Another root issue :S

Hey guys alright i've been posting threads and pictures for a while and everyone kinda has a few opinions of why my plant is dying, the leaves just started drying on the top and working its way down the plant... usually where the bud sites are. But here is what i did find out today.


1 plant
-Shultz per fert soil. (bad i know but worked fine till now )
- 150w HPS
Like 4 fans.
pH was like 6.2
temps are 85 lights on 80 lights off.
Humity is 40.
This plant also is like 3 months old. Possibly longer i didnt actually start growing for real untill like july cause it was just on a window seal and got like 2 inchs in about a month lol..
It's about 15 inchs or so atm and has been there for like a week.. its not even moving. its in like week 3 to 4 of flowering.

The buds are slowly getting fatter but verrry slowly but the plant is not growing up at all..

Some people said b/c i had a hermie in there for about 2 week into flower before i cough it it did early polenation so the plant is starting to die.. Others said to much nutes.. others said not enough..

Anyways i did feed it with feed sticks (4-10-5) and it didnt seem to do anything yet but i figured today i would flush it. I put about 1-2 gallons through it and the water just sat on top of the soil... like it took FOREVER for it to seep though.. and even thinking back now everytime i water it the water sits on top of the soil for quite some time and then actually amost pushes itself to corners away from the stem.. So i stuck my finger in the soil before i flushed it and the soil is hard as a rock around the stem.. like 2" in every direction from the stem its solid... but everywhere else isn't... does this tell anyone what may be happening to my plant? Im hoping with this peice of info it might help lol.. Because everything else i've tried didnt work.. at all..

Here's the golden answer: You have a phosphorus deficiency. A very obvious one.

Fixable with good nutes.

I do believe it to be potassium,not phosphorous,please see-http://www.onlinepot.org/grow/diagnosingplantgrowingproblems.htm

Doctor Cannabis said:

Here's the golden answer: You have a phosphorus deficiency. A very obvious one.

Fixable with good nutes.

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Yeah I agree, I would pull out those silly feed stick and give it some Budswel

luvvin growin said:

I do believe it to be potassium,not phosphorous,please see-http://www.onlinepot.org/grow/diagnosingplantgrowingproblems.htm

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Potassium def starts at the entire edge of the leaf, then works itself towards the main vein.

Phosphorus def starts at the tip and moves towards the stem.

reread and agreed,I bow to the Doctor.

Don't know for sure but this hard as rock soil is bugging me! Those deficiencies might be due to some clogging and bad circulation within the soil, what is it made of initially?

luvvin growin said:

reread and agreed,I bow to the Doctor.

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Still that's a pretty useful site. Thanks for the link.

Yeah,I found the pics to be utterly useful in diagnosing probs.

My opinion may not be worth much because I also am still experimenting on my first grow, but so far I've done everything right and my plant looks very healthy. I don't know a lot about plant problems because I haven't had any but is there any chance that the problem isn't chemical at all? What if because of the soil, the roots are stuck which would explain the stop in growth? And what if poor water flow through that soil was the result of the drying of the new growth?

It makes sense to me that if the dirt absorbs little water, it will support the previous growth (like it always has) but the plant can't suck up enough water from that hard soil to support new growth, which would explain the dry leaves on new growth only. This is 100% theory and no research was done to back this up, just putting in my 2 cents. It's definitely not like anything I've seen anywhere else on this site though. If you had pre-fert AND you added any nutes then I think it's highly unlikely that you have a deficiency.

I grew my plant in unfertilized normal all-purpose soil, and fed it only water for weeks, and later gave it a shot of half-strength shitty M.G. 24-8-16 Plant food. No more than once I week did I give it this, recent pictures of my plant can be found on my profile or in my thread in the link below. I am proof that a plant will survive on hardly any nutes as long as you give it a nice environment. My diagnosis as a newbie is water deficiency. I don't know how you'll stir up your soil to make it loose enough to take water but I bet if you did your problem would disappear. It may be wise to just take what you can get from it and start fresh with a new seed or clone in some nice soil. Now that you have that nice HPS you can do it right all the way and you're next plant will look twice and good and get twice as big. I look forward to seeing it when it happens bro

Here's the problem with this theory.

If roots can't absorb more water, then they can't absorb any more nutes and minerals, which are generally absorbed together with the water. Eventually you'd see a miriad of deficiencies, but still figure out that they are caused by root failure because lack of imobile nutes (boron, copper, manganese etc) causes deficiencies at the top while the lack of mobile nutes (N, K, Mag etc) causes deficiencies at the bottom of the plant first.

Also, if roots were stuck, you'd have root lock, which at this lat estage of flowering would not even be a problem, since the only simptom of root lock is stunned growth.

Since water is a mobile element in the plant, in case of lack of water (or any other mobile element) the bottom leaves will be sucked dry first and all new water/nutes will be redirected to keep new growth as healthy as possible.

Having theories and thinking outside the box is essential in forums like these, but finding the right solution can't be done without fully understanding the problems or habits of plant growth. Don't take it the wrong way, it's nice to see someone try to think for themselves. And as you said, you just lack the experience, and that's not something that can be rushed or read in a book or packed into easy chunkes.

That was the best answer you could have possibly given me. You can only so far with logic and no knowledge, at least I tried to help I've never had to deal with any plant problems because I haven't had any yet. And for that reason I haven't spent any time looking into diagnosis, or the recovery tendencies of the plant.

Lack of water causing the bottom leaves to dry and feed the new growth -- That makes perfect sense lol, it never even crossed my mind. I was just stuck on the detail where the soil is so hard the water won't sink into it, and it stopped growing. Just initially seemed like roots couldn't grow nor get water because the water can't get in the dirt. But then again thinking outside the box is what I do, good thing there's guys like you to correct me or I most likely WOULD be having plant problems. Cheers

Hey guys. Thanks for the replies. So im going to finalize the diagnoses with P def. So the plant sticks i put in where 4-10-5 i do believe and at walmart it was all i could find. Everything else was like redicilously high. Like 20-20-20 and 10-49-29 and shit like that lol.. And i was told to look for something in higher P and Less N in flowering stage. So should i start to see a recovery in the next few days possibly? or should i try to take the sticks out and get new nutes? Im not quite sure where to get new ones though becuase my store choices are limited haha. I have no Hydroponic store anywhere close at all.

Supplementing for the deficinecy will cause the plant to regain its heatly status.

Don't pluck the affected leaves. Always, in cases of deficiency it's best to let the def take it's toll on the already striken leaves. Plucking them will just make the def move on to attack other leaves.

Don't be scared of nutes with high concentration, you just need to add less of them in the water, so that the nute concentration in the watering solution is always pretty much the same.

Also, don't try fixing the def by adding too many nutes cause it can happen for your plant to go from nute def to nute burn. 4-10-5 in normal concentration sounds great.

right on. they are like those little plant sticks that u like stick in the soil. I think they are just suppose to desolve over time? how long should i wait before i try another method? And Should i just start to see new healthy growth?

Don't buy those fert sticks because you can't control the amaount of nutes released.

Seeing that you're in veg, new growth should not develop, but you may expect some new leaves to shoot out to comensate for the dried up ones.

from my experience; used throughout veg, nitrogen sticks have been beneficial.

Doctor Cannabis said:

Don't buy those fert sticks because you can't control the amaount of nutes released.

Seeing that you're in veg, new growth should not develop, but you may expect some new leaves to shoot out to comensate for the dried up ones.

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I'm not in veg dude im in flower about 4 weeks in or so... lol. Um.. so i should take out the nute sticks and maybe look around for something else? it is saturday tho so i might have to wait till monday :S

Nugglet said:

I'm not in veg dude im in flower about 4 weeks in or so... lol. Um.. so i should take out the nute sticks and maybe look around for something else? it is saturday tho so i might have to wait till monday :S

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Sorry man... I'm totally high, what I ment to say was "seeing that you're in flowering..."

still, those nute sticks are hard to manage.

I thought that during flowering your plant like doubled/trippled in size bro? And about the sticks ill have to order some real nutes offline or something and hope those sticks will hold me off till they get here. haha