Big plants dying suddenly

napalisherpa · Aug 8, 2014

Our plants have been doing beautifully throughout the season. This photo was taken today. Almost all the plants look like this.

Sunday, we discovered this

and this.

Since Sunday we have:
pulled up 3 plants that died within 24 hours of finding limp branches,
have one plant that's halfway dead (like this)

and another that is showing signs like the previous four

napalisherpa · Aug 8, 2014

We dug up the plants to find the roots looking like this

and the interior of the plant looking like this

We also have not watered since Sunday. In the previous days we have thought one of these now dead plants needed water, but it only seemed to accelerate their death, while the others are still okay for now.

We did not find mold when we dug through the mounds, we did not find an infestation of insects that would kill the plants this quickly and systematically. We have yet to find a gopher hole IN the garden, but we did find this 100 feet down the hill

Another hundred feet we found a colony of mounds.

This is the type of terrain we're working with up top. We had to use a jackhammer to break up all the rock so we could bring native soil from below to act as a buffer, then we put our good soil on top and formed mounds.

We have cages for 3/4 of the plants, we questioned even needing them in the first place. Out of the 5 plants that got sick one of them was caged, but didn't have any holes anywhere around or atop the mound. We're pretty certain the problem is gophers, but the healthy tap roots and the lack of gopher holes in or even that close to our garden confuse us. What else kills off a healthy, vigorous plant without any warning? Over the course of a day?

I'm going to home depot after I post this to try and ward off these bastards (if that truly is the problem), hopefully some repellant will help. Tomorrow, I'm watering in actinovate (which I had already planned on doing last week). I'm wondering about treating/dreanching the soil with insecticide, or if I'm wasting money (we've been very diligent about preventative treatments).

Mostly, I'm looking for similar stories/solutions/questions to make it easier to troubleshoot. I think it's gophers, I may be wrong. Help

StanKDanK · Aug 8, 2014

how often have you been watering before Sunday ?
have you given any nutes or made any changes recently?
I doubt its a gopher due to the fact it is happening to multiple plants at the exact same time. I would guess over watering but more info is needed for us to help you/

Backyard Farmer · Aug 8, 2014

Look for girdling around the stem, what you have looks like a root disease ...check the cross section of the stem under a microscope,

I'm very sorry.

If your stuff's completely girdled it's too late.

If you still have some stem that isn't mush , get some MycoStop WP and apply the shit out of it

intotheunknown · Aug 8, 2014

You sure you didnt piss someone off?
Is this a secure location?

Backyard Farmer · Aug 8, 2014

Pull that straw back so your stuff can breathe

mack 10 · Aug 8, 2014

Wow, horrible sight! I can only imagine losing such fat plants..
Karma coming your way.
Hope someone can shine some light on your problem.
Seem's very small roots? or just the pic?

Kind of looks poisoned?

and you say adding water hastened there death? dam!
Good luck.

where's the Skunkman when you want him?

napalisherpa · Aug 8, 2014

We water via drip lines, about 50 gallons per 500 gallon mound. Typically every other day, but a little more about week ago when the temp was above 95. We water 500 gallons of tea for the whole garden every 7-10 days.

Our last feeding (~10 days ago) was a top dress consisting of bloom and veg guano/earthworm castings/kelp. About 6 cups per plant. None of the plants show any sign of nute burn. We also foliar sprayed insecticide and a combo of liquid kelp, grow/bloom food for transition.

There have been two changes in the last two weeks.
1. The girls have started pre flower, so we started a transition feeding (last feeding).
2. The temperature dropped from upper 90's to low 80's suddenly.
After the first plant died, we waited a day and dug it up. The bottom third was pretty wet, the top two thirds was moderately dry. We chalked it up to POSSIBLE overwatering, thus not watering the last 5 days, but the problems are continuing. Also, there is no root rot, the roots appear large, healthy and white.

I've had problems in the past with overwatering and am very conscientious about the signs. This plant showed NO SIGNS of stress. It's like it just shut off and wasn't up taking water, even though it was one of the healthiest, happiest plants in the garden. One of my favorites, actually

napalisherpa · Aug 8, 2014

Backyard Farmer said:
Look for girdling around the stem, what you have looks like a root disease ...check the cross section of the stem under a microscope,

I'm very sorry.

If your stuff's completely girdled it's too late.

If you still have some stem that isn't mush , get some MycoStop WP and apply the shit out of it

We haven't noticed any girdling. Is actinovate comparable to mycostop? I already had it on the agenda for preventative measures...

napalisherpa · Aug 8, 2014

mack 10 said:
Wow, horrible sight! I can only imagine losing such fat plants..
Karma coming your way.
Hope someone can shine some light on your problem.
Seem's very small roots? or just the pic?

Kind of looks poisoned?

and you say adding water hastened there death? dam!
Good luck.

where's the Skunkman when you want him?

A lot of the main roots are about the size of my fingers. Probably just the pic. I was going to dig the other plant up tomorrow and go further around the plant to get more of the root system.

Backyard Farmer · Aug 8, 2014

Go and feel the base of the stem where it meets the soil , is it firm ? Is it slimy ?

napalisherpa · Aug 8, 2014

The base of the stem is woody, not slimy. They were actually pretty tough to get out of the soil, we needed to really shovel in there, which discredits our gopher theory?

Some extra info, tho, each plant that has died was double potted. Its' partner plant is happy, so if it was some sort of fungal disease wouldn't it be affecting the live partner plant? Most of them are equal in size and have had the same exact regimen throughout the season.

We are planning to remove the alfalfa in the morning. We only used it to keep moisture in during triple digit days, which were frequent until last weekish.

Stayfoolish · Aug 8, 2014

Could someone be pouring bleach on your root balls?

furrywall11 · Aug 8, 2014

sherpa probably would've smelled the bleach..... also, bleach on the root ball probably wouldn't affect a single branch leaving the rest alive like in the 3rd pic down on the op... could it have anything to do with the smoke from the yosemite fire? assuming you're in norcal. good luck figuring it out

DoubleDDsNuggs · Aug 8, 2014

I am curious too what is going on. I'm indoors but had something similar happen to one branch and there were many ideas but afterwards I think what I did wrong was overwatering combined with a super high dose of guanos. I had a really bad infestation of fungus gnats and super drenched with sns 203 to make sure there was contact in the soil everywhere, but the day before I gave them 2 gallons in a 3x3 bed of guano. after the drench, the fan leaf on one node went limp but the branch still was stiff. I hope you find out what's going on. Do you smell any rot when you were digging them up? I only suspect that because the original soil had to be broken up with a hammer so I thought that maybe drainage wasn't up to par or you have a leak in your drip lines that you don't know about and you mentioned that the double potted ones are having issues. Hope the rest of them snap out of it and good luck!

Yes4Prop215 · Aug 8, 2014

usually when i had this happen in the past it was due to some kind of root disease…mostly from over watering the stem area and having too much straw mulch...

jackpot7 · Aug 8, 2014

Did you check the stalk? With this drought the mice and rodents are at anything green... had one this week do the same thing when we checked it a mouse had girdled the whole stem all the way around... next day mouse does it again to another one but we catch it halfway thru and seal it w limb sealer...

DoubleDDsNuggs · Aug 8, 2014

I should probably add that I used alfalfa mulch as well. forgot to mention that.

SativaBreather · Aug 8, 2014

terrible man, i feel for ya, hope no more die

i had it happen once on a massive plant 16 weeks into flower 6 years ago, indoors and it had another 16 weeks to go

dunno what caused it

mossyoakle · Aug 8, 2014

I'd second root/soil disease combined with over watering. 50 gallons a watering seems a little steep, but are they for sure drying in all the root zones before watering again?

I had a couple die before like this and the soil would never dry but the plant would look like it needed water. Eventually it croaked. Right now my 200 gallon smart pots are rooted with big ladies and get around 7 gallons a day. This is in 90 degree weather with high drainage soil. The plants are about 8 feet tall by 5-6 feet wide with 5 inch diameter bases. So my first guess is root rot from over watering.

Big plants dying suddenly

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