Hello all,
Was wondering if I could get a second opinion. I sifted through 6 pages of questions about yellow spots & only saw 1 post where symptoms & plant stage looked similar.
These spots just appeared on leaves of two plants today. It’s only appearing on lower growth. So I was thinking it might be a mobile element? I saw someone say it resembles thrip damage, but I’ve been checking every leaf on every plant everyday & haven’t seen a single thing. I’ve read it’s hard to overwater in coco so I haven’t really been worried about it. Just pour until water starts dripping out the holes in the solo cup.
Growing in Conibo Coco with build-a-soil coco mineral mix. Feeding botanicare kind base, grow, vitamino & pure blend tea, cal-mag, silica, hydroguard & Tribus. Following chart from Botanicare for coco at half strength
ppm 400
pH 5.9
Rh is between 65-70 lights on, 60-65 lights out
Temp 78-80 lights on, 72-74 lights out.
Lights at 24″ & 70% on 20/4 schedule
Am I worrying needlessly? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Established, well rooted plants in coco are less likely to be over-watered but seedlings can very easily be over-watered. Seedlings need no added nutrition for about the first few weeks. A little too much, too soon.
Ok I’ll keep that In mind & be gentle in the first few weeks. & How long for nutrients? Like 3 fingers or wait til 5 are showing? I appreciate the feedback, everything online says it’s like impossible.
General rule of thumb for me has been when the seedling starts to consume it’s initial cotyledon leaves. When they start to yellow you know it’s ready for some food.
It sure does look like bugs. The stippling but on the other hand it kind of looks like the snot of thrip. But maestro didn’t say anything about it. So yesterday, I was in the greenhouse and I found what looked like spider mite stippling damage. Well I got the leaf under the microscope. And I searched and searched and search couple different lenses. Well I just kept telling myself about a past post. Seek and ye shall find. Well I finally found a little bastard. He was a juvenile. Very slow moving. More docile than my average mites. I don’t know what his problem was. It made it harder to fine though because I’m always looking for movement. Never give up searching. But I’m here and you’re there. And I can really can’t see everything and know everything like you can. We often have both PH upsets and bugs often at the same time. Good luck
Yup what mystro said ^^^ Seedlings can be delicate and generally don’t need any additional food at this point.
Its possible its just a over feeding or a little seedling funkiness that she will grow out of. That does look a bit like thrip damage though, so its not a bad idea to do some preventive spraying with something like neem oil or horticultural soap just to make sure you don’t have a pest issue. Preventive sprays every 3 days for a week or two, (and weekly after that during veg) should help ensure you don’t have any issues.
Another thing to make note of… The build a soil coco mineral mix is really designed for people mixing coco with other ingredients to make it into a living soil. Its meant to be the coco version of the mineral pack used as part of the coots mix living soil recipe. Its not really intended to be used in a coco grow with bottled nutrients.
I don’t think this is what is causing your leaf splotches, but I really have no idea how this will effect your grow. Its probably not a huge deal, but its not what I would have recommended. The coco mineral mix is basalt, gypsum and sul-po-mag. This means you’ve added lots of calcium, sulfur, potassium, magnesium and trace minerals to your coco. Your bottled nutrients will have all this stuff in it too, so you will likely end up with excesses of these nutrients which may cause lockouts of other nutrients or other issues.
So yeah, no idea if this will cause you issues or not, but I would be ready for some nutrient issues in the future if you continue using this coco. In the future I would not use the coco mineral mix unless you are trying to turn your coco into a living soil.
I have regalia grandevo & venerate for IPM. I just wasn’t sure how early I could use them, was gonna start next week, guess I’ll bump up my schedule.
Also I see what you’re saying about the mix. In my mind i was adding it to offset the calcium hunger of the coco while adding hardness into the medium. But I’m always learning & next time I won’t use it. Might just add a little perlite for hardness I suppose.
Sounds like a plan.
You can probably make things work with that mineral mix added to your coco. Just be aware you’ve already got that stuff added into your mix, so adjust your liquid feeding accordingly so you aren’t overdoing it too much.
You can safely apply Grandevo and Venerate to sprouted seedlings. Just don’t drown them, but there’s no issue with using the Marrone lineup on seedlings. You got the perfect answers from Jmystro and SOUP. Fwiw – I think it’s just a little over-watering and seedling funkiness. I’ve had plenty of seedlings do weird things in the early days that just straightened themselves out by the 5th or 6th node. I think you’re going to be just fine!
@DTOM420
Thank god you guys said it looked like thrip damage. It crosses my mind too and now I don’t feel quite so inept at this growing game. I usually don’t even comment after Mystro because he always nails it to the wall with very few words. Mucho respect!
You’re growing in coco using a hydroponics mix. All you need is the Botanicare Mix and RO or quality water, and Recharge once a week will not hurt. You can correct for the plants needs by adjusting the ratio of the Botanicare Mix. You do not need any of that other stuff… Seriously throwing money away. If you want to save money buy dry salts fertilizers instead of liquid nutes. Check out Jacks 321. I also think the spots look like bug damage. Good luck with it!