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Urgent help needed!! Tea (with pics)
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Posted by azkid110 Indoor (My Page) on Tue, Oct 7, 08 at 23:41
hi everyone, I have a tea plant that I purchased awhile ago. Its been in my indoor garden for about 2 months, and it started growing what I think may be fruits, can someone identify for me?
Also it's leaves have started to turn brown and it is worrying me. I have been feeding it 300 ppm of gen. hydro flora nova 7-4-10, and it seems to be getting into worse shape. These are the only growth nutrients I have available at the moment but I want to pick up organic nutrients, and if someone can help me with that, or just help me to figure out what the problem is and a solution I would greatly appreciate it. (grow room stats: (lights on) temp 78 F, Humidity 48%, light cycle 16 hours on/8 hours off)
Thanks for any help or advise you can provide. I have already flushed the soil once, but I would be willing to flush it again and get new nutrients or what ever it needs to save it. |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Urgent help needed!! Tea (with pics)
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OK. I believe those are flowers about to form.
This is my two cents worth. I would re-pot it in regular soil/garden dirt and put it outside under deep shade until it started looking better then put it in dappled shade at least for the remainder of the season. I'm not a big believer in fertilizer and maybe fertilize once or twice a year in small amounts. But if you must keep it inside I would maybe try to supplement the light with more red (incandescent) lights or at least give it some southern window exposure. Also florescents sometimes give too much electromagnetic radiation (because of the long arc tube) that plants don't like. |
RE: Urgent help needed!! Tea (with pics)
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| Re-potting in 'real dirt' is never the appropriate thing to do for container plants. Mineral based soil turns into something quite different when kept to the confines of a container. What is your potting mix composed of? |
RE: Urgent help needed!! Tea (with pics)
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| oh sorry I didn't post my location, I live in Tucson Arizona, and this plant isn't native to here, it's still over 90 degrees during the day and it is very dry. The lights in my garden consist of 1 70w HPS, 4 100w (equivalent) warm CFL's, and 4 100w (equivalent) cool CFL's, so there is a good mix of light, but there is more reddish light. The potting mix it is in is some cheap "organic" potting mix from wal-mart with some extra perlite... and the fungus gnats love it! Could the fungus gnats be causing the problem? I have sticky fly traps in there that are collecting what seems like hundreds of them. |
RE: Urgent help needed!! Tea (with pics)
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| The fungus gnats could be an indication that you are either keeping the plant too moist and/or that your potting mix doesn't drain rapidly enough. Those are factors that 'could' be causing the severe leaf burn we see in the image. I'd get a decent, soil-less potting mix and add a bit of perlite and bark soil conditioner. The bark pieces will be much smaller than what you see as pine bark. We call them 'fines'. I've seen bags of this stuff at most of the big box stores and it makes a superior container medium amendment. I can't speak to the fertilizer issue. I am not familiar with the brand you mentioned. Just be very sure that you aren't using too much, too often as that could cause foliar burn, as well. |
RE: Urgent help needed!! Tea (with pics)
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| well, I found the problem... the cheap soil I used had 3 months worth of fertilizer in it, and I didn't take note of it. So I added some fertilizer and double dosed my poor tea plant. last night I came to this realization and thought "Man that was a dumb mistake." So I flushed the soil with water with a few drops of hydrogen peroxide, then a little more water, and Viola! some some the brown leaves are already turning green again, but some have died and become crispy already. Next time I will mix my own soil-less mix if I'm going to do soil, but the next seeds I get I will be using hydroponics. Thanks for the help guys! |
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