Emmie's Vegan Fertilizer, Pineapple Chunk 2020 Celebration: Experimental Soil Grow

[Old Salt]

There are too many cooks in that Mega Crop kitchen for all but an experienced grower. With only three years of cannabis growing experience, I don't count myself among them. It only leads to confusion. Bluter had a very good idea, but the message has been lost along the way.

Most people don't care how a computer works, just that it does, and when something goes wrong that they can get it quickly fixed. I'm the same with any nutrient line. The technical details don't interest me. I just want my plants to grow well enough for me, and the ability to get help when things go wrong. I had to learn to 'operate' the nutrient lines, just like someone needs to learn to operate a computer.

It was much easier growing veggies outside. Or maybe, it's just that I've been doing it for over five decades.

 

[Emilya Green]

Since the plant has to take time to uptake nutrients and process them

@Deketx please pay special note to this line... this is what is happening to you right now. Megacrop loads its full load of amino chelated nutes, except for a couple, right up into the plant! It has nowhere to go, until it is processed. This is why changes are so gradual in MC and why it is so easy to get to overdose before it can be seen and why even after a flush, it seems to take a long time for the plant to recover.

 

[MrSauga]

I would like @MrSauga to rephrase his latest question to GLN as follows: If someone has been overdosing the plant with MC, are the lockouts that result caused by the excess of Ca and Mg that has been given in proportional amounts with the excess Nitrogen?

I asked the question to GLN based on the scenario that the discussion has been about, so their response was to the question below. I have no intention of going back and rephrasing the question. He knew how much was being fed, how old the plant was and based on that he gave me the answer I expected to hear. I think you just need to accept the fact it's not a Ca overdose and unless at extreme levels(outside of the calculator values) or other factors MC does not create Ca buildup

I’m not sure if you can answer this question for me. I have a plant growing in a mix of Living Organic Soil and Fox Farm Ocean Forest potting mix (don’t ask why J ) in mid to late flower stage. I’m currently feeding at 5g/gal. I have a deficiency that resembles a Ca toxicity. Would the megacrop at 5g/gal at that stage of growth be enough, in your opinion, to cause Ca excess? Or should I be looking at something else.

I honestly don't want to pursue it anymore. You can tell members your way and I'll continue my way.

 

[Emilya Green]

It should be very hard to ever get an excess by not exceeding 5g, but that is not the issue. Many with problems have even exceeded 6g, but you didn't ask about that. But that is ok, since you don't want to pursue it any more... I will seek the truth as best I can without you.

 

[DrCannaCanadian]

Hey @Emilya - things are looking great!

I am currently growing plants in soil and plants in coco/perlite.

I know that soil has the virtue of being natural, buffers pH and supports microlife.

I know coco/perlite is an empty medium and we control pH and forego mocrolife.

The question I keep thinking about is as follows:

If I don't need microlife in my medium, or if MegaCrop doesn't play well with microlife, then why should I use MegaCrop in soil?

I keep thinking that I should just use MegaCrop with coco/perlite.

This takes me back to when I was first learning, and I was using Fox Farm nutes with my Fox Farm soil and found out that the nutes were killing off the microlife - so why should I even be using soil anyway if I don't need the microlife?

I'm likely still missing something

 

[DrCannaCanadian]

It should be very hard to ever get an excess by not exceeding 5g, but that is not the issue. Many with problems have even exceeded 6g, but you didn't ask about that. But that is ok, since you don't want to pursue it any more... I will seek the truth as best I can without you.

FYI, I think @ProfessorFlora went to 7.5 g/Gallon with his Do-Si-Dos --- and it did not end well.

 

[Emilya Green]

Hey @Emilya - things are looking great!

I am currently growing plants in soil and plants in coco/perlite.

I know that soil has the virtue of being natural, buffers pH and supports microlife.

I know coco/perlite is an empty medium and we control pH and forego mocrolife.

The question I keep thinking about is as follows:

If I don't need microlife in my medium, or if MegaCrop doesn't play well with microlife, then why should I use MegaCrop in soil?

I keep thinking that I should just use MegaCrop with coco/perlite.

This takes me back to when I was first learning, and I was using Fox Farm nutes with my Fox Farm soil and found out that the nutes were killing off the microlife - so why should I even be using soil anyway if I don't need the microlife?

I'm likely still missing something

I think mostly it should be a matter of personal preference. I prefer soil simply because of its water retention abilities and now with my recent experiments, its ability to work with a product like @Vulx to drastically increase the root's contact with the medium so as to allow for much better nutrient exchange. I am not concerned one bit about pH or that my soil produces a positive drift... this is MegaCrop and as long as I am within 7.5-5.5 with my pH, I think all will agree that the MC nutrient availability is just fine. I am betting that someone could use MC just as I am using it here, in coco/perlite or any combination of the two using tap water and not adjusting pH.

 

[DrCannaCanadian]

I see what you're doing:

Soil, Microorganisms, Water Retention, pH Buffer, MC, SK, SC, BE, Vulx

That's an awesome combination that takes advantage of the natural properties of soil and the science of fertilizers and amendments!

I would not be surprised if a bunch of amateur home growers with anonymous 420 accounts without college degrees have no clue what you are doing.

Just keep doing what you're doing - I'm pretty sure the master chemists at GLN & Vulx understand your strategy - and that's what really counts!

For now, I am going to go with coco/perlite, MC, SK, BE, pH 5.8

I am betting that someone could use MC just as I am using it here, in coco/perlite or any combination of the two using tap water and not adjusting pH.

??? That sounds like a disaster!

I'm not aware of anyone not pHing hydro or that MC has pH perfect technology.

@Old Salt , do you pH your coco/perlite with MC?

 

[Emilya Green]

it would be a good test to see if nutrient pH availability is really what the papers say it is... I may try it someday soon

 

[DrCannaCanadian]

it would be a good test to see if nutrient pH availability is really what the papers say it is... I may try it someday soon

Unfortunately, I still consider myself an amateur - and need to maximize my harvests for medicine.

But one day, there are a lot of little experiments I would love to run.

I hope your enjoying your weekend - chat later

 

[Deketx]

@Deketx please pay special note to this line... this is what is happening to you right now. Megacrop loads its full load of amino chelated nutes, except for a couple, right up into the plant! It has nowhere to go, until it is processed. This is why changes are so gradual in MC and why it is so easy to get to overdose before it can be seen and why even after a flush, it seems to take a long time for the plant to recover.

I know I have to be patient but it's killing me! Like @Old Salt I think my harvest will suffer unfortunately. They were really taking off when this hit. I'll just hope things correct themselves and what I get is descent.

 

[Emilya Green]

Full Bloom, Day 40
Still running strong, with totally out of control tap water and no idea what the pH of my nutes or soil happen to be, and still apparently an anomaly in the MC world according to some.
Here is MegaCrop green, from top to bottom:

All right folks, it is time to get serious here. I know that the things I am saying in this thread, my own version of a "how to use MegaCrop" thread, are directly at odds with 4 or 5 prominent growers out there who think they have devised a "system" to work with MC, all while adding in their own extras and with many of them pushing MC beyond the limits it was designed for. I seem to have unique thoughts about the use of MC in organic soils and the quality of water needed.

I wouldn't call myself a master gardener of weeds, but I am pretty darn good at this and I am very good at reading my plants. It is clear to me that I have learned how to use the MC correctly, while also effectively applying the GLN supplements.

The plants are now at 4.5g MC, and they look fantastic. They look better than they have looked since late veg even though showing a few battle scars gathered along the way! 4.5g is the perfect amount of MC for my situation (yours will vary depending on your local factors) and the color of the plants today is superb, from top to bottom. Not only that, but the bud growth and development right now is amazing, and the trichomes are coming in so thick at the moment that it is breathtaking. Entire regions of the buds are now sparkling in the light because there are so many trichomes stacking up, and we are not quite yet to the beginning of week 6!

Once the correct level of MC (N,Ca,Mg) is found by going for the proper green, magic starts to happen. With everything in the proper MC balance, 10-7-18, it is time to adjust for the stage the plant is in. Whilst in veg, SK is appropriate for its root building abilities, along with its extra K. During stretch, it seems that SC would be appropriate, helping to initiate Budset, and then from Mid-Boom on, BE with its load of P and K can help develop the buds to full completion. The key to using these supplements successfully is in proper timing and not going overboard with the numbers. A little bit of BE, with its massive PK numbers, goes a long way to boosting your NPK levels to where they need to be in bloom. It is imperative however, to first have everything in MegaCrop balance, showing the correct shade of green, or lockouts will occur.

Less is more, and I will be very reluctant to go above 4.5g ever again in 5g containers. Larger gardens and larger plants will be able to handle more than this, but that level will need to be carefully ramped up to. If you have overdone the MC, forget using the supplements... they will be very hard to manage if not impossible. If you have given extra calcium or magnesium, forget using the supplements, they will likely lock out.

MC is designed to be simple to use but yet many are making the huge mistake of looking at the upper limit of MC on the feeding calculator as a challenge that needs to be met. If you misuse the product, you will likely have problems. Read their instructions carefully about the green and the use of supplements. Less is more... it is super important to not exceed the capability of your plants.

If you are doing this correctly, pH should not be an issue for you, it is not for me. The quality of your water is not much of an issue in soil, although it may be important to someone tracking ppm, and chlorine is not something you need to guard against. There are many misconceptions and lack of knowledge about amino chelation out here in the online world right now surrounding this MC. Conversations implying that GLN is lying to us or full of corporate greed, are not helpful.

Contrary to what some may say, I do know what I am doing. I grow beautiful plants, no matter the mode or medium and I have done this for many years while learning my skills. I pushed MC hard on this grow, specifically to see where its problems occurred and through this I have learned a lot about the product. I pushed and then recovered from the mistakes twice in this grow, fully documenting every step of the way just to show what happens, how much was possible, and how to recover from the mistakes.

No one else out there has done this for you or tried to explain what happens when you exceed the limits. This talk that it is impossible to tox out your plants by exceeding the needed MC, is silly. The proof that we are getting Ca and Mg lockouts is all around us... one just needs to open their eyes. To argue that this could not be the mechanism behind all of our lockouts, is disappointing.

Now, the proof... My buds at 40 days... according to some, the result of doing everything wrong and being totally unscientific.

and then this sweet little thing, way down deep into the canopy:

 

[Billpopy79]

Hey Emilya.
I must say your plants are looking great and those buds are going to be humongous at this rate.
It's great that you have the different ideas of how to use MC and also having the balls and know how to actually push the boundaries.
I have a question, other than ease of use is there any reason to you not checking the pH of your feed?
Does this not affect the uptake of any suppliments?

 

[Emilya Green]

Hey Emilya.
I must say your plants are looking great and those buds are going to be humongous at this rate.
It's great that you have the different ideas of how to use MC and also having the balls and know how to actually push the boundaries.
I have a question, other than ease of use is there any reason to you not checking the pH of your feed?
Does this not affect the uptake of any suppliments?

Keep in mind that nature does not adjust the pH... it takes whatever comes in and the plant manages, because in the great outdoors, the microbes in the soil do not care about the pH of the rainwater. The same thing happens in a container organic grow... the microbes don't care.
When we analyze our methods, we can see that the only reason we adjust pH is because of the chelation, or the packaging that our nutes come in. If we just dumped all of the elements in our nutes into a container together without some prep work, there would be massive interactions between some of them, especially in liquid form. Some would not survive the trip from the manufacturer to your garden. To solve this problem, manufacturers "chelate" the individual nutes, by chemically putting a shell around them that is designed to break apart and make the nutrients mobile only when they encounter a specific pH range. This neatly solves the packaging problem, and when you apply your solutions at the correct specified pH, your nutes become mobile in the solution and available to the plants. The old salt based EDTA chelated nutes were typically used between the ranges of 5.5-6.1pH in water based systems and 6.2-6.8pH in soil based systems. We adjusted our waters accordingly.
Amino chelation is different. It has a much wider range where the amino acid will strip away and reveal the nutes inside. Since the amino acid is molecularly so much smaller than EDTA, the nutes are much smaller overall, and much more easily lifted right up into the plant, still chelated. EDTA can't do that, it is blocked by its size at the roots. So with MC, already the mechanism to get the nutes up into the plant is way more efficient (140% more) and the nutes are mostly all sitting inside the plant, waiting to be processed. The internal pH of the plant is 6.1, so for a perfect transfer you could try to adjust to that point, but ... and this is a biggie... you don't have to.
The bioavailability of the nutes (where the amino acid chelate is stripped off and the nute is available) is different for each element, but overall, between 7.5 pH all the way down to 5.5, the amino acid is stripped off easily by the plant and the nute special prize inside is revealed.
This wide range of pH is very close to the known safe range of pH... where something is not so base or acid that it will burn you. It is a huge range, and not one that is at all hard to hit, and it matters not whether you are at one end or another or in the middle, bioavailability stays fairly constant on that curve. Even without a pH meter I can surmise that my tap water is somewhere around 7 and when I add the nutes it probably drops down into the low 6's or high 5's. That is fine with me, and no longer a worry. It took some additional study to reveal this science in order understand GLN's very casual mention of pH on their website, and it was this idea of not having to pH adjust that first made me look at MegaCrop seriously.

 

[Billpopy79]

Keep in mind that nature does not adjust the pH... it takes whatever comes in and the plant manages, because in the great outdoors, the microbes in the soil do not care about the pH of the rainwater. The same thing happens in a container organic grow... the microbes don't care.
When we analyze our methods, we can see that the only reason we adjust pH is because of the chelation, or the packaging that our nutes come in. If we just dumped all of the elements in our nutes into a container together without some prep work, there would be massive interactions between some of them, especially in liquid form. Some would not survive the trip from the manufacturer to your garden. To solve this problem, manufacturers "chelate" the individual nutes, by chemically putting a shell around them that is designed to break apart and make the nutrients mobile only when they encounter a specific pH range. This neatly solves the packaging problem, and when you apply your solutions at the correct specified pH, your nutes become mobile in the solution and available to the plants. The old salt based EDTA chelated nutes were typically used between the ranges of 5.5-6.1pH in water based systems and 6.2-6.8pH in soil based systems. We adjusted our waters accordingly.
Amino chelation is different. It has a much wider range where the amino acid will strip away and reveal the nutes inside. Since the amino acid is molecularly so much smaller than EDTA, the nutes are much smaller overall, and much more easily lifted right up into the plant, still chelated. EDTA can't do that, it is blocked by its size at the roots. So with MC, already the mechanism to get the nutes up into the plant is way more efficient (140% more) and the nutes are mostly all sitting inside the plant, waiting to be processed. The internal pH of the plant is 6.1, so for a perfect transfer you could try to adjust to that point, but ... and this is a biggie... you don't have to.
The bioavailability of the nutes (where the amino acid chelate is stripped off and the nute is available) is different for each element, but overall, between 7.5 pH all the way down to 5.5, the amino acid is stripped off easily by the plant and the nute special prize inside is revealed.
This wide range of pH is very close to the known safe range of pH... where something is not so base or acid that it will burn you. It is a huge range, and not one that is at all hard to hit, and it matters not whether you are at one end or another or in the middle, bioavailability stays fairly constant on that curve. Even without a pH meter I can surmise that my tap water is somewhere around 7 and when I add the nutes it probably drops down into the low 6's or high 5's. That is fine with me, and no longer a worry. It took some additional study to reveal this science in order understand GLN's very casual mention of pH on their website, and it was this idea of not having to pH adjust that first made me look at MegaCrop seriously.

Thanks Emilya.
So i think I'm starting to understand now.
Most nutes have to wait for a bus, that bus is taking them to the plants at a certain time and using a set route (pH range)
Mega crop provides these with their own transportation so they can go whenever they like and take any route they want.

 

[Emilya Green]

Side note:
When GLN says this:

You should make dosage changes for the first time in small amounts, for example changes of 10-20% increase or decrease only, and then waiting 2-3 weeks days to monitor plant response after each change. Since the plant has to take time to uptake nutrients and process them, it may take 2-3 weeks days to notice the results of the changes you made.

surely this is a typo... we don't have 2-3 weeks to watch for changes in our weeds. I think this statement above makes much more sense if we substitute the word "days" for weeks above. @GreenleafNutr ?

 

[Emilya Green]

Full Bloom, Day 41
Today was watering day and once again these plants at their peak of nutritional needs are amazingly happy at 4.5g of MegaCrop. The color is outstanding and as time goes by the tops and bottoms of the plants getting closer and closer to the same shade of Megacrop green. There are no active problems to be seen and growth of the buds continues unabated. The BE and SC was given again, at the same 1g/g level as before, with no adverse effects to be found. Meanwhile, I still see people overfeeding their MC plants and puzzling over mottled leaves. Someone please send a lifeline to those other threads, and tell them that Emmie, with all of her unscientific beliefs and inexperience, has found a better way, simply by following the directions.

 

[Cannygrow]

i Have been feeding this girl 6g/g at 5.8/6.2 ph in coco loco at the first sign of cal-mag d deficiency I piped up the .5g suggestion that is common the deficiency did not soread and seems contained but now the plants seems to have hit some other form of defficiencies wich looks like nitrogen to me. I am a bit confused as to hats actually going on. The leaves seems a nice deep green with bearly any burning. I was actually going to scale back the dose but am now a bit worried since the yellowing has occurred.any advice ?

 

[Emilya Green]

i Have been feeding this girl 6g/g at 5.8/6.2 ph in coco loco at the first sign of cal-mag d deficiency I piped up the .5g suggestion that is common the deficiency did not soread and seems contained but now the plants seems to have hit some other form of defficiencies wich looks like nitrogen to me. I am a bit confused as to hats actually going on. The leaves seems a nice deep green with bearly any burning. I was actually going to scale back the dose but am now a bit worried since the yellowing has occurred.any advice ?

unfortunately, your problem looks exactly like what we have been seeing all around the forums, it appears to be a potassium lockout caused by giving way too much MC. You called that a nice deep green... no, that is an alarmingly too deep of green, showing that you are having a Nitrogen overload, and it definitely is not MegaCrop green.
Since you are overloading the plant with N, you are also overloading it with Magnesium and Calcium, which are coming in at the same percentage of overage as the N is. Too much Mg and Ca will lock out Potassium, and that is what your leaves are showing you... a potassium deficiency. Since we know that there is plenty of K in the MC mix, we know that it is not a typical deficiency, but instead, that which is there is being locked out.

My monster plants are getting along fine with 4.5g of MC. I suggest that you immediately cut your MC dosage to 5g and maintain that for several waterings to see if the plant can recover from this over fertilization quickly. The damage you now see will not go away, but if you act now, you can keep it from getting a whole lot worse, but also keep in mind that your plant now is loaded up with 2 or 3 days worth of 6g MC, and its effects will not go away until the plant has had a chance to process all the nutes you last gave it... any changes you make now are not going to be seen for at least a few days.

 

[Buds Buddy]

Lookin' Good ! Gotta lotta reading to do to catch up.