Yellow leaves and other crap....

Wonderful title isn't it...?

I have a bunch of ladies that I spent LOTS of money on, getting their seeds into my country... (twice... argh.. long story) and now, Im having problems. So... being a newbie to controlled growing and not guerrilla farming, Im posting. Forgive me if this problem is addressed a millon other times... I would rather someone tell me hey... do this, than try something and have it get worse and loose more $$.
My ladies are a month old and I am having two problems... but first, I have them planted in soil - m grow-shit-and perlite mix. They are sitting under a climate controlled 1000w mh light. They are plenty warm, and have fresh warm air. Two days ago I checked on them before work... they were doing fine. Wen I came home 8 hours later, I didnt just have a few semi yellow leaves.. I had a bunch of all bright yellow leaves. (all in 8 hours or so) Figuring this was a nitrogen diff, I added some nitrix and calmag to water and gave them it. I have also been spraying them with a nitrix, gh(floragro, micro) and calmag diluted solution. (trying the foliar feeding) I do have one plant that is showing small signs of nut burn but nothing to extreme.. and that is just one plant. I don't know whats going on... and now, the same plant that has the small nut burn has leaves starting to twist and has a small section of her stalk turning purplish in color.. I dont know if this is normal.. its just a small section and its basically where all of the leaves start to sprout out from her....
All of the new growth on all plants is looking healthy... its just the older larger leaves that are yellowing in color.

Can anyone help... do you think it is just lack of nit and/or mg? I really dont want to loose the ladies or have any other setback. I did water them with some nuts to try and compensate the yellowing but I don't really want to go too terribly much higher with nuts because of burn. I did ph.. the water (soil was ph'd last week and was ok) the water is double tested both electronically and chemically and is sitting at about 6.6-6.7. PPM meter tells me that the nutrients are at approx 500ppm (I am using natural spring water)

Second problem: SLOW GROWTH. They are one month old (to the day) and my tallest girl is perhaps 7-8 inches...? She by far is taller than all others. Most are sitting at the 5-6inch range. (Some of them less most of them are however getting bushy-ish)..I NEED to speed up growth (for numerous reasons) but one is that I may do some cuttings and transplant them into a aero system. Anyone know how to do this that could help me? After 1 month I really thought I would have more growth than this.

I'm growing WW and LOJ.

Hi wyatt,

They do look a bit sorry for themselves! You can pull them round though:-

1. Get them into bigger pots now. Those roots must be mighty bound for 4 weeks in those pots.
2. Let the roots stretch into some clean fresh soil, lay right off any nutes, at 4 weeks old I would have only fed ONCE, probably around the 3 week mark.
3 You wont stop those yellow leaves crisping eventually, so judge by new top growth, that looks to be OK apart from the nute burn I see on a couple of them.

They will be just fine if you relax and let them develop those roots The slow growth is probably due to lack of root space, once they begin to stretch into that new soil you will see them take off so don't give up.

Hope this helps, just leave those nutes off for a bit!

They were just transplanted about a week and a half ago.. I have them in "Jiffy" or peatmoss cups.. so the roots actually grow right through the cups... (wanted to avoid root bound issues...
Think I should still transplant them again? I mean.. how much growth do you think happaned in one week? I do not see any roots anywhere on them... (meaning they are not growing out of the pots yet)

as for feeding... ok.. Wow... Guess indoor growing is wayyyy different than what I am used to. Um.. everywhere I turn says feed them with a week solution every other watering... so.. lets say.. 1 a week they get nutrients...(perhaps twice)

Think I should give them more nitrogen as of right now or not?

Thanks

In my past experience of those jiffy pots the roots dont really grow through until they are surrounded by moist soil which kind of helps to soften them and break them down gradually, it encourages root growth through the jiffys into the fresh soil. If you take one out hows the roots looking? Are they nice and white? Not too warm? Not over wet? For 4 weeks you really need to give those roots more room to stretch and you will see them fly. At that stage I would personally have my plants in a good 6/7 litres of soil to allow that taproot to dig deep.

They're not too bad at all overall though. Re: nutes, way too many people overfeed thier plants and it damages them. Wait until they begin to tell you that they NEED a feed.

Thanks.

Ill let you know what they roots look like later today/night.

I've been up for almost 24 hours now and its time to go to sleep. I'll carefully take one of them apart a little later. any good way to take one apart without hurting the roots?

Just hold the pot upside down with your thumb across the top of the soil and squeeze gently all round, should slide right out into your hand, keep it upside down so the soil stays together....wont do any harm at all.

Phoenix58 - Its been about a week and I did transplant them into much bigger pots. The roots looked nice and white when I transplanted.
I am still having slower growth (I just watched a video on indoor growing and the plants I saw that were approx the same age were much larger)

I am still having some yellow leaves but not as much as before. I cut back on the nutrients and am giving them more water. I am a little hesitent about not giving them at least some nitrogen... and having been adding a little of that to the water every other time. (only about 2.5-3ml per gallon of water) I really don't think my soil is nitrogen rich and I do not want to have that drop.

If you can think of anything else to increase their growth rate, let me know.
Thanks

wyatte said:

Phoenix58 - Its been about a week and I did transplant them into much bigger pots. The roots looked nice and white when I transplanted.
I am still having slower growth (I just watched a video on indoor growing and the plants I saw that were approx the same age were much larger)

I am still having some yellow leaves but not as much as before. I cut back on the nutrients and am giving them more water. I am a little hesitent about not giving them at least some nitrogen... and having been adding a little of that to the water every other time. (only about 2.5-3ml per gallon of water) I really don't think my soil is nitrogen rich and I do not want to have that drop.

If you can think of anything else to increase their growth rate, let me know.
Thanks

Click to expand...

wyatte,

If the roots were nice and white and healthy then thats the main thing. You will not stop yellowing of older leaves once its started so you need to be looking for healthy new growth now.

For comparison heres one of my plants taken at 3 weeks old, at this stage she had been fed nothing! Just plain water at PH 6.4, adjusted with a simple manual PH test kit, 2 drops of PH down added to 2 litres of water. At that stage I was watering every 4 th day only and 400ml was enough to flood the pot and produce around 10% run off. This 10% figure is worth bearing in mind, I let them stand in trays so the run off is absorbed back into the soil again, too much and it wont take it back in again so you know you have overwatered.

I would guess you have added too much nutrient for such a young plant to handle and they are taking time to recover. A cheap PH test kit is a must at least to establish the PH of your water, they are very cheap (link below to UK kit, not sure where you are!) 6.2 to 6.4 in soil is acceptable where the soil acts as a PH buffer to some extent.

PLants may well take a little time to recover in the new pots but they will. Then growth rate should increase.

Have confidence I've seen plants recover from much worse damage than that on the forums in the past!

Give us more details if you can, maybe a new pic?

Cheap PH test kit link (UK)
http://www.seaofgreen.co.uk/product.asp?numRecordPosition=1&P_ID=2068&strPageHistory=cat&strKeywords=&SearchFor=&PT_ID=170

I've had a good read around and I'm still not sure what the problem is, have a look at pics and some advice would be helpful.

Pheonix58,
Sent a visitor message to you regarding this thread. I do have a ph test.. Actually two. Both chemical and electronic (however the electronic one took a unplanned bath last evening when I dropped it into a bucket of water and now needs to be replaced. It consistantly reads a ph level of 156 on a scale of 1-14. hmm.. I think its done for lol) So a new one is ordered. In the mean time I will use the chemical test.
As for the nutrients I did cut back.. A lot of the plants are doing MUCH better since I transplanted... there are a few that I have not gotten to as of yet and they for the time being are doing ok... and others are still acting and displaying some signs of something... for example... I have one plant in particular that looks like a palm tree.... All of the leaves are curling under... like it was watered too much. No nutrient burn... but the plant looks litterally like a ball on a stick. (if that makes any sense) Now I did not water this anymore than the others... and none of the others look this way.
Another issue is that some of the plants are still a lighter color... not completely yellow but a lighter green than what I would like. (again.. I am not new to growing.. just new to growing indoors in a controled enviornment where I am supplying all of the nutrients, water, light etc..) So I am a little confused with this.

I will post new pictures in a day or two.. my digital camera was loaned to a friend but will be returned tomorrow.

Thank you again for the tip on the pots. I would not have figured that they would have been root bound that quickly. I can in a number of the plants see growth already in one week.

Phoenix, please help stussy...he/she posted a comment on my thread. I thought my plants looked bad.. but holy crap. wow...

Inbreeding of humans is bad.... Can inbreeding of plants happen? Thats gotta be what it looks like!! lol.

I feel bad for you Stussy!!!!

Wyatt, put them in bigger pots, add some good natural fert like work castings and some fish fert. It could be a combination of a few things causing the leaves to yellow, curl and burn on the ends. Check your fan isn't wind burning the plants and not too close, dont over water, use small amounts nut's less regularily and watch the dilution (not too strong). I'd recommmend these from me experiences. Cheers