Lower 1/3 yellowing during flowering

Hello to all the experts out there. I am on day 17 of flowering, and I’m slightly concerned. The bottom 1/3 of my pre-98 bubba kush is yellowing and dying off. I’ve been reading and watching videos that says this is normal during flowing because the plant is using up the nitrogen stored in those leaves and killing them off due to the lack of light. I am a few days away from the day 21 defoliation, but should I start early and open this one up by taking off the fan leaves? I’m afraid to take them too soon. Am I starving her?

The rest of the plant looks completely healthy, and like it is thriving, and it is producing nice sized pre-flowers. I have since added a fan that blows directly up through her canopy to try to eliminate lack of air flow as the culprit. Please help!!

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Nice looking girls you have. Just so you know you should always run a fan pointed at the plants. This allows for the stems and branches to strengthen up so they can hold more weight later on.

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Not much light getting down past your canopy. What light are you running etc? They have a support ticket you can fill out, the gurus will chime in. Just my .02 not enough light penetration to bottom, but your girls look healthy otherwise. Your not losing much down around the bottom, allot of people clean all that out, look up lollipoping :wink:

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Welcome leafs yellow and dead take them off. You are in early flower stage pictures with the green leaves I see no nute Burns looks to be all new growth healthy. I would step up a little NPK you are right it is feeding off of itself.

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Thank you everyone! I have had three fans running in my tent. Prior to this, two were blowing on top of my canopy and only one underneath. But this lady is much thicker than the rest, and her canopy was/is dense. So now, I have added the extra one on the bottom. I will defoliate this weekend, on day 21. I have been feeding with Bergman’s nutes weekly, but will step it up for this lady to biweekly. She is much bigger than my others. In terms of light, I am using two 1000w LEDs in a 5x5 tent. This lady was gifted to me, and was already lollipopped, but now that I am flowering, she is becoming more dense. Thanks for all the advice.

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So a couple of things: I would put the plant at 2 weeks in flower (if you count from initial flip to 12/12 you have to discount 8 to 14 days for transition) which means the plant is yellowing far sooner than one would want.

First: fill out the Support Ticket and please do another series of pictures in white light (colors affect ability to see problems).

COPY/PASTE the below list into your forum post.

Answer these simple questions the best you can.
If you do not know, or do not use something; Just say so; Or post
NA (non applicable)

  • What strain, Seed bank, or bag seed
  • Method: Soil w/salt, Organic soil, Hydroponics, Aquaponics, KNF
  • Vessels: Pots, Grow beds, Buckets, Troths
  • PH of Water, Solution, runoff (if Applicable)
  • PPM/TDS or EC of nutrient solution if applicable
  • Indoor or Outdoor
  • Light system
  • Temps; Day, Night
  • Humidity; Day, Night
  • Ventilation system; Yes, No, Size
  • AC, Humidifier, De-humidifier,
  • Co2; Yes, No

Always try to upload a clear picture of any issues you may have to allow the community to assist you.

Add anything else you feel would help us give you a most informed answer should be included. Feel free to elaborate, but short and to the point questions and facts will help us help you in a more efficient manner :slight_smile:

Thanks!

Please be as complete as possible. It is NOT helpful to say “soil” for example. When describing lights please include the ACTUAL watts drawn from the wall and brand etc. Light schedule, distance, nutrient line and if so what are you feeding and how long etc. We need this to help you.

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Thank you @Myfriendis410. I will do my best to fill out the support ticket below. For full disclosure, I should have defoliated prior to flipping her to flower because there was already very dense canopy and little to no light penetration to the bottom. I have since meticulously cleaned out the dead matter so that I could monitor the yellowing better. Here are some updated photos of her.

  • What strain, Seed bank, or bag seed: pre-98 Bubba kush
  • Method: Soil w/salt, Organic soil, Hydroponics, Aquaponics, KNF: organic soil
  • Vessels: Pots, Grow beds, Buckets, Troths: 20g plastic pot
  • PH of Water, Solution, runoff (if Applicable): PH of water- 6.5 (haven’t tested runoff)
  • PPM/TDS or EC of nutrient solution if applicable: 1000
  • Indoor or Outdoor: indoor, 5x5 tent with 6 in inline vent filtration system
  • Light system: two 1000w sunraise lights, draw-165w
  • Temps; Day, Night: 72/68-70
  • Humidity; Day, Night: 48-51%
  • Ventilation system; Yes, No, Size : yes, 6 in inline vent filtration system with three additional fans inside (one on the bottom and two for the canopy)
  • AC, Humidifier, De-humidifier: haven’t needed for flowering, humidifier used for veg
  • Co2; Yes, No: no

Thank you guru’s!

This was the plant when I got her on October 17th:

Looking at the second and third pictures, I can see that the leaves that died off are right in that dark portion of the canopy. The rest of the plant has grown significantly. So, I’m hoping that lack of light is the true issue. I have 8 plants and this is the only one with any sort of yellowing on it.

Plant looks great in my opinion. I would have taken the bottom third of the plant before flipping to flower anyways. :v::bear:

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Thank you @MattyBear. I probably over reacted, but given this is my first grow all the way through, I wanted to make sure I didn’t mess something up. My first grow from some bag seeds resulted in all 4 being males. You could imagine my disappointment. Following that, I bought feminized seeds from ILGM. Very happy so far, and can’t wait for the fruits of my labor.

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Vermont?

Like @MattyBear said but will add that you are suffering from a lack of light. You are running 320 plug watts in that space and frankly one of those lights would not be sufficient for one plant.

What are you feeding it at 1,000 ppm and what soil are you in? It wasn’t clear.

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@Myfriendis410, I have a few questions also. To answer yours, I have been using Bergman’s nute series, and following the schedule. I usually give them just a little less than what it calls for. I have also found that the Refreshe brand of water from Albertson’s had a pH of 6.54, so that is essentially all I use, and also use that with the nutes. I feed with nutes once a week and then the bottled water in between. As for the soil, I’m not exactly sure because she was given to me. I think I remember guy saying that it was organic and pretty pricey. He also said I should probably put her into a bigger container, could she be root bound? I’m not sure I have anything bigger that isn’t one of those wooden barrel type containers. Or a Tupperware maybe?

As for discounting days for the transition. Is this only done in cases when the plant wasn’t already showing pistils prior to the flip? It seems if she was mature enough to do that it wouldn’t take more than a few days for the plant to transition over from veg to flower.

Distilled water from Wally World is the ticket. Purified water can NOT be PH’d as there is nothing there to drive it. You could water start to finish with pure distilled or R/O and if you never put anything into it you would never even need a PH meter. Just FYI.

If you have unknown soil; a slurry test is wise.

You can order fabric pots off of Amazon for dirt cheap (see what I did there haha?) I like 7 gallon for my media grows.

Showing signs of sexual maturity is not the same as actual pistils but you are right in that some cultivars transition quickly and others; not so much. I’ve had a week for some and @Not2SureYet had one that took a month IIRC.

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@Myfriendis410, what do you mean the water can’t be pH’d?

I am using fabric pots for my plants: 1, 5, and 10 gallons. I believe this one is in a 20 gallon plastic pot, so I’m not sure how to go bigger without having to get a gigantic planter pot.

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They make fabric pots up to 800 gallon lol.

Pure water, by definition has no PH: it’s neutral. Any reading taken with any EC (electrical conductivity) meter relies on solids suspended in the solution to get a reading against. You could set out 10 samples of distilled and get 10 different readings. There’s nothing there to read.

As a further point, we use EC meters to monitor our solution concentration but there are substances (not conductive) that won’t show up. Mine won’t read table sugar. Any person wanting precision in their TDS have to do it by weighing the sample, evaporating the water and weighing the residue. We cheat. It’s close enough for jazz.

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Thank you for all of your help, and knowledge, @Myfriendis410. Since the plants are only about 2 weeks into flower, when can I strip down all of their fan leaves? It is getting pretty crowded in my tent.

Also, is transplanting to different and/or bigger pots safe at this point? I usually use fox farm ocean forest as my medium.

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If you are going to transplant then you’d better hurry.

You can start removing fans any time but I usually wait until they start to get beat up and scruffy looking before I do.

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I start trimming mine off when I see the stretch is over. I have to nudge @Myfriendis410 to trim LOL He has taken boxes of leaves off some of his out door plants before :grin: I am at this point here and have about as many fan leaves stripped off as I can get away with. i cleared a ton of new bud sites. I take the main fans off and leave what is not blocking any thing. I now have better air flow. But not a completely naked plant. If this helps at all. I normally start trimming around the start of week 4. This plant here has had about 7 large shoe boxes full of leaves stripped off over the last week and a half. I remove and she grows what is left bigger :roll_eyes:

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