purple/brown stems, yellow leaves, photos

[paddy1]

Hi - this is related to my last post, but I decided to attach pictures.

 

Background - they have been on 11/13 for 14 days now. I switched the nutrient brand and also the fomular type - went from veg nutes to bloom nutes.

 

Also, the temperature at night when lights are off is dropping a fair bit because we've nearly entered winter now. I am a little worried that maybe I have underfed nutrients or maybe overfed and watered. The coconut fibe seem a bit dense and a little moist below the surface, but nothing too dramatic.

 

Anyway - first two photos show the purpling the stems/branches. previously they were green. Second two photos show the plant with yellowing leaves around the base..etc...

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Edited May 4, 2010 by paddy1

[The Hash Nibbler]

Hey paddy, these girls are sick, looks like over watering but could be a deficency or over fertilizing, there is a facts and questions area in this site in Cannaversity, there is some great info there. these girls should have much more in them yet. Need to give more details to get a real answer here. And dude, go 12/12, what is this 11/13 crap?

Also let people know the strain if you know as it will help to give an indication of what the plant SHOULD be doing. Some strains shoot purple shade stems when they bud, like mine, otherwise it's a deficiency of some kind. Good luck and will help if I can.

Edited May 4, 2010 by Grasshopper72

[bloodshot_eyes]

How much are you feeding? i.e. How strong, how often, roughly how much water? If your in the high end of what your nutrient bottles recommend, its unlikely you would be underfeeding in which case I would give it a flush with fresh water, and back them off a bit, see what happens. If you feeding a really weak solution then that could well be the problem. And as Grasshopper said, it could be simply that your watering too much. If the plants are growing in cooler conditions, they don't transpire as much, growth slows, they don't need as much water, or nutrients for that mater. Are you running Run-to-waste? If so, aim for about 10% daily run-off.

 

Edited May 5, 2010 by bloodshot_eyes

[Luke Skywalker]

Looks a lot more like hungry plants than overfed ones to me. Either through pH management issues or sheer low doses. The temperature it drops to at a minimum may also be holding these girls back a fair bit, though I'm more inclined to be looking towards nutrition directly than temps. That said, I don't know what your minimum temps are.

 

Give us some more information regarding nutrient strengths, ph levels of watering and even some runoff figures and we may be able to narrow it down a bit.

 

Also, is that a thousand watt HPS light in the background in a cupboard type setup? What kind of ventilation do you have in there?

[The Hash Nibbler]

Thanks guys, needed some extra help with this one, it looks like they are in standard pots, do you put these in a tray that collects water because i can see no hoses on your pots, if the bottom of the pots are sitting in water/nutes this may not be helping, if they are running off into another catchment or container then disregard this, just trying to narrow down the variables for ya mate. Skywalker knows his shit and bloodshot too, so between us I'm sure we can help you out bud.

[paddy1]

hey guys

 

sounds like I've found the gurus here Perfect.

 

If it means anything, I have started contributing to posts from beginners and happy to continue to do so. Great forum and great responses and assistance:)

 

While this is my first ever grow, I have had long discussions with my hydroponics retailer and learned a lot. I have actually found all this stuff to be really interesting!

 

Anyway.... down to business:

 

So here's the answer to some of the questions put:

 

1) "What's this 11/13 crap?" - advice from a friend who used to grow once a year and produce the goods. He went from 18/6 to 11/13 and found he got a bit of extra final growth and good quick budding. Found some people on various forums who did the same. Mine did stretch a bit more than I wanted when I switched, but I figured it wouldn't be too much of a problem in the end.

 

2) When using the grow/veg formular, it was (approx as i can't find the bottle) 3.2% nitrogen, 0.8% phosphorous and 4% potassium. The bloom formular i switched to (bottle in front of me) is 2.7% nitrogen, 1.4% phosphorous and 6.5% potassium.

 

One problem I have is that two of the plants were started in soil. The other three are in coconut fibre. I have been feeding the soil ones a more diluted fomular as I assume they are still drawing some from the soil. Admittedly every third feed, the fibre plants get the more diluted version as well as the soil, but generally I like to keep the concentration of the coconut fibre ones as constant as i can. As the coconut fibres are showing yellow leaves at the bottom, but the middle and top seems green, I am thinking its an under-nutrient problem. The very sick one you see (third photo) is one of the soil ones. There is a thick stinky layer of bud around that one and it seemed to be ok, but about a week ago, one leaf per day seemed to turn yellow and its appearance is starting to look a bit off.

 

3) Yes that is a 1000W HPS you see. The wardrobe is left open when the light is on, I have a duct and fan attached which is sucking air out of the bottom of the cupboard. Also, the cupboard is right next to a window which is left open, the door is also left open and it has been windy, so a good flow of air goes through the room (much better than i had during veg). Also, when the light goes off, as you can see from the photos, i put the plants on a bed in the middle of the room in front of the open window to ensure they get extra fresh air during darkness. Don't know what the PH of medium as i don't have measurer.

 

4) The temperature of the room doesn't get too high, even with the light running for a while, as it's fairly cool conditions where I am. I would say after 10 hours of light, the room is about 23 degrees and around the plants is a little higher. Once the lights are turned off, the plants probably go from 28 degrees to about 16 degree within an hour or two. I often wondered whether that was a concern. Could be way off on these temperatures, they're just a rough guess-estimation. Minimum temperatures it would be exposed to at night would possible be around 12-14 degrees or so.

 

5) I feed every 36 hours. Hand feeding from a bottle. 1 litre of diluted nutrient feeds five plants (so they get about 200 ml each per feed). Every 5th feed, I use just plain water and give about 250ml per plant just to flush out salts..etc.. Dilution is done according to instructions: 5ml of A and 5ml of B to every 1 litre of fresh water.

 

I just pour it into the pots. There is an empty tray that the pots sit in just to stop any excess water from leaking onto the base of the cupboard. Don't have anything fancy there and usually when I feed them, I rarely get much (or any) water leaking out the holes at the base of the pot. I am not running any Run-to-waste to fancy drainage system. I simply water the pots and sometimes a little dribble comes out at the bottom.

 

I did this feeding regiment during veg and they seemed hungry enough to lap it all up, but at the same time, it was warmer conditions and the room was generally warmer overall. Now the conditions are cooler and it seems like the fibre is staying more moist for longer. Also, the fibre belows the surface feels a bit compact and not loose and fluffy when dry so i was wondering if the roots were bundled up too tightly and perhaps they are retaining too much moisture or i don't need to feed as often ??? Or perhaps I need to slightly up the nutrient concentration? To be honest, I was thinking that I might be over watering, but under-nutrienting, if that makes sense.

 

All help much appreciated

 

Also - can't tell you what seeds are, though got them from a deal that contained a lot of seeds and the smoke was good and strong.

Edited May 5, 2010 by paddy1

[gothash]

a ph meter would be a very good purchase, do you flush regulary with clean distilled ph adjusted water, you could be suffering with a nute lockout due to salt buildup....

[paddy1]

Hi - if it's budding, does that mean the pH is probably too low?

[The Hash Nibbler]

Hey paddy,1) you need to measure the run off out of your pots by putting them in a container and measuring what goes in after a water and what is left in the container.(do em seperately, it's easier) This should be between 10%-20% of what goes in, 15% being optimal. Coco has very different properties to soil (as you probably know) and the flushing through of the new nutes dicharges the old stuff and salts as mentioned before by gothash (legend).

 

2)If you flush them and start again being extra careful of PH, Nute levels(follow the directions on your bottles to the letter), Make sure your pots are raised out of the tray, even if it is just 1cm (could be salts leaching out and as the plant/pot dry during the lighting period, the salts are taken up again from below but with some of the water evaporated, so very concentrated).

 

3)Sorry, If that 11/13 works for you, go for it.

 

4) Your nutes balance is OK, what your using, pretty standard hydromix but is it for coco? Coco has different nutrients as it is a different medium, different balances and composition.

 

 

5) your night time temps are way too low, keep them in the cupboard with the fan on, will be fine. daytime is OK, about 4 degrees too low but not such a problem.

 

6) Maybe try less watering but when you do, use more to than 200ml so it gives the coco a nice flush through.

 

7) Dude if those pots at the top of page is the ones they are still in then maybe a size upgrade, the mass of the roots in coco is similiar to that of soil, even your one in soil would be pushing the sides. Bigger pots mean less watering too and more of a flush when you do.

 

8) Plants are triggered by light to flower, ph levels are just for acid/alkaline soil readings to keep the ph in the range of optimal nutrient uptake from the roots. They are a good gauge of what happens in your nutes and your soil.

Thats all i can think of right now, my head hurts, I'm going for a pipe =) Good luck dude.

[paddy1]

Hi Grasshopper

 

You are a legend and thanks so much for your time. Jsut a couple of finishing notes and then a bit of a recomemndation from you regarding procedures.

 

1) Run off - I think you may have hit the nail on the head there. I have been thinking that the lack of run off indicates that I am not actually putting enough fluid in, be it water or nutes. So I would guess there's an accumulation at the bottom which is probably causing a problem. I'm definately not even getting 3% on average run off.

 

2) Ok - i'll raise them up out of tray

 

3) Yep in all other respects 11/13 seems to work fine and yeah, found a few sites and forums that endorse 11/13 or 11.5/12.5 to basically emphasise making it just under 12 hours. Seems both work debates could go on for a while!!!

 

4) Yes - it's a formular for hydro with coco medium.

 

5) yes i thought it might be a bit too cold at night. I'll keep the window closed at night to keep the temperature a bit higher.

 

6) How does feeding/watering every 48 hours sound?

 

7) Since I'm only about 2-3 weeks away, should i bother repotting them now?

 

So here is my plan now, let me know what you think:

 

a) After lighting is finished, flush the soil. I am assuming that I will need to put about 600ml water per plant when i do this and will get considerable run off?

 

Wait 48 hours (?) then introduce nutes ensuring i get about 10-15% run off

 

c) Repot the plants into bigger pots. If I do this, do I have to do it in the dark to keep the roots out of sunlight? Also when I take the plant out of the pot, do is shake off the soil if it's all balled up, or just place the ball in a bigger pot?

 

d) By a PH testing kit and test PH a little.

 

How does all that sound?

 

Thanks heaps.