Yellowing leaves while flowering? Correct the problem with a high N food.

[Old Uncle Ben]

My last indica (Monkey Balls, a Deep Chunk F2) was turning a pale yellow top to bottom indicating too much light for the N content. I fertilized with Osmocote 15-9-12 since it popped early Feb. I've been taking it outdoors for a sun bath weather permitting recently, Texas cloudless days after a cold front blows thru. Indoors it's under a ViparSpectra KS5000. I corrected the chlorophyll yellowing by giving it 1 tsp/gallon of Peters High Performance 25-5-15 and the nice medium color has returned to the leaves. As of today, Cinco de Mayo, it's been flowering since I flipped to 12/12 March 26, or about 6 weeks. https://icl-sf.com/us-en/products/o...-professional-25-5-15-high-efficiency-g99087/

As an aside, I make sure my faves get some boron. It is required for the reproductive cycle.

Wish I had a BEFORE pic, didn't bother.

Smell is really getting nauseating, flowering is intense after getting the high N food.

Uncle Ben

 

[GMT]

At week 6 you want them to yellow. Last thing you want is bud full of nitrogen at harvest. Or it'll smell and taste like hay. Let it yellow now, just water.

 

[goingrey]

I didn't realize Deep Chunk was such a yielder.

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

At week 6 you want them to yellow. Last thing you want is bud full of nitrogen at harvest. Or it'll smell and taste like hay. Let it yellow now, just water.

No you don't, that's internet newbie rubbish. This is exactly what I mean by the brainwashing effect.

Been growing weed since the 70's. This industry is full of scams and suckers.

Uncle Ben

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

I didn't realize Deep Chunk was such a yielder.

Yes it is. I just harvested Cannacopia Lapiz Mtn. indica which is very similar. It's some of the best smoke I've had - very potent, creeper, happy laugh your ass off smooth high. Got 3.3 oz off a 18" plant. Only food I used was a 5-6 month release Osmocote Indoor-Outdoor Plus, 15-9-12 with micros. Had some weird colored leaves, some bronze, some purple. Was a stack of leaves so thick looked like someone squashed it with their foot LOL. Needless to say I don't remove any leaves.

Uncle Ben

 

[GMT]

Well maybe I'm just a newbie repeating rubbish with no real world experience then. But answer this, if you believe what you say, why aren't your plants pumped full of nitrogen, instead of that yellowing purpling effect in your photo? Did you just get that plant wrong, along with the rest you describe as not being green?

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

Well maybe I'm just a newbie repeating rubbish with no real world experience then. But answer this, if you believe what you say, why aren't your plants pumped full of nitrogen, instead of that yellowing purpling effect in your photo? Did you just get that plant wrong, along with the rest you describe as not being green?

Any (relevant) questions?

It's all about the roots and leaf mass. Feed to support that. DO NOT fall for the bloom foods stuff.

UB

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

Never had a green harvest yet which I preferred over yellowed/dead. Maaassive difference in terpene profile and potency.

Had a lot of cannabis from subpar sources (most believing their product to be superior) and the majority was green garbage.

Perhaps your stuff is different for some reason.

 

[moose eater]

It's been my understanding that some of that yellowing can be a result of a lock-out relative to, among other possible issues, excess Potassium.

 

[Ca++]

They needed N for sure.

Excess N isn't good. However that is a different topic.

On the rare occasion I get leaves that are not green anymore, I mark the price down. Dying tissue is not a good sign. Many people confuse natural senescence with killing them. Which is just a waste of time.

This topic would be better with some numbers. One uni is going 200ppm all the way. A couple of others over 150ppm. I feel 130ppm works in my grows. Which is basically what my grow feed gives, not my bloom. I spent so many years only buying big grow that when I picked up a small bloom, they gave me a look lol. I use it with Nitric for my cuttings I told them. They were deep in thought after that one lol

 

[GMT]

Any (relevant) questions?

It's all about the roots and leaf mass. Feed to support that. DO NOT fall for the bloom foods stuff.

UB

Yeah, why show pics of plants in flower, were talking end of life here?
Take a look at the opening pic in this thread, tell me you think that's a healthy colour. Oh yes you already did. You're wrong. But you actually are a newbie here. If I were as dismissive as you, I'd simply say, stick around, read up, you'll learn, but I'm trying to be helpful. Let the plant use the available nutrients, don't force feed it. Pumping a plant full of N at 6 weeks will destroy the flavour, and if it's full of other crap too, which I suspect it will be, you're smoking nutes rather than cannabis.
However, since you won't listen to me, we could always reach out to the OG breeder of deep chunk and ask for his opinion, or is he an internet newbie too? You about @Tom Hill ?

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

I don't "give an excess" of any element and that includes N. Been gardening for 50 years. Let's hope by now I have soil chemistry and plant nutrition down pat.

Osmocote 15-9-12 is a perfect balance for any kind of plant material and that includes cannabis. While most are screwing around making such a simple thing as difficult and confusing as they can, I'm doing nothing more than watering my faves with rain water and moving on.

I took this pic of the MonkeyBalls just now in part natural light, part room lighting. I did what I set out to do, restore the leaves to a nice green healthy productive color. Ironically I found this plant blown over on my rock drive yesterday. She's a tough ol bird! It was a hot sunny day yesterday in Texas.

6 weeks after flipping. I figure I've got about 2 weeks to go.

Yellowing necrotic, non-productive leaves and/or plants that have been manually butchered via "leafing" are not, can not, produce what they're capable of producing "in the right hands".

It's just simple botany folks.

Less is more,
Uncle Ben

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

You're wrong. But you actually are a newbie here. [/USER]

Would someone clue in this smart ass who he's dealing with, please?

Fella, do yourself a favor. Lurk, learn to grow tomatoes, FIRST, and get this book. It is excellent covering every aspect of cannabis culture and processing.

Uncle Ben

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

They needed N for sure.

Excess N isn't good. However that is a different topic.

On the rare occasion I get leaves that are not green anymore, I mark the price down. Dying tissue is not a good sign. Many people confuse natural senescence with killing them. Which is just a waste of time.

This topic would be better with some numbers. One uni is going 200ppm all the way. A couple of others over 150ppm. I feel 130ppm works in my grows. Which is basically what my grow feed gives, not my bloom. I spent so many years only buying big grow that when I picked up a small bloom, they gave me a look lol. I use it with Nitric for my cuttings I told them. They were deep in thought after that one lol

I don't do numbers, usually. Don't need to. I read my plants understanding plant nutrition. Here's a ditty I wrote 20 years or so ago that's been posted at quite a few forums. Why folks have to over think growing a weed is beyond me, but that's what they do.

FWIW, I harvested the Jack Herer in my avatar just after I took this photo with what we used back in the day, a Polaroid camera. Then scanned it. Year 2001. The cola covering my face was a good 6" thick and solid, hard as a brick. Notice the healthy leaves at the bottom. Tips show white because of the camera's flash ON LOWER BUDS. For the leafing folks, that plant was crammed in with a bunch. Good light did not reach the lower bud sites.

When I upcanned to my final MicroKote painted pots I mixed in a small handful (1-2 TB?) of Osmocote into the last inch of topsoil as I finished filling the pots. Production is also about the roots, another thing I've mastered by using systems that root prune to initiate a profuse, super dense root system. MicroKote has been a marginal success as opposed to the use of Griffin's Spin-Out years ago which gets 100% root tip termination.

But I digress....

Root system was so dense I had to beat the rootball on the ground about 20 times to recover some of my (custom) potting soil!

I have changed my approach regarding macros after realizing that most if not all foods contain way too much P. Whether it's feeding my turf, tropical fruit trees, peach trees, landscape....whatever, I choose a food that is more like a 5-1-3, low to moderate in P. I have changed my thinking a bit compared to what I wrote as I usually don't use, need, bloom foods. They're nothing more than a marketing gimmick. https://www.rollitup.org/t/the-neve...rous-bloom-foods-to-enhance-flowering.158144/

Uncle Ben

 

[led05]

edit……wrong thread

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

Another cultural internet forum trap folks get suckered into regarding the retention of healthy leaves until harvest is giving them too much light. My last indica, the Monkey Balls, is under 75% light. The sun bath it gets is occasional, weather permitting. This lower light intensity mimics the light cannabis gets at a latitude of say.....30-45 degrees. The light intensity is much lower during fall/winter flowering and harvest period at those latitudes. Sun is lower in the horizon too.

Again, folks have been brainwashed into bleaching out their faves with too much light. Combine that with not enough N via "bloom" foods and you are screwed. I addressed this many moons ago which has been posted at different forums.

Plant Moisture Stress - symptoms and solutions (revised May 30, 2011)

Quite often I hear groans from folks having leaf problems: "Help, my leaves are cupping and the leaf edges are turning brown!" or, "My plant's leaf tips are curling down and turning black ....what's wrong?" Unless insect damage has occurred or the plant is suffering from a severe case of calcium deficiency, the plant is trying to tell you that it is water stressed. It's hard to tell exactly what the culprit is, and unfortunately the solution the grower chooses many times is not the right one. A mis‑diagnosis only serves to make matters worse by promoting further decline. I'll try to cover some of the more common causes that can induce these common symptoms and try to offer a few simple solutions. The ultimate and correct solution is in the hands of the grower.

1. Over‑fertilizing ‑ the most common cause of leaf cupping aka leaf margin rolling, leaf margin burn, leaf tip curl/burn and copper colored round spots is the overzealous use of too much plant food in relationship to factors such as plant vigor and rate of growth. The first unit of a plant to show moisture stress is the leaf at its margins and/or tips, reflected by margin rolling (cupping) or burning. A hard, crispy feel to the leaf frequently occurs as well, as opposed to a soft and cool feel of a happy leaf. When you have a high concentration of salts in solution (or in the root medium) compared to lower salinity levels found in the plant's tissue, water is actually drawn out of the plant across the root gradient in order to fix the PPM imbalance. IOW, this is a natural, osmotic response that serves to equalize salinity levels on both sides of the root's epidermal gradient. Back off on the amount and/or frequency of plant food. Too much plant food can also burn the roots, especially the sensitive root tips and hairs, which then creates another set of problems such as nutrient deficiencies. A note for the bio folks ‑ as soil dries, the concentration of the remaining salts rises further exacerbating the problem. Leech (flush) your pots once in a while to get rid of excess salts.

2. High Heat ‑ the plant is losing water via it's leaves faster than what can be replaced by the root system. The leaf responds by leaf margin cupping or rolling (up or down) in order to conserve moisture. A good example is reflected by the appearance of broad‑bladed turf grass on a hot summer day, high noon, with low soil moisture levels ‑ the leaf blade will roll in and the grass will take on a dull, greyish‑green appearance. Upon sunrise when moisture levels have returned to normal, the leaf blade will be flat. Lower the heat and concentrate on developing a large, robust root system by practicing sound plant culture. An efficient and effective root system will go a long way to prevent heat induced leaf dessication and leaf margin curling by supplying sufficient moisture for good plant health. One short episode of high heat is enough to permanently destroy leaf tissue and cause a general decline in the leaves affected, which often occurs to leaves found at the top of the plant located to close to HID lamps. The damaged leaf (usually) does not recover, no matter what you do. Bummer in the summer. One can only look to new growth for indications that the problem has been corrected.

3. High Light ‑ yes, it's true, you can give our faves too much light. Cannabis does not receive full sun from sunrise to sunset in its natural state. It is shaded or given reduced light levels because of adjacent plant material, cloudy conditions, rain, debris and dust collection on the leaf surface, twilight periods of early morning and late afternoon, and light intensity changes caused by a change in the seasons. Too much light mainly serves to bleach out and destroy chlorophyll as opposed to causing leaf cupping, but it often goes hand‑in‑hand with high heat for indoor growers. Again, back off on the light and concentrate on developing/maintaining an efficient and robust root system. Keep in mind that all but equatorial material receives less light during flowering than during the vegetative stage.

4. Overwatering ‑ this practice only serves to weaken the root system by depriving the roots of proper gas exchange. IOW, the roots are not getting enough oxygen which creates an anerobic condition causing root decline and root rot with the end result showing up as leaf stress, stunted growth, and in severe cases, death. <gasp!> A lot of times folks think the plant is not getting enough plant food (which it can't under such adverse conditions), they add more nutes as a "curative", and just add insult to injury.

5. Underwatering ‑ not only is the plant now stressed due to a low supply of adequate moisture, but carbohydrate production has been greatly compromised (screwed up). Step up the watering frequency, and if need be, organic growers may need to soak the pot from the bottom up until moisture levels reach an even consistency throughout the medium especially with mixes that are heavy in peat. If severe, a little surfactant (1 teaspoon per gallon of liquid Ivory dish soap) added to the drench will help return the organics to a normal moisture retentive state. If the pot feels light to the lift ‑ it's time to water. Don't wait until the soil pulls away from the sides of the pot or leaves droop before you water. Soil should stay moist (not wet) at all times. Wet/dry cycles cause more problems than you think they might solve.

Happy gardening,
Uncle Ben

 

[Ca++]

I don't do numbers, usually. Don't need to. I read my plants understanding plant nutrition. Here's a ditty I wrote 20 years or so ago that's been posted at quite a few forums. Why folks have to over think growing a weed is beyond me, but that's what they do.

Uncle Ben

I made a start 35 years ago. In dirt as was tradition then. Growers then, and before that time, needed green fingers. I can see you work that way. Using experience to dose things in handfuls. It's very difficult to share green fingers though. It's hard to interpret what a handful is, or a foot. Sometimes people read things you didn't even say, to find what they want to hear. This is why I like numbers. I also like science. We can grow without a single measurement if we want to. Or we can grow with lab standard analysis. Which we believe is better, is personal choice. I have to shake my head at peoples 'over thinking' comments though. It's taking sides. If I have to do that, I'm going to take the progressive advancements achieved through scientific research.

LEDs are obviously the stuff of satin though

 

[Old Uncle Ben]

I made a start 35 years ago. In dirt as was tradition then. Growers then, and before that time, needed green fingers. I can see you work that way. Using experience to dose things in handfuls. It's very difficult to share green fingers though. It's hard to interpret what a handful is, or a foot. Sometimes people read things you didn't even say, to find what they want to hear. This is why I like numbers. I also like science. We can grow without a single measurement if we want to. Or we can grow with lab standard analysis. Which we believe is better, is personal choice. I have to shake my head at peoples 'over thinking' comments though. It's taking sides. If I have to do that, I'm going to take the progressive advancements achieved through scientific research.

LEDs are obviously the stuff of satin though

Here's a guide for Osmocote. You can find the same type of "recommendation" on fertilizer product brands. Not talking "cannabis specific" rocket fuels. Hell, a lot of times you can't even find a guaranteed analysis of what's in them. It's a trade secret ya know. https://icl-sf.com/uploads/USA/Rebranded Product Sheets/OH/a903226_osmocote_plus_15-9-12_5-6m.pdf

Being the old pHart that I am, I pretty much do this stuff by sight and feel, like cooking. You'll never see me measuring when I make a pot of chili, or Italian marinara sauce, cajun gumbo, etc.

I am measuring when I hit my greenhouse trees, many of them having to be pruned to keep them under 15'. Citrus is a heavy feeder and those trees get about 12 oz of Os. late Feb. Avocados, annonas, pitaya, mango get about 8 oz. I give them the same type but a 8-9 month feed. Takes care of the entire growing season.

Another nice thing about Os. is it's real hard to burn your plants. No matter the forum I see a lot of gardens where the poor plants look like they've been run over by a Mack truck - yellowing, twisted leaves, or plants that are skimpy on leaves, just not healthy rich. Most likely the grower kept throwing shit at them hoping something sticks and they created a nutrient antagonism issue or an out of whack E.C. environment at the root system.

As luck woudl have it I got 8 males out of 10 (pure) indicas recently. Looks like that's the way indicas roll. Take this "old" Sensi Hindu Kush. Beautiful plant, I was just sick when I saw the balls.

Keep easy,
Uncle Ben

 

[Ca++]

I once bought a liquid lawn feed, that had good numbers. I was unaware the N was in a form that the tomato feeds were avoiding. I know we have two in our hydro feeds, and the ratio is important. I run out of knowledge at this point though. I think the law stuff was ammonium. Somewhat available, but cycles round to the more useful NO3.
I started growing 35 years ago, but it was a few years later till I really got busy. Making me gen-hydro
This means the nitrogen cycle, is some sort of transportation with pedals?

It tasted bad. May as well of wrapped up an alkaline battery and tried to light it. High P can be chemically, but this was naff. The runoff even had a smell to it, and... well... as you do... the feed tasted bad in the bottle. In hindsight, it was from the tanks at a pig farm and not something to be gargling with, but you don't think of that when you are using it. Same sort of yang though, from bottle, to run-off, to bud.

If we look at nitrogen is it's basic form, what does it really taste of. Air is near 80% nitrogen. They carbonate drinks with it, for a smoothness co2 can't achieve. I'm going to say that No3 might not taste of much. It's major components of the air we breathe.
I do see how the curing could be effected. It's going to be present in any case though.


I won't use ammonium nitrate again. I can see why it was for lawns. Soil feeds do use a fair bit more than hydro, especially in slower release formulations. I did use up my lawn feed in veg though. Where there is time for that N cycle.


I'm quite happy avoiding soil technology. Some has stuck as I have passed by, but I'm not green fingered. I do wonder if others have used poor sources of N and ruined their crop though. Blaming N directly, when like with me, they may of used the wrong type and the wrong time.


Straw though.. that is interesting. I think it's almost an infection. N gets blamed, but my brushes with that, have always been problems at the root. Maybe we have some microlife that can breed better through the drying process, with a higher N level ?

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

Osmocote marketing dept... is that you?

Many, maaaaaany growers I have met who sported decades of growing exp had seriously subpar cannabis. Gold, as far as they were concerned. Not saying this is you, and would not be surprised either way.

If you have not sampled product from multiple growers/states/countries for decades, I would caution anyone from being too rigid in your beliefs.

Been there, oopsed that.