Tons of rust, dried out, no bugs, lots of pics: Please help

yuk do you drink that? lol, thats all most solid. j/k I stop drinking at 400. epa says max of 500. Is that city water? I try lots of things. But I would rather do it myself. I did a compost last year. for the spring grow outside. I'm trying the indian style grow. going with 2' deep compost at the bottom will be fish. the only thing I will add is worm castings. I have a guy a few lots away that has a big worm farm. so even that will be ez.

why not buy from their website? that's what I did, I got it in 3 days..

http://www.jacksclassic.com/order_now.html

stumps said:

yuk do you drink that? lol, thats all most solid. j/k I stop drinking at 400. epa says max of 500. Is that city water? I try lots of things. But I would rather do it myself. I did a compost last year. for the spring grow outside. I'm trying the indian style grow. going with 2' deep compost at the bottom will be fish. the only thing I will add is worm castings. I have a guy a few lots away that has a big worm farm. so even that will be ez.

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No! I don't even give it to my dog. It's city water. They have 4 different wells and aquafers they draw from and it gets as low as about 300 ppm but it's bad any way you slice it.

Looks burned by radiant heat to me.

Acuity said:

Looks burned by radiant heat to me.

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could you explain why you think it's a burn?

stumps said:

could you explain why you think it's a burn?

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I was kinda wondering that myself.

The last 3 photos are consistent with radiant heat burning. The edges tend to get damaged and then in bad cases the leaflets will crisp and flake off at the extremeties. Looking at how green the rest of your plant it that is what I think the issue is, the first few shots could be just about anything but I gathered that the camera was making it look a biased colour. It also explains why it is happening to some plants and not others. I could of course be wrong; but that is what it looks like to me. Never be in a rush to start flushing mediums and adding calcium and zinc and rainbows and whatever else before you confidently know what the issue is.

Update:

The plant that had these shitty looking leaves turned out to be a male, so I let my cats eat it.

But then I noticed a few of the plants I had in veg were showing similar issues on their bottom leaves. I was pretty confident that this was a calcium/magnesium deficiency, so I went out and bought a product called 'Mag-i-cal'. It's breakdown is as follows:

N: 2%
Mg: 3.25%
Cal: 3%
Iron: .11%

I watered all my plants in veg with 'Magical' before going on vacation about 4 days ago. I will update everyone on the results when I get back tomorrow.

Note: I only have a shitty 3-way meter to measure ph, but it seems accurate. I base this on it's reading of new FFOF soil, tap water, and a drop in ph after fertilizing flowering plants. It says my soil is about 7, maybe less.

Added note: This has not happened with previous batches of FFOF or more recent batches. However, almost every plant I have put in this batch has these rusty spots and sever drying out of the bottom leaves. I suspect a possibly defective batch and am going to notify Fox Farms, even though I no longer have the bag to identify which batch it is from.

More updates to follow...

PS - No way it's radiant heat burning. The average tmeps are 80-85 day, 65-70 night, with 40-60% rh (in veg, where the only problems are)

Well, the news is not great, but not horrible.

The Black Domina plant that had the worst symptoms before I left was worse when I got back. I clipped her 3 worst leaves and included pics.

This issue is not present in any of my flowering plants, which are a week or two from harvest (I clipped a small bud to quick dry and test, as you can see in the pics it looks great!). It is also almost non existent in my other plants in veg.

I think the issue may be PH related at this point, although I have never worried too much about PH. Any suggestions for a cheap way to consistently measure the PH of soil? I am thinking of a total transplant, washing down the rootball, just to avoid PH testing.

Update

The Black Domina plant still has the worst symptoms. I pruned her bad leaves until she looked 100% healthy. A few days later, the brown/black spots and drying out is returning to mostly bottom and middle leaves.

Hypothesis
There is too much calcium and magnesium in the water I use, causing a cal/mag lockout, no matter if I give it 'mag-i-cal' or not. I live in Portland and normally get water that is merely 4-13 ppm according to their report. However, we do seasonally use groundwater which is 85-100 ppm. I would bet we use groundwater during our wet winters, and that it Ca/Mg are a big part of those 85-100 ppm.

So I went out and bought distilled water today. I flushed the soil of the Black Domina plant using a gallon of distilled water. We'll keep an eye on her.

I used another cheap Ph tester to back up the results my 3 way meter gives me. The shitty tube/powder Ph test says my soil is 6-7 or so, about what my 3 way meter gives me. Thus, I have not added any of the dolomite lime stuff I bought, which would only make the soil more acidic.

After all this, I am tempted to try my hand at hydro/aero.

Pics upcoming. Right now, the plants are getting cold air, wind, and regular misting as a mite prevention measure. Best to be proactive and only use the neem when need be, since I can't afford anything else to use in a rotation with it.

lime goes the other way. Lime would make your soil more alkaline. Use acid to bring your ph down and base to bring it up.

stumps said:

lime goes the other way. Lime would make your soil more alkaline. Use acid to bring your ph down and base to bring it up.

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Man, I feel retarted. i thought that something acidic like lime would make the soil more acidic, not more alkaline. It sucks being somewhat new to this but it is great fun to learn and I thank everyone for their help so far.

Time to do a little more studying about soil Ph and whatnot.

Thinking fungus? Very hard to troubleshoot . Might explain why it is so localized.

wow this is what mine are starting to look like! is your stalk looking a black?

miz yeska said:

wow this is what mine are starting to look like! is your stalk looking a black?

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Stalks look dark, but not black, just woody.

Fungus? Maybe. But I have rotated this plant along with the 5 others in my veg layer so they are not all in one spot all the time. Not sure why the fungus would like this one and not the others, but mites have been that way before too.

Good news is that it is still growing and it is about big enough to start taking clones from. I am ditching soil in favor of hempy buckets after this, so if it goes away once I clone we can blame it on a shitty batch of FFOF.

60% rh seems to invite fungus. Oh well...if she's kickin ass, send her to the flower room!

patlpp said:

60% rh seems to invite fungus. Oh well...if she's kickin ass, send her to the flower room!

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I have decent airflow, and when it gets near watering time every few days, Rh gets as low as 30%. I'm still not discounting this possibility though.

Update

The flush seems to have slowed the rate of spotting/browning. I spotted some of the same shit on one of my other plants, very bottom leaves. I am going to give them some dolomite lime mix with their next watering.

I am very suspect I got a shitty batch of FFOF. I keep track of my plants by naming them using the alphabet. My A-generation is currently awaiting harvest and doing well. My B-generation was planted with soil from a new bag of FFOF, same as my C and D generations. Both B plants had this issue and turned out to be males. 1/2 of the C-generatin and 1/3 of the D-generation have this going on. None of the E generation has this, and they are from a new bag of FFOF.

Some pics after flushing, waiting for soil to dry so I can hit them up with the dolomite mix.

Thanks for all you help everyone! Time will tell what the issue was/is....

dukeofbaja said:

Man, I feel retarted. i thought that something acidic like lime would make the soil more acidic, not more alkaline. It sucks being somewhat new to this but it is great fun to learn and I thank everyone for their help so far.

Time to do a little more studying about soil Ph and whatnot.

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Limes are acidic. Lime is alkaline. Common mistake bro.

dolomite lime has pH of 7 (it's neutral)

so you can use it to raise or lower pH

Not sure what books your reading to come up with a ph of 7. lime has a ph more like 12. A base can't be neutral it's a base. Ph is a hard nut to crack