Tips curling up, leaves canoing - Heat/light or nute def?

Hey guys, first time grower here and trying to get a few things figured out with my girls. I've been fighting this issue for a few days now and figured I'd post and see if anyone has any suggestions. I have a few plants that are curling up on the edges and on one in particular the top leaves are tacoing up as well as curling up on the edges as well. I've been feeding them tap water with airstones in the buckets for 24h+. I add GH Root Stimulator at 2ml per L every other or every third watering. I bring the PH from mid to high 7s to the mid 6s and drench the pot until I see the first hint of water. All plants have about 2" of 50/30/20 mix of subcools supersoil, FFoF and Perlite. I followed his recipe to the T though at one point I had the soil go anerobic and I had to lay it out until it dried some.. All plants are auto except two fem WW I have growing in 1gal buckets.

I have read and seen pictures that say it could be a number of things from heat to too much light, RH being too low, a mag or other nute def.. really not sure honestly. Fast forward to today and I checked on the plants, still curling up on the same plants after a watering and 24h and the worst part is one of the only two non-auto plants I have that I want to clone later on is curling up something fierce too, not sure what to do here guys. The plants are curling up but nothing (except the leaves on the (I'm assuming) light-bleached plant) on any of the leaves shows drying out or necrotic tissue.

Here's my 16 day old WW fem, as you can see it has a very bad curl going on up top, bottom foliage is fine however ...?


Here you can see one of two leaves on a bubblicious auto I have growing; it was planted 30 days ago. Other than curling this plant has had no other issues, and the leaves on either side of this node only have the brown leaf tips compared to a heavy curl and fade from before. New growth is showing a leaf curl up, but nothing else has gone brown on me.


On these two pictures of the same plant as above, you can see where the circled leaf has dark and light green spots along the veins of the leaf. Could this just be a mag def on several plants? There are only a few of my plants, maybe 3-4 of 12 that look particularly severe compared to the others. My other thought is perhaps these are the first of my girls to encounter and try to use the SS mix on the bottom of the buckets... No idea



Last but not least, the (flowering) room:

Well, I will say, over watering. I know it well. It is a plant that needs drainage. It is a plant that with drainage can be feed every day to bulk up.

- the main contributor to over watering is me
- the second is undrain, too damp soil, so the O2 can't get to the roots (I know you are using O2 saturated water, but, if the roots are soggy in soil, I am not sure that even matters)
- the 3rd contributor to over watering is too big a container. To me those are 3 times the size you need to get the roots thirsty. If they are wet they cannot be thirsty, so they do not grow.
- the 4th contributor to overwatering is overfeeding. You can seperate feeding and watering, in soil.
- the main contributor to overfeeding is not rinsing the minerals between feeding and not letting enough runoff happen.

You said you water until the beginning of flush. I flush 20% extra and measure that PPM. If higher than input, the plant is concentrating salt by selecting only the water. Lock out could be beginning and overfeeding is happening, salts not being flushed, etc.

If PPM is less for that 20% flush water, then I am underfeeding.

I begin in a 16 solo cup for clones and washed, coco coir, or a tiny root plug for seeds. RapidRooter.
My fogger enters the tent via a 4" into a bucket which has a pump to pump the condensed water back into the fogger box.
For me it is all about getting a cup bound root ball. If you keep the container small at first, it can just use the tiny bit of water to force the roots out. In a big container like you have for tiny plants, there is too much soil and it never dries well enough. I don't use perlite for that reason. I make sure there is at least 50% humidity and don't water it.

Then I transplant the coco coir, root ball, in hydroton with maybe only 1/3 volume, coco coir. Mad drainage and I can water every day, and then twice and then 3 times. But, you have to have that root ball to feed it. And it has to be much more dry to force those roots on the quest to make a root ball. We don't want lazy roots.

"N" toxicity it presents its-self by dark green coloring of the leaves, leaves looks like a claw - you are over feeding - young plants can survive on h20 untill they are "old" enough to feed

So I bought a thermometer and tested the room; seems to have a stable temp of 78-82f but the RH was at 20-25%(!), and from what I've read the RH should be close to 60 for veg and lower for flowering. I have a humidifier running in there now, and the RH is creeping up from the 40s as I type this. Go figure...

I also use a moisture meter and also cross-check the dirt before I water the plants. The dirt is pretty dry at 3-4" before I water, and the pot is quite light too. Hoping bringing up the RH will help matters.

I agree, your going a bit rich on the nitrogen. give it less and less N until the color matches 'Doers' plants. a nice vivid green.

yours are darrrrrrk

otherwise, it looks fine, healthy, no heat stress, no bugs. the perky leaves dont seem like an issue, seems to be mainly the newer growth, smaller leaves... but towards the bottom, they hang downwards. 'leaf curling' is more towards a leaf looking like a loose cigar.

The color looks fine, and really, the type of light could show that the OP's plants are in the normal range for green....

His question is:
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Tips curling up, leaves canoing - Heat/light or nute def?

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That all looks like normal leaf growth... So, I think you have no issues, except, you put 3" tall plants into Bud...

Good Luck man....

Yeah, these Auto girls really like to do things on their own timeline. I'm running a humidifier, the cupping is less pronounced on a few of the plants, but still present on my non-auto WW. I'm going to wait until tonight to water the girls straight water and see if my issues clear up some.

Just to follow up on my rooting-in phase. It worked. 10 days in a cup with no water beyond the rinsed coco coir.

I can see the coir is quite dry by now and the roots have been out hunting for more. But, she grew quite a bit in 10 days.

Hey a thick green stem, not purple and thin!!! Yeah! I used to see the unrecoverable over-watered stall at 10 days. She will spend 10 days in the 6" azalea cup. Getting feed a little ever few days. The she goes into the 2.5 gal rose bucket there, the cup is sitting on, for another 40 days and that is my 8 weeks of Veg. No more transplants. The rose bucket will move over 3 different, top drip, nute res. One for finshing Veg and one will be for beginning bloom and the other for finishing. I want to get 2 plants a month out in to the curing jars. That is plenty for me.



A note to the OP.

Could you tell us the thinking about blooming so small a plant? For me the yield has always been disappointing compared to cost of the light. Is it because you have the room for a lot of plants to yield a little bit, to add up? I am paying $20 a seed (considering 50% males) I can't get your math, unless you have bagseed.

Well, I just ran a full watering through one of my pots and decided to test PH. I let the pot sit for 15 minutes to let the salts dissolve and ran some more water into the pot, the water that came out tested with a PH of 4.0. Any ideas here? I've run almost 2 gallons through the pot and the PH shows no signs of changing. If worse comes to worse, can I wash the dirt off the roots and transplant the non-auto plants into some other dirt, or a hydro setup? Would they possibly recover from the nitrogen poisoning?

Edit: I got a bunch of autos free with some other seeds I bought and decided to learn with them; they started flowering on their own. A light has been on 24 hours since they sprouted; I'm pretty sure hitting super acidic soil stressed them and they're flowering early. I was thinking of washing the plants and switching them to hydro, but I'm not sure if it's worth it with them at their current size..

autos will flower as they veg

silkroad said:

autos will flower as they veg

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what?????????

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoflowering_cannabis They flower on their own around 4 weeks regardless of lighting.

Yeah, and even more weird are the semi-auto flowerers. a .....a hybrid that will show some of the characteristics of the autoflower parent like early preflowers and vigorous growth in flower etc.

There is a guy in the advanced section on RIU, that is experimenting with early sexing of SAF strains.

He put them under 12/12 after germination and in 3 weeks they maintained growth and sex was shown, males were culled, and the girl put under 20x4 Veg lighting. They re-vegged but with very vigorous growth, lots of branching....like supercropping.

BTW, if you don't know, there is a 3rd species called Ruderalis and it has the great genetics of not needing photoperiod to flower. More useful for hemp production, not a lot of THC, etc. But, a little of that gene in the right places with a high THC strain will make a cross that flowers very easily and really stretches into it.

It it may have an undiscovered secret that allows it to be sexed easier than other strains.

Yeah, the seed breeders get their autoflower genetics either from another autoflowering strain, or directly by breeding it with Ruderalis.

Hmmmm.....I was unaware of auto-flower strains that don't have Rude in there somewhere.

Got a name?

I meant that an auto strain bred using ruderalis and sexed as female, when pollenated with another (sativa or indica) pollen has a high % chance (I think it was like 60% when I read it) of being auto. It's how they boost potency and stability; breed plant A with ruderalis, create plant B, breed plant B with plant A's strain until it stabilizes plant B's strain (in auto form). To verify any plant is auto just leave it under 18/6 or more light and wait for bud sites to appear. If they do, use colloidal silver to create seeds from the new auto plant.

I get the gist of it, but I imagine it's quite a bit harder than it sounds...