Severe drooping, curling, and browning of leaves. Underwatered? Please help

What kind of water are you using? Are you using plain tap water or reverse osmosis water?

bgib said:

What kind of water are you using? Are you using plain tap water or reverse osmosis water?

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I am using well water that comes out of the tap. It is usually about 7.5-8 ph that I use ph down to get to around 6.5.

Just went and checked on them and the main stems have straightened up nicely but the leaves haven't made as much of a recovery. I guess I thought the leaves would perk up a little more than they did. I'm assuming that the older leaves are as straight as they are going to get after being so damaged by the overwatering. Most of the droopy ones are pretty well dried out. I broke off a few of the really crisp leaves to help expose some of the thriving secondary undergrowth to the light, especially on the widow. The overall growth has been very stunted but there is new groth and the plants seem to be responding properly to being watered

Here are a few pics, widow pic 1 and skunk pic 2. I tried to take them at the same angle as before.

That's the ticket. I know it's tempting, but leave those bloody leaves alone! They'll come off when they're ready.

Two or three days ago your plants were dying, now they're on the way back - be great if you pool the pics and take some more in a week or so - then you can do a properly useful picture guide on over watering your seedlings and what happens when you have, and how to fix it even when it looks like hell.

Cheers

jackmac said:

That's the ticket. I know it's tempting, but leave those bloody leaves alone! They'll come off when they're ready.

Two or three days ago your plants were dying, now they're on the way back - be great if you pool the pics and take some more in a week or so - then you can do a properly useful picture guide on over watering your seedlings and what happens when you have, and how to fix it even when it looks like hell.

Cheers

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I didn't take full leaves off, just broke the super dry tips off a few of the fingers. It's pretty easy to tell what parts of leaves still have life in them by just touching them lightly. The parts I took off crumbled at the slightest touch and were blocking new fresh green growth. I am enjoying looking back on my daily pics of the progress. I like the idea of trying to help other people out with the same problem. I will post a new thread in a few weeks with their progress, and continue to update this one.

Good stuff. Look forward to frosty colas and everything in between! At the end of this grow, there'll still be one of those slightly damaged leaves on the plant and you'll look at it and remember all this tribulation with warm feelings - just before you harvest it.

Credit to you that you were able to ask for, listen to, judge and act on advice. There's a lot here don't have that ability.

I said it before - you've got common sense, you'll succeed.

cheers

jackmac said:

Good stuff. Look forward to frosty colas and everything in between! At the end of this grow, there'll still be one of those slightly damaged leaves on the plant and you'll look at it and remember all this tribulation with warm feelings - just before you harvest it.

Credit to you that you were able to ask for, listen to, judge and act on advice. There's a lot here don't have that ability.

I said it before - you've got common sense, you'll succeed.

cheers

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Thanks, I can't wait for the colas too! If you're going to ask for advice, you might as well listen to what people say (and not take everything as gospel, because no one is right all of the time)

Update: Both plants look much healthier than yesterday. The upper few tiers of leaves on the skunk are starting to look like a healthy plant again. The widow is recovering more slowly than the skunk but it is showing more growth too. Pots are still damp, no need to water today. You can kind of see the new secondary growth in the pics of the widow. There are full new leaves coming out of the stem/leaf intersection on the dying leaves. They are lush green leaves that the plant is focusing most of its new growth to (the skunk is slowly getting taller and the widow is slowly getting bushier). If the spotted brown/yellow/green leaves were gone, the widow would probably look like a healthy plant again too. I am not going to remove the old ones, I'm milking for all the energy they have left.

Pic 1 is skunk pic 2 is widow

collision666 said:

Update: Both plants look much healthier than yesterday. The upper few tiers of leaves on the skunk are starting to look like a healthy plant again. The widow is recovering more slowly than the skunk but it is showing more growth too. Pots are still damp, no need to water today. You can kind of see the new secondary growth in the pics of the widow. There are full new leaves coming out of the stem/leaf intersection on the dying leaves. They are lush green leaves that the plant is focusing most of its new growth to (the skunk is slowly getting taller and the widow is slowly getting bushier). If the spotted brown/yellow/green leaves were gone, the widow would probably look like a healthy plant again too. I am not going to remove the old ones, I'm milking for all the energy they have left.

Pic 1 is skunk pic 2 is widow

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Happy days!

Cheers

Great mentor you are Jack !

Nice to see they came back, I was curious. Just be patient with the recovery. The damaged leaves won't probably recover and the roots may well have been damaged to it might take a while for the plants to grow back vigorously but they're on the right track. Remember K.I.S.S and don't over feed as they are recovering and sensitive.

Update:
I was out of town for about a week but am back now. I had a buddie look after the plants. He stopped by twice and watered both times, three days from my last watering and three days between his waterings. When I got home the plants had grown a bunch, but still looked overwatered. He said the soil was dry dry when he watered them both times, and after three days it usually is. I'm not sure if he gave them too much water during the waterings or what.

Either way, I have been home for two days now and the plants are getting droopier each day. They do have new growth each day I check them, which is nice to see! Well today was three days since the last watering and the leaves on both plants were pretty droopy, in what seemed in my beginners opinion to be the overwatered droop. The soil was really dry when I checked it. I have been seeing roots in the bottom holes of the cups for a few weeks now so I decided to transplant. They had been in the cups for 4 weeks. I transplanted into 1 gallon pots with Ocean Forest and a little extra perlite mixed in with it (no where near as much as I used the first time!). The soil in the cups was dry and dusty throughout. I watered each with 3 cups of ph 6.5 water and got about 1/2 - 3/4 cup runoff from each. It's been an hour since I transplanted them and the plants look exactly the same as before the transplant. Hopefully I did the right thing and didn't set them back again by overwatering.

Here's to hoping they perk back up

Skunk (pic 1 two days ago, pic 2 current) and Widow (pic 3 two days ago, pic 4 current)

Update:
I checked the plants before I went to bed last night and they were just as droopy, if not droopier, than when I took the pics in the last post. The soil was still pretty wet from when I watered them during the transplant. I went to bed thinking that I had once again overwatered my plants and was expecting the worst when I woke up.

So I checked the plants today and............ they have recovered Both of the plant's leaves have perked right back up. It's amazing how much of a recovery they made! I'm thinking that the soil in the solo cups not only had too much perlite in it, but it must have gotten pretty compacted by the overwatering. The new soil has less perlite and is not compacted. The roots must have finally been able to get enough air to start to thrive. The roots were starting to wrap around the inside of the cups so they could have been rootbound too.

The skunk is continuing to grow upwards and the widow is continuing to bush out. Where the widow's first five finger leaves were (they died off due to overwatering) there are now three new three new shoots that are starting to really take off. I was really worried that I was going to have to same overwatering problem but it seems the plants just needed a nice new pot to live in.

Does anyone have any idea why the plants were drooping so badly before the transplant???

On a side note, I put my seeds in rapid rooters to germinate. When I transplanted from the solo cups, the root system in both plants was only coming out of the bottom of the plugs, none out of the sides. The root system did look healthy in both. The soil on the top third of the cups was loose and fell right out but the bottom two thirds stayed together in a rootball. Is it normal for there to be no roots coming out of the sides of the rapied rooter plugs?

First pic is recovered skunk, second pic is recovered widow

make sure you have at least 4 holes on the bottom and 4 holes on the side bottom of each cup for drainage about the size of a ink pen. I bet the new seeds do better if you dont stress them like the current grow. Stressed plants take a long while to bounce back. water solo cups every 4/5 days and no more. No adding inbetweeen as well just to keep em moist. I stick with 25% added perlite to ffof soil.