Stunted + nutrient burn?

Thanks ahead of time for this forum and all your help. it's greatly appreciated.

1. What type of medium: soil/compost
2. What brand and type of soil? Purple Cow Indicanja
3. Indoors or outdoors? indoors
4. What strain? World of seeds Amnesia
5. How old are the plants? 27 days from sprout
6. What type of lights and how many watts? 1x Viparspectra V600
7. How far from the lights? ~20 inches
8. What is your watering frequency and source of water? Store bought distilled and/or Walmart “primo” refillable
9. What, how much and when was it fed? NPK? N/A
10. What is the medium/runoff pH and PPM if in hydro?
11. What are the temps and humidity in the room? I try to follow the VPD chart, but my basement is cold and dry and until today I didn't have a temp controller. I was just winging it with a space heater and small humidifier (both inside the tent). Therefor, temps have been between 70 and 85 with some major swings but RH fluctuates A LOT.
12. What size pots? 3 gallon smart pots
13. Any bugs? Look real close. no
14. Any other pertinent info? Grow space is a Vivosun 24x60x36 tent in my unfinished, unheated basement which is apparently 62f with an RH of 62%. Heater and humidifier are in the tent.

My two questions are: is the brown leaf tip due to nutrient burn and is this plant rather small? It currently measures 3.5" tall.

Has it been looking this way for a while? (was it in good health recently)

I can't open the information sheet for Purple Cow Compost online. Does it have a typical analysis?

Edit: ime compost is more of a conditioner than a soil itself and you need to add extra organic matter or fertilizer for npk.
The information for Purple Cow Compost online suggests using it as a top dressing etc.

I would find out for certain if they add any slow release fertilizer or similar. If they don't and the plant was in better health early on, i'd give it a little fertilizer and see how it goes.

Aussieaceae said:

Has it been looking this way for a while? (was it in good health recently)

I can't open the information sheet for Purple Cow Compost online. Does it have a typical analysis?

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1. the only other pics I have are all blurple'd out (attached anyways), but there does appear to be a bit of discoloration of that same leaf tip on 12/31.

2. I was mistaken about which Purple Cow product I used. It's actually the Indicanja. The bag says the analysis is 1-1-1 and the guy at the grow shop said it's good enough to feed the plant until harvest which is backed up by the product page that reads: "Purple Cow IndiCanja is a scientifically formulated and tested organic fertilizing package that contains the necessary minerals, nutrients, fertility and biology for all stages of plant growth from young seedlings in a vegetative phase through transplanting, budding and flowering and the final hardening phase. IndiCanja was developed by a grower, for growers to be "ready-to-use" requiring no further inputs! "

LawnXweeds said:

My two questions are: is the brown leaf tip due to nutrient burn and is this plant rather small? It currently measures 3.5" tall.

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My dear Your plant is stunned, i cant really tell the reason for this stun , but used to get something similar when i over water and the drainage is not that good in the medium, plant this size wont consume much nutrients, well you are using smart pots witch has a good drainage, but 3 gallon pots is big for your plant age and you can easily over water, try not to feed more than 100 ml at a time and increase the dose as the plant goes bigger, try to use some organic nutes and for now stay away from synthetics.

VRZ711 said:

My dear Your plant is stunned, i cant really tell the reason for this stun , but used to get something similar when i over water and the drainage is not that good in the medium, plant this size wont consume much nutrients, well you are using smart pots witch has a good drainage, but 3 gallon pots is big for your plant age and you can easily over water, try not to feed more than 100 ml at a time and increase the dose as the plant goes bigger, try to use some organic nutes and for now stay away from synthetics.

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Thank you.

1. I water very infrequently as it is. The soil gets pretty dry in between. Like scary dry. however, when I poke my finger in the soil right at the base of the plant, it's solid-ish and seems moist whereas the rest of the pot is crumbly.

2. Yea, i know it's too big of a pot but I am clumsy af so I didn't trust myself to transplant being the first time I've grown anything other than the other kind of grass. The next round, though, I am absolutely going to stage the pots because proper watering has been the bane of my existence.

3. As far as nutes go, i am not using nutes at all. My intention with the soil I purchased was water only because that is how it is sold and what the guy at the grow shop told me. that said, I wouldn't doubt if I screwed it up somehow and the soil suddenly doesn't work as advertised. The only non-water thing I will add is a compost tea and maybe some humic and kelp.


4. Stunt: I assume fluctuating temp and RH plays a huge role in this, no?

LawnXweeds said:

I will add is a compost tea and maybe some humic and kelp.

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this is good also if you not over watering them feed them something light or you can top dress with compost, the thing about organics that it takes long time to show results, but once you the food web gets established, you font have to worry about anything but feeding the microbes in your soil.
and you never over do it and you don't have to worry about PH,

LawnXweeds said:

Stunt: I assume fluctuating temp and RH plays a huge role in this, no?

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well it might cause some leaf damage or twist, but not in your case, lack of P makes a midget plant, but i was worried that you over water but if this is not the case then try to feed some organics, and dont make it dry to much.

as we can see from the pic you sent that the lower leaves are getting pale and burned and this means some nutes lockout or not enough in the soil, try to feed some NPK Ca Mg moderately at 1/4 recommended dose if using synthetic and full dose or even 2x for organics.

and from now on just focus on the new growth as this how the plant compensate for the loss.


good luck, it will grow out of it you will just lose 1 to 2 weeks for this stun.

VRZ711 said:

and from now on just focus on the new growth as this how the plant compensate for the loss.

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So these leaves are always going to look this way? they won't turn green again? Should I expect them to get worse?

LawnXweeds said:

Should I expect them to get worse?

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well if they stay the same it is a good sign, , but for sure they wont get better, the plant is smart and will dispose them and spend the energy on the new growth , just dont focus on them focus on the new growth.

also try to fix the humidity issues u are having. it will surly help.

VRZ711 said:

well if they stay the same it is a good sign, , but for sure they wont get better, the plant is smart and will dispose them and spend the energy on the new growth , just dont focus on them focus on the new growth.

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Everything you've said makes sense to me and intuitively seems like the right answer (I'm trying to pull from my knowledge of lawncare rather than seeing cannabis as a completely different genus or family altogether. Afterall: they're both plants). I've gotten a lot of conflicting information the past few days, so it's difficult to suss out the right one.

As far as humidity is concerned, I am in the prefab stages of building a proper grow room to at a minimum house my tent so I have a larger surrounding environment to control rather than trying to control the inside of the tiny tent. I doubt I will have it done for this round of plants, but I definitely won't start another one until I do.

thanks a ton for all your help.

update: I went to my local grow shop to get a second opinion and while I was there, I realized that I was actually correct the first time when i said I used the activated compost. I wanted to use the Indicanja and thought I was using Indicanja but no, I planted into straight compost. in hndsight, I knew it was a little too dense. But the guy at the grow shop assured me it was the right stuff. I'll give him a pass for now. The guy also could tell right away just based on the picture exactly what lights I was using and that I had them too close, which i did for almost a week because I thought I had some stretching.

So, even though I was deathly afraid of transplanting, I bought the Indicanja and did so anyways. I know without a doubt I lopped off a good deal of roots and when i initially put the pot back under light, it sagged and drooped miserably. however, within maybe 3 hours or so, she pepped right up.

the blurple pic is immediately after transplant. The regular light pic is from 10 minutes ago.

you doing good she will grow out of it,things are clear now its just a bit of nutes burn of a hot compost mix, increasing light distance will help in the process of the bounce back.

VRZ711 said:

you doing good she will grow out of it,things are clear now its just a bit of nutes burn of a hot compost mix, increasing light distance will help in the process of the bounce back.

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Should I begin cutting the dead/dying leaves off? If so, where do I make the cut? There has been no growth since I transplanted but the plants are standing on their own without need of support and do seem to respond positively to watering.

LawnXweeds said:

Should I begin cutting the dead/dying leaves off?

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I know ur plant will look better without them, just let them be, dont remove them the plant will dispose them when she wants, after she sucks all the nutes from them.

LawnXweeds said:

There has been no growth since I transplanted

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there has been a growth that you cant see(Roots)
the growth that you will see will start within a 2 - 5 days, once ur plant fully recovers she will start growing so fast you cant imagine like an inch a day.

" I water very infrequently as it is. The soil gets pretty dry in between. Like scary dry. however, when I poke my finger in the soil right at the base of the plant, it's solid-ish and seems moist whereas the rest of the pot is crumbly.

I know I have read many posts about not over watering when using soil. But the truth is you can't really over water if you are using soil that drains well. Think about it. plants float in hydro. But there they get oxygen from a bubbler.




2. Yea, i know it's too big of a pot but I am clumsy af so I didn't trust myself to transplant being the first time I've grown anything other than the other kind of grass. The next round, though, I am absolutely going to stage the pots because proper watering has been the bane of my existence.

3. As far as nutes go, i am not using nutes at all. My intention with the soil I purchased was water only because that is how it is sold and what the guy at the grow shop told me. that said, I wouldn't doubt if I screwed it up somehow and the soil suddenly doesn't work as advertised. The only non-water thing I will add is a compost tea and maybe some humic and kelp.


4. Stunt: I assume fluctuating temp and RH plays a huge role in this, no?
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The soil is probably to hot for the little plant, if the bag says good till harvest. That means it's a hot soil, like super soil,try using a weaker soil for your clones and seedlings, then use this soil when you transplant when the plant is 4wks old or
When it has out grown that pot that it's in.

Another update.

I went ice fishing up in Northern Minnesota for the past week and left my babies under the care of my wife, though all she really needed to do was fill the humidifier and water when necessary. I told her to keep me in the dark so I'd be surprised when I got back and boy oh boy was I ever surprised.

Thanks for everyones help because it looks like everything is a-OK.

Looking good!

Just another followup since this is the closest I have to a detailed journal. Here we are a month later. I am thinking I might flip to flower sometime next week because my tent is short.

LawnXweeds said:

I am thinking I might flip to flower sometime next week because my tent is short.

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Good Job,
How you plan on training that lady ? maybe use a scrog now? let the branches fill 70% of the scrog and then switch, things will be easier to manage for you.