First grow. lower leaves curling and drying up

this is my first grow and all of the lower leaves on my plants are turning yellow and getting brown spots, then curling and drying out until they fall off, any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm using 2 cubic ft of black magic soil with 8 quarts of pearlite and 8 quarts of moss peat in 3 gallon pots. I am watering with water from a ph of 6.5 to 7 but I do not know the actual ph of the soil. The plants are under a 600 watt metal halide light on a 20-4 light schedule. The room stays from 78 to 80 degrees during the day and 71 to 73 when the lights are off.

Ok this is what i see, judging from the curling and burnt spots it seems as if you have a Calcium Deficiency. Which can be solve with cal mag. Now for the burn tips it seems as if the plants have nutrient burn (To much nutrients) which can be solve by less nutrients.

Agree on the nute burned tips...did that before!! I think if you test the ph of some runoff water from the bottom of the pot after a good watering, it'll give you an idea of what your soil ph is like...I'm new to this shit, but I feel like that's better than nothing!!

Looks more like a K and N deficiency to me a calcium deficiency would look like tiny rust colored freckles. The tips are like that from the K deficiency if it was nute burn it'd be all over especially at the top. Since it's worse on the bottom that indicates a nutrient deficiency.

Nutrient deficiency would make sense. I was giving light nutes and the plants looked great at first, but then they started to look how they do now so I thought I was giving them nute burn and I stopped giving them nutes completely. I'll feed them a little today and watch how they react over the next few days.

They look pretty pale to me. Over fed plants are usually dark green somewhere.

Don't forget to always cut off any yellow leaves instead of letting them fall off. It attracts bugs and your plant will not waste energy on trying to repair the bad leaves.

Bmoney1 said:

Don't forget to always cut off any yellow leaves instead of letting them fall off. It attracts bugs and your plant will not waste energy on trying to repair the bad leaves.

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No dude that's not a good idea especially with a plant suffering from nute deficiencies. The plant sucks nutes from the lower leaves which act like fuel tanks to power new growth when it's having nute deficiencies. It's always best to the let the plant take what it needs from the older leaves and collect them after they fall off naturally. Sorry to jump on ya man but this is a bad idea you're doing harm and stressing you're plants if you rip the leaves off. The only time you might want to rip them off is if they have a fungal infection. Even then it should be a last resort after all other options have been exhausted.

Bad N def and the reasons are ph is too high and your not feeding veg nutes. Feed hydro veg nutes every watering at 6.5 ph and you will green plant from top to bottom with no nute burn. Give them nutes asap or they will be beyond repair. The soil wasn't great quality either.

Next grow I'm going hydro, I don't like the soil at all. I've never clipped the yellow leaves off but I'll give them a very light tug and if they don't come right off I just leave them. I'll make sure I get the ph right at 6.5 from now on.

ryanr8542 said:

Next grow I'm going hydro, I don't like the soil at all. I've never clipped the yellow leaves off but I'll give them a very light tug and if they don't come right off I just leave them. I'll make sure I get the ph right at 6.5 from now on.

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I wouldn't even tug on them the plant will drop them after pulling all the nutes out. +1 on the hydro idea people think it's harder to do but it's not. You have a lot more control over the nutes with hydro it really makes things so much easier. I grew in soil for 2yrs before switching to drip systems and never looked back. PM me if you ever need help making the switch.

If I was you I would invest in a good soil test kit for about $25 on Amazon, which will tell you exactly what's up with your soil. I use one and it takes all the guess work out of problems with soil. Also soil is a good medium to grow in if you like large plants. That's my reason for using it, and your problem could be nitro burn, maybe. Good luck with the problem. Peace

N deficient causing other lockouts... good rules of thumb for soil. remember there is 2-4 weeks of veg nutes already in your soil, this is why we start with plain ol' water
check out your tds/ppms from your tap, if its 50-200 your fine but over 300 or so your getting in the tricky side of things, this is the amount of total dissolved solids in the water, and if it is high then you may want to do a water analysis to make sure you aren't putting too much crap in your soil. Also it doesn't hurt to Leech your soil. Leeching would help you if there is unknown salts building up on your roots.
have you ever had nutes dry out on something and theres salt left over? This is what happens to your plants roots when you let them over dry. Sure, the real pro's don't let it happen, but it will happen to you and the best way to make sure the roots are uptaking things correctly is to Leech the salts off them by putting 3x the medium size of water through the medium. I always go slow at first so i make sure the medium is getting equal saturation and this method works great with looser soils as it doesn't drown your roots
leech every 4 weeks after starting nutes
As far as giving nutes after the initial 2-4 weeks, i start with a low dose and work my way up. 1/4 dose to 1/2 dose and so on. the more aerated your soil is the more often you water, so the less concentrated your nutes should be (lower dose)
but the ratios of veg to bloom should be something like this....
veg nutes through veg
1/4 bloom 3/4 veg end of veg
1/2 bloom 1/4 veg start bloom
3/4 bloom 1/4 veg mid bloom
full bloom very little veg late bloom
and then slowly ween off as you get closer to harvest
Your plant looks like it is N deficient causing other lockouts, if you had still been giving it some veg nutes it wouldn't have done that; or perhaps its the roots being too salty locking things out.

Is the leaching the same as a flush? I ran about 2 gallons through all the plants about 2 weeks ago, the only thing I didn't like was that after I flushed them the soil held the water for awhile. I didn't have to water for about a week, then the pots started getting lighter. I've been giving nutes the past couple days and the plants are looking better. There is lots of new growth and I haven't had many leaves dry up, just a couple. Would my hydro store have something for me to check my ppm? We have pretty rough water here so I wouldn't be surprised if it was high.

Yep. A ppm/tds meter is CHEAP. And if you decide on hydro it will be needed for sure. I actually went the other direction. From hydro to organic soil. Hydro has it's own issues. Rez temps and keeping a steady pH were a daily hassle. High temps create battles with pythium root rot. That being said, if a issue comes up it is nice to be able to pull the plant, deal with the entire thing, clean the whole system and start over with out plant loss. Also bugs are less of an issue.
I'm not trying to change your mind about switching it up, just don't think the switch will take you over to the land of milk and honey. If one way were better than the other, we would all be doing it that way. Just gotta figure out what works better in your set up's limitations.

ryanr8542 said:

Is the leaching the same as a flush? I ran about 2 gallons through all the plants about 2 weeks ago, the only thing I didn't like was that after I flushed them the soil held the water for awhile. I didn't have to water for about a week, then the pots started getting lighter. I've been giving nutes the past couple days and the plants are looking better. There is lots of new growth and I haven't had many leaves dry up, just a couple. Would my hydro store have something for me to check my ppm? We have pretty rough water here so I wouldn't be surprised if it was high.

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If you had too much nutes then it would be green somewhere like others have said. You probably flushed too much of the nutes out when you ran the 2 gallons through it keep giving it nutes now. The most hassle free of all the hydro systems is the top drip system I've tried all of them and decided to stick with it. It's cheap to setup and you don't have to worry about reservoir temps and I haven't ever had a problem with pythium in my drip totes in the 7yrs I've been using them(knock on wood). I tried growing a couple plants in some FFOF next to my drip totes during my last run mainly to see if the ones grown in soil would taste better as it had been almost a decade since I had done a soil grow. The plants in the FFOF were much smaller, took longer to mature, yielded less and contrary to what you would think produced bud that tasted bitter and paled in comparison to the bud from my hydro plants. And while there are cheap ph/ppm combo meters it's best to spend the money on a good one like a milwaukee mw802 or something. I spent a lot of money on cheap meters before realizing that it's best to get a good one and be done with it.

Check out ebay you can probably get stuff a hell of a lot cheaper than at a hydro shop. Plus you're much more likely to be watched by the pigs going to a hydro shop then getting stuff online.

I definitely want to try out a hydro set up, the only reason I didn't is because I was told they were super complex and I didn't want to fork out the cash for a ph/ppm on my first grow; but after researching hydro systems I think that with lights I have I only want to do 4 plants and grow them as big as I can, my grow room is only 7 feet tall and I'd like to see them almost reach the top. What I had in mind for a setup was a DWC with 4 18 gallon Rubbermaid bins painted white or covered in mylar with an undercurrent and possibly a drip on each plan. I figure with that big of a res for each plant, I should be able to grow them fairly large. This is just what I thought I would like best, any thoughts on that setup?