New Grower Whats wrong with my plants? Yellowing|curling|freckled leaves

[wg]

If you're trying to speed up the process and flush the soil down to the proper pH then what I'd advise is this;

Make up water twice the size of your pot, i.e: 4L pot = 8L (2 gallons or so) of water, to the proper pH.
Crunch around the edges of the pot to break the soil up.
Pour the water through slowly, stopping to break up the soil and smash it around as you pour more through.
Once you let the water run through, smush the soil around one last time and let the plant dry out almost completely before watering again, when you water next time, water with 1/2 str bloom nutes.

Your plant will be kind of "ehhhh" after this process as you're restricting the roots from getting oxygen. The plant will droop, for up to one day after this process. I wouldn't of defoliated until after the flush and nutrient water, I only say this because the other leaves will get damaged until after the flushing is complete. 500mL won't bring your entire soil pH down to level, where 2 gallons of water would.

After you posting your results of your meter and tap consistenly being 8.1 I'm very confident the issue was boron/phosphorous lock out due to high pH.

 

[HerrKaleun]

Thank you for the kind words and advice. What a great community!
I will flush my plants later this day. I have two questions:
1. What pH should I flush with? Should it be the pH I want the soil to have or less since the soil's pH is too high right now?
2. Should fertilizer be added to the last part of the flushing water (I have read this somewhere)? I assume that flushing will get rid of most nutrients in the soil and the plant is in dire need of nutrients because of my watering failure. Or is this assumption wrong?

 

[HerrKaleun]

Okay, I started using flowering nutes (BioBizz Bloom) since my last post. pH was always adjusted to 5.8-6. Should I water with 6.5 now, so that the soil won't get acidic? The plants are still looking quite bad but I guess they would have died if I hadn't adjusted pH. Thanks everyone for your help! I have commenced germination on 01.12.2012 so they are now around 55 days old.
I have a question now:
1. How long should I wait until harvest? I have already started to water without ferts. I cannot go with the "wait-until-fan-leaves-die-off"-method, obviously, since most leaves have either fallen off or are yellowed.

I have attached pictures of all plants that will probably make any knowledgeable grower flinch. They are GRAPHIC.

 

[peaceloveandbud]

a pH of 5.8 is used for hydro mediums so I would definitely suggest watering with the correct pH balance for soil, 6.5. How much did you dose them? PH lockout looks to have caused a whole slew of def.

Peace.

 

[HerrKaleun]

I used 1.5ml of nutes on 1L tap water. I pHed to 5.8 because I unknowingly watered with pH >8 for a long time and was advised to bring down pH by watering acidic. I think the soil pH should have dropped by now so I will water with 6.5 from now on

 

[peaceloveandbud]

I pHed to 5.8 because I unknowingly watered with pH >8 for a long time and was advised to bring down pH by watering acidic.

In all honesty it should have only taken one nice flush with correctly balanced pH water (6.5) to get her on the road to recovery. Changing the pH to quickly I.E. 8.0 to 5.8 in a short amount of time can cause more harm than good, and I would never recommend watering outside of the pH range for any reason.

Give her a good pH balanced 6.5 flush and redose with the correct level after a day or so. Fingers are crossed for you.

Peace.

 

[wg]

Yes, water with 6.5. I should have clarified - I was not saying do both, I was saying do one or the other. Either 3 waterings @ 5.8 or one big flush with pH'd water then feed at 6.3. I'm sorry for the confusion, but the plants DO look better and the bud development means the phosphorous is no longer locked out. If it was you would not have the bud development that's shown there. Those buds look very fat and dense, are they? There's also green foliage where if the lockout had continued from the date I advised the flush to now, there would be NO green foliage. Overall that's a nice recovery on the plants and I'd water @ 6.3-6.5 now. Have you checked your soil runoff pH?

Plants are looking better than they could bro, great job on the recovery!

 

[peaceloveandbud]

@whatsgoodie it does look like a nice amount of bud despite the circumstances.

 

[HerrKaleun]

Yes, buds are looking pretty dense and are fattening up :3
Any idea how long they should live up from now? Dinafem states "65 days tops" but I guess that cant be trusted.

 

[wg]

That's good news that they're nice and hearty man, really happy to hear that! :gthumb:

Do you have a loupe or microscope so you can look at the trichomes? If not, your best option is to sample a smaller bud from the plant at the time the harvest window opens. Can you post any close up bud shots?