Is it the Nutes, the Lights, or the PH sickening my plants?

[uninformed]

First off, I'm a longtime lurker. This site is great and many of the gardeners here have provided me excellent information.

Secondly, this is my first attempt at an indoor garden and I apologize if my post is too long and not thorough enough in background info. I'll do my best.

Third, I've read the C Bible front to back, utilized this forum and many other forums search function before posting these questions as well as consulted local gardeners I know without using photographs or allowing them to see my plants - so I'm getting generalized information.


The Plants:

2 BB -15 days flowering -36 days overall from clone
2 Silver Pearl x Sour Diesel -15 days flowering - 36 days overall from clone
2 Hindu Kush - 11 days flowering -43 days overall from clone
1 White Widow x SS - 3 days flowering - 43 days overall from clone

The Light: 400w HPS
3 42 watt cool CFLs

The soil:
Fox Farm Happy Frog organic soil

The Nutes:
SuperThrive - used once every 3 weeks
Botinacare - Liquid Karma - used sparingly


The Issue: The SP x Diesel cross developed spotting (not like thrips, not yellow spots, dark spots were cells are dying and it seems to occur close to the veins) that can only be seen when the leaf is lit from behind, given a day or two eventually the leaves will lose their color, the spots will necrotize and become visually apparent until eventually the leaf will turn brown or yellow and die off. The stems leading to affected leaves were purple. I didn't know if this was consistent with the strain.

Background:
Initially this happened with the smaller of my 2 SPxD. This also seemed to have happened after the first time I hit the plant with any real nutes. Prior to this I had not been using any nutes as the Happy Frog soil seemed to have all the nutritional requirements the plants needed (Note that I'm a NEWB and if I could do it over again I'd make my own medium, however the plants are too far into development for me to transplant them) I was making my decisions based off of information I received from the local hydro shop owner. His advice was that the soil would be good for 1 month, and that after that first month nutes would be needed. Of course he does not know exactly what I am growing so he couldn't provide me strain specific information. So, following his advice I waited 1 month to nute my ladies.

Nutes are 2.50 ML Liquid Karma per Liter of water.

My Tap Waters PH is 7 even.

The same nuted water used to water the SPxD was used to water the BB strain. The BB stain developed similar issues later on in the week, 3 days after the SPxD began showing symptoms however the symptoms weren't quite as severe. After a while both SPxD plants had been overtaken by this issue to the point where I removed all the old foilage. ALL OF IT. By now my plants were budding as I was 10 days into flowering and yes, I was removing leaves with less than 50% damage.

My Diagnosis:

From all the research I'd done it seemed the best solution was to leech the soil. I figured I have some sort of nutrient problem (as there are NO pests in my garden, no mold, no fungus nothing) or that my plants were too close to my light. I tested the soil and it fell in the 7.0-7.5 range. Which according to all the literature I read was well within the range to grow in soil.

From there I pulled all the affected leafs off to allow the newly budding leaves an opportunity to grow and changed the position of my lighting fixture to be further away.

It had been hot and humid lately so in conjunction with the amendments I added an AC to the room to keep the humidity down and the temp. 69-73 degrees.

I let then plants go 2 days and the issue only seemed worse.

I consulted a few other gardeners and showed some leaves I'd collected. The consensus was that the issue was overfertilization (my leaves were very green but no nitrogen had been added to the soil). I thought perhaps it was a phosphorous def. and went back to the Hydro store to further explain my problems. They asked me what my Ph was at and I gave them the 7.0-7.5 answer and I was immediately reprimanded.

For soil, I was told, the PH should be between 6-7.

So, I ran home with some PH down and flushed all my plants with 6.0 water no nutes.


That was this past Friday.



The Issues now:
The BB, though never badly affected, is really thriving now.

The SPxD is still showing symptoms of overfertilization.

The worst part is I can't get the NPK rating or the PH rating of my Soil. Its not listed on the bag.

Questions:
1. What is the NPK rating of Fox Farms Happy Frog organic soil, and what is its PH?
2. What PH does the "WHITE" strain best thrive in as well as the "diesel" strain?
3. Are these Nute issues as a result of the PH in the soil or as a result of the soils nutrient?
4. What is the best PH range to grow in soil?
5. Why does the BB strain seem to thrive under the exact same condition while my SPxD strain seems stressed from this nute issue?
6. Are these organic soils with growing bacteria that are supposed to help the plant absorb nutrients just a PITA to stabilize?
7. If this issue is with the soil and I can't stabilize it is there something I can do to save these plants - note that the SPxD are NOT dying themselves, the stems are rather healthy looking and the bud sites are many, the new small leaves look healthy enough.. for now but I fear they will develop the same issues.
8. I look at a lot of other peoples gardens and notice that lots of peoples leaves look screwy, perhaps this normal for these plants in general?




What I've done to troubleshoot:

To see if this was related to the soil, nutes or heat I went and created a baseline. All 4 plants were flushed with PH 6.0 water. The light was repositioned. On day 3 after flush I added a mild flowering nute formula to the BB, and less to the SPxD. The BB has really taken off while the SPxD seems to still have the same issue on the "relatively older foilage" (the older foilage were small-medium sized leafs I left on the plant after all the larger older leaves were removed. The new leafs on the SPx D don't appear to have that issue but the buds are not adding weight.

The individual I got the clones from is flower the mother of my clones. They have water with a PH level of 6.5 (we tested it) and they use their own grow medium which has more perlite that as I used the soil right out of the bag. The mother is flowering BEAUTIFULLY and I got a small test sample of what is to come - the sativa high was CRAZY - I borderline panic attacked. So, I know that the mother of my clones is doing fine.

(And yes the soil was cleansed with a mild natural pesticide and a rubbing alcohol solution before the plants were transplanted)



Other Information:
During the Vegging stage all my plants took off. They grew vigorously and I had topped them 2 days into the flowering cycle. Even after the topping they grew 2x the original size.



In Conclusion:
I feel like its a nutrient/lighting/PH problem. The spots on the leaves look like perhaps mineral/trace elements/nutrients are depositing in the leaves and it kills the cells surrounding the deposit. Also, I have no real experience therefore no real intuition as to what is going on. I'm trying to go by the book in diagnosing the problem but the books and the internet don't have pictures that look identical to my issue but instead look like a variation of what seems to be the aforementioned educated guess.


So, Please - any sort of baseline remedies would be appreciated. Answers to the questions posted above would be as well. Hunches and expert opinions are all welcomed - and please, feel free to probe for info because I may have missed something critical.

Thanks to all those that will help!

 

[bounty29]

Well if all you're using for nutes is Liquid Karma your plants are probably starving by now. Liquid Karma is just meant to be a supplement to enhance growth, not a stand alone nute. Get some PBP Bloom to go with it and give them 5-15ml per gallon of that and see how they react. They're probably all cracked out on the LK and have taken everything they can from the soil. I can't give you much advice with PH for soil, I never really got that down. That's why I grow in coco now.

Are you leaving your tap water out for at least 24 hours before giving it to the plants?

 

[uninformed]

I do have Sunleaves Indonesian Guano blooming formula. Would that do the trick?

 

[bounty29]

I think it would help a lot if all you've been giving them is Liquid Karma. Give them a low dose of that and see how they respond, I'm not sure how strong it is but if it's bloom formula it's what you'll want to be giving them. Give them that until a couple weeks before you harvest, and go back to plain PHed tap water for the flush.

 

[uninformed]

The issue actually seemed to start when they were given the nutrients so I'm leary of giving it to them now. Furthermore, the BB which is on the same schedule as the SPxD didn't seem to react at all to the nutrient except get larger.

This is why the issue of the soil is brought up. The soil is supposed to have a lot of life in it because of the nature of the enzymes and bacteria in the soil. It has earthworm casings and bat guano in it already, so.. I fear over nuting the plants because I don't really know the NPK ratio in the soil.

 

[bounty29]

What nutrients did you begin to give when problems first arose? Liquid Karma isn't considered a nute. It helps the plants, but doesn't directly feed the plants. I'm sure if it was given nothing but Liquid Karma it could probably screw it up.

I just read through it again. What size pots are you in? Depending on that you might've had only a 30 day supply in the amount of soil you had. Maybe I'm missing some details in your original post, I'll give it another read.

 

[uninformed]

I only gave it the liquid karma once. The plants are in 3 gallon containers. I went ahead and mixed up a blooming solution using the Sunleaves blooming formula. According to this I shouldn't need to add anything for another 3 weeks. We'll see how it goes.

 

[DeebeeAhhSee]

I can't and don't know anything about liquid karma.... but I can tell you a few things i learned in my 1st grow, and a few things since.
7-7.5 pH is too high. That level of pH has already locked out some nutrients that you made available by using the Liquid karma (I'm not familiar with it), and from what I've read its already not a "stand alone" nutrient.

You need a pH meter (its seems that you already have one, but I though i would say it just the same).
pH for soil can (or should) be between 6.2 - 6.8. I tread somewhere between the 2 at 6.3-6.5. MJ plants enjoy a slightly acidic environment and do their uptake business at those levels without locking out nutrients. Its also where powdery mildew likes to make a home (acidic environment), but that is another story.
So try to acquire some kind of ph down ( mad farmer is what I use). I think lemon juice will work as well.

As far as the Fox Farms happy frog... i doubt seriously that it is your problem. If I were you I would buy proper Nutrients (whatever that may be), Leech the plants and then water them with pH corrected water and give them a few days to recover while letting the plants "dry" out.

I don't know of many items that you can use that last for three weeks, its not the route I'd take but you have to make a stand somewhere.
Early in my first grow a guy told me that the soil I had would give the plants all the nutrients they need for the first three weeks, needless to say it didn't work out like he said.

So lets recap.
pH tester.
Leech plants.
Water with pH corrected water.
Let plants "recover" and "dry" out.
Use nutes when it all settles.
Keep us informed.

 

[uninformed]

Well, thanks for the advice.

I have actually leeched the plants (last friday) waited till the plants dried out a bit (yesterday) and gave the plants different nutrient formulas. Two I used just the guano blooming formula, the other two I made a mild nute mix of 1.25 ml PBG mixed with Liquid karma to up the total NPK (for any nitrogen issue) so far the plants have responded by looking a bit nute burned with the leaves yellowing very slightly and the tip of the leaves becoming pointy.

We'll see what they look like in the next few days.

And yes, I use 2 different PH tester, the probe type you insert into the soil and the liquid type to test the run off water as well as water I use for the plants.

 

[FreezerBoy]

I vote with bounty. You're starving them to death. KoolBloom is yeast and seaweed, it's not food. What kind of Guano? Jamaican is all phosphorous (1-10-0.2). Mexican is little more than nitrogen (10-2-1). They need a balanced diet. Micro nutes like mangenese, boron, sulfer, iron. Additives are for adding to the food but, you need food to add to.

 

[cocktail frank]

hope this isnt the soil probe you use.

everything reads 7 on this, its bunk.

and yer girls sound hungry.

 

[DeebeeAhhSee]

Yeah I got that ratbastard probe its a frickin pile. 'Cept mine has numbers 1-4 on it...
Well it seems like your moving in the right direction... maybe your next meter will read ppms and you can get an overall idea of what your feeding your plants.
But i still think that pH and nutes will solve your most of your circumstances given the nutes have the things your plants are looking for.
Good luck.

 

[FreezerBoy]

maybe your next meter will read ppms

Oh, dear flying spaghetti monster, let's hope not. There's no such thing as PPM. It's hogwash invented to keep us from understanding one another. There are EC meters that display EC and EC meters that hide EC in favor of nonsense. Do us all a favor, use EC.

 

[DeebeeAhhSee]

My meter converts both.
Whatever works for you... either way he'll need one or the other would you agree?

 

[FreezerBoy]

As rabid as I get over ppm, the garden is illiterate. It couldn't care less. As long as you have numbers to plot a curve, you can run your garden. It's conversation that gets tricky. As much as I love my Bluelab EC Truncheon, I have to wonder, knowing EC and pH move in opposite directions, if a good pH kit isn't all we need. That thing above ain't it. Not that I - koff, koff- would know.

 

[uninformed]

Well, I use two different ways to test the PH of the soil. One, a vial that captures the run off, add a drop of this PH reader formula and it changes the color of the water to match the PH level on the bottle. So, when my water reads yellow to light green I feel I'm in the general area of the PH level I need to be at. I compare that to what my probe reads and they mirror each other. No, my probe measures moisture, PH, and light.

As for the plants, suppose when I go to turn on my garden this morning that the leaves on the plants have yellowed. Which last night it was looking like they were going to do. I still don't think anyone has taken into account this potting soil I'm using. If you don't know anything about the Happy Frog soil then you don't really know if I need to add nutes, as the other plants that are not using nutes, just the soil are growing fine and look healthy as hell. In comparison, those that I've given nutes to, the leafs do not look as nice.


All the buds are looking fine on every plant, its just the leaves that are turning on the select few I'm referring to.


Anyway, as I said, I've added the blooming formula after these plants were leached with lower PH water so we'll see how it goes. I really hope that the plants are being underfed.

However, how does underfeeding a plant lead to the issues I saw with the leaves. The splotching and necrosis surrounding the splotching?

 

[uninformed]

Alright, so I checked the plants today. The one SPXD I'm having the most problems with is again showing the same issue. The spots have come back on the new foilage worse than it was yesterday. Yesterday I gave it the recommended nutrition (after having already leeched the soil on friday) and now the leaves are turning point at the tips, there are dead spots that extend from the veins of the leaf, starting at the tip, and on the more affected leaves the dead spots extend downwards toward the stem and from the middle of the leaf outward.

So it seems that even this very mild nutrient formula I gave it has only made the situation worse. My initial thought before coming to this board was to leave the plants alone for a week. Keep giving them good PH corrected water and then in a week try my hand at giving them nutrition.

I'm vexed as to what to do next. Should I let the plants dry out a little before I water it again or do I once again have to flush the pot to prevent this from getting worse. The thing is, the PH is now corrected so I don't get it. This plant used to be the healthiest of all my plants and now it is the illest.

 

[cannakid]

i know nothing about happy frog soil exept ill never use it again, used it once back when i used soil straight out the bag and fed only w/liquid foods. the happy frog seemed to have a bad effect on my girls in contrast to black gold (wich has little or no intial 'food') and ocian forest -the only two ive used since. very bad health in the last 3 weeks coupled with PM infections lead me to start mixing agracultural lime into the pre-mixed organic soil, flushing every 4 weeks of growth to keep salt build ups low. i cant pin down what it was but my girls didnt liek that dirt and i listened to 'em, lucky i only bought one bag as it may just have been realy realy old.

As i read more about organic soil i wanted to mix dry foods into theas top quality allready ammended soils, usieng only top quality organic foods i aimed @ makeing supirior dirt that would need no future feedings atall. mainly the organics section for building soil recipies and 3LB's 'recycleing our soil' thread aswell as a few others where they stand behind dry organics ammendment *most notably compost.

this may i went about spending my econ stimulis payment buying soil and suplies to step my growroom up a notch, a 45 gal weel-around 'roughneck' container, from home depot to keep soil in and make life easy . two bags of fox farm planting mix, a bag of ocian forest, a bag of black gold and a 40lb bag of organics alive soil ammendment -i was told to mix this as 20% of my soil mass, it may be off a bit but thats 5 bags toatal so the 40lb bag is a bit more then 20%. also picked up a 5 gal bucket and air pump, drill some holes in the lid 1 for the air hose in and a few breather holes -the pump sits ontop with raindrip toobs and connectors, a raindrip 3way connector difuses the air into two buble streams. -this is vital for earobic guano teas for my outdoor and indoor crops this season as well as simply haveing a constant supply of de-chorinated/oxygenated water for the room, just clean, fill and pug it back in.

after the hydro shop i went to my local nursery that had all the EB stone veriety or most of it, sul-po-mag, bloodmeal, bonemeal, kelmp meal, alfalfa meal, and agracultural lime were all about 7buck for 2-5 pound box and ill use two cups of most at a time -bone meal is heavily applied as it helps root formation and is long lasting enough to encurage fruit set, although i still apply guanos like ebstone nitrogen gunao as a tea to reduce algie that can grow on the to dressing of nitrogen guano and primal harvest micron sifted phosphate guano to easily penitrat the soil and provide fast acting bud food.

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=53792
*this is the recipy i used initally, for 5cubic feet plus the 40lb bag of organic alive 'base' i was mindfull of the intent the base would be nutral like most sunshine mixes and my base is pre-mixed and contains some foods 'and lime/ph buffers' allready.
{RECIPE #1
If you want to use organic nutes like blood, bone and kelp...
Dry Ferts:
1 tablespoon blood meal per gallon or 1/2 cup per cubic foot of soil mix
2 tablespoons bone meal per gallon or 1 cup per cubic foot of soil mix
1-tablespoon kelp meal per gallon or 1/2 cup per cubic foot of soil mix or Maxicrop 1-0-4 powdered kelp extract as directed
1 tablespoon per gallon or 1/2 cup per cubic foot of Jersey Greensand to supplement the K (potasium) in the Kelp Meal and seaweed extract.
Mix all the dry ferts into the soiless mix well and wet it, but don't soak it with Liquid Karma and water @ 1 tbs./gal. Stir and mix it a few times a week for a week or two so the bacteria can get oxygen and break down the bone meal and make it available. And don't let the mix dry out, keep it moist and add water as needed. It'll also have time to get the humic acids in the Liquid Karma going and the dolomite lime will be better able to adjust the pH of a peat based mixture too.}
*i used something like 3/4 cups lime per cubic foot insted of 1cup that was recomended for the base soil recipies, 3 3/4 cups in all, 2 1/2 cups of each:bloodmeal, kelp meal, sul-po-mag, and alfalfa, and 5 cups of bone meal. this was all for the amount of soil to fill up a 45 gal bin within a few inches of the top.
i also used the 3LB 40gal used soil recipy for used soil as another footnote, i really dont think their a whole lot of NPK in pre-mixed soils honestly -even ocian forest needs amending if you are looking to water alone (growdoc, now a breeder used this method with sucssess. he is the one who inspired me that dry foods do work, back in '06 maby with plagron from europe or their abbouts. the pain of keeping liquid food solutions consistant had me looking into easier organic methods. then 3lb has their shared thoughts on all things organics, and finally re-useing my soil ment not useing foods that intorudice salts and lead to toxic buildup.

i will admit that i use liquid food still to give a boost around the first quarter into my flower cycles, of pbp soil-bloom formula that has the 7% humic acid i desire + any P or K that i havent suplied and honestly its only the k im worried about as my primal harvest guano is 0-8-1. BUT the sul-po-mag has a lable of 0-0-20 NO SHIT, it keeps the plants green and the huge crystals mean a slow releasing food. sul-po-mag is also inplace of jersy green sand wich i couldn't source, it also has more magnisium then jersey green sand i beleave wich is what keeps 'em green.

ive had no troubles besides sourceing the organics alive for the second mixing, or anyother qualit compost for that matter. i dont stoop as low as ace brand maby-organic but i have set my bar lower then organics alive, that doesnt mean i cant re-use that ammended soil after most roots are taken out and hopefully keep biology from the organics alive going strong.

ive used liquid karma for this period aswell and found it to help grow the bigest buds yet, also my technique of limiting scrony under acheving growth for healthier heads and top canopy. a weekly adition of breer rabit full flavor molasis (for major mineral/sugar uptake in early growth/vegg) and grandmas original (much less,probly half the minerals of breer fullflavor w/the same sugar/carb load for late flower)
even with the sodium content in molasis and use of a feeding or two of PBP i was comfortable re-amending this first batch or mixeing it with more top quality bag-dirt and amending the 5 cubic feet/40gal or so of dirt in my inital recipy. and have plants in that very mix now, exept im useing wider based more stout 5 gal pots rather the tall nerrow buckets.

i think simply adding dry kelp and lime to the mix would help greatly, i also think its a tottal pain sourceing new soil and in my case luging a half dosen heavy soil pots up a flight of stairs as opening and pooring soil indoors is a scary thought. i use a dolly to get the 45 gal tub up into the room and mix all the dirt outside in a concreat slab w/flat head spade. then transplant inside the rubermaid bin right ontop of the soil, takeing the poted plant out and to its new home.
mixeing outside your bound to cross-contaminate and yes i have gnat problems and gnatrol#2 is my solution, ive also found that the preditor of the fungus gnat has populated my soil aswell. no leaf dicolerations for an entier crop of grand dady purple just a slight kiss of purpleing as they finished.
i will say that i intended to only give water and molasis to my plants the whole cycle, as this dry ammendment trial was aimed at makeing life easy, no mesureing and testing, just filling up the bucket and buble it over night or over a couple nights and water when they need. haveing water seady and a bin full of soil waiting (well-turned and kept semi woist) makes my life easy and to be honest i never liked mixeing all thoes firts just to see the PH go way off, so i stoped checking PH and started adding horticultural lime. ive read too much about how fox farm has crapy acidic soils and really not a thing about how much dolimite lime is too much and what specifically heppends then. makeing me beleave they just dont add enough ph adjusters so a 1/4-1/2 a cup should be mixed with each bag, thats my .02

 

[uninformed]

Ok, I can't take it anymore... I have to show the pics so you can see what I mean. Here is the problem plant.



Here is another view of the same plant.




And here is the garden. As you can see the other plants seem to be doing ok.





So now... what the hell is this thing on my plants. Notice the leaves. That is all new foilage. I pulled all the fan leaves off because they were like those leaves but worse.

 

[uninformed]

Oh man... I think I figured it out. I've not been letting my tap water sit out for 24 hours, which I had in the past. Considering I have organic potting soil the chlorine might be killing the bacteria in the soil, which means it can't break down the nutrients. Organic soil is supposed to ease the worry of PH levels and overfeeding your plants but maybe if you're killing the organisms that neutralize that effect, this is what happens?

I'm pouring out 10 gallons of water right now to let sit over night. Perhaps buying some water from the store might be an option as well so that I might flush this soil with water that won't kill the bacteria?