What does los mean ? Im growing in living soil,10% ewc , 10% perlite, & 444
It means Living Organic Soil. I've grown in LOS for a long time, and I've seen The Claw many times. I also use Gaia regularly, it's a great product.
Unless you have dumped in a bunch of high nitrogen fertilizer, here's my best guess.
It looks to me that sometime in the last few days you gave them a really heavy watering. Far heavier than normal. A flush or a root soak or a watering to full runoff, and possibly into saucers that allowed the plant to re-absorb the runoff and soak it back into the pot. Very wet.
Or a shot of CalMag.
Or those worm castings were the very 1st application in quite awhile, or ever, and they were generous and fully watered in.
Or any/all of the above. They produce the same end result.
Gaia doesn't have much calcium in it so as the levels of calcium physically drop in the pot, as calcium is both heavy and very mobile when wet, you end up with too much magnesium at the surface as the heavy mobile calcium sinks.
Upper magnesium gets high in it's ratio to calcium as the calcium sinks.
Calcium and magnesium are both strong electrolytes and they control a lot of things in the soil, but must remain in ratio with each other or one gets out of control.
In ratio calcium keeps magnesium in check. When calcium is low in the ratio excess magnesium gets sticky.
So as you water, the calcium in the soil sinks and magnesium gets unruly at the surface.
When that happens magnesium starts to electrically stick to things on an atomic level. Nitrogen is magnesium's 1st choice and will attach to it on a 1 to 1 basis for every magnesium that isn't being tamed by calcium.
The end result is that as magnesium slowly builds up in the ratio, and by it's sticking to nitrogen, nitrogen slowly gets reduced in availability. It's there, it's just locked out, and the lockout keeps growing as more calcium sinks.
Then either a calmag event, or a full watering saturation comes along, and the calcium boost from the calmag, or the instant high mobility for calcium in the soil from a full watering event, allows calcium to homogenize throughout the pot, putting magnesium back in check, and all that nitrogen in the soil instantly gets released. Instant availability.
When that occurs you get the claw.
Just before flip I purposely use calmag and a full watering to cause it, to release the nitrogen time bomb before the flower cycle.
I look at your plants and other than the clawing they are very pretty.
The slight tip burn tells me they have adequate food and a strong environment. The leaves are fat with water so that indicates a heavy watering, and the tip burn and clawing are over the entire plant so it just occurred in the last 72 hours or so.
There are also a few lower leaves that show a slight magnesium deficiency, which is typical under these circumstances because if magnesium is locking out some nitrogen, some nitrogen is also locking out some magnesium.
That being said, pictures of water fat leaves reflect light to mimic what looks like a magnesium deficiency, when it's actually just glare off the ribs of the fat leaves, so the magnesium deficiency may be an optical illusion.
Also the mottled look in some of your lower fans says you need a heat mat under your pots. They aren't super cold, but it's creeping in. The mottling will go away when they warm up.
Or that water/calmag event was with cold water. Keep your water in the tent.
If that's what is going on, then either the flood that homogenized the soil calcium, or an application of calmag, causes this nitrogen release on contact. Boom. The Claw appears.
The good news is nitrogen is volatile so it vents quick. It's likely already back in balance. The bad news is the leaves stay clawed. So you need to watch new growth. If in 2 sets of new leaves it's still there, it's likely your soil is too wet, but thats a whole other conversation.
EWC contains a fair bit of readily available calcium, so regular topdressings of smaller amounts more often will keep adding fresh calcium that will slowly sink and keep magnesium in check on it's way down. Only adding large amounts very infrequently can release all that nitrogen.
An easy way to tell if magnesium is heavy is to let your pots dry down until the top inch is completely dry. Is it crusty? If so, that is magnesium sticking things together, you need a bit of calcium to release it.
So the real answer is it's a calcium issue in my opinion, which is the main problem in LOS.... it's almost always a calcium issue. The problem is how do you know if it's starting to get low, as you can't just keep adding calcium or sooner or later it will get too high and fry your plants like nute burn.
Luckily it's very easy in LOS to observe calcium levels in real time. You need an analog brix refractometer. They are $15-20 U.S. on amazon. Really easy to use.
You squish up a leaf until you can get a drip to come out and onto the refractometer, look into the eye piece, and if the reading line is fuzzy calcium is good, and if the line is crisp then calcium is low.
When it goes low in the leaf juice you are 2 weeks away from seeing it in the leaves and magnesium will be starting to get sticky. You will also notice surface crusting is starting.
This is how calmag greens up a plant in LOS. It unlocks the nitrogen.
Low doseage calcium used 2 or 3 times is far better than a single large dose.
I'd start by letting them dry down and then checking the surface for crusting, and order the refractometer as it's far more important than any PH or EC pens when growing in LOS.
It has to be an analog refractometer used for brix and alcohol levels. A winemakers refractometer, not a chemist's refractometer, and not a digital one.
The cheap one, how often does that happen
So that's my guess, was I even close?
