what are the symptoms of a plant outgrowing its container?

Ok, I've really been needing to make this thread for a while now, and my plant is continuing to get worse. Its an og kush from hso, and I vegged it for a little over 2 months and the thing got massive. It started getting some random leaves that were starting to yellow, and now the leaves are dying and its reached the gaurd leaves.

I've thoroughly flushed the thing for about a week now, so I really don't think its from over feeding or pH problems. I had a couple other plants from bag seed exhibiting similar characteristics, with bottom leaves dying too quickly and whatnot and they were DEF in containers that were a little too small. The OG was in a 5 gallon smart pot and I was trying to keep from transplabting since I'm halfway through flower. I went ahead and switched it from a #5 smart pot from one company to a #7 from another compan, and they wound up being almost the exact same size. Lemme post a few pics.



The leaves startedyellowing, but as you can see began to form brown, small necrotic dots. Its actually gotten even worse, these pics are several days old--now some of the leaves are completely dead on the tips and curling up. They started yellowing pretty randonly, but now its looking like mostly the tops that are hurting the worse, so it prolly has something to do with an immobile element.

I doubt its a deficiency BC I feed with the roots organic line from aurora. Again, its been flushed for over a week now and getting worse, so I'm gonna go back to feeding it a little. Do you think it might just be outgrowing its pot? The thing is massive. Its too big for a five gallon bucket so I would probably have to put it in a tub of some sort, but I hate giving it fresh soil high in nitrogen this late in flower. Lemme know your thoughts, hopefully someone can help me figure this out BC this plant is daaaank. It smells amazing and has been frosted up since the second week of flower. Thanks for any input.

Wow hehehe that's a beautiful plant bro as for you question I can't remember it after seeing your pic's. After looking at the pic's and reading your story I would say you have nothing to worry about. The plant is just finishing and eating itself, all normal. But thats just an opinion bro I'm sure you will get ten or more members with ten or more theories as to whats wrong so take your pick.
Damn that's a frosty plant. I see your cat is eyeballing it and he looks hungry.

looks good to me bro

Lol! Its so obvious what the problem is from ur first pic!!! That cat is zapping nutes out your plant with his eyes!! Stop the greedy beggar quick!

But seriously....WOwser!! That it an extremely bountiful looking plant!! The amount of solid, mini-christmas trees and the size of the base of that main stem is awesome dude!

ANd i agree with everyone else on u likely fine & if anything probably needs feed now, especially after flushing. One thing tho, u said its late in flower but didn't say exactly how long - so if ur planning on only running up to another 3 weeks, i'd say ur likely fine, but anything over 3 weeks & u may need to increase feed strength or adjust schedule so they get less more often. Or possibly maybe just look to add low dosage of a CalMag liquid supplement too, and one with a touch of N & trace elements should help starve off any potential overly-rapid leaf loss.

Otherwise, the only other thing i'd offer, which does require alot of patience & delicateness, is u can foliar feed the leaves using absorbant, cotton gloves & a small hand-held spray. U can't spray normally like veg, but if u ain't lazy it can be done anytime in flower. (unless u got major groomage going on obviously - i talking a few plants!)
One leaf at a time, just hold each big fan & side leaves against the inside palm of 1 glove & spray into it lightly from 2 inchs away to coat each leaf individually. Try not to drench & cause excessive run-off, as ur basically trying to avoid wetting any nearby buds. If done with patience, u can dowse enough large outer leaves that they will absorb it & feed, whilst keeping water away from buds. It certainly helps with absorbing trace elements & immobiles & lock-outs, etc.


But yeah, wish it was mine for sure!!

Hahaha, yeah my cats love it in the grow room, I leave the tent unzipped so they can lay in the light every now and then.

And I know what you mean about the ten theories, and I'm more than open to hear from them lol. At first I was wondering if it was just "giving up it's leaves" getting closer to flower, but now that it's getting the necrotic spots on the guard leaves and stuff its definitely worse than it should be at this point.

They look great!! You will always have yellowing leaves here and there as long as it is not the whole plant. Good Job making so many tops. Honestly the plants could grow much bigger in the 5 gallon smart pots. When you use air pots/smart pots you can grow the plants into size that a 7 gallon size would.

They could use more NPK. You have a slight def in all NPK. Yellowing would be from Nitrogen def, Phosphorus the brown blotches is the sign. I can't see if you have potassium def, but since you say you have brown spots that would be potassium.

RedWhiteBlueGreen said:

Lol! Its so obvious what the problem is from ur first pic!!! That cat is zapping nutes out your plant with his eyes!! Stop the greedy beggar quick!

But seriously....WOwser!! That it an extremely bountiful looking plant!! The amount of solid, mini-christmas trees and the size of the base of that main stem is awesome dude!

ANd i agree with everyone else on u likely fine & if anything probably needs feed now, especially after flushing. One thing tho, u said its late in flower but didn't say exactly how long - so if ur planning on only running up to another 3 weeks, i'd say ur likely fine, but anything over 3 weeks & u may need to increase feed strength or adjust schedule so they get less more often. Or possibly maybe just look to add low dosage of a CalMag liquid supplement too, and one with a touch of N & trace elements should help starve off any potential overly-rapid leaf loss. But yeah, wish it was mine for sure!!

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Thanks for the reply man. Yeah, its actually only 3 1/2 weeks into flower now, I figured it would run for 8 or 9 weeks. You might be spot on with the cal mag-- I was feeding with botanicares cal mag (+iron) towards the beginning of flower, but my water is pretty hard (140 ppm) and so with my flushes ive been leaving it out. It definitely is seeming more like a deficiency, since it seems to keep getting worse.

I'm gonna start feeding again tomorrow, the thing is definitely dank as all hell and I'm hoping to pull 8-10 o's by the time she fills out. The smell is INCREDIBLE. I had a bubba kush and a white widow on my first run that both had great genetics and turned out well, but they weren't even on the same level as this plant (and the bubba kush was the dankest shit in my small town while it was around).

This is actually my only plant in my second run; I have two supposed "ak-47" bag seeds but they aren't frosting at all, let alone dripping with resin like this one.

Another note, I might have some environmental prpbls going on BC the tips of my pistils are all turnng orange, definitely a little too early. I'll have to get some more recent pics during lights on tomorrow to give you guys a better idea where she's at, these pics were taken right around/just before the start of week 3.

SilentGreen21 said:

They look great!! You will always have yellowing leaves here and there as long as it is not the whole plant. Good Job making so many tops. Honestly the plants could grow much bigger in the 5 gallon smart pots. When you use air pots/smart pots you can grow the plants into size that a 7 gallon size would.

They could use more NPK. You have a slight def in all NPK. Yellowing would be from Nitrogen def, Phosphorus the brown blotches is the sign. I can't see if you have potassium def, but since you say you have brown spots that would be potassium.

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Yeah, see I figured it wasn't nitrogen since the tops are yellowing more than the bottoms. You may be right about the other elements. I am in walk mart and just saw someone staring me down out of the corner of my eye. I look over and its a damn Ron burgundy stand up lol.

Aaaaanyways, yeah when I post the more recent pics tomorrow you guys are gonna wanna cry, seeing this beautiful plant starting to get sick.

Magnesium Def could make it yellow to. Are the yellowing coming from inside out? Your lights could be too close to the canopy too if only the top fan leaves are yellowing.

Thats nice flowering already if u only nearing 4 weeks flowering - hopefully they should all swell well - but yeah, u will deffo need some feed for sure & also CalMag likely a good idea too still.

And with the Calmag, i dunno if u in UK or can order it, etc but wanted to say i use PlantMagicPlus Calmag & thats got a good few other bits including N in it, and more relevantly, its formulated for hard water area's so avoids excessive salts, etc. Certainly recommend any plantmagic stuff anyway.


And also, i guess u seeing the example now of what difference in quality u can get between seedbank seeds and random bagseed! 1 of the best bits of advice i read on here early on was that if ur only doing a few plants grow, then pay out for decent seeds as it'll likely eliminate a few possible problems, and ur much more guaranteed a healthy, sturdy & quality plant. Bagseed can come good but definitely less guaranteed & more possible time/resources wasted.

ThorGanjason said:

Thanks for the reply man. Yeah, its actually only 3 1/2 weeks into flower now, I figured it would run for 8 or 9 weeks. You might be spot on with the cal mag-- I was feeding with botanicares cal mag (+iron) towards the beginning of flower, but my water is pretty hard (140 ppm) and so with my flushes ive been leaving it out. It definitely is seeming more like a deficiency, since it seems to keep getting worse.

I'm gonna start feeding again tomorrow, the thing is definitely dank as all hell and I'm hoping to pull 8-10 o's by the time she fills out. The smell is INCREDIBLE. I had a bubba kush and a white widow on my first run that both had great genetics and turned out well, but they weren't even on the same level as this plant (and the bubba kush was the dankest shit in my small town while it was around).

This is actually my only plant in my second run; I have two supposed "ak-47" bag seeds but they aren't frosting at all, let alone dripping with resin like this one.

Another note, I might have some environmental prpbls going on BC the tips of my pistils are all turnng orange, definitely a little too early. I'll have to get some more recent pics during lights on tomorrow to give you guys a better idea where she's at, these pics were taken right around/just before the start of week 3.

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Dude! you are using tap water and CAL-MAG? Your tap water is excellent, stop using the cal mag since the tap water already has it. I almost never use cal mag even I am using RO water with Dyna-gro line.

And let me take this time to point out, that there's nothing wrong with vegging your plants longer than 4 weeks. In fact, if you are constantly dissatisfied with your yields despite various attempts to increase, then I highly recommend it.

And btw, that's Günyïr (named after Odin's spear) in pic 1, but also notice my little Siamese kitten in pic 3 catching a sniff. I leave an empty smart pot out at all times, they love curling up in it

SilentGreen21 said:

Dude! you are using tap water and CAL-MAG? Your tap water is excellent, stop using the cal mag since the tap water already has it. I almost never use cal mag even I am using RO water with Dyna-gro line.

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Well, I don't always feed with the cal mag. This is my second grow, and my first one I had yellowing on the top leaves in flower and after treating with cal mag it cleared up (not sure if the cal mag was what fixes it or not, I originally attributed the problems to pH lockout) and so my second time around with this plant I have been feeding a small dose every 4-5 waterings since I've been in flower.

At first the yellowing seemed to start in the margins of the leaves so I thought it was a magnesium deficiency, which I'm pretty sure is a semi-mobile element and since it was affecting leaves about halfway up I thought for sure I was pretty close. But now I'm noticing that the yellowing is actually just starting at the tips and moving to the base of the leaf.

You earned that rep bro just wish i could join you for a fatty from that plant lol.

ThorGanjason said:

Well, I don't always feed with the cal mag. This is my second grow, and my first one I had yellowing on the top leaves in flower and after treating with cal mag it cleared up (not sure if the cal mag was what fixes it or not, I originally attributed the problems to pH lockout) and so my second time around with this plant I have been feeding a small dose every 4-5 waterings since I've been in flower.

At first the yellowing seemed to start in the margins of the leaves so I thought it was a magnesium deficiency, which I'm pretty sure is a semi-mobile element and since it was affecting leaves about halfway up I thought for sure I was pretty close. But now I'm noticing that the yellowing is actually just starting at the tips and moving to the base of the leaf.

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What nutes are you using? NPK Value?

Hell yeah man thanks. Yeah, I'm a true believer in organics but most importantly in good genetics. Redwhiteblueandgreen was spot on in saying that paying for some good genetics are worth it.

I actually just finished putting together my aeroponic setup, and have blue dream and desert diesel from the same breeders (hso) running in it, as well as a delicious seeds cotton candy and a reserva privada purple wreck going. Organics have great results, but the growth is soooo slow. Just in the first week, its blown my mind how fast my plants are growing in the aero setup.

I need to cut another piece of the square tubing to make the net pots fit a little tighter. I'm worried about how much light the root zone is getting; the net pots have four holes around the top rim that let light through, so if they set a little higher the problem would be eliminated.

SilentGreen21 said:

What nutes are you using? NPK Value?

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Auroras roots organic line in fox farms ocean forest. The grow formula is 2- .5 - 1.5, and the bloom is like .5 - 2 - 1.5, but I also use several supplements, like their liquid bat Guanos (hp²- 0-4-0 and hpk 0-5-4). I also fed a little super nitro bat guano like two weeks ago, its a 15-1-1.

Oooooh yeah, I also add a little synthetic to help it bulk up-- gh's kool bloom bulking formula, which is 0-10-10. I feed 5 mils per gallon of each, a little less of the kool bloom but there have been a couple feedings where I got lazy and fed only the kool bloom at a little more concentrated.

ThorGanjason said:

Hell yeah man thanks. Yeah, I'm a true believer in organics but most importantly in good genetics. Redwhiteblueandgreen was spot on in saying that paying for some good genetics are worth it.

I actually just finished putting together my aeroponic setup, and have blue dream and desert diesel from the same breeders (hso) running in it, as well as a delicious seeds cotton candy and a reserva privada purple wreck going. Organics have great results, but the growth is soooo slow. Just in the first week, its blown my mind how fast my plants are growing in the aero setup.

View attachment 2902057View attachment 2902058 I need to cut another piece of the square tubing to make the net pots fit a little tighter. I'm worried about how much light the root zone is getting; the net pots have four holes around the top rim that let light through, so if they set a little higher the problem would be eliminated.

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Can't go wrong with areoponics bro you will get massive plants(like you don't already) I still can't believe how well mine do in my setup.

I had the same prob with yellowing leaves early into flower
I gave abit more N like advised
It didn't really slow though
By the time i harvested , the plant dropped all big leaves for me
Didn't do my plant much harm