PPK - Girls not looking so good.

End of veg plants are looking real bad, lower half of plant leaves are yellowing and dying. See pics.

They're in coco coir with perlite, about 30% coco.

Feeder pump 3 mins on every 4 hours. I thought that interval would give them a good flush of fresh water/nutes.

6 inch gap.

I feel like they are not getting enough drainage and air to the roots. Coco really can hold water. But I figured such a small percent of coco plus the 4 hour interval would help with that. I chose coco because turface is expensive and has to be shipped, but I'll probably have to go back to it. I'm seriously thinking about using hydroton, that stuff will guarantee good drainage. Has anyone tried hydroton

And does anyone know how to test the drainability of a medium (forgot what D9 was calling this), the ability of a medium to drain well.

looks over watered to me but i could be wrong. i was overwatering in gravel perlite which i thought was next to impossible but i got root rot and stunted growth. i would start there

Yeah overwatered mate. I’d say there’s a good lot of root rot going on there. You have to start off watering once a day or even less during veg just so the roots can spread and grow. Dumping water on them regularly early on will always fuck up no matter what the perlite/coco ratio is. People say “oh you can’t overwater in coco” and I say bullshit! Cannabis plants and the roots love oxygen. Airy mix and oxygenated reservoir. They should’ve started on one small feed a day or less until they were ready for more. You can always lift the pot and tell with coco. When it’s about 1/3 to 1/4 still moist then water again and gradually increase. By the time you’re into flower you can go for it most times. Feel sorry for you mate, I’ve done it too. Good learning curve and you’ll only get better for it.

I second and third the overwatering. Cut way back if it is retaining the water.

Could be over dry + over watered.
Remove the yellowish part and focus on the main colas

Peace

Yes, too much water, this is what I thought also. But the real problem is the medium, coco does not work well with ppk is seems. With coco I would only want to water once or twice a day, not every 2-4 hours like what is done with ppk.

I guess I need to go back to Turface. Has anyone tried Hydroton (marble sized clay balls). I would think that stuff will drain best, even better than Turface.

Also, do I need to worry at this point that the plants could have root disease, like Phytophthora, which would affect other plants in the system since they all share the same water resevoir? That would suck if I had to tear everything down and clean buckets and rez and start over.

I've had great grows with 50/50 coco clay pebbles in ppks. I always started out hand watering the first week or so of veg then gradually increased the watering from once per day up to once every two hours lights on and once or twice in the dark period depending on how big the plants got. I never did make the jump to turface in my ppks and am not currently growing in any ppks, but have had some of my fastest growing plants and heaviest harvest in my chow mix (50/50 coco/cp) ppks. I'd let them dry out really good and start watering once a day to start and judging by the plant size, you'll be watering 3-4 times during lights on by mid flower. Good luck!

Yeah, I'm going to try the 50/50 mix, that is what I've been thinking about from the beginning.

@oti$ - Do you remember what your feed cycle was when you where doing ppk with the 50/50 mix?

Thanks.

getting the water sced down will help that. let them dry out a little. cut back to maybe 20 second burst of water vs a longer feed but then again that will depend on your pump an how many buckets your feeding.

in my systems they seem to like the 6 hr or 4 hr feed interval when vegging works best, maybe even feed only when lights on. u want the roots to search an build.

once the roots are bigger, or into flower u can feed around the clock every 4 hrs, every 2 hrs , hour an half. ive even done every 60 min lights on only. as long as they are draining quickly. if water stands for awhile u gotta work your medium to drain better for next round. i even drilled drain holes in the upper plant bucket.

gotta get them to drain, an then you will see alot less problems. now late flower an roots thick will block drainage , but thats a different story..

I dont think I ever fed more than twice daily during veg, maybe 3x if growing trees. I never had to water multiple time during lights off in flower as the coco held water pretty well. They'd get over watered if I continued watering every 2 hours when the lights were out. I never had a set watering schedule. I'd read the plants and adjust accordingly. As far as the length of each water cycle, I'd usually let the pump run for as long as it took to nearly fill a ball jar, which would give me a good flood in the 2 and 3 gallon top buckets I used. The time of each flood woukd depend on the size pump, how many sites and the upper container size. I hope that was helpful.

only down part of not having a set schedule is when things dry out to much due to surface evaporation or an underwater, or multiple underwaters, that makes the nutrient dry out an revert to a bonded salt state again an builds. white crystal formations. once that salt is re moistened it may not ever become available again. it goes thru a chemical bonding process, i believe its called salinization.

this maybe another reason why during a dark period u may want to water again. just to keep the turface slightly moist to prevent salinization.


ive even actually had one particular area where problems arose due to ground fans rapidly evaporating the upper exposed turface/perlite . salt was building on these particular buckets an plants looked unhealthy an rest of room was fine. rest of room was further from the fans. these buckets had higher evaporation going on due to being closer to the fans


there is more surface area exposed in a 7 gal muck tub verse a 3.5 gal bucket. the muck tub was the original ppk design. 3.5 vs muck tub will also change things.

With turface this is absolutely right, but we are talking coco mixes here, and in my experience , unless the plants are huge and suckling up loads of water, multiple watering during lights off keeps the medium too wet during those 12 hours. I never made the jump to turface because coco is a staple in all my systems (beds, dew smarties/air pots and ppks) and it was just cheaper and more convenient to buy a couple bags of hydroton for the ppks... I use the same 50/50 mix for dtw as well. I've considered trying turface, but the coco has been good to me all these years and it's easy to source, so I'll probably stick with it.

hey otis... i appreciate the conversation.

ive done multiple runs with straight coco in 2 or 3.5 gal buckets top drip with watering every hour, with runoff. larger plants usually. canna coco, botanicare, royal gold, hyrdofarm bricks, i then used coco perlite mixture, then tupur.

they grow like rockwool with multiple waterings, BUT only..when the plant has filled the bucket an at the right stage i would multiple water. they grow bat shit crazy at that point.

coco will still build salts. i def consider it a hydro medium an feel it should be treated as such, an not treated like soil, in the right environment.

the other thing otis an this is my take.... an people forget, or not realize is guess, or maybe im wrong, but when you water you are not just watering the plant for the sake of water/feeding. u are also..

1) readjusting the PH in the medium to whatever the feed ph is.

2) u are pushing out any unused food an reducing buildup in the rootzone, there for creating a medium with less buildup to prevent any future nutrient antagonisms

3)u also are exchanging the air in the medium cause a flood will push the old air out, then the gravity of the water draining will suck new air back in.

effectively doing multiple things with just a watering. smaller buckets with multiple feeds.

recently ive moved away from coco as my rooms became more demanding an i would have to increase food to keep up with co2 an DE lighting ,proper humidification an dehummidification . i felt i hit a point where the K in the coco may have interfering with nute uptake. there usually is alot of K in most bloom feeds to begin with. then the possibility of K leeching out of the coco , so i felt it was best to eliminate those variables.

one of my friends grows some of the best herb ive ever witnessed an smoked in straight royal gold coco.

every gardens different.. bwell

Couldn't have said it better myself. Multiple watering daily is what really unlocks the potential of what you can do with coco. If you are only watering once per day, you may as well just go amended soil. I think many don't think about the oxygen exchange happening when you water...more watering per day= more O2 exchanges/day=happier roots=more shoots=more buds come harvest. I've attained "fast hydro"(dwc&rdwc) growth rates by watering coco multiple times a day. Sounds like you know your coco scripture well can, I like it...we kinda hijacked the op's thread, but a little knowledge never hurt no one....

Nah no highjack thread, I run ppks mainly .