Gee64
Well-Known Member
Calcium is the main player in the cation exchange. 75-80% of your colloids should be carrying calcium ions. The remaining 20-ish% is made up mainly of your magnesium and potassium. Sodium and aluminum to a far smaller percentage.
So if calcium is out of range your ratio's are out of whack. Everywhere. You get lockout and that causes deficiencies.
There is nothing wrong with using CalMag. If you need it, you need it. I like to have everything in the pot and in the top dressings/EWC because if I get through without needing CalMag then my soil and top dressings are balanced. If I need Calmag, I screwed up my mix.
If one of you folks needs it, it doesn't mean you screwed up your mix, it just means your mix is designed to work with CalMag is all.
There's a perfectly good reason Calmag is the most popular bottle, because it works.
Once calcium is correct, magnesium stops locking out nitrogen, so fixing a calcium deficiency automatically correct both magnesium and nitrogen lock-out.
Also, if calcium isn't correct on your colloids, neither is hydrogen, which is a filler of empty spaces on the colloids.
Hydrogen can flip from positive to negative and vica-versa, so when the colloids are almost full and hydrogen adjusts its charges to balance out the charge in the colloids, the amount of hydrogen on the colloid is directly linked to PH, so wrong calcium can upset the other cations, causing too much or too little hydrogen on the colloids.
End result... Unbalanced calcium causes an incorrect charge, and cations become static-electrically stuck to each other and to the colloid, and PH is effected by unnatural amounts of hydrogen on the colloids. Colloids ARE your CEC vehicles.
So low calcium = low calcium + locked magnesium + locked nitrogen.
The locking of magnesium to nitrogen also crusts the soil and chokes air out, thus reducing nitrogen and oxygen. A plant won't recognize food as food unless it has an oxygen molecule attached, so low oxygen causes full starvation.
Think overwatering really badly. Too much water means too little air. Low calcium will mimic over watering to a large degree.
If you have a nitrogen deficiency and you add a nitrogen source and it doesn't work, its because your low on calcium and mag has nitro locked.
So if your experiencing a nitro deficiency, always try calmag 1st. Otherwise if you try a nitro additive and lock up even more nitrogen, then fix calcium, mag gets put in check, releasing all the nitro plus the extra you just added, all at once.
You get The Claw real quick, and burnt tips. In late flower this nitro rush can make for less tight buds.
Calcium neutralizes magnesium on contact. So if you have a nitro deficiency and use Calmag, you should see better color within 48 hours if low calcium was your problem. If you get no results, then you were actually low on nitro.
It's hard to get a nitro deficiency in organics as the air is 78% nitrogen, and the microbes convert it to a plant useable nitrogen, so if you are nitro deficient, it's likely a calcium thing. Or over-watering.
Check those 2 things before you start dumping nitro in.
Low calcium can also cause magnesium deficiencies by locking it to nitrogen and the colloids, plus magnesium needs to be properly ratioed to calcium, so if you have a mag deficiency, you should check calcium 1st.
A cheepo analog refractometer, as in non-digital, is all you need, to check calcium in a plant.
