Buttercrunch lettuce growth issue

11 years ago

I am in my first attempt to grow in a deep water system and am having issue with my lettuce. The leaves are growing on the inside of the leaves but the outer edges are not growing. This imo is giving a bunched or a muscle bound look. The leaves middle is growing faster then the edges causing a folding over effect. Can someone give me a hint or direction to look to find out what is doing this?

Peppers are great and squash did well before I moved then and at a more rapid grow rate.

I have not check the ppm nor do I have a method of doing so at present. My Ph is about 6-6.5 and am using Maxigro 10-05-14 mix. Lighting is HO t5's and I have been running 24/7 with intermittent breaks of darkness when area gets warmer than desired.

Every thing else looks good, they are nice dark green and roots are white. Growth is slowed than I desired and expected. I contribute that to either inexperience or fertilizer maybe both.

Thank you for any help or insight that you can give.

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Comments (5)

cptcosmos
11 years ago
I vote calcium deficiency... I had the same issue with mine and with my Romain, added 1/8 tsp of Calcium Nitrate per gallon of nutrient, problem faded away, damaged leaves don't repair though.

I got mine from a local hydro store but amazon sells it as well. There are also apparently a few home grown remedies for low calcium but i can't really speak to what works.
newchew thanked cptcosmos
newchew
Original Author
11 years ago
I appreciate the response cptcosmos and will put some in today. Also whatare you running your lighting at? 16/8? And have you tried 24/7 on lighting with lettuce. I had heard some things could be grown for a time that way and decided to let it run 24/7. I have also heard recently this could be contributing to the issue so began last night at cutting them back to 16/8.
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cptcosmos
11 years ago
I run 16/8, I was always taught that plants needed some darkness and since it works I don't feel the need to change. I have a couple of pepper plants under the same light and am kind of favoring them ( the only place around here I can get a ripe Jalapeno is if I grow it ).

As an aside not too long ago I came across a reference to someone running 50 minutes of light and 10 minutes of dark every hour .. the theory and initial results sounded promising but I never found a follow-up.
newchew
Original Author
11 years ago
Am new so really guess I should not be experimenting yet. I too am growing some Jalapeno got six or so right now that were under same lighting. They are doing good just gonna prob stick outside in a few weeks if all goes well. We will see how weather goes.
Thank you again for your replies, have applied the calcium and changed lighting so we will see what happens. Will post in a few weeks or so on progress.
newchew
Original Author
11 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
Ok not too sure what the situation was with the lettuce. The lettuce was in a dwc with some peppers and the peppers did fine, well great. Could be the peppers stole the nutrients not sure. Lettuce never corrected even after a new batch of nutrient but those peppers went wild. So pulled lettuce and decided to switch pepper to pots. Most are 8-10 inches and looking very well with blooms starting. Going to top the peppers and work on toms. Will make another Lettuce run later and see if I learned. Ty for all the help