What's wrong here? See pics!

Hello everyone.... experienced grower here. This is a new strain for me- White Widow- and I'm not sure what's wrong with them. (Except that they are dying) Here are the things I know:

- I suspected that the problem was over-feeding, so I flushed each plant with 2 gallons of water and Flora Kleen (a wetting agent)... that was about 4 days ago, haven't touched them since.

- It shouldn't be overwatering, as they have been allowed to dry thoroughly between waterings.

-There are thrips on them, but it is a minor issue- there don't seem to be too many of them. I'm going to take care of this soon.

Okay, with that info, here are the pics, and thanks for the help.

they dont took horrible, but it may be the heat. how hot does it get there?

looks like dampening off to me.

Ambient temp is in the mid-70's, canopy temp not much higher... shouldn't be a problem, I don't think... dampening off, you say? What do I do about it? I guess I'm not really sure what this means... too much water?

I see spots in the last pic. Its hard to tell the color of the leaves with the HPS on. Are they pale maybe? Do you know your Ph? I think its the Ph.

hmm, i think i had a different understanding of what the term damping off meant. upon further evaluation its seedling and fungus related.

check ur ph and make sure u arent over loading them with water.

I think you're right about the pH, yes the leaves are pale, I've been having pH problems for quite some time now... without going into the details, I thought I had it fixed but I actually think I did more harm than good. Oh, well, they're seeded anyway, had a hermie somewhere in the mix in my last batch, maybe got some feminized seeds though. Thanks for the input.

H.

over fertilization, leading to high acidity. http://www.ncw.wsu.edu/treefruit/soil/lime.htm

Well, so much for Fox Farm. Even at 1/2 the recommended strength of the regimen (Open Sesame/Beastie Bloom/Cha Ching, Big Bloom, Tiger Bloom), I've had consistent pH problems. Screw it- I'm going organic. Thanks for the help and input, and I do thoroughly agree that the issue is pH...

H.

Its not really Fox Farms fault, and besides Fox Farms is organic lol. You need to discover lime. http://www.ncw.wsu.edu/treefruit/soil/lime.htm
I'm on my 1st grow using lime and my PH is very comphy 6.8. (I spelled comfy with a PH lmao)

itsgrowinglikeaweed said:

Its not really Fox Farms fault, and besides Fox Farms is organic lol. You need to discover lime. http://www.ncw.wsu.edu/treefruit/soil/lime.htm
I'm on my 1st grow using lime and my PH is very comphy 6.8. (I spelled comfy with a PH lmao)

Click to expand...

Actually, only one component of the Fox Farm system is organic, and that's the Big Bloom... the rest are DEFINITELY not (with numbers like 5-45-19, that ain't organic)... and as far as the lime, all the soils I use have lime mixed in with them to begin with, I think that it just gets used up over the course of my flowering period; like you said, over feeding seems to be the problem. I'm kind of afraid to add more because I don't want my starting pH to be too high (the soil I use is balanced from the beginning to 7.0, so I don't want to add more and make it 8.0, which is even worse than being a little low)... does any of this make sense? I will read that article you posted, I started to last night but was a bit drunk so it didn't work out so well

So, what exactly are you doing to keep your pH at 6.8? By the way, my understanding (and this seems to be widely debated) is that a pH of 6.5 is more "ideal", but I will definitely settle for 6.8 What kind of lime are you using? Soil? How much lime do you add to your soil?

Thanks for your help!

H.

Yeah I use the organic big bloom and grow big 3-2-6. And I'm stingy with it. Anyway I crunched the numbers (down from the garden sized numbers on the bag instructions) and I added 1/3 cup fine dolomite lime to 56Qts of my soil mix. I bought 20 lb bag of course dolomite lime at home depot. Thats all they had, but it'll last me forever. Its course though so I have to crush it down to a powder. So far I'm good. But I might have used to much time will tell. 6.8 is the upper limit of where i want to be. I'm shooting for green at week 8-9 this time.
Check out the LST thread theres a pic of my girl. >https://www.rollitup.org/indoor-growing/196569-great-riu-lst-thread-low.html

Definitley pH in my opinion

itsgrowinglikeaweed said:

Yeah I use the organic big bloom and grow big 3-2-6. And I'm stingy with it. Anyway I crunched the numbers (down from the garden sized numbers on the bag instructions) and I added 1/3 cup fine dolomite lime to 56Qts of my soil mix. I bought 20 lb bag of course dolomite lime at home depot. Thats all they had, but it'll last me forever. Its course though so I have to crush it down to a powder. So far I'm good. But I might have used to much time will tell. 6.8 is the upper limit of where i want to be. I'm shooting for green at week 8-9 this time.
Check out the LST thread theres a pic of my girl. >https://www.rollitup.org/indoor-growing/196569-great-riu-lst-thread-low.html

Click to expand...

What kind of soil do you use? I have a 50 lb bag of what I think is fine dolomite lime (it just says "garden lime" on it, and the ingredients list says "dolomite lime", but it looks pretty fine to me), about to transplant today, I'll try adding some to my Pro Mix as per your perscription.

Also, I finish my plants in 8" pots, so they get watered and fed more frequently, which I think uses up the lime in the soil more quickly. The pics of the sick plants are actually in 10" pots, hardly even root bound yet, so that's not the whole problem, certainly.

Perhaps I'll try the LST technique next time, I have two 4' T5's for my veg chamber, which should be plenty of light. I will of course have about a million questions on that one, but I'll save that for another time. Thanks again.

H.

Quote - "Also, I finish my plants in 8" pots, so they get watered and fed more frequently, which I think uses up the lime in the soil more quickly. The pics of the sick plants are actually in 10" pots, hardly even root bound yet, so that's not the whole problem, certainly"
Bigger pots will help too. I would think that frequent feeding and watering would only speed up the process that acidfies the soil over time. The bigger the pot the more stable the PH will be. My 1st grow I used 8-10 inch pots, now i'm in 3 or 4 gallon buckets. The bigger the better.