Hi all,
Appologize in advance for the long winded post - this has been building for a while. First time grower and have had a myriad of issues that I can’t seem to overcome. Popped seeds on Oct 1 and currently growing in OLS in 15G grassroots living soil pots. Light is a Mars Hydro SP 3000 LED and have 2 plants in a 4x2 tent. I got off to a bad start with some pretty substantial overwatering early on - while they were still in solo cups. Growth stunted, leaves were formed and more. Once I figured that out, uprooted them to 1G and dried them out a bit, things got a bit better, although still slow growth. Still had watering issues though - never knew if I was over or underwaering at any given time. When I potted up to 15G pots, I mostly got watering under control. It took a while, but the plants ultimately looked very healthy, but still grew incredibly slow. Until that point, the only feeding I had done was top dressing with dry amendments + worm castings and watering with recharge every so often. I eventually became frustrated with slow growth - around week 6-7 and decided they needed a boost so I introduced Foop - an organic bottled line. Around the same time, I added a humidifier and got my VPD in check. Before the humidifier, I was running 73-75f and 50rh. after, humidity was uo to about 60. vpd has been pretty good since. Growth picked seed to pick up, but after a couple of weeks, I started getting really deformed new growth. I was also treating fungus gnats with mosquito bits, so though that might have had something to do with it, but I don’t think that was accurate. Deformed growth was soon coupled with discoloration and leaves tacoing up and getting worse. it took me about a week or more, but I finally concluded that this might trace back to the Foop. Specifically, since im in OLS, I haven’t been PHing water and assumed I should stay that route when I added the Foop, but I think that may have been a big misstep. Wondering if the reason we don’t PH with OLS Is because there is enough buffer in the soil for the NORMAL range if water. With the nutrients, the water solution was now around 3.5-4 PH. Ouch! I Phd the next feeding or two before pulling the plug on the nutrients and going back to water. Been on straight water or water + recharge for at least two weeks and the new growth was slowly getting back to normal-ish, but no change in discoloration and tacoing! I had been getting ready to flower when the first deformed leaves showed up in early December and put it off while I try to get them back on track. I finally decided to flip the lights on 12/23 even though health wasn’t totally restored because I felt like I just needed to get on with it - and quite honestly, I’m wanting to ge to the end so I can start fresh. Very depressing. Also on 12/23, I have it another top dressing. On 12/24 I aded a heater to help get the temps to 80-85 + and raise the vpd for flowering. Today, 12/25, almost all new growth looks like the first deformed growth in early December. Ughh!!! . Coming into flower, light was at 55%. have bumped it up about 10% each of the last two days and planned to keep doing so till it was at max. Removed the heater for now and raised the light height a bit. Try to keep it around 15-20". Again, sorry for the drawn out saga, but wanted to hopefully paint the whole picture. These girls have struggled in one way or another since the beginning and the most recent struggles are particularly stressful. I’m. here to learn and as such and open to all input. Please help me turn this around. Thanks so much.
What it seems is your problem first the watering issue and second your lighting. Veg is with more light. Running your lights at 50%, they are going to grow slower.
In flower, temps come down and so does light intensity.
Think about nature. When the plants are growing it is summer. Hotter weather and longer days. As fall comes and plants start to ripen or flower for cannabis. Temps are cooler, days are shorter. Sounds like you are running things backwards.
I have used FOOP. You have to ph it. You mediums sounds like a lot of the problem for now. We have all made the mistakes you have. Just learn from them and keep going. We are all always growing one way or another.
Also let the plants adjust to the light for a few days before pushing more.
I agree with @oldjoints up to a point. One thing that can do to make indoor better then outdoor is to give your plants “strong light” throughout the entire grow…
They don’t look that bad, first grow is a learning experience, if you get something to smoke at the end its a bonus 
It will take a few grows to dial it all in, especially if you change strains every grow. I always ph my water in 10 gal no till. It’s one less thing in the equation if I get a problem.
Be patient with yourself, if you rush at trying to fix a problem, it’s easy to make it worse. Once you put something in, it’s hard to get it back out lol.
I can’t turn my lights down they don’t have a dimmer so my plants have the same light the whole grow
You can do that @corey. I have found for me, lowering the intensity even more and shortening the light cycle the last few weeks let’s the plant know winter is coming. They will speed up some.
Running your lights at 90% is actually better for them. They will last longer when you are not pushing the max.
Just for me, I do not run my lights at full for flower. Everyone’s situation is different for their liking, space and needs.
Yes sir, I totally agree… right now I have 5 ft plants away from intense direct light that they were use to 2 weeks ago. Great information @Old-Ron!
Honestly for your first time your plants look fantastic, piece of advice on watering; your plants literally grow like weeds so it’s ok to let them dry out completely, if you watch them every day until they’re completely dry you’ll be able to tell when they want water as they’ll start to wilt and look droopy and like they’re kinda falling in on themselves, DON’T WORRY, they’ll recover within an hour of watering every time.
Once you’ve got a plant completely dry feel the cup and how light it is, compared to a wet one it’s a HUGE difference. REMEMBER THAT WEIGHT as best you can, picking your pots up is essentially the easiest way to tell how much water is in them. Also do your best to remember how completely wet cups and pots and half wet cups weights feel, over time you’ll develop your own method you prefer best but this is an easy way to start out.
Now on to my personal two cents about the curling and stuff, you’ve got your soil way too hot. If it was living soil to start I always thought the idea behind that was you more or less don’t need to add much to it, just water and it makes it’s own nutrients.
Less is ALWAYS more, it’s much easier to add more nutrients if you didn’t correctly treat a deficiency than it is to take 2 weeks flushing out a fuck up and letting the plant dry and recover from being so beat up and then soaked. I’d personally just water your plants for a week or two, maybe add simple things that help nutrient uptake like cal mag and stuff. But you’ve gotta find a base to start at before you can start chipping away at the different possibilities of things to fix, that’s what I’d shoot for is finding a ground zero to start at and going from there, maybe this chart can help you decipher what happened nutrient wise a bit but that’s where your coloring and curling is coming from is nutes
It looks like possible magnesium lockout from low pH, potentially from the bottled nutrient you started. It doesn’t look too bad yet to me. I think the idea that soil growers don’t need to pay attention to pH is over-stated.
I would suggest adding microbe’s on a weekly basis (Myko’s is one option). Focus more on water schedule / amounts / needs of plant, than on pushing nutrients. As it’s already been suggested feel the weights of wet and dry, wait until they’ve lightened before watering and don’t water to full saturation consistently, occasionally yes, but not always. You can’t really rush soil. But, done well, soil can make top notch smoke. Build up your soil nutrient levels w dry amendments (find a good super soil recipe) and compost, so that you can mainly just use water and microbes on the regular. Earthworm castings always seem to help. I prefer top dressing w dry amendments over bottled nutrients and/or compost teas for when I think I see a deficiency starting. If I don’t see any deficiencies I just use water and microbes.
What is your soil?
With Foop you add Cal Mag for certain soil types.
I have found the plants become Foop dependent, they are addicted at a point. Cutting it or not using it after regular use can cause an upset addict.
Are these autos?
Thanks for all of the responses - very helpful. I’ll try to respond to a couple of things here.
My understanding of the light requirement is that it boils down to DLI, so while the needed DLI may slowly decrease as it gets later in the year outdoors, we take a 33% hit in total DLI when we flip from 18 to 12hr of light. With that, I thought I need to walk the ppfd back up by 33%, at least at first. I think you are saying if starting fresh, that I would be near max ppfd in veg and slowly walk that down after flipping the lights - am I understanding correctly? From where I am now (55%in veg and am now up to about 75%, given the plant conditions, what would you suggest I do with the light level from this point?
The plants are photos - super skunk and super silver haze. When I was in smaller pots I picked them up wet and dry regularly to try to feel for the amount of water they had. I ultimately started using a scale, which helped a lot. Now they are in 15G pots and it’s very difficult to feel the difference except at the wet and dry extremes, and for living soil, I had been targeting the middle vs the extremes. I mixed the original soil in a class and it was 1/3 peat, 1/3 compost (compost was 1/2 castings and 1/2 something else - don’t remember.), and 1/3 aeration (aeration is 1/3 small pumice, 1/3 rice hulls. 1/3 vermiculite.) I also added 25+ worms to each 15G. I add microbes regularly via recharge and sometimes rootwise and mykos.Top dressings have been buildasoil craft ben, BaS big six, worm castings, kashi and have been planning on a BaS buildaflower top dress soon. I didn’t think I could overdo any of this stuff, but maybe?
It sounds like the general theme here is 1. the plants don’t look awful - I’m having trouble with accepting this one, but I’l try. Those little new growth nubs + curling + overall coloration look terrible to me!! 2. chill and just add water. 3. get the lights better dialed in - hoping for a little more specific direction on this one.
Thanks everyone. Appreciate the help!
Growing under LED is different than HPS and MH, To me it looks like your plants cant handle the amount of light they are getting. Light is the driver of the plants metabolism, LED will cause problems you normally wouldnt deal with when using HPS and MH.
I should add that at 15" above the canopy, my light at 100% produces >=1000 ppfd in the center and >=700 ppfd in the corners. Ive been using that as my basis assuming 50% provides roughly half those numbers.
I would raise the light to 20 inches at full power, you may not think as I did when I switched to LED that it’s that bright, but they will burn your plants if you let them get to close. Hang some string with a weight on the light at the height that works best, so when the plant grows you know when to adjust the height.
I have 150w home made Bridgelux light strips I use in veg and ruined my first grow using them to close to the canopy. Messed my soil up as well because I thought it was a deficiency instead and kept adding more nutrients.
When you see a problem with the plants and you are using soil, that problem could have started 7 to 10 days ago. So if you have a journal of everything you do, you can look back and see what may have caused it.
Uptake of nutrients is controlled by many things, so even if your soil is not hot with over fed or held nutrients in it, it can become to hot from high microbial action making more nutrients than nessacary, or low humidity causing a greater water uptake and then nutrients with the water, from the plant expirating more.
@just_farmin
Sounds like a real good light!
If your setup is not regulating all the climate factors then you have no reason to change your light intensity.
Just match the temperature and humidity to it depending on how small or big you want to keep it.
Can i ask you what was the temp in your grow space?
PAR:
Seedling / Clone
100 – 300
Vegetative
250 – 600
Bloom / Flowering
500 – 1050
Co2:
Seedling / Clone
400
Vegetative
400 – 800
Bloom / Flowering
800 – 1400
If you have (microbes, castings, craft blend, Big 6, kashi etc), you should not need any foop or other bottled nutrients. Craft blend takes a little time to break down and Big 6 can go a long ways. Kashi is a bit hard to overdo, but should usually be used on top of the craft blend to assist in breaking it down or just general application.
Lots to take into account or at least be aware of. Co2, Par, DLI, tent temp, RH etc. Personally I would have just use the soil and amendments when needed as per usual and then supplement after that if they run into a need.
I am a big supporter of BuildASoil and run lots of their products in my grow diary. It is easy to want to change things/try to help the plants too much sometimes, so I would just stick to the basics at first and then go from there.
@just_farmin
It also looks like deficiency symptom is starting from the top so it means not a mobile element deficiency but immobile element deficiency. Def, not magnesium.
Also, tips turns yellow and leaf margin showing discolouration. Thin blade and wrinkly new growth. I feel like maybe it is zinc deficiency.
Moreover, if your humidifier stream is directly hitting the plants then that can cuz serious stunt growth to deformed leaves so check if that’s the case.
Lastly, your grow medium sounds like having a false drainage. Which is not actual drainage but just medium unable to hold moisture. You can try to water really often like hydroponics to stop deficiency as the medium can’t hold water contents. On the other hands, it means you can feed fresh nutrients often with that medium so it can improve yield and quality. I think you have good chance to make it back and keep good!!
Seriously look at octopots. 40% of your growing problems will go away like over watering etc. They are a little costly but if you get 1/2 through a grow only to realize it has failed all those resources used could have bought octopots and had a perfect grow. I would also look at the PH of your water. Test it., If you need to get it down use a zero water pitcher filter. If it is too low use some baking soda. Some of the pic the PH looks too high.
I stay back about 20-24” w/ my 300w LED for veg, starting seeds at 50% power / clones 25% power gradually move up to 100% power by mid veg period. 100% power through flip to end or mid/late flower sometimes I drop back to 65-75% if I’m fighting environmental heat. I let plants stretch up to 14-18” from lights for mid/late flower.
Yea, 15ga pots no longer functionally can use the weight test…that’s when you gotta get real zen w the plants. Water w as much as you think they can drink in 2-3 days…if your hand watering. They’re needs will change at different points in the cycle. Learn the patterns, prepare, anticipate, and have some fun too.
Octopots def look like a good option to consider. Been thinking lately about trying some diy SIP versions.