Why do my plants always grow weird?

The last several times I've tried to grow, I've always ended up with odd results. I don't know if it's the seed I used, the ferts, growing medium, lights, heat + ventilation, etc.

Usually my plants start out with single-bladed, giant freakish leaves and grow sideways or diagonally in some cases even when the light is straight overhead. Some of it I attributed to fertilizing too early but I quickly flushed the system but still got the plants growing all strange.

I use 5 gallon DWC buckets that I fill about 3.5 gallon in with reverse osmosis water, I add 5 tsp, Advanced Nutrients Grow/Micro and 1 tsp of AN Bloom. I also give them 30 mL Hydrozyme, about 6 tsp. Botanicare Aquashield and 2 tsp Botanicare Silica Blast (just started using a week ago). I keep the pH between 5.5 and 6.5 and usually keep it on the low side since it steadily rises and the silica stuff is high pH too.

They're in an enclosed box lined with mylar. Humidity is usually between 30%-40% and I try to raise it by keeping a glass of water in there or misting the air but doesn't help much. The temps are between 76 and 86 and periodically I open all the windows in my house to direct cold outside air into the grow area to cool it down.

Lighting is BadBoy T-5 system with equal mix between veg and flower tubes. I think they're about 6 in or so from the tops of the plants. I had them very close last week but I think that heat stressed them.

Some of them are droopy now and have yellow or brown dead spots on the leaves and I can't understand why. What am I doing wrong? Im starting to think I just cant grow.

Oh yeah, and the strains are a variety of unknown but they were given to me as seeds from someone who saved the 1 seed he might find from a bag of Diesel. Blueberry, Northern Lights, etc once in a while and he collected them for over a year.

kinda droopy lately and curling upward leaves

Can you cut back on the watering? What're the numbers on your ferts and how much are you putting in? When I run a F&D system on cheap timers I get these same types of problems but I can cut back to two runs a day. Cheap timers give a minimum of 1/2 hours and that's to long. Brown tips usually indicates that the plant has or is experiencing a root problem because of the growing medium which in fact includes the entire op. Knarling green upper leaves indicates a fert problem, usually a tad bit to much nitro. Yellowing is also a sign that the roots aren't being airated properly. When using ventilation take care that you do not create negative air pressure in the op. Nitrogen desipitates faster with less air pressure. I remember my first potplant, I grew it in one of thoses large metal milk cans the milkman would deliver milk in.

bird mcbride said:

Can you cut back on the watering?

Click to expand...

Can't cut back on watering in DWC...

I'd try to lower the lights again to within 3", the plants are really losing a lot of usable light by them being 1/2' away. I couldn't really see any heat stress signs in the pictures - usually you'll start to see the base (nearest the stem) and the serrated edges of the leaves begin to roll/'taco'/'canoe' upwards if the radiant heat is too much. Just make sure you have adequate airflow on the fixture/bulbs to keep them cool.

Low light levels can/will result in few blades forming and strange growing patterns.

What kind of airpumps are you using (rate or rating)?

TaoWolf said:

Can't cut back on watering in DWC...
Low light levels can/will result in few blades forming and strange growing patterns.

Click to expand...

Improper lighting can cause all kinds of strange things to happen to pot plants.
Are you sure you have equal or positve air pressure in the op?

Not sure about air pressure. I just have a 50 CFM bathroom vent fan running on the side of the box to blow hot air out and I have two regular tiny fans inside the box to circulate/cool the air. I don't know the exact numbers on my ferts but I use Advanced Nutrients Grow/Micro/Bloom and add 1.77 tsp of Grow/Micro per gallon and .33 tsp of Bloom. There's about 3.5 gallons in each individual res.

I have a four socket air pump rated for 175 gallons so I figured it would be more than okay for a combined total of 14 gallons for 4 buckets. I also have 2 two socket air pumps that I also think are rated for far more than I need.

As far as the distance of the lights, about a week ago I changed them from being 2" to 3" away to where they're at now just because they were so close I could not get in there easily to test pH, top off water, etc and I knocked over and spilled half a bottle of my $20 SilicaBlast while trying to maneuver through. I thought it would encourage them to grow taller too, so was I wrong?

Also I added about 5 tsp of 3% H202 from Walgreens to each res yesterday to kill off bad stuff like algae, root rot, etc. I was gonna change the water the next day after giving the H202 some time to sterilize everything. Not soon after I added the peroxide, my plants were wilting and crispy so I immediately just changed the water in all 5 buckets and they're slowly recovering. The H202 wasn't in there for more than an hour. I don't understand cause I've had other plants that didn't mind H202 and it actually helped them.

Anyone know anything about Hydrozyme too? I never had any problems and then used it and got root rot and brown slime. I never used H202 until I had problems with this.

I lowered the lights to around 3" I think, hows it look?




Also this one in the foreground is the "runt" of the 5, I think it's a male but could be wrong. It has less branching and fewer leaves.

I hope you end up getting some answers on this, but it will be interesting to see how they grow out as they are...

How old are they by the way and when are you planning on flowering them?

They only other thing I could think to ask about is what their lighting schedule is like?

I am not sure when exactly I started them but here they are as early seedlings on 9/25/10, in my thread Messed up seedlings? Help! So, I'd say they are probably a month old plus 3 to 5 days.

I do not plan on flowering these until they become big, massive trees with stems I could make a rope out of, so probably mid-December after they've gotten about 90 days give or take of veg time. I also don't wanna flower until I see pre-flowers.

I give them 24 hours light a day.

<a href="http://wig.bz/6i"><img alt="Pnms_468x60" src="http://wigify.com/system/ad_images/411/original/pnms_468x60.gif?1284462615" /></a>

I had to come back to this thread because after thinking about it, I've seen something sort of similar before.

I nutrient burned some seedlings that still had their cotyledons once - the cotyledons turned dark green, then the tips turned black, and then they browned and dried up well before they usually do. The seedlings survived but they did produce only these funky-shaped, 3-bladed, round, leaves for a long time before they broke out of it and started really growing normally. The effects of damaging the cotyledons seemed to linger for longer than I thought it would.

Might be similar to what is going on with your plants? Except maybe you have more indica dominant plants being grown under a lot of close fluorescents - which might make the results appear even more exaggerated.

Pure conjecture but thought I'd share it with you.

Thanks, that sounds like exactly what happened here. I messed up with the nutes in the beginning of their life and maybe that did it?

Some of the leaves on my plants are gigantic! Like the size of dinner plates. I am pretty certain they're some kind of indica.

im no professional, but those look good to me. they are super bushy. id say if it gets worse over the next month then maybe you have a problem, but as of yet, they just look bushy as fuck, which is awesome

heres a pic of one of the gigantic leaves. i know its bad to clip leaves but the plant is getting so bushy its almost difficult to handle for everyday stuff like checking pH and adding more water to the res.

Just thought id say i wouldn't let the Ph get over 6.0 in DWC. I use DWC and have had great results but every plant i'v done seems to love the Ph between 5.5 - 5.9. Whenever one of mine has started looking a little under the weather its always been the Ph rising to over 6.0, when corrected they almost instantly perk up. Nice1