[bilgeweed]

I can not seem get this little girl healthy. May I please have your thoughts.
Strain- female Northern Lights

Soil Growers:
1. Are you growing from seed or clones? seed
2. How old are your plants? 6weeks
3. How tall are your plants? LST 12" tal
4. What size containers are they planted in? 1.65 gal (8" dia. 8" high)
5. What is your soil mix? Vic's formula -all organic
6. How often do you water and what type of water do you use? a mix of RO
and tap water. -
7. What is the pH of your water? Ph-ed to 6.7
8. What kind of fertilizer do you use and what is its NPK ratio? FoxFarm's
Big Bloom and Big Grow- 1/2 strength
9. What kind of lights do you use and how many watts combined? (HPS, MH, fluorescent, halogen, incandescent "plant lights") 150HPS & 2x27 watts
compact- daylight
10. How close are your lights to the plants? 8" or so
11. What size is your grow space in square feet? 1.75 sq feet
12. What is the temperature and humidity in your grow space? Range from
72* at bottom to 85* at tops (radiant)
13. What is the pH of the soil? I think it is about 6.1
14. Have you noticed any insect activity in your grow space? NONE
15. How much experience do you have growing? a few years

These plant have had a very hard time. Shortly after transplanting
from 3/4 gal. pots to 1.65 gal pots they showed signs of a mag. def.
may have been a ph lock out ? I have pampered them with a shower
or three of Epson/H2o and added a little lime to the top of the soil a few watering ago. They seem to perk up a little and then go back into this state of wilty/curled sick looking growth. Mosty the new growth. I think the soil's PH is about 6.1- using the vile/chemical test kit. For comparision-I recently bought a bag of fox farm Ocean Forest and it PHed at 6.0 according to the
test kit. I have a moisture meter as well and find that the sides of the pot
are DRY but get a reading of slightly moist in the center of the root ball. I wait as long as possible before watering. I usualy give them 2 cups of water
every 3-5 days- it dribbles out the drain holes. Please take a look at the photos give me the bad news. These girls must go into 12/12 soon.

Best Regards
bilgeweed

[bilgeweed]

For some reason the photos did not load- at the bottom of this form-
it shows some one elses Gallery and not mine. What up with that?
Could it be the the proxy I'm using ? I still can not load the photos
but if you hit the "gallery" icon in the original thread you will find
two photos of the plant in question. (first two pics)

Finaly got the photos to load------------

THX
bilgeweed

[anonamauz]

i think they might be too big to only give them 2 cups of water (i assume you're talking about 8oz cups) every 3-5 days. you might be underwatering and underfeeding. They certainly don't show signs of overwatering, so I'd start with a good heavy flush to wash out anything built up in the soil, then start feeding again, perhaps a little more aggressively.

couple other issues you might need to figure out. they're 12inches and LST'ed in 8 inch pots. that's a lot of plant for such a small container at 6 weeks. They could probably use more soil. you should be in closer to 5 gallons by now.

And finally, there might be a PH issue (which would render the above moot). how are you correcting PH?

Also, top dressing with lime can take a while to take affect. several weeks to months i believe... (not positive on that one).

I'd wait for other opinions on this before acting, but to me it looks like a good transplant and flush will cure what ails ya.

[bilgeweed]

Thanks for looking Aonamauz- This has been my most difficult grow to date.
Just can not get this dialed in. I'm starting to think I did not mixed my soil
properly and may have hot spots or major deficiencies. The soil is pretty loose with
vermiculite. I typically water slowly- 1 cup-wait a minute or two and add another
cup until it trickles out the drain holes. As my first post stated- two days after a watering,the moisture meter shows dry sides but moist inner ball so I waited another day or two and water before dropping appears. My last feeding (day I wrote the above) was with full strength nutes and this morning(two days later) shows no signs of improvement. Being unhappy for much of it's life it's not all that big/full. I pulled it from the pot this a.m. to find the roots white/cream colored but not bound. I knocked off as much soil as possible and repotted with FF Ocean Forest with a splash of lime. Watered lightly with a H20/ super thrive solution. I'd love to be able to repot into a larger container but this is not possible in my small grow area.

To answer your questions- about 2.5 weeks ago I gave it a top dressing of 1.5
Tbs lime and also put a little epson in the water. I have PHed my H20/nutes to
about 6.6-6.8 to try and bring the PH up a little.

With such an invasive transplant it may be a couple days before I see it's future.
I'll keep ya posted.

regards
bilgeweed

[anonamauz]

sounds like you're doing everything you should- also, after 6 weeks, and considering you water so slowly, you get very little run off, so whatever the plant isn't taking up stays in the soil. that's why a good heavy watering/flush is good for them from time to time.

that transplant might have been a bit rough on your girl, but sometimes breaking up the rootball can be good- you'll aerate the soil. give her some time to adjust, and hopefully you'll be fine.

good luck

[MynameStitch]

your plantr is having a magnseium deficiency there
you need magnseium in there diet

do you have any magnseium in your ferts you are using?
and are your plants flowering right now? why are you using big bloom if your plants are not flowering?

[bilgeweed]

Stitch- thanks for the reply. I'll agree on the mag def. I have foliar feed them mag
about four-five times in the past two weeks. Also added some epson in the H20 during watering- along with a tbs of lime spinkled on the soil. Should I have added more ?

Big Bloom is part of Fox Farms veg program-
Grow Big and Big Bloom for veg
Big Bloom and Tiger Bloom during the flowering stage

GROW BIG---------------------------
TOTAL Nitrogen (N)12.0%
1.5% Ammoniacal Nitrogen
2.0% Nitrate Nitrogen
8.5% Urea Nitrogen

AVAILABLE PHOSPHATE (P205) 7.0%
SOLUBLE POTASH (K20) 7.0%
Boron (B)0.02%
Copper (Cu) 0.05%
0.05% Chelated Copper
Iron (Fe) 0.10%
0.10% Clelated Iron
Manganese (Mg) 0.05%
0.05% Chelated Manganese Molybdenum(Mo)0.0009%
Zinc (Zn) 0.05%
0.05% Chelated Zinc
Derived from: Ammonium Sulfate, Ammonium Phosphate, Urea, Blood Meal, Potassium Nitrate, Potassium Sulfate, Earthworm Castings, Norwegian Kelp, iron EDTA, zinc EDTA, manganese EDTA, copper EDTA, chelating agent, Disodium Ethylenediamine Tetra Acetate (EDTA), sodium borate, and sodium molybdate.

BIG BLOOM------------------
TOTAL NITROGEN (N)................ 0.01%
0.002% Ammoniacal Nitrogen
0.001% Nitrate Nitrogen
0.005% Water Soluble Nitrogen
0.002% Water Insoluble Nitrogen
AVAILABLE PHOSPHATE (P205).... 0.3%
SOLUBLE POTASH (K20)................ 0.7%
Derived from: Earthworm castings, bat and seabird guano, rock phosphate, sulfate of potash magnesia (a mined natural mineral) Norwegian kelp

Looks like a pretty complete diet------ I have read that additional mag is
required at times-------------

Regards
bilgeweed

[bilgeweed]

Well- I didn't take long for this plant to recover from the transplant
shock but it still is not well. Small twisted- canoeing leafs with a leathery
look to them. It's sister plant is doing much better but still no beauty.
Due to grow height space I had to put it into flowering a week ago. It's been drinking the usual F.F. nutes but I see no signs of a full recovery. Has anyone ever seen such extreme canoeing ect from being root bound?

Option 1- continue with the grow and hope for the best.
Option 2- Sacrifice the sickest plant for clones and repot the other
into a pot no higher but larger in dia.

What ya think ?

Thanks for your advice-

Bilgeweed

[gOurd^jr.]

I think you should press on and hope for the best, she doesn't look THAT bad in the pics, hell I've taken worse looking plants through flowering and still got a decent bit of buds. Also clones from an unhealthy plant will likewise be unhealthy and probably take a long time to root and generally lack vigor, I know that much from experience.
keep in mind that once those leaves get yellowed etc. they won't recover, but all the upper growth on there looks nice and green. If you can get them into wider containers certainly go for that as you're likely to be rootbound by the end of teh show.
hope it helps, all the best
gOurd

[anonamauz]

sometimes you get mutant plants- no matter how hard you try to fix, they're just sickly (genetically), and nothing you can do about it. that being said, it doesn't look that bad. new growth looks good, perhaps a bit screwy, but nice and green. I'd stick it out.