes I have to remind people that I'm a redneck biochem student.

Reverse Osmoses

Start by learning what a plant needs to grow. Throwing fertilizer at it until it burns is a pretty poor way to learn. You wouldnt know specifically caused the problems since toxicity can cause all sorts of problems.

A much better way would be to either start with a soilless medium like coco and control exactly what your plant is getting via nutrient solution. Or mix your own soil, adding organic amendments to cover each of the plants nutrition requirements.

Learn how to tell the difference between deficiencies and when it is NOT a lack of fertilizer but something else. Too many people cry deficiency. You would think cal-mag and epsom salts cure cancer.

I would start by reading articles NOT written for cannabis specifically and definitely not cannabis grow forum threads. There is way too much misinformation and the good stuff is hard to find unless you already have a solid foundation to be able to skip the bad info.

Check this out:

http://landresources.montana.edu/NM/Modules/Module9.pdf

Bear in mind that nutrients are only one aspect of understanding how plants grow. There are also limiting factors like pH, light, CO2, oxygen etc. If these are not in the optimal range, the plant cant use nutrients effectively. For example, it doesnt matter how perfect your nutrient schedule is if your pH is locking everything out.

Reverse osmosis, derrr. Dunno why I didn't think of that. I was just looking at systems online the other day.

And MYOB-- just because I'm a hillbilly, that doesn't mean im like 90% of the people who jump on here without doing any research. If you had seen any of my pictures, then you would've seen my tomatos that I started growing first, before my bag seed.

In fact, I've studied quite a bit about how plants work. As well as a hillbilly, I'm also a biochem major and so I'm already a little familiar with how plants use light to convert co2 into sugar that they use as energy, or store as starches in the leaves. I also know that plants use most of their nitrogen to produve protein in the form of enzymes, and that nitrogen can easily move from older plant tissue to younger tissues, which is why nitrogen deficiency starts as a yellowing on the tip of the leaf that moves inward.

And im not just giving my plants metric fuck tons of nutes without any type of control to see what's being affected. I have 13 plants right now, in 4 different stages of life, err age rather (most of them seedlings). 4 plants are only getting water and have been given an alkaline once to raise the pH. Only 2 of my plants have even been given a fully concentrated feeding with the nutes, and the only nute I've used is the Buddha grow formula by roots organic, which has an npk of 2.0-.25-1.5. Just throwing nutes at them and waiting for them to burn wouldn't teach me asuch as I'd like.

But even considering all the research I've done, I still wouldn't have gotten this water thing right until I stuck a seed in the dirt (or something) and started to see for myself how they react. And honestly, my biggest priority lately has just been getting my environment stable; my setups only a couple weeks old.

I respect your opinion and I understand where you're coning from. A lot of people jump on here wanting others to do the work for them. But I mean hell, you make it seem like its a crime for someone to throw a seed in some dirt and try and learn something from watching the grass grow.

rry if I seem oppositional. I take pride in the time I've spent learning, and to come on my thread and act like I don't know how a plant grows turns my ass red. I can't help it I'm a redneck.

BTW, I know I'm not entirely nute locked, however there are yellow spots on my leaves, and calcium needs the lowest pH range in order to be absorbed. My pH stays around 6.2-6.6 or so, and so my calcium might be having a hard time being absorbed.