“A good day, a rare day in which I didn’t feck up anything.”
Turns out I spoke too soon.
I was right to be concerned about droopy leaves and slowed growth.
This only accelerated over the following days to the point of almost total plant shut down.
Checked and double checked Ph and PPM of nutrients in both tanks and they were all “dead on”.
I was sure that changing nutrients to bloom and altering the light cycle to 12/12 wasn’t the main problem (shock may have made things a bit worse) as the symptoms had been present in the veg stage.
Really there was only one major thing to check.
Water temperature.
In my veg tent, I’d kept back a small clone growing in a 2l plastic bottle placed on a propagation mat and found the temp to fluctuate between 14c and 18c. This surprised me, as the prop mat is supposed to pump out a constant 22c. Investigating further I found the bottom 2" of water was indeed 20-22c with the temp falling off the higher up the bottle. In fact, the top 1" showed only 8-10c. Because I’m growing the Kratky method, I don’t have water circulation other than convection. Think back, the symptoms really began to be noticeable when I changed the early seedlings from .5l bottle used in early propagation to the taller 2l bottle.
Moving the 4 plants to a much larger flowering tank probably doubled if not trebled the symptoms because the volume of water could only lead to more severe temperature layers. 12c bottom of the tank to a low of 4c at the top.
It’s no wonder my plants went into shutdown.
My fix was to:
-
Move all plants back to the veg tent 18/6 lights and change nutrients to veg.
-
Cutback the height of the bottles to about 12"
-
Reduce water level to 4"
-
Use air fan and propergation mat to maintain a more constant 20c-22c temp
It’s early days but my canna-family are recovering and starting to grow again.
Who knows, the trauma may make the plants stronger in the long term.
My respect for both strains cold hardiness and general lust for life only increases day-by-day.
Yes, I feck-up but I fixed the feck-up.