I went out to check on my girls this morning and found some yellow leaves near the bottom of one of them. She’s a GSCA in happy frog & ff ocean mix. I feed them ff liquid Big Bloom, Grow Bi, and Buds and Blooms about twice a week. I keep the ph around 6.5-6.7. Sorry to say I couldn’t get my ppm meter to calibrate correctly, so I don’t know the ppm, but I’ve been lucky so far. They’re at the end of week 9. I’ve taken a few pics because someone told me that when the plant is close to being ready to harvest the bottom leaves will start turning yellow. Am I being hoodwinked, and does anyone have any ideas? I will say that it’s rained quite a bit here in the last few days, but I just felt the top of the soil and it’s dry. I’m pretty certain that the soil below is damp, I mean, it’s raining again. Should I move them out of the rain for the day? Also, for pest control I use Captain Jacks and yellow sticky paper, (I have found that if I double the amount of CJ concentrate when making it, it works much better).Processing: C10362C1-F32B-4823-8253-AD229725E723.jpeg…
Okay, it’s not processing the pics. I’m going to try again in another post. Hopefully they’ll appear below this.
Without seeing the whole plant, they look fine to me. Bottom leaves will yellow and drop at times. Can you take a shot of the entire plant?
Edited, I read your post closer. They are close to finishing and will yellow. Toward the end I have noticed my soil potted, and even hydro plants drink a lot of water. As far as rain, I have grown tent and greenhouse. One thing I wonder, and outdoor growers will know this, but do you put some sort of shading screen over the buds when they are this close to harvest to keep them from getting wet in the rain? It souunds silly, but not sure how you control that part. I have seen photos of plants with a white shading cloth over them.
So here’s the thing. I defoliate. I don’t have a lot of dead leaves because I don’t leave them on the plant long enough to die, but I don’t think there is any problem with the occasional older leaf to yellow and fall off. As long as the leaves are in the lower part of the plant and is only a few, I wouldn’t sweat it.
Plants look good: still a ways to go before thinking of harvest. If you are in a high humidity environment you will want to pay attention to your flower. As it matures and bulks up, it will provide a very convenient place for moisture to collect and mold to develop. A mild peroxide and distilled water solution may be necessary if you start to see signs of white powdery mildew (wpm).
As plant matures it starts to scavenge N from lower leaves and once depleted release them. This is normal and natural.
I would suggest replacing your TDS meter and make sure your salt levels are where they should be (FF recommends flushing at specific intervals).
Thanks everyone. I was a little worried, but thought it might be the plant getting towards the end of its cycle. I’ll have to get another meter, this one won’t calibrate past 600, and I read somewhere that for my outdoor grow I needed it to be up in the 1000 range. I bought the correct solutions. Live and learn.
I’ll watch out for the wpm because it has been pretty wet around here just recently. Praying I don’t come across any.
After buying an inexpensive TDS meter that won’t calibrate correctly, could you possibly tell me if this mid range priced meter would work for my outdoor grow? One of the reviews said it actually measured the TDS, not just what it says on the box.
