Leaves yellowing and dying sativa indoor grow

[MakaLacka]

Kia ora Friends,

This is a poor sativa girl that has had a hard time for a while. Grown indoor mostly under 28w/sqft sil leds.
Was rootbound in a tiny pot 4 weeks into flower and got burned quite badly with a full strength organic liquid feet dose.
Repotted into a 3g root pouch in a cheap organic mix (better soil than it had), and now at 9 weeks flower.
Leaves yellow and turn extremely pale, browning at the tip and spreading half way up the leaf. Cupping downwards.
The last week new leaves have been getting a bit more like green in them.
Regardless to all this stress she is still reflowering weekly putting on lots of bud, bud looks great and plenty of resin and trichomes.
She will easily make it another few weeks to finish flowering, but would be great to figure out if she was just hurt way too much early flower to recover, or if I am still doing something to hurt her at this point?

Cheers
Maka

 

[Creeperpark]

The plant roots are damaged from nutrient pH swings and won't do much more at this point. The last transplant into fresh soil will not have enough time to regrow new roots.

 

[zaprjaques]

This is very interesting to me MakaLacka .
Would you please post some more pics in a couple of weeks, maybe before harvest?
I have a plant that shows similar behaviour, but it already got rid of all the fan leaves and seems to be devouring itself.
My soil was also very rich to beginn with and the plant was very rootbound aswell. Also i'm under SILs but slightly more watts per sqfoot.
After transplanting to a bigger pot it bounced back but still showed signs of too much Nitrogen. Dark clawing leaves and burned
tips.
I pollinated the top, plant stayed nice and green, i harvested the top for seeds and let the lower unseeded branches flower some more.

I was suspecting that the yellowing and loss of leaves was a sign of age.... shes well over 16 weeks of flowering at the moment...

You can check out my thread in the micro section. Link is in my sig.
Theres plenty of photos.

Cheers
Edit:
I'll try and add some pics here.

Thats 4 weeks ago.
Upclose:

And the newest pics:

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[zaprjaques]

Forgot that one.

 

[skmatzwonk]

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The yellowing is due to compost!

Rinse the affected pots well, water well daily, and after about 10 days you will see new green growth. It's the compost that is at fault. May be warm compost, old compost, too many nutes, but typically it's compost that's breaking down too quickly and making too many nutes. Too much bacteria is not good for plants. Just the additional heat from composting in the tubs is enough to yellow and eventually kill the plants. If you add chemicals, or seaweed nutes to compost, this adds to the brewing problem. It's a bit like PUTTING SUGAR IN HOME BREW BEER. The resulting mixture of COMPOST FIZZES UP WITH YEAST ACTIVITY.

Wash your pots out well and water well every day to see the problem go away.
Use good quality peat or pure-peat for greener plants. (Sorry, can't vouch for coir or greener alternatives, though said to be good.)

Using cheap multi-purpose compost, like Verve multi-purpose-compost, is too rich for cannabis, and you should change to a lower nutrient compost.

Westland seed & cutting peat is very good, despite the added nutrients, which has just 20% chopped up green matter. Drainage is also very good. Pure-peat may be better. https://www.diy.com/departments/west...7859151_BQ.prd

https://www.diy.com/ideas-advice/compost-buying-guide/PROD_npcart_100687.art

 

[skmatzwonk]

Plants can go wrong if the conditions change. Are saying you put them outside after growing indoors? Could be this? Strong summer sunlight could affect the already weak leaves. Leaves likely to drop off initially, including buds. Take them back indoors and rinse them regularly to see a great improvement.

 

[Cuddles]

what the hell happened to my post?
I was asking whether the too much nutes problem can be remedied by just flushing with water.

 

[0j4Udcfr8z]

Yes. Water well until the substrate swells up in the pot. Continue to rinse daily. Next time use fresh pure-peat or a greener substitute. Hold the nutes until you've seen greener plants. Introduce nutes gradually, taking care, and noting the results of measured quantities.

 

[MakaLacka]

Thanks for the replies,

Creeperpark, seems likely and am sure all problems are symptoms of poor soil, low cec and ph issues. Its a shame I didn't transplant just a bit earlier because that new soil is a lot nicer - more hummus and better composted.

Very interesting photos Zap, the yellowing and leaf leaf curling is very similar indeed! I'd be happy to post some photos come harvest, there probably won't be any leaves left heh.. Being rootbound was the start of all my problems oops!

Skmatzwonk, I think you're on the right track friend. Poor soil that hadn't been composted enough. I've learned that good compost is the key to soil growing, can't wait till my next grow I've learnt so much!
I only take her outside some days to bask in the winter Aussie sun, and she noticeably enjoys it more than the sils. My grow box is very short and the tops were 8" away from the lights, I think this was causing a lot of damage so I managed to get it to 10". I think for these led 11-12" is a better distance at 30w/sqft ae

Cheers friends!
Maka

 

[Limeygreen]

They root bound sped up the problem with the low feed, looks like they need more phosphorus and potassium which is the burnt edges and extreme yellowing from lack of fertilizer. They still look chunky but yield is lost of course. This point simply it is what it is.

Next time you can either pot up earlier so they don't get root bound and feed on a better schedule or feed better in the smaller pot and careful with the roots. My opinion anyways.

 

[flylowgethigh]

I am having the same problem. I do not feed during the sacond half of flower, is that a mistake? This is a sugar leaf...

This pic is mine. Why is the same pic shown above in a noobs post?

Those are on this plant, which still has 3 weeks at least, left to bloom... The real shame is the sugar leafs are making nice trics, and they smell great.



In the same tent is a plant doing better, but starting to brown between veins. A third plant in the tent is starting also. These are on a SIP auto system getting the same water.

Plant 2 starting

So is plant 3

 

[MakaLacka]

Cheers for popping in Limey,

Great advice and good knowledge. Much of what I was already thinking, it is what it is haha!
Next grow will be a million times better, and definitely won't be letting plants get so rootbound again lesson learnt! This was a cutting from an outdoor plant that yielded huge airy sativa buds outside, its been interesting to see how it did inside.

1. Plants love the Aussie sun, nothing beats it
2. Lots of rootspace =happy, low maintenance plants
3. Well composted soil with lots of hummus/high cec is a recipe for success!

Flylow, your first pictures look very similar, does the growing spread up the leaf or remain at the tip? Similar low feeding problems as mine for sure!

 

[MakaLacka]

This was the mum outside back in January! Happy days, huge 9 finger fan leaves and praying leaves. Only needed a couple small feeds the whole grow. Compared to the tiny 5 finger leaves inside my microgrow box due to the small pot!

 

[HempKat]

This isn't really a suggestion to your specific situation but rather just some general knowledge to apply when dealing with root bound plants. Of course you can just up pot the root ball to a larger container without doing anything extra but the improvement will be slower because the original root ball is still in a tight mass. Having more room to grow into the roots will eventually expand outwards but it will be a slow process. What many growers do to kind of speed things up a bit is, when they take the root ball out the score the outer edges of the root ball with a knife, cutting about one quarter to half an inch deep. This kind off frees up the roots a bit so they can start growing outwards quicker. If you already knew this then forgive me for mentioning it I'm not trying to imply you don't know what you're doing it, I just couldn't tell based on what you posted.

Also in general it's not a good idea to up pot or get a plant out of being root bound when you're in flower. You can get away with it in the first few weeks of flower but typically the plant establishes it's root network mostly during the veg phase of growth. The roots will continue to develop some in the earliest stages of flower but before long the roots stop developing as the plant focuses more and more on bud growth. Since this is the case you really want to make sure that when a plant goes into flower it has plenty of room for it's roots so that you don't have to disturb the plant at all and it can just focus all it's energies on bud growth.

 

[MakaLacka]

Kia ora Hempkat,

Very interesting about scoring the roots to alleviate the tight rootball when reporting from a rootbound state! I am by no means experienced, just learn from my mistakes and acquire new knowledge along the way.

I had read mixed advice on repotting during flower, ideally you shouldn't have to but I messed up haha. I didn't notice any negative response when she was put in new soil, and about a week and a half later she had nicely accommodated the new soil with roots. Sativa's reportedly are quite active with their roots during flower and this is what I observed. I have, without a doubt, sacrificed bud growth this grow.... In the future I hope to never have to repot during flower!

Thanks for for taking the time to reply!

Maka

 

[Guest]

It needed available calcium. We call those leaves "parachutes", it's the result of photosynthetic sugars stalling in the leaf since phosphorus is waiting on available calcium to carry it to the roots.

I have never once seen a Cannabis grower properly diagnose this extremely common problem. I have not seen a calcium sufficient Cannabis crop other than my own in decades.

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[flylowgethigh]

i forgot all about cutting off the outer layer of a root ball when up-potting. That is supposed to be a good trick. I try to fluff out the roots so they have a chance

 

[MakaLacka]

I think calcium intake is just a symptom, the root of the problems seem to be pH fluctuations and extremely bound roots early in flower causing all these nutrients intake issues.

No doubt calcium is not available to the plant, and that is good knowledge to have for future diagnosis of parachute leaves! That's super good to know because the 'parachute' leaves has been something I haven't been able to figure out!

Cheers Butt

 

[MakaLacka]

Gday Flylow, I have heard of this technique in regards to keeping bonsai mums. I was wanting to minimise stress to this poor girl so I popped her into the new pot without a second thought, in hindsight I probably should have fluffed up the roots to loosen them up more!

Maka

 

[MakaLacka]

This is an interesting symptom, any insight on what nutrient lockout this is?
Leaves brown at tips from a young age, but as they get larger the browning spreads up half the leaf.
They don't get crispy and brittle, stays quite mailable.
Immobile Potassium?