small thin leaves, small thin buds

hey all. please help me. my plants always seem to have small thin leaves and produce small thin buds (smaller than i'd like). it is not caused by the strain for i have tried many. i have plenty of light(4 600w hps), my ph is good(around 5.8, nutes are good, heaps of ventilation and air flow. i am growing in perlite and was watering twice a day. my pots are quite large so i thought it might be due to over watering so i have cut back to once a day. plants are healthy and green and never wilt. i live in a very hot and humid climate and my room is around 30 degrees celcius. i am going to use smaller pots next crop so they can dry up quicker and i will also install an air conditioner. i am also going to put some panda film around the base of the plants to prevent the medium/pot getting too warm. does anyone out there know exactly what i'm doing wrong for i am just guessing. am i on the right track? i was unable to attach photos. cheers. ash.

ashleynewth said:

hey all. please help me. my plants always seem to have small thin leaves and produce small thin buds (smaller than i'd like). it is not caused by the strain for i have tried many. i have plenty of light(4 600w hps), my ph is good(around 5.8, nutes are good, heaps of ventilation and air flow. i am growing in perlite and was watering twice a day. my pots are quite large so i thought it might be due to over watering so i have cut back to once a day. plants are healthy and green and never wilt. i live in a very hot and humid climate and my room is around 30 degrees celcius. i am going to use smaller pots next crop so they can dry up quicker and i will also install an air conditioner. i am also going to put some panda film around the base of the plants to prevent the medium/pot getting too warm. does anyone out there know exactly what i'm doing wrong for i am just guessing. am i on the right track? i was unable to attach photos. cheers. ash.

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Sounds like you're not following good cultural practices. Tough to say without checking out your day to day activities. 30C is a great day temp, plants need a good drop in temp at night.

With perlite having the open, loose structure it does, how could you have an over-watering situation unless the pots are way oversized in relationship to the plant size. Again the balance - small plants with little foliage mass do NOT wick off much moisture at the root zone and vice versus.

I hope you're using a food that is complete (16 essential elements.)

UB

well sounds like to me over watering and maybe your lights are too far away from the plant cause when i just started and used hps lights they where 2 feet away and my plants streched so it could be streching severly cause of the lights not being close enough of over watering or underwatering but are some of the leafs getting droopy and hanging down ?

i feel my pots may be oversized or too hot. i've had to bud my plants a lot earlier this grow due to lack of smoke and therefore my plants are alot smaller and pots are exposed to more light (less shade) than usual. my nutes have been tried and proven in previous crops. watering is by pumping through spaghetti tube for 15 minutes per day. some were very dry so i tried watering twice a day yesterday to see how they reacted but it seemed to make the leaves curl on some plants and edges are slightly yellow now (see photos). i'm finding some pots are a lot drier than others due to different sized plants and strains. i've decided to hand water only as necessary . can u describe at all what processes might cause a plant to grow smaller leaves and is the curl and yellowing from overwatering. i have attached some photos. they are three weeks into flower.

looks like very sativa dominant, It might be awhile before you get mature budz. good luck & always stock up before you grow

ashleynewth said:

i feel my pots may be oversized or too hot. i've had to bud my plants a lot earlier this grow due to lack of smoke and therefore my plants are alot smaller and pots are exposed to more light (less shade) than usual. my nutes have been tried and proven in previous crops. watering is by pumping through spaghetti tube for 15 minutes per day. some were very dry so i tried watering twice a day yesterday to see how they reacted but it seemed to make the leaves curl on some plants and edges are slightly yellow now (see photos). i'm finding some pots are a lot drier than others due to different sized plants and strains.

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Does the watering method provide for a complete soil drench, or are you creating dry channels/holes in the medium which causes a reduced amount of moisture and salts uptake by the plant?

i've decided to hand water only as necessary . can u describe at all what processes might cause a plant to grow smaller leaves and is the curl and yellowing from overwatering. i have attached some photos. they are three weeks into flower.

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Plants look good but a red flag should be mentioned - if your new leaves are smaller than the previous ones, you have a plant in a state of decline and will likely lose it or at least reduce production.

Good luck,
UB

i checked my roots and found they were brown with some type of root rot. i used growool on my previous crop and while on holidays i let my pumps do the watering. i came back to find my plants drenched, yellow and wilting. i put it down to overwatering and vowed not to use growool again. although i am using perlite this time, i didnt sterilize my pots and i believe the root rot spores were lying in wait. high reservoir temps didnt help which is hard to avoid in the sub tropics. i dosed my plants with h2o2 and fungicide and they began to grow again. i then gave them some rhizotonic to get the roots going and hygrozime to keep the medium clean. as highred mentioned the stains are very sativa dominant and are taking way too long to finish. i recieved some awesome seeds recently and i want to get a good grow in before july/august so i decided to let my mate look after my plants for the remainder so i can start again. he's getting half the end product for his effort. i only lost one plant in the end. thanks for the help.