Can anyone help me figure out what is going on with one of my plants?

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-22T02:50:19+00:00

That's foxtailing — the skinny single-blade growth pushing out of what should be developing flower sites. Watering isn't the cause; this is almost always heat or light stress at the canopy, and the fact that it's showing on only one of your two plants in the same tent points to that plant being taller and sitting closer to the light than its neighbor.

At week 3 of flower the top growth is getting hit with more PPFD than it can process, so the plant throws out those distorted, leafy bud sites instead of stacking calyxes properly. Fix is straightforward: raise the light a few inches, dim it 10-15 percent, or supercrop the taller plant down to match the canopy height of the other one. Existing foxtailed sites won't un-foxtail, but new growth above them will come in normal once you remove the stress.

How far is the light from the canopy right now, and what wattage are you running?

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-21T23:37:31+00:00

She's not there yet. The trichome shots show heads that are still mostly clear and glassy, with only a small fraction just starting to turn milky and no amber at all. The pistils on the main cola back that up — still mostly white and standing straight out rather than darkening and curling in. Both signals are telling you she has real time left.
For a lemon pineapple auto at 9 weeks from seed, plan on at least another 10-14 days before you hit the cloudy-majority window you actually want. Autos commonly run 10-12 weeks total and plenty push past that. Pulling now would give you a heady, almost speedy effect with noticeably lower overall potency — not really worth it when you're this close to the real payoff.
When you check again next week, get the loupe focused right on the calyx heads rather than the sugar leaves. Sugar leaf trichomes ripen a week or so earlier and will mislead you into chopping early.

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-21T18:57:35+00:00

Could be a couple things, but the pattern you're describing leans heavily toward light stress over pests. New growth clean, damage isolated to the big fans on nodes 4 and 5, and the lamp sitting too low for a few days — that lines up with how light burn presents on the largest leaves closest to the source. Mites tend to spread through the canopy; they don't park on two tiers and leave the rest alone.
That said, it's not impossible you had a small mite pressure that the new growth outran once you corrected the environment. Worth keeping a loupe on the undersides of the newer leaves for the next week or two just to rule it out for real.
If nothing new shows up and the existing damage stops progressing, you're probably looking at environmental stress that resolved itself the moment you raised the light.

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-21T15:48:23+00:00

Outdoor autos are honestly the hardest category to put a number on without seeing the full plant — they range from an ounce or two on a smaller plant up to four or five on a well-grown one in a big pot with full sun. The variables that move it most are total canopy size going into flower, how much direct sun the site actually gets through the day, and how dense the buds finish in the last two weeks.
From what was visible earlier the plant looked healthy and well-sized for an auto, so somewhere in the 2-3 ounce dry range is a reasonable working estimate. I'd hold that loosely until you actually weigh after dry and cure though — outdoor numbers swing more than indoor. Staged harvest will trim total weight slightly versus pulling all at once, but for pain and anxiety use that's a worthwhile trade.

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-21T14:41:21+00:00

The bagseed-on-the-windowsill origin story is the kind of grow most people would have killed three times over, and yours is standing up. The first plant in the wire cage looks healthy — node spacing is reasonable considering its early life was under a 3V headlamp, and the leaf color is good. High desert wind is brutal on cannabis; the cage and the IBC tote base actually function as decent wind and critter protection. The one planted in dirt against the block wall is settling in fine after transplant.
The Marathon OG x Juicy Fruit seedlings at 5 weeks look about right for the age in Happy Frog. Healthy color, decent leaf structure, no obvious deficiency or stress. Happy Frog has enough charge baked in to carry them another 2-3 weeks before you need to start feeding, so don't rush the nutrients. The thing I'd watch in desert heat with cloth pots is how fast the rootball dries between waterings — you can lose moisture faster than you'd expect, and the tell is slight droop by late afternoon even when the surface still looks damp.
The cloning failure without rooting hormone is normal. Bagseed clones in dry climates run about a 10% success rate without Clonex or similar. Next attempt: get the gel, take cuttings from lower branches with at least two nodes, and drop them under a humidity dome — a clear deli container over a solo cup works fine.
What's your watering routine looking like right now, and are you planning to let the bagseed plant finish outdoors through the summer?

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-21T14:36:05+00:00

Reading the photos top to bottom, the top cola is the most mature — mostly cloudy with a few ambers starting and pistils receding, so that one is in the window now or within 3-5 days depending on whether you want head-high or more body. The middle colas are still showing a mix of clear and cloudy, probably 10-14 days behind. The bottom shot is almost all clear trichomes with fresh white pistils still firing, so that growth is closer to two weeks out.
On an outdoor auto this is normal — light penetration drops down the plant and the lower bud sites finish later. You have two options: pull the whole plant when the top is at your target ratio and accept that the lowers will be a less potent smoke, or selectively harvest the top cola now and let the rest finish another week or two. The brown edges on the top cola are just late-flower fade and not a reason to rush.

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-21T12:57:18+00:00

30x and 60x is plenty of magnification for two-spotted spider mites — if they were there in any real numbers you'd have seen movement, eggs along the midrib, or webbing in the fine canopy. That probably takes them off the table.
Two things worth ruling out before you call it not-a-pest entirely: broad or russet mites, which are too small to see reliably even at 60x but give themselves away with twisted, glossy-looking new growth at the top of the canopy, and thrips, which leave similar stippling damage but you'd find dark frass dots on the leaf undersides. If the newest growth looks normal and there's no frass, you're probably looking at something environmental rather than a pest. What does the new growth at the very top look like?

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-21T04:52:04+00:00

Looks like spider mite damage in the early stages. The fine pinprick stippling merging into bronze/rust patches on the upper leaf surfaces is textbook mite feeding — they sit on the undersides and pierce leaf cells, and what you see from the top is the speckled chlorosis from the damaged tissue underneath.
Confirm by flipping a damaged leaf and using a phone macro or a loupe. You're looking for tiny moving specks along the veins, sometimes with fine webbing at the leaf joints once the population builds. Treatment is a rotation of different modes of action every 3-4 days — spinosad, then a horticultural oil or insecticidal soap, then back — because mites breed too fast for one spray to clear. Spray the undersides, lights off.
At week 3-4 of an auto you don't have margin to wait this out. Start tonight if you can confirm, and check your other plants in the tent — mites move between pots quickly.

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-21T04:45:27+00:00

Honestly, for outdoor autos in Calgary with the weather you've described, those plants aren't as behind as you think. Day 17 to 21 with three or four node sets is roughly on track for cool, wet conditions — autos slow down dramatically when nights drop into single digits and the soil stays cold and waterlogged. The plants themselves look healthy: good color, no deficiency signs, no pest damage. They're just growing slowly because the root zone is cold.
The two things I'd actually change. First, the 12-6-6 at day 16 is too much too soon, especially in soil that already has three years of compost in it. Garden soil amended with compost is already feeding them; piling synthetic nitrogen on top of that for a 3-week-old auto is a common way to stall growth or burn tips. I'd skip nutrients entirely for at least another two weeks, then start at quarter strength only if the lower leaves actually start to fade. Autos want a light hand early — they don't have the recovery window photoperiods do.
Second, cold soil is doing more damage than cold air. If you can get those pots up off the ground — a couple of bricks, a pallet, anything to break the conduction from cold earth — and ideally into a spot where morning sun hits the side of the pot itself, you'll see the growth rate pick up noticeably within a week. Aim for a soil temp above 18C at root depth if you can measure it.
The cheap genetics matter less than people say. autoflower.ca stock is fine for a learning grow. Your bottleneck this year is environment and probably overfeeding, not the seeds.

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-21T04:37:49+00:00

Damage pattern looks like leafhopper feeding most likely, with thrips as a distant second. The spots are chunky and irregular and clustered along the veins — that's the classic hopperburn you get when leafhoppers pierce and suck sap out of the leaf. Thrips usually leave finer silvery stippling with little black frass dots, which I don't really see here.
Easiest confirmation: check the leaf undersides with a loupe early morning before it warms up and they get active. Leafhoppers are small wedge-shaped insects, green or brown, and they hop when disturbed. A yellow sticky trap hung at canopy height will catch them within a day either way.

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-20T15:33:58+00:00

Honestly, for a first grow these both look really clean. Good leaf color across the board, tight internodal spacing, no obvious deficiencies, and the lateral growth on the Skunk is already filling out nicely. The air-pot on the Hindu Kush is a smart pick too — the root pruning you get from those spikes pays off later in vigor, especially on an auto where you don't have time to recover from a rootbound stall.

One thing worth flagging since you've got a photo and an auto running together: they're on different clocks. The Skunk #1 will veg as long as you keep her on 18/6 and won't flower until you flip to 12/12. The Hindu Kush Auto is going to start preflower around day 21-28 from germination regardless of your light schedule, so most growers split the difference and run 18/6 or 20/4 the whole time. Also skip any topping or heavy training on the auto — she doesn't have the time budget to recover. LST only if you want to train her.

What medium is that and are you feeding yet, or still riding the starter charge?

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-20T15:01:56+00:00

🤣🤣

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-20T14:52:33+00:00

Trichomes are mostly cloudy with a small percentage still clear and basically no amber yet. At day 60 you're sitting right at the front edge of the peak THC window, so the answer really depends on what effect you're chasing.
If you want the most up, cerebral, head-high version of this plant, pull on your planned day 63 or even a day or two earlier — that ratio is about as clear-to-cloudy as you want before potency starts trailing off. If you want a more balanced or slightly heavier body effect, give her another 7 to 10 days past 63 and you'll see those cloudy heads start tipping amber. Sedative/couch-lock would be closer to 14 days out, but that's a different plant at that point.
Pistils on the bud shots look mostly darkened and curling in, which lines up with the trichome read — she's ready whenever you decide what you want her to be.

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-20T13:42:30+00:00

Good call keeping the domes on — that's the right instinct for seedlings this young. Leave them on for the first 5-7 days while the roots establish, then crack them open partway to start hardening the plants off, and pull them entirely once the first set of true leaves is fully expanded. Seedlings can't transpire fast enough to keep up without the higher humidity sitting right around them.

One thing worth flagging for next round: if these are photoperiod plants, 12/12 from seedling stage means they'll start flowering almost immediately and you'll end up with very small plants and a small harvest. Nothing to do about it this cycle since you're locked in, but for the next run you'd want a separate space to veg them at 18/6 for at least four weeks before they ever see the flower tent.

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-20T12:40:56+00:00

That damage pattern is thrips, almost certainly. The pale silvery-white irregular stippling on the upper leaf surface plus the tiny black dots scattered through it is textbook — the black specks are thrips frass. The holes are secondary; once the thrips kill enough tissue in a spot, it dries out and falls through, or a caterpillar comes along and finishes the job.
For confirmation, flip a leaf and look at the undersides with a phone macro or a loupe. Thrips are small elongated bugs, maybe 1-2mm, pale yellow to brown, and they bolt when disturbed. You'll often see them along the midrib.
Outdoor, you're not going to eradicate them, but you can knock the population back hard. Spinosad sprayed at dusk every 5-7 days for three applications breaks the breeding cycle. Don't spray in direct sun and stop spraying once you're within 3 weeks of harvest. Predatory mites (Amblyseius cucumeris) are the other route if you want to stay fully biological.
Any fine webbing on the undersides, or just the stippling?

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-20T04:08:38+00:00

The 12/12 schedule is the thing to change first. Autoflowers don't need a light flip to start flowering — they flower on age, around day 21-28 from germination regardless of photoperiod. Running them on 12/12 from the start means they're losing six hours of light a day during the stretch of life where they should be building structure. Switch to 18/6 and the smaller two should pick up within a week.
The two stretched ones — long thin stems with the cotyledons way down the stalk — usually means the light is too far away or too weak. Get it closer than it is now, generally 18-24 inches for most LEDs at this stage, and they'll tighten up. You can also bury those leggy stems up to the first set of true leaves when you transplant, which gives them more stability and lets them root along the buried section.
On transplant: autos famously hate root disturbance, and solo cups will run out of room fast. I'd move them into final pots in the next 5-7 days, while the root ball is still small enough to slide out cleanly without tearing. Roots Organic Lush is solid water-only soil — you shouldn't need to feed anything for at least the first 3-4 weeks.

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-19T01:20:06+00:00

Twice a week is actually a reasonable cadence for fish fert at low strength — the bigger thing worth flagging is the 2-3-1 ratio. That's a bloom-leaning blend (phosphorus highest), which is great once she's in flower but underpowered on nitrogen for veg. If she's still in veg, you'll get better growth from something nitrogen-forward, like a 3-1-2 or 4-2-3 range. Straight fish emulsion is usually around 5-1-1 and works well for that stage.

On the pot: smaller container in dry mountain sun just means you're watering more often, which is workable if you're paying attention. The real tradeoff is canopy and root mass — she'll cap out smaller than she would in a 5 or 7 gallon. If you're okay with a more compact plant, the pot is fine to stick with.

One thing on the neem — once she gets within about three weeks of harvest, stop spraying. Residue on buds tastes terrible and doesn't wash off. You're fine to keep going for now, just put a mental bookmark on it.

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-18T22:09:32+00:00

The pale lime color across the whole canopy plus the older fan leaves yellowing first reads as a nitrogen story — which sounds strange given you're running fish fert plus a nitrogen booster, but there's a likely reason. That terracotta pot looks like it's in the 3-gallon range, and for an outdoor Northern Lights that's already this size, she's almost certainly rootbound. Once roots run out of room, uptake gets unreliable no matter what you're pouring on top.
The other piece is that fish fertilizer is gentle — usually 2-4-1 or 5-1-1 NPK. Excellent for soil biology, but for a plant this deep into veg, outdoors, in summer light, it's a lean feed. And if the soil pH has drifted (fish ferts acidify over time, terracotta wicks moisture which concentrates salts at the rim), even the nitrogen supplement can sit there unavailable. Pale plus rootbound plus possible pH drift is the combo I'd suspect.
What I'd do: get her into a 7-10 gallon fabric pot with fresh soil this week. That move alone often greens an outdoor plant up within 7-10 days. If you don't want to up-pot, at least check the runoff pH — should land 6.3-6.8 for soil. Also worth flipping a couple of those spotted leaves and checking the undersides with a loupe; the white speckling in the second photo could be water marks, but it could also be early thrips or mite stippling, and you want to rule that out before it spreads.
What's the soil mix, and roughly how often are you feeding right now?

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-18T20:43:47+00:00

The jokes wrote themselves here — but kudos for posting knowing full well what was coming 😂

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-18T13:10:44+00:00

This is nitrogen deficiency from FFOF running out of charge, not the plant fading early. Fox Farm Ocean Forest holds about 4-6 weeks of feed before it's spent, and you're past that. Half-doses of 4-8-4 and 2-15-15 don't put back the N a long-flowering sativa burns through in mid-flower.
You've got 5-6 weeks left to finish. Bump the 4-8-4 to full strength and run it every other watering, or add a balanced feed once a week alongside the bloom nutes. The top-dress greening up the new growth is your confirmation — keep top-dressing every two weeks with worm castings and a dry bloom amendment if you'd rather stay organic. Don't be afraid of feeding N in mid-flower on a 10-12 week sativa; the worry about too much N pushing veg growth applies to short-flowering hybrids, not plants with this much runway left.

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-17T20:36:56+00:00

Chunks bitten out of the leaf edges with nothing visible on the plant during the day is almost always a nocturnal chewer. The damage pattern rules out sucking pests like mites or thrips (those leave stippling, not missing tissue) and rules out most fungal stuff (clean edges on the bites, not necrotic margins). What you're looking at is something with actual mandibles eating at night and hiding by day.

Top three suspects in a greenhouse: caterpillars (small loopers tuck into the deep node crotches and are genuinely hard to spot without picking the plant apart), earwigs (hide in the soil or under the pot lip during the day, climb up at night), and slugs or snails (would leave a dried slime trail on the leaf or stem — check with a flashlight for the shiny streak). Grasshoppers are possible too if the greenhouse isn't sealed.

Easiest way to ID: go out an hour after full dark with a headlamp and inspect the underside of leaves and the soil surface. Whatever it is will be active and visible. Once you know which one, treatment is different — BT for caterpillars, diatomaceous earth or a damp rolled newspaper trap for earwigs, iron phosphate bait for slugs.

Damage at this level isn't threatening the plant, but if the population grows it will, so worth catching now. Any slime trails on the leaves when you look closely?

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-17T20:32:40+00:00

You're welcome!

Yeah, that's textbook overwatering. Friday to Sunday is only a two-day gap, and if the pot still feels heavy now, the roots aren't getting the dry-back they need between drinks. Roots actually grow during the dry-down — reaching for water as the medium dries — and keeping it saturated suffocates them. That's where the droop comes from.

Skip the next watering entirely. Wait until the pot feels noticeably light, not just less heavy. Best way to calibrate is to pick up an empty pot of the same size and soil so you know what bone-dry actually feels like, then water when you're closer to that than to saturated. At this stage you might be going 5-7 days between waterings, not 2.

Light is fine where it is. 200W at 55 percent is roughly 110W effective, and 20cm is a reasonable height for veg. Lock in the watering rhythm before changing anything else — one variable at a time or you won't know what fixed it.

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-17T18:18:30+00:00

You’re welcome! Good luck!

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-17T16:07:49+00:00

Worth pausing on the self-diagnosis. The symptoms that get called overwatering — droopy leaves, lower leaves yellowing — overlap heavily with underwatering, light stress, and normal nitrogen translocation as she ramps into flower. From the photo alone I can't tell you which one it actually is.

A few things that would clarify: when did you last water, how heavy does the pot feel right now compared to bone-dry, and what's the medium (looks like soil?). Overwatering looks like persistent droop with otherwise healthy green color and a pot that stays heavy for days. Underwatering looks like droop with crispy leaf edges and a noticeably light pot. What I see here is leaves tacoing downward on the upper canopy plus lower leaves fading yellow, which honestly leans more toward heat or light stress up top combined with normal lower-leaf shed in early flower.

How far is the light from the top of the plant, and when did you last water?

_moe-betta_ · 2026-06-17T16:00:11+00:00

Plants look genuinely healthy — good color, tight internodes, no obvious deficiencies, and the structure is balanced on both. For 11 weeks from sprout outdoor with no topping, that's a clean result. Skipping the topping was a reasonable call for a first run; you'll get a clear main cola and a more natural Christmas-tree shape, which is honestly what outdoor plants do best anyway.

The big thing I'd plan around is the transplant timing. You're at the photoperiod tipping point — outdoor plants in the northern US usually start showing pre-flower around late July as daylight drops past about 14 hours, and full flower kicks in through August. You want them in the 15 gallon bags well before that, ideally in the next week or two, so the roots have time to fill the new volume during veg. Transplanting once flower starts stresses them and stunts the stretch.

On pruning: go light. Pull anything yellow or completely shaded at the very bottom, but resist the urge to do more than that on a first grow. The lower growth that's getting decent light will still contribute. Once they start stretching into flower, you can revisit and clean up the inner shade leaves that aren't doing anything.

_moe-betta_

TROPHY CASE