Lingering effects from underwatering during early flowering?

Heya folks! I’m just about 4 weeks into flowering my LSD and Black Jack ladies, and they had been doing nicely until I forgot to water them. :frowning: Normally I water them every 3rd day, but last week I accidentally didn’t water them until the 5th day. They were of course very sad and wilted. But I watered them with nutrients as usual, expecting them to pop back overnight like they used to do when I’d forget during veg.

But this time, a whole crop of issues seems to have arisen including some leaves completely dying off overnight (these leaves are all crunchy and curled up, although the stems are still firmly connected to the stalk). A number of the leaves also developed purple tips, and many of the lower ones turned yellow and bronze.



I’ve never seen this happen before from forgetting to water for a couple of days. It wasn’t even hot out (daytime outdoor temps were in the 50s ºF, within the tent was around 73ºF).

Anyone have any ideas what happened and how to correct? I’m wondering if the salts from the FF nutes became too concentrated in the soil when it dried out, and if a system flush would help (it’s due for one soon anyway).

  • LSD and Black Jack
  • Method: Soil (FFOF + Perlite)
  • Vessel: Smart Pots
  • PH of Nutes: 6.3-6.5
  • TDS of Nutes: approx 630 per feeding (2x per week, Fox Farm Soil Feeding schedule)
  • Indoor grow
  • Light system: 600W LED (Vivosun), 12/12
  • Temps: Day about 73ºF, Night about 62°F.
  • Humidity; Day: 68%, Night: 58%
  • Ventilation system: Yes, duct fan for exhaust, small fan for circulation
  • Dehumidifier: Yes
  • Co2: No

Yeah man I’m sorry to say you’re going to notice different results from this. Essentially those damaged fan leaves (solar panels) will never work again. This will cause a loss of efficiency in gathering the needed sunlight to produce flowers. In my experience, it’s about a 20-30% loss on yield. I’d water to get them as healthy as possible then do a flush in case of salt buildup - I grow organic so I don’t have that issue myself.

Make sure to give them everything they need to minimize effect. You should be looking for a P boost right about now - you might offset some loss with correct feeding from here on (hard to ever get it perfect so maybe if you weren’t dialed in previously, you only see a slight reduction in yield). Good luck m8 :+1:

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Eh just defoilate your in flower, pluck anything dead dead (leave what you can) and ensure your buds are getting light that no big leafs are covering your buds.

Correct your actions and steam forward.

Most growers rip a ton off anyways for defoilation purposes.
As @Sirsmokesalot said they won’t recover, when you do damage in flower it stays. So be careful.

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Thanks @Sirsmokesalot @Nicky. That’s what I was afraid of, that they were damaged for good. I had already done a fairly aggressive defoliation a few weeks ago to try to prevent the bud rot that I always seem to get right before harvest, so hopefully these additional leaves being gone don’t do too much damage to the final product. I’m sad that it might be as high as a 30% yield reduction though. Lesson definitely learned!

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I would strongly contest 30%
I’ve had lots of plant get cal mag issues and still produce lots.

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