Scrog'ing Mothers Gone Wild

[g-one-three]

Day 29 of 12/12
..... Ya I had a golf outing and it was an early to bed for me hahaha moving on to

Day 30 of 12/12

 

[g-one-three]

Cold roots will cause all kinds of issues. I use upside down milk crates to keep them off the floor. 69 degrees and above in the soil makes an unbelievable difference. 66 is too cold for sure.

So I got the heat mat going and buried the temp probe into the soil about 4". The reading was 67° and that's with the lights on, I set it to 74. Hopefully this will keep the root zone warmer, especially at night.

 

[g-one-three]

Day 31

 

[Gee64]

Well if you look past the part of the one plant thats acting funky they look really nice. Turgidity and color are good and the flowers speak for themselves. I've never seen a plant do this before, and you have no idea how many plants I have purposely tortured over the years. Any chance it's possible to get a good pic of the affected limbs coming off the main trunk? Or a few of them even, from some different angles?

Also you should notice a difference if you get your soil temps up.

The injured leaves look lower and older. Any chance that around flip you might have had the light up too high and sunburned them and only the new growth since then is better?

 

[g-one-three]

Well if you look past the part of the one plant thats acting funky they look really nice. Turgidity and color are good and the flowers speak for themselves. I've never seen a plant do this before, and you have no idea how many plants I have purposely tortured over the years. Any chance it's possible to get a good pic of the affected limbs coming off the main trunk? Or a few of them even, from some different angles?

Also you should notice a difference if you get your soil temps up.

The injured leaves look lower and older. Any chance that around flip you might have had the light up too high and sunburned them and only the new growth since then is better?

Well I'm happy to have given you something that you haven't seen before. I will say that the smell begining to come off of them is sweet, almost candy like especially the healthy buds on the damaged one.

I'm hoping removing the DI part of the RODI water will start to allow the soil and roots to heal.


This is a picture of the stalks lol far less bonsai now that they've grown out. I've highlighted the main culprits that are holding the budsites with issues.

This is the first time I have seen one of these deficient bud sites pray and not look totally unhappy.

 

[Gee64]

Well I'm happy to have given you something that you haven't seen before. I will say that the smell begining to come off of them is sweet, almost candy like especially the healthy buds on the damaged one.

I'm hoping removing the DI part of the RODI water will start to allow the soil and roots to heal.


This is a picture of the stalks lol far less bonsai now that they've grown out. I've highlighted the main culprits that are holding the budsites with issues.

This is the first time I have seen one of these deficient bud sites pray and not look totally unhappy.

This is going to be a long post, grab a coffee.

Those stalks do look lesser in girth than the others so the plant may be directing nutes as it see's fit, but if the leaves are going up then they are producing sugars, so the plant should cater to them.

Keep doing everything you are doing, and dial your water in. If she likes Calmag then keep it coming. It's a good balance of both cal and mag in perfect ratio. Mixing prilled dolomite in water makes good calmag too.

So you hear all sorts of "veg you should do this, and in flower you should do that" and all that may be true for the style of grow that the sayer was growing, but in living soil it's different. Here's how it works in a nutshell, and toss out all your veg and flower rules you have heard.

What I'm about to say is where most LOS grows go bad, especially ones in SIPs.

1st, you need available calcium in your soil. It is an electrolyte, so it supplies electricity to soil. Microbes run on electricity.

It's magnetic charge is positive, so it causes static in the soil much like rubbing a balloon on your head and then watching dust particles attract to it.

That static, when it gets just right, will make your soil fluff right up. It's called tilth and in this aspect calcium is referred to as a "soil conditioner" .

It's ratio to magnesium sets the degree of active static, so dolomite, which is natures blend of cal and mag is best. Prilled dolomite is the best dolomite for weed.

So lets say you have calcium correct and tilth has been achieved. This is what tilth is... Soil particles are like dinner plates.

They stack up like plates in a cupboard. They have a charge in the center and an opposite charge at the edges, so they stick together magnetically.

When cal and mag get correct, their combined charge alters the charge in the plates and in the exact same way 2 magnets will stick, but if you reverse one they repel. When tilth is acheived, every 2nd plate repels. This causes every 2nd plate to stand on edge, fluffing your compacted soil bigtime.

Now you have passages in the soil that air and water share. If the passages are too full of water then air is restricted. If there is too much air things drought.

This is where soil carbon comes in. I use coco but it's dealers choice on the soil carbon you choose. So lets say we are using coco.

Carbon holds 4 times its weight in absorbed water. So when you water and it runs thru all the hallways that tilth created, it absorbs into the carbon like a sponge. If you can fully hydrate all the carbon but leave no puddles in the hallways you now have lots of moisture but the hallways are open completely for maximum O2. The best of both worlds.

Now microbes can flourish and breath and move about and nothing is dehydrating.

That carbon has swollen tho to hold all that water so the hallways are open but narrow.

OK now the difference between veg and flower... Flower requires microbes to mine more phosphorus, and lots of it. You can't just add high phos ferts, it crashes living soil, the microbes must do it.

The extra work involved is hard work. The microbes require more oxygen to do it. So in flower you need to dry down a bit in order to shrink the carbon thus opening the hallways wider for more O2.

We can talk all day about nitrogen but nitro is simple. More nitrogen requires more water, less nitrogen requires less water.

So to put it all together, veg requires more nitrogen because protein is nitrogen and plants use tons of protein to grow like they do until stretch is done. Veg needs to be wetter.

After stretch is done they immediately require way less protein because they are growing less, so less nitrogen, so less water, but way more air because they are working hard to mine Phos.

So when stretch is ending you need to water often, but much less each watering, going from fairly moist to only damp.

Get cal and mag correct to condition the soil to open the hallways up, then water correctly for veg and for flower. 90%, if not more, of all problems will go away.

The trick in flower is you can't water near as much at once as in veg, but the soil can't go dry either, so you need to find the sweet spot and water far less at once, but far more often, to stop the violent swings of a wet/dry cycle, and settle in on a moderately damp steady cycle.

Organics translates to "of carbon base" and thats because plants require correct carbon in the soil to regulate air and water, and carbon from the air to create sugars, which are mainly carbon. I have tried many soil carbons and coco works best here.

If you take food and water out of the picture plants only require 6 things other than light and water.

Minerals, carbon, calcium (in ratio with magnesium) oxygen, microbes (myco gets lumped in here too) and phosphorus. All soil has minerals and we just covered the rest, mostly by watering properly.

Ensure you have mineralized phosphorus in your soil from day 1 of sprout. Plants need a bit more phosphorus tomorrow than they needed today, every day of their lives. I use the same soil mix in all stages, I just add more carbon and perlite to weaken it's nutitional vale at the seedling stage.

So thats it, get minerals, organic matter (plant food), carbon, and phosphorus into a pot, add calcium to fluff it, water it properly to regulate O2, and introduce microbes and fungii.

If you have all that and your plant goes yellow then your soil is too wet, oxygen is cut off, and the plant starves because all that organic matter needs to be attached to an oxygen molecule in order for the plant to recognize it as food, so even in a pot rich with food a plant will starve if it's overwatered. A starving plant can show any kind of deficiency, depending on it's stage of life.

I hope that makes sense, its the basic system that organics runs on. Once that is established you can screw around a million different ways to customize your grow/art, but you must adhere to these basics. Get one wrong and it all crashes.

Usually it's lack of calcium and too much water, they go hand in hand.

Calcium is extremely mobile in water, and it's the heaviest mineral in the pot, so overwatering literally causes calcium to fall out the bottom of the pot.

 

[g-one-three]

This is going to be a long post, grab a coffee.

Those stalks do look lesser in girth than the others so the plant may be directing nutes as it see's fit, but if the leaves are going up then they are producing sugars, so the plant should cater to them.

Keep doing everything you are doing, and dial your water in. If she likes Calmag then keep it coming. It's a good balance of both cal and mag in perfect ratio. Mixing prilled dolomite in water makes good calmag too.

So you hear all sorts of "veg you should do this, and in flower you should do that" and all that may be true for the style of grow that the sayer was growing, but in living soil it's different. Here's how it works in a nutshell, and toss out all your veg and flower rules you have heard.

What I'm about to say is where most LOS grows go bad, especially ones in SIPs.

1st, you need available calcium in your soil. It is an electrolyte, so it supplies electricity to soil. Microbes run on electricity.

It's magnetic charge is positive, so it causes static in the soil much like rubbing a balloon on your head and then watching dust particles attract to it.

That static, when it gets just right, will make your soil fluff right up. It's called tilth and in this aspect calcium is referred to as a "soil conditioner" .

It's ratio to magnesium sets the degree of active static, so dolomite, which is natures blend of cal and mag is best. Prilled dolomite is the best dolomite for weed.

So lets say you have calcium correct and tilth has been achieved. This is what tilth is... Soil particles are like dinner plates.

They stack up like plates in a cupboard. They have a charge in the center and an opposite charge at the edges, so they stick together magnetically.

When cal and mag get correct, their combined charge alters the charge in the plates and in the exact same way 2 magnets will stick, but if you reverse one they repel. When tilth is acheived, every 2nd plate repels. This causes every 2nd plate to stand on edge, fluffing your compacted soil bigtime.

Now you have passages in the soil that air and water share. If the passages are too full of water then air is restricted. If there is too much air things drought.

This is where soil carbon comes in. I use coco but it's dealers choice on the soil carbon you choose. So lets say we are using coco.

Carbon holds 4 times its weight in absorbed water. So when you water and it runs thru all the hallways that tilth created, it absorbs into the carbon like a sponge. If you can fully hydrate all the carbon but leave no puddles in the hallways you now have lots of moisture but the hallways are open completely for maximum O2. The best of both worlds.

Now microbes can flourish and breath and move about and nothing is dehydrating.

That carbon has swollen tho to hold all that water so the hallways are open but narrow.

OK now the difference between veg and flower... Flower requires microbes to mine more phosphorus, and lots of it. You can't just add high phos ferts, it crashes living soil, the microbes must do it.

The extra work involved is hard work. The microbes require more oxygen to do it. So in flower you need to dry down a bit in order to shrink the carbon thus opening the hallways wider for more O2.

We can talk all day about nitrogen but nitro is simple. More nitrogen requires more water, less nitrogen requires less water.

So to put it all together, veg requires more nitrogen because protein is nitrogen and plants use tons of protein to grow like they do until stretch is done. Veg needs to be wetter.

After stretch is done they immediately require way less protein because they are growing less, so less nitrogen, so less water, but way more air because they are working hard to mine Phos.

So when stretch is ending you need to water often, but much less each watering, going from fairly moist to only damp.

Get cal and mag correct to condition the soil to open the hallways up, then water correctly for veg and for flower. 90%, if not more, of all problems will go away.

The trick in flower is you can't water near as much at once as in veg, but the soil can't go dry either, so you need to find the sweet spot and water far less at once, but far more often, to stop the violent swings of a wet/dry cycle, and settle in on a moderately damp steady cycle.

Organics translates to "of carbon base" and thats because plants require correct carbon in the soil to regulate air and water, and carbon from the air to create sugars, which are mainly carbon. I have tried many soil carbons and coco works best here.

If you take food and water out of the picture plants only require 6 things other than light and water.

Minerals, carbon, calcium (in ratio with magnesium) oxygen, microbes (myco gets lumped in here too) and phosphorus. All soil has minerals and we just covered the rest, mostly by watering properly.

Ensure you have mineralized phosphorus in your soil from day 1 of sprout. Plants need a bit more phosphorus tomorrow than they needed today, every day of their lives. I use the same soil mix in all stages, I just add more carbon and perlite to weaken it's nutitional vale at the seedling stage.

So thats it, get minerals, organic matter (plant food), carbon, and phosphorus into a pot, add calcium to fluff it, water it properly to regulate O2, and introduce microbes and fungii.

If you have all that and your plant goes yellow then your soil is too wet, oxygen is cut off, and the plant starves because all that organic matter needs to be attached to an oxygen molecule in order for the plant to recognize it as food, so even in a pot rich with food a plant will starve if it's overwatered. A starving plant can show any kind of deficiency, depending on it's stage of life.

I hope that makes sense, its the basic system that organics runs on. Once that is established you can screw around a million different ways to customize your grow/art, but you must adhere to these basics. Get one wrong and it all crashes.

Usually it's lack of calcium and too much water, they go hand in hand.

Calcium is extremely mobile in water, and it's the heaviest mineral in the pot, so overwatering literally causes calcium to fall out the bottom of the pot.

I've had my glass of water (11:50pm here so no coffee this late) and I think I'm understanding and relating my issues to this information. I'm going to try to write out how I'm understanding it and if I'm off on something let me know. I also have a couple questions as well.

So in using my RO DI water I was possibly pulling the calcium and oxygen right out of the soil and even with the CalMag addition it still wasn't enough to keep the plates stacked on end. I didn't start adding CalMag until after flip which the DI water was already striping Calcium and whatever else, oxygen?, it could pull out of the soil. That could explain the over watering and subsequent nitrogen deficiency because the there wasn't much oxygen to attach to the nitrogen due the lack of calcium closing the hallways.

Could that also explain why I was having trouble mixing in my Gaia Green top dress as well because the tilth was off causing the soil to compact down?

It just dawned on me I have prilled dolomite lime that I use in my veggie garden in the spring. I'm almost out of my bottled CalMag so this could be the perfect time to switch. What ratio per gallon of water should I use? Do I need to pH it after mixing it up?

My soil uses sphagnum peat moss and processed forest products, so that'd be the carbon in my soil? It also contains perlite and pumice but I'm assuming that's for aeration.

Also thanks for taking the time explaining and helping me with this, I really appreciate it.

 

[Gee64]

I've had my glass of water (11:50pm here so no coffee this late) and I think I'm understanding and relating my issues to this information. I'm going to try to write out how I'm understanding it and if I'm off on something let me know. I also have a couple questions as well.

So in using my RO DI water I was possibly pulling the calcium and oxygen right out of the soil and even with the CalMag addition it still wasn't enough to keep the plates stacked on end.

It is completely possible and quite probable, yes.

I didn't start adding CalMag until after flip which the DI water was already striping Calcium and whatever else, oxygen?, it could pull out of the soil. That could explain the over watering and subsequent nitrogen deficiency because the there wasn't much oxygen to attach to the nitrogen due the lack of calcium closing the hallways.

That's exactly what happens. Soil nitrogen provides essential aminos and atmospheric nitrogen allows the assimilation of non essential aminos. You need both.

Could that also explain why I was having trouble mixing in my Gaia Green top dress as well because the tilth was off causing the soil to compact down?

Now that you mention it, and I'm glad you did, yes it certainly could. Your soil could very well be very compacted. Untilthy.

It just dawned on me I have prilled dolomite lime that I use in my veggie garden in the spring. I'm almost out of my bottled CalMag so this could be the perfect time to switch. What ratio per gallon of water should I use? Do I need to pH it after mixing it up?

I mix half a cup in a 1 quart jar of RO water, put the lid on it, and shake the daylights out of it. Then I mix a bit of that concentrate with fresh RO water until I get 50-85ppm. 50 ppm is a maintenance level that I use weekly-ish when growing in small pots. Every 3rd watering. 85ppm is what I use at first when recovering from a deficiency up to the point that I only need maintenance. I'm not sure if you have a ppm tester but in living soil both a ppm tester and an analog refractometer come in very handy. Calcium is vital and too much is deadly as it is literally electricity in a bottle. The refractometer will tell you the state of calcium in the plant, the ppm meter will tell you what level you are adding. At the price of calmag it only takes a few bottles worth of home made dolomite water to pay for both meters. Don't buy a digital refractometer, they can't measure calcium.

My soil uses sphagnum peat moss and processed forest products, so that'd be the carbon in my soil? It also contains perlite and pumice but I'm assuming that's for aeration.

Processes forest products are excellent carbon. They recycle really well too. Spaghnum is good too but there isn't much left after recycling. Thats why I switched to coco, but spaghnum is good stuff too

Also thanks for taking the time explaining and helping me with this, I really appreciate it.

No problem Any time. I hope it helps.

P (phosphorus) is vital to flower but if you introduce it at birth, the plant and rhizosphere will mine and store it in advance and it really makes for better buds. It's what takes your end game from nice to Freakin' Spectacular.

The nugginess will amaze you. Don't add too much, find a good recipe, but have it available all thru veg for a much better flower.

It is something you need to stay ahead of for a good finish. Once it's deficient you can never truly catch up on it. Things like fossilized bat guano or soft rock phosphate added in proper amounts to your veg soil make the flip to flower seamless.

In LOS never use liquid P. Gaia Power Bloom has adequate amounts, but Gaia is low on calcium, so you need to bring the calcium.

Fish ferts greatly and drastically improve myco's health, and you MUST have healthy myco to have a chance of big nugs. Hydrolysed is the way to go. Never waste your money on any fish products that contain the word emulsion. Not even if they include the word hydrolosate with the word emulsion. If you see the word emulsion keep walking. Emulsion is whats left of hydrolysate, or hydrolysed as it is also called, after the food industry strips out all the good stuff we need. Emulsion is a wadte product. Hydrolysate is expensive, but it ladts a long time. My brand uses 1.5ml per litre of water.

Also, home made dolomite water in it's concentrate form is really stinky so keep a lid on it. It's not going rancid, thats just how it smells. You will see what I mean

Add all this up and your plants will be healthy enough that bugs shouldn't bug you.

 

[g-one-three]

So this is the fish stuff I have.

Should I add it in even with the standard 2-8-4 Gaia Green top dressing? I am always afraid of over doing it.

Also should the dolo water be fed straight or could I add in the fish ferts into the same water?

 

[g-one-three]

Also should I ph down the dolo water because I'm assuming it's going to raise the ph

 

[Ke0ncp]

Turning that corner! Great work! Your plants are looking great!

 

[g-one-three]

Turning that corner! Great work! Your plants are looking great!

Thanks man, of it wasn't for members here I'd be still swimming in circles lol. You ghosts are coming along well too!

 

[Ke0ncp]

Thanks man, of it wasn't for members here I'd be still swimming in circles lol. You ghosts are coming along well too!

I am right there with you!! I would have landed at some other forum and wouldn’t have met all of the great growers of all walks that are here!!

My ladies are on the struggle bus! I think I have it fixed though. The next 7-10 days will let me know though.

 

[g-one-three]

I am right there with you!! I would have landed at some other forum and wouldn’t have met all of the great growers of all walks that are here!!

My ladies are on the struggle bus! I think I have it fixed though. The next 7-10 days will let me know though.

Dude ya honestly I look back and think dang thank god my password and email were still the same from 10 years ago hahaha coulda ended up in a strange land struggling to grow whatever the cool kids were pushing haha now I'm looking up refractometers for measuring Brix and I don't know what happened .

Good luck with the girls I'll swing over to your spot and check it out.

 

[g-one-three]

@Gee64 so I mixed up some of the prilled dolomite. It's kinda chocolate milky but it doesn't stink, does that mean it's not mixed through? There is a kind of gray chalk at the bottom that settles out.

 

[Gee64]

@Gee64 so I mixed up some of the prilled dolomite. It's kinda chocolate milky but it doesn't stink, does that mean it's not mixed through? There is a kind of gray chalk at the bottom that settles out.

That looks good G. Don't worry, in a few weeks you will uncap it and you will say "Oh, there it is, now excuse me while I vomit".

When that day comes don't throw it out or worry, it just is what it is and works great.

Just please be careful. Lower doses more often are way better than higher. Over 75 and it gets risky, over 100 and it becomes dangerous. Shake it well before using every time.

If you get a refractometer look at the crispness/fuziness of the reading line. The crisper it is, the lower the calcium in the plant. The fuzzier the better.

See how the blue fades to white? Thats good calcium. Low calcium is a straight sharp line blue on one side and white on the other. If it's fuzzy enough that you have to guess, as in is this 15.5 or 16 or 16.5? thats what you want.

 

[g-one-three]

That looks good G. Don't worry, in a few weeks you will uncap it and you will say "Oh, there it is, now excuse me while I vomit".

When that day comes don't throw it out or worry, it just is what it is and works great.

Just please be careful. Lower doses more often are way better than higher. Over 75 and it gets risky, over 100 and it becomes dangerous. Shake it well before using every time.

If you get a refractometer look at the crispness/fuziness of the reading line. The crisper it is, the lower the calcium in the plant. The fuzzier the better.

See how the blue fades to white? Thats good calcium. Low calcium is a straight sharp line blue on one side and white on the other. If it's fuzzy enough that you have to guess, as in is this 15.5 or 16 or 16.5? thats what you want.

Alright I guess I can't wait to smell it!? Lol. Does the water need to be pH'ed after mixing? I was doing a little reading and some people said that it's a natural buffer but when I checked my water after adding 50ppm dolo concentrate and giving it a good stir the gallon of RO came in at 8.1.

Also will any old Brix refractometer work? Like the ones for making wine?

 

[g-one-three]

Day 32 of 12/12

Tropicana Cookie

Purple Lemonade

 

[Gee64]

Alright I guess I can't wait to smell it!? Lol. Does the water need to be pH'ed after mixing? I was doing a little reading and some people said that it's a natural buffer but when I checked my water after adding 50ppm dolo concentrate and giving it a good stir the gallon of RO came in at 8.1.

Also will any old Brix refractometer work? Like the ones for making wine?

I don't ph it. I'm not sure what it mixes out at for ph TBH. I will check next time I mix some which should be in the next couple days. As for the refractometer I use one that shows both brix and alcohol percentage.

This is the scale you see when you look into the eyepiece.

This is what it looks like.

 

[Tokin Roll]

How is it going @g-one-three

Just curious do you feed all your ladies the same way. What I mean is the ppm's the same on all your plants? The reason I ask is some strains like a heavier dose of nutrients. When I grow multiple plants there is always one that wants special treatment; wither it's cal-mag, or strength of nutrients, or something else.

Keep up the good work, you are almost to the finish line.

Hope this helps.

Stay safe and grow well my friend,
Tok..