9 Reasons Why Your Cannabis Plants are Dying
There are many reasons why your having problems with sick plants or your Cannabis Plants are Dying. In this article we will go over ten different and most common reasons why your cannabis plants are not doing well. While there can be hundreds of reasons why your plants are not thriving, these are the ten most common reasons why, and we will tell you how to fix them.
Poor Soil/Soilless Medium for your Cannabis Grow
One of the first reasons I see new cannabis growers fail right away is the soil that they start with for there cannabis seeds. Not starting with the right soil medium can cause your grow to fail before your new seeds even get out of the ground. I have seen new growers using soil from their lawns to start their seeds.
Why Bad Soil Mediums Will Cause you to Fail
If you don’t start out will a good healthy medium to grow your cannabis plants in the seeds can get attacked by soil bacteria. If this happens you seeds will die and never germinate.
When picking soil mediums for your plants remember to pick something that is sterile for your seed starting mixes to prevent this from happening.
Picking the right mediums for your plants is important as it will have to have the right nutrient balance to keep your plants healthy, as well as the correct PH so your plants are able to absorb those nutrients as well.
Not keeping these things about your cannabis growing mediums could be one reason why your cannabis plants are dying.
Over Watering Your Cannabis Plants
When growing cannabis plants, they tend to like the growing mediums on the dryer side of things rather then wetter. It is important not to over water your cannabis plants. Doing so can create all sorts of issues with your plants. It can cause root rot that will destroy your cannabis roots causing them to get mushy and die. Over watering your cannabis plant can also cause it to grow slowly.
Under Watering Your Cannabis Plants
On the flip side of the issue above is not watering your cannabis plants enough. If you plant is constantly drooping down from lack of water this will slow down growth of your plant. If it doesn’t get watered enough it will eventually die from lack of water.
Water management is an important aspect of growing cannabis, it takes time and experience to get your marijuana watering down to where it is perfect every time. When the cannabis plant takes up water, this is the only time that it will bring calcium into the plant.
Too Much Salt Based Fertilizer
Sometimes too much of a good thing can be the reason why your cannabis plants are dying. Most times when buying regular salt-based fertilizer, it calls for too much of it for cannabis on the bottle. Using too much bottled salt-based nutrients can burn your plants, cause lockout of nutrients. So instead of your plants getting more of the nutrients that you provide to them, then end up not being able to uptake any of them into the plant where they are needed. One good over use of salt nutrients can kill your marijuana plants over night.
We recommend using an organic based nutrient solution for your weed plants.
Lack of Enough Light in your Grow Room
This is something you will rarely have to deal with outside, or a greenhouse but it is very common in, indoor grow rooms. Cannabis is a light loving plant, if the grower does not provide enough lighting the plant will grow every slowly. Most of the under leaves that help the plant grow in the vegetative stage of life will start to turn yellow and die off. Some new growers may confuse this will nitrogen deficiency. However, if light can’t get to these bottom leaves, then they will fall off and die.
There are many things that can go wrong with you lighting indoors, you can have bulbs that die, a messed-up timer, power outage, or LED light that just break for no reason you can see. It is always important to have back up lighting just encase something goes wrong with your main cannabis lighting.
Plants that have a lack of good lighting will turn yellow at the growing tips, and after a few days will be the reason why your cannabis plants are dying.
Your Cannabis Plants are Dying Because of an Insect Infestation
There are thousands of insect pests out there that would love to get into your marijuana garden. They will suck, eat, chew your beautiful cannabis to death in a matter of days. Some of the most common pests you will find in your garden are Thrips, Spider Mites, Grasshoppers (Leaf Hoppers), Fugus Nats, stem-boring caterpillars, and Slugs and Snails.
As a grower, you will always have to be on the look out for these pests in your cannabis pots, and on your plants. Some pests like Spider Mites are hard to see at first with the naked eye. They can take over the garden in a matter of days. They will infest your plants, sucking the sap out of the leaves, and can be the reason cannabis plants are dying.
Once the pest takes over it will always lead to the plants becoming much weaker, and will result in no less or no yields on the plant.
Extreme Temperatures in the Grow Space
The reason that your cannabis plants are dying could be because of extreme temperatures in your grow space. If the temperatures in the grow space get so cold that the plant freezes this will quickly kill marijuana. It is less likely with extremely high temperature in the grow space but it can happen if the temperature gets very high in the growing space.
In high temperatures it is more likely that the plant will become dehydrated from of lack of moisture in the growing medium for the plant. In the summer when there are very high growing temperatures it is recommend to use a shading cloth, this will help to keep your summer outdoor plant cooler.
Harmful Fungal Pathogens attacking your Marijuana Plants
There are many different types of fungal pathogens that can attack cannabis. However, there are three main ones that most cannabis growers deal with. These three are Phytophthora, Pythium, and Fusarium are very harmful molds when it comes to growing cannabis.
The key to keep these pathogens in check is with good air flow, good ventilation in the grow room, and adding beneficial fungus like fungus Trichoderma to the growing medium.
The more beneficial bacteria that you can add to the soil the more it will push out and leave less room for harmful fungal attacks on the roots of the plants.
Lack of Attention to the Plants
This is more of a combination of all of the above, however I have seen lack of attention to the growers’ plants kill more plants than anything else on this list. It is most likely the biggest reason why your cannabis plants are dying on this list.
You want to watch your plants everyday to keep them healthy, as a cannabis grower you can inspect them and catch many issues on this list before they get out of control. There are very few issues that can not be fixed with growing weed plants. By looking at your plants, checking the water, looking for pests, and watching for nutrient issues you can avoid cannabis plant death.
