Brown & Crispy Leaves: Don't PANIC!

Has Your Cannabis Plant Got Some Brown and Crispy Leaves? Here’s the most likely culprits.

For the best cannabis crop, you want the healthiest cannabis plants.

So, should you begin to panic if some of the leaves on your cannabis plant begin to turn brown and become crispy in texture?

The answer is no, but you will need to get to the root cause of the problem – sorry about the pun, though it is not actually the roots where the problem lies, unless you have overdone the nutrients and burned them!

The consequence of this will usually see your leaves become crispy and fragile.

In fact, it might not be a problem at all as, when ‘flushing your plants’, roughly a fortnight before harvesting when you drastically reduce all nutrients, some of the fan leaves will curl and fall off the plant.

Similarly, when the plant is nearing the end of its life cycle, it is natural for some of the leaves to wither and die.

However, if you aren’t getting the correct balance of macronutrients and micronutrients right – lots of the former and less of the latter, that can affect leaf quality. Check out our previous video on the importance of macro and micro nutrients for more on that.

If the PH of the soil is too high or too low, the plant will struggle to absorb moisture, and the leaves will suffer as a consequence. Aiming for a soil PH of between 6.0 and 7.0 is optimum.

You could, of course, be overwatering your plants, which is easily done when new to growing cannabis plants. Overwatering means leaves take too much water absorbed up through the roots and, eventually, the cells can rupture.

Browning leaf tips will be the first warning signs of overwatering.

Keep an eye on the temperature of the air surrounding your plants. Excessive heat won’t help the plant to grow, it will dry it out instead, leading to crispy leaves and eventually a dead plant.

Be careful you are not subjecting the plants to too much light or that the light source is in too close a proximity to the plants. If you are growing your plants outside and the weather is unduly sunny, create some shade with a light cloth laid over a simple framework when the sun is at its strongest, usually between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.

So, if you’ve got crispy leaves, there’s usually a good reason with a simple solution to the problem.

All you need to do is figure it out, and when you do, let the rest of us know how it went in the comments section below.