Hello all,
I am trying my hand at growing a few plants indoors and noticed some recent changes I thought might be a problem. As you will see from my photos, some of my leaves are turning brown/yellow and the stalks are turning red. Is this something to worry about?
I started these seedlings outdoors, and moved them into a tent last month. I am watering them every few days, only when the soil feels dry. I've been using Arber Plant Food every couple weeks. My tent has an outtake fan/filter and inner fan. I've been keeping the temp at about 70 and humidity around 60%.
I read that the reddening stalks is due to the plants being too close to the grow light, but my light is at the very top of the tent (60" high). I've also got it set to the second lowest brightness. The light is on an 18 hour timer as I heard that is what is necessary during the vegetative stage.
Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
It looks like you have fungal gnats, and a pretty bad case if you're filling yellow sticky sheets to that density. Fungal gnat larvae eat the fine hairs on roots, which eventually cause nutrient deficiency.
The most obvious nutrient you're lacking is Nitrogen, but you can't really fix that without healthy roots to absorb it. That's a long winded way of saying you have to address the gnats before you have any real hope of turning them around.
E. Also the soil looks super wet, which will cause root rot over time, but might be ok if you just watered them before snapping this picture.
Thanks for the info! Luckily our gnat problem seems to be finally resolved. I actually did water these 20 mins before taking the photo. Do you think these will recover now that the gnats are gone?
They can absolutely recover at this stage of growth, assuming you are positive the gants are gone. You might want to replace your stickies to make sure no new adults pop up, it's hard to tell for sure without a clean baseline.
With that said, I use Hydroguard to encourage healthy root growth and have been very happy with the results. I use it throughout the entire grow in my hydroponic dwc tent. You might try it in soil to encourage new growth and fast track recovery, I've read of others successes with that approach. You can also just wait, they might sort themselves out with time.
Awesome, thanks for the help!