Help! sick plants need diagnosis

Hi everybody, this is my first post! Anyway, I'm having problems with my 37 day old plants (1 month and 1 week). For starters and a bit of background knowledge, this plant is outdoors, in fairly high temps of around 30 degrees celcius (80-90 F) constantly (except for night - 25 degrees), with a humidity on average around 50%. I recently had an underwatering incident which possibly wasn't treated in the most beneficial way, but was treated none the less (im assuming this might have also had an impact). The plants are in a pot and are soon to be planted into the ground to reduce this heat stress. Another thing to keep in mind is i recently had to do an emergency transplant into another pot (which was done rather badly, hence the emergency part). I didn't do a good job and I was worried this might have had an impact. Another thing is I was giving her a nice amount of basic nutes and slowed down a bit when she was showing odd signs. Anyway with all of that out of the way, would anyone be able to enlighten me as to what would be causing these problems??!! Any help would be greatly appreciated and thank you in advance. (There are pictures attached to show the damage).

PS - please don't judge me for my neglect, if i had the time and conditions i would be caring for this girl 24/7, but unfortunately this is not possible. Thanks!

Pot size? Is she flowering? How much nutes??

Might be defiency caused by wrong PH, root problem/root bound or defiency in general.

Potassium or phosphorus defiency, chech those on google image search.

Im not certain so better wait for experts opinion

no shes still in the vegetative stage, she's in a 5 gallon pot. I was very close to transplanting her but when i took her out she had no roots at the bottom of the soil so I decided it wasn't time and i'd wait a bit. that sounds like a serious range of problems haha, I've done no PH testing and im not sure if i should it seems like a costly process (maybe im stingy). The nutes is hard to say because i'm not well educated in that topic, i kind of put in a bit of nutes which was what i could get my hands on (due to growing conditions) so that may be of the problem, though i was very light in my dosage as i was worried that something like this could happen.

Thanks for your insight and information by the way mate, helpful!

looks like it needs more nutes, those leaves are showing nitrogen and phosphorus deficancy. what type of nutes are you using?

The nutes im using are not specifically targeted for cannabis growing (as this is not possible from where i am). The product i used though is called kickalong organic vegetable and herb plant food (searles). I'm not sure if this is a good option to use, however it is one of the few available. I wouldnt be able to tell you the NPK content, however it has majority Nitrogen. IMO i thought this would be good for vegetative growth. I slowed down alot on the nutes when i was worried it was over nuting, but maybe i was infact under and now the problems only getting worse.

What's your soil mix? 5 gals of good soil should have plenty of nutes in it for a month or so........I would not consider 80-90F stressful to a plant at all.

I'm just using a basic premium potting mix, yeah there are included nutes. So you think a deficiency may not be the problem?

also to add to this, i havn't done anything in terms of Ph and wasn't sure if this would also have a negative impact. I read around and there seems to be opinions on both (that it is essential, and that it doesnt matter that much) so maybe this could be another problem?

take a pic of the entire plant with the pot it sits in then we might be able to help better, you say you went to transplant but there were no roots at the bottom. so what you pulled it out of a 5 gallon to put it into what??? 5 gal is enough to grow out in.. depending on your soil the water will be fine for awhile.. so send a new pic and updated info..

Jerry2 said:

I'm just using a basic premium potting mix, yeah there are included nutes. So you think a deficiency may not be the problem?

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My Basic potting mix is Happy Frog and Dolomite lime and my plants can go over a month with no nutes easy even clones in beer cups......not saying I don't use a triple 16 also just that I can get away with not using it.

Jerry2 said:

also to add to this, i havn't done anything in terms of Ph and wasn't sure if this would also have a negative impact. I read around and there seems to be opinions on both (that it is essential, and that it doesnt matter that much) so maybe this could be another problem?

Click to expand...

If your soil is peat based it should have a tendancy to go acidic right about now (5 weeks) as the peat breaks down....combat this with dolomite lime....mix with your soil as far in advance as you can to let it cook....get a cheap $6 General Hydro pH test dropper kit for your runoff and feed water.....cant hurt......bet your runoff is red.....more pics and details can only help bro.

By basic potting mix i mean just store bought for plants, not specifically targeted for MJ growing. I'll upload more pictures now, I'll upload photos of what she looks like now and what she looked like only a week prior to everything going bad. I removed the really bad leaves because they were looking terrible yesterday, but now its starting on other smaller leaves. I'll upload pictures and show you. Thanks man

These are a variety of photos I took to give you a good look of the whole plant. The problems are now taking effect on the lower leaves and stems. She is drooping because i was just about to water her so i'd ignore that, however she has been droopy a fair bit lately (by droopy i mean her state in the photo, now falling over). The last photo is a picture of my run off. Obviously the mixing with the dirt would change the colour but you were right twostrokenut, the water definitely has a redish tinge. The picture didn't really get a good shot of the colour because it definitely looked redder than that. I hope this can help with the diagnosis.
Also to put this impact in perspective, this was the same plant around a week before majority of these photos were taken. The plant in this photo is looking great and very healthy. This is a drastic change so you can understand why i was worried and confused. Shows how quick they can go bad without good care and attention. Though they are very resilient plants and im optimistic! Thanks again everyone.

My bad i didnt reply properly. Update again she is still looking pretty sad to be honest

It's nute burn. The leaves will not grow back. Just feed it water for now until it gets going again, that might take a while. The thing about the plants is once the damage shows its pretty much too late to stop it from getting worse for the first couple of days, all you can do is try damage control. So once it burns, its going to continue to burn more for a day or two until the changes you make start taking effect.

That plant will do fine in plain soil until it is much bushier, start out at 1/4 nutes the rate you were at and go from there once it gets back in shape. That could take 4-6 weeks.
5 gallons of soil is enough to get 3 ounces off of depending on the strain and growing conditions of course.

I've been watering with only plain water for the last 2-3 weeks, i've decided im going to slowly edge into giving her nutes again. i started with a quarter dose like you recommended and im hoping that this'll do good for her. Probably too early to tell because i gave her the nutes yesterday but she is in fact looking perkier, the leaves are still bad though. I'm hoping it keeps getting better, thanks for your help man.

That runoff water is reddish? Dude I meant go get yourself a pH dropper test kit....for an aquarium or whatever mine's a General Hydroponics test kit it was like $6 no shit pretty cheep.....you can prolly get one at walmart for fish tanks make sure you can test the 5.0-8.0 range at least your target is 6.0-7.0 so....test your water see what the pH is and test the run off see what that is....if you don't know the NPK of your fert find out....what ever potting soil should have an NPK also somewhere in small print find out.....

So when I said I bet it's red I mean when you test it my kit red means like 4.o or less...yellow is 6.0...green is 7.0....blue is 8.0.....


Those plants are starving for food imo because you say you have been using straight water for a while but your runoff is not clear and you said they've been in those pots for over a month so runoff should be clear.......so what does your nutes look like when you mix them like that runoff??

Are they water soluable??? I just googled your fert looks like slow release soil additive correct? Searle says:

"[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]This product is designed to provide sustained plant growth over a [/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]2-3 month period[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]. The ingredient blend promotes excellent soil microbial health and vitality plus the addition of zeolite enhances the nutrient retention and delivery to plants, minimising leachate and providing excellent fertiliser response.[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"

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If that's the case I'd say burn but dude if you can't even tell us the soil name or brand that would help looks like peat and some bark mulch type stuff but hey?

I'd say you burned them with the fert........but I can't find any NPK on the website.....just says "[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Due to the nutrient concentration of Kickalong®, this fertiliser delivers 2 to 3 times the normal strength of normal organic fertilisers, offering sound environmental awareness for the reduction of packaging and freight, and delivering maximum impact and plant response."[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

I think organic ferts have NPK in the 2-3 range so you may be in 6-9 range so I'd say those plants aren't eating because pH won't let them or you mixed up too much fert and burnt them.......or both.
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Dude if you're giving it more nutes I hope its not slow release stuff.....is your kickalong slow release or is it something water soluble???