by Nebula Haze
You check on your cannabis plants and at first, the leaves appear green and healthy. But when you look closer, you notice that the tips of a bunch of leaves have turned yellow. Oh no! What causes yellow tips of marijuana leaves and how do you fix it? Today’s article will teach you why it happens and how to stop it.
This tutorial teaches you how to identify and prevent yellow leaf tips on your weed plants
3 Most Common Causes for Yellow Leaf Tips
Why are my leaf tips turning yellow? Yellow leaf tips on cannabis plants are typically caused by one of 3 reasons: light stress (the grow light is too close), nutrient deficiency, or environmental problem. Check out these pictures to see which one looks most like your plant, and get the solution!
1.) Grow Light is Too Close (Light Stress)
Yellow leaf tips often appear on the leaves closest to the grow light as a response to light stress from cannabis grow lights being too close to plants. Yellow tips can also appear when the grow lights are overly powerful for the size of your space. (What size grow light should I get?)
Too much light can cause leaf tips to turn yellow
Sometimes light stress is accompanied by leaves turning all the way up so they’re more horizontal than flat.
You may also notice the serrated edges of the leaves curling up instead of the whole leaf laying flat like a piece of paper.
If you’re seeing all these symptoms on one plant, it’s almost a sure sign the light needs to be moved a little further away, at least temporarily. Often if a plant is light-stressed it will recover and be able to take stronger light again.
2.) Nutrient Deficiency
This is another extremely common reason to see yellow leaf tips on weed plants. This may be the result of your plants needing higher levels of nutrients overall, but that is relatively rare and typically accompanied by the whole plant turning yellow all over starting from the bottom (nitrogen deficiency). If you see yellow tips without the rest of the plant turning yellow, then it’s much more likely that the pH at the roots is too high or too low, which causes nutrient deficiencies by making nutrients harder for the plant to absorb.
Yellow leaf tips are a symptom of some cannabis nutrient deficiencies, which are typically caused from the pH at the roots being too high or low.
These yellow tips and leaf edges were caused by incorrect pH at the roots
When there is a nutrient/pH problem causing the yellow tips, you’ll often see other unusual colors. For example, the above plant has a dark almost bluish-green appearance, and the plant below has purple leaves. This was caused by incorrect pH at the roots. In both cases, these plants were also very close to the light, which contributed to the yellow tips by adding light stress.
This is another deficiency caused by pH which can make yellow leaf tips. This deficiency appears randomly on the plant and is usually not associated with light stress.
3.) Bad Environment or Watering Problems
Although this is rarer than the other two reasons, occasionally you may have a weed plant show yellow leaf tips in response to environmental stress like heat, cold, super low humidity, or poor air circulation. A plant that is overwatered (given too much water at once, or watered too often) also commonly shows signs of nutrient deficiencies because nutrients and water aren’t able to move properly through the plant. However, typically if your environment is causing yellow leaf tips, you will also see other signs of stress on the plant.
This plant is showing symptoms from incorrect pH, overwatering, and heat
Note: Yellow Tips Are Not Nutrient Burn
Yellow tips are a cannabis plant symptom that often gets misdiagnosed as nutrient burn. However, nutrient burn causes brown crispy tips. If you’re seeing leaf tips that have actually turned yellow, you’re looking at something else.
If you see brown crispy tips on leaves all over the plant, it’s probably nutrient burn (caused by giving too high levels of nutrients)
Should I cut off yellow leaf tips? There’s no reason to cut off yellow leaf tips except for appearance purposes.
I hope today’s article helped you diagnose your yellow leaf tips. Luckily this is not a serious problem and will not cause any serious damage to your plants or buds as long as you fix the problem.
Happy growing!
Nebula Haze
Check out some articles you may not have seen…
- Light Burn or Light Stress – Light stress can dramatically slow down plant growth while light burn is a physical symptom of light stress. These both tend to happen when growers (like me) try to give a plant too much light. Many of us were taught that more is better but that’s not always the case…
- PSA: Cannabis Can Get Too Much Light?! – Like I said in the end of the last bullet point, more is not always better when it comes to providing light for your cannabis plants. Grow lights can dish out a crazy amount of photons and in some cases, it’s just too much. Check out this article for more info.
- Plant Doctor – Diagnose Your Cannabis Plants! – Hopefully, light stress is the only problem you deal with since it’s easy to fix. But if you’re dealing with other issues with your plant, this is a great place to go to learn how to identify the issue and quickly fix it. Cannabis is a hardy plant and if you react quickly, they can survive almost anything.
- How to Make Cannabis Tinctures – Have you ever made an edible cannabis tincture? For those who don’t know, a tincture is high-proof alcohol infused with cannabis. They’re usually awful to eat, but very portable, easy to store, and really strong as far as effects.
