Sick & dying .. pics

[dyingbud]

Ok so first off - Hi All! I am a new UK outdoor grower. I came across a plant by chance that a friend had been given as a clone. He was keeping it on 24hr light with a couple of others. When he came to move them into his grow area he decided they wouldn't all fit and put the runt to one side.

Yup you guessed it, I now have the runt! I'm not looking to get a commercial yeild out of this. I actually just want to see if I can keep it alive! It looked very ill with a long stem and only about 6 leaves when I got it. I kept it watered and on a south facing window ledge so it got plenty of sun. Pretty soon it started to look a lot healthier and greener and more leaves began to sprout. I had to insert a small stick to support the thin stem with the weight of the leaves.

Pretty soon it got too tall to sit on the windowledge so I transplanted it into a bigger pot with a mix of soil and compost and dropped the long and thin root ball into the centre. I watered it and left it in the garden sheltered from the wind and in good sunlight. After a few days the drooping stopped and it began to look healthy and green. I also started using a small amount of miracle grow when i repotted it and it seemed to help.

Unfortunately the weather in the UK sucks and it spent a couple of cold nights in it's second week so I made a teepee out of plastic sheeting and also covered the soil with newspaper at night. However it began to look worse and started drooping. It definately stopped growing new leaves.

Finally after another 10 days I removed the pot from the earth and probed into the bottom - soil as dry as sand began running from the bottom, even though the surface was moist down to about 3-4" everytime I checked (I hadn't checked deeper).

I panicked and repotted it with a load of stones in the bottom and only compost trying to fix the irrigation problem, and now have it standing in a shallow bath of water to make sure water is getting to the roots, but mother nature has decided to rain down in fury and now i am worried that it might be too wet!

I'm sure the response is - give up and start again!, but I don't have any other plants and kinda hoped I could at least keep this one alive, even if it never buds.

Here are some pics I took (between rain showers) - I wonder if anyone can suggest anything?

(NB - Pics removed after advice given - sry )

 

[GreenBandit]

ye looks like its been over-watered and low on nitrogen....have u been giving nutes? take a look at this site . . .
http://www.geocities.com/nutrientproblems

 

[brainwreck]

totally overwatered, maybe not a bad idea to put more dirt in the bucket, that way she can develop her roots, properly, and don't forget to give her nutes, doesn't matter what, organic or biological, as long as the plant get's her nutes, she will live.

greetz

 

[dyingbud]

Cheers for the rapid response guys (great link greenbandit! wish I'd found that earlier)-

Took drastic action today as another 24 hours of torrential downpour that tries to pass as British spring was forecast! I have gone out and got a new pot (same size) potting compost and mixed it with 25% pearlite as well as adding a 3" thick layer of pearlite in the bottom.

(brainwreck - do you think I should put still more compost in? - I think I misjudged it again, would I need to totally re-pot or can I 'top up' the soil as there are no leaves on the first 10cm of stem?) -please don't shoot me if that's a really dumb question!

I have been giving it miracle grow nutes (NPK 15-30-15) but sporadically because I was worried that the 'too green' look meant it was getting too much.

I have given it a dose of 15-30-15 after re-potting, but haven't watered it too much - for obvious reasons!

It is now sat in the corner of my office (temporary!) to keep it out of the rain and what looks like slug damage, but as it isn't as close to a window as I would like I wondered if it would get any benefit from using normal house lights until it is ready to go back outside? - I've rigged 2x 60 watt spotlights up - see below - but I'm sure someone told me once that they wouldn't work, so let me know if I'm wasting my time!

I now see the massive benefits from indoor growing ... if only it didn't stink when it buds - damn the neighbours!

 

[cincy boy]

put the lights as close as you can

 

[cincy boy]

and the nutes your using are for the first sages of flowering not vegg I use the same **** when vegging give a 20-20-20 MG then for the last weeks of flowering give a 10-52-10 1 time than just water the soil (flush)

 

[dyingbud]

Me again.

Moved the lights as suggested and have held back on watering - things started looking better ...But suddenly overnight everything drooped, I think it might be water related again - how much/often should I be watering this plant?

 

[cincy boy]

make your plants beg for water man and if the problem continues kill them and star over

 

[dyingbud]

is mine begging yet? It looks pretty unhappy

 

[naimitsukai]

let them go awhile without watering. cincy right, you may just have to start over but hopefully not.

peace

 

[dyingbud]

First off thanks for all the help so far guys - really appreciated.

Since the last installment I have had to move the plants indoors due to not being able to find a spot with more than 6 or so hours of direct sunlinght now that the neighbour has been building! So I stuck them on 18-6 under a 250 watt HPS light. It perked up something rotten when that happened! BUT I think I had the light too low as the topmost leaves looked burnt (kinda brown and dry) after the 3rd day. I have moved the light up so it is now about 2 foot from the plant and added an oscillating fan to keep the plant cool, which seems to have fixed that problem.

So onto the next problem! As it has been repotted so many times thru my inexperience and shifted all around the houses I don't really want to repot again, but I fear that the damned MG enriched potting compost I used is causing nutrient problems. I bought a moisture meter so I can probe down into the soil to get a better idea of if it is over watered (a kind of trademark of mine now I think!) and am giving it about 1/2 a litre of water every 4-5 days to keep the moisture at about 2 on a scale of 1-5.

Now I have noticed that the ends of some of the leaves are curling downwards (pic)

and a few are beginning to turn light green and develop these spots (pic).

From reading thru other threads I am thinking it might be a Magnesium deficeincy, but don't want to give it epsom salts - just in case it is a different nutrient problem that epsom salts would make worse! I have trimmed about 15 of these leaves from the plant over the course of the week, mainly because I couldn't stand to look at them anymore, but most of them began to wither away after 3-6 days. All in all it has lost about 30 leaves thru pruning and droppage (is that a word?).

I am worried that it has something to do with keeping it in veg for so long, so I have dropped light to 16-8 but don't want to go into my first flower just yet because I have to go away for a week soon and really think I should be here.

Any advice at this stage would be greatly appreciated.