Lower new leaves that don't get light are blotchy yellow?

So I've noticed with my current grow after defoliating, the leaves underneath are yellowish throughout almost like they lack sulphur. But after my first defoliation, the leaves that then got direct light turned healthy green. Just tonight I did another defoliation and noticed the same with the 3rd node budsites beneath - fan leaves were yellow blotched throughout.

So I got 2 theories for the title question.
1) Lack of direct light can affect full green health look. Maybe because the plant recognizes those leaves don't need perfect nutrition because they aren't photosynthesizing much, or its not a plant choice and lack of light affects fan leaf development.

2) I'm actually lacking nutrients and plant can only keep the most important fan leaves fully healthy

Before Defol 1

After Defol 1


Before Defol 2

After Defol 2


What do yuns think? this isn't a nutrient advice question per say, just a look and share opinion. My feeding in general has been water, feed, feed, water. The medium was cooked for 3 weeks with half the bag recommended "4 week" dry amendment of 5-3-3. Cooked for me was adding water if the medium felt dryish, so I was adding maybe 1/3 a gallon of water to the 9 gal of medium once a week, and mixing it among itself. My feedings are of FF Big Bloom, Fish Fert(5-1-1, veg), and FF Tiger Bloom(2-8-4, flower), and supplemental and at 1/3-1/2 bottle dosage; though as
I'm into week 9 I imagine all of the "4 week" amendment treatment cooked is 99% gone so I am starting to feed closer to 3/4 recommended Tiger Bloom.

come on now, gotta be some of you old dogs or reefer book nerds that can shed some light on my overthinking lol

bignugs68 said:

come on now, gotta be some of you old dogs or reefer book nerds that can shed some light on my overthinking lol

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I think it's accurate to say that leaves change color only as a reaction to a change in chemicals in the plant. I wouldn't say it's a function of not getting light.

The plants below are my current grow and they were vegged with a veg light, then a flower light, and then flipped. There's a lot of foliage in there and the leaves in the center/bottom of the plant are a very healthy green.






But I just plucked these off about an hour ago. It's day 51 of the grow, 11 days into flower and some of the leaves are starting to die off. That "senescence" is part of the process of flowering.


Same plants, 10 days ago. Zoom in on the leaves on the front of the plant on the right and there's discoloration because about 2-3 weeks ago, the plant on the right wasn't getting the right nute mix. Some of the leaves on the back had the same issue. I think EC was 0.8 at the time so I may have upped it to 1.0

bignugs68 said:

come on now, gotta be some of you old dogs or reefer book nerds that can shed some light on my overthinking lol

Click to expand...

Overthinking is the key word. Those plants are perfectly healthy.