Second Grow - Let's Try This Again

I hope I haven't lost everyone. Here are the first today. The Afghanis continue to confuse me. Not sure if I should feed again or water. Any insight?
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So I tried to do a slurry test for the first time. Only did it for one plant. I watched some videos on how to do it and used a soil to water ratio of 1:2. If this is accurate I have a serious problem. It had a ph of 4.5 and a ppm of 206...... Will do the other 3 tomorrow. The 2 baby Afghani continue to befuddle me. At least the one is finally starting to grow up.
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Here's a two-minute video about how to prepare a soil sample from from Hanna instruments, a big international company that has been making pH meters for decades. Is this anything like the technique your using? (Just wanna make sure you're getting good numbers before you proceed...)

YouTube
 
DominaMortem said:
That is in fact the exact video I used
Click to expand...

Cool. So assuming that's a correct value, and knowing that you're not using any commercial fertilizers that are formulated to be more available at non-ideal pH, and knowing that you live in an area that probably has pretty low levels of mineral content in the water, I'm going to guess that that's a magnesium deficiency that's causing that interveinal chlorosis in your leaves.

It might be something else that's causing the yellowing, but I don't thing that the exact mineral really matters at this point. What matters is that for once I think we might have a genuine case of nutrient lockout because the pH is too low for magnesium absorption (or something else absorption).

If it was my grow and I wanted to stay organic (rather than just pouring a bunch of pH-adjusted FloraGro on it), the first thing to do would be to correct that pH upwards, obviously. You could do that with pH Up which is just potassium salts, which your plant would like, or you could buy a bag of finely powdered dolomite lime (a.k.a. "Dolomite") which I think is about half and half calcium carbonate (i.e. chalk) and magnesium carbonate. Mixing that into your soil as much as you can without disturbing the roots too much should lower the pH and add some magnesium at the same time, so it could conceivably kill two birds with one stone. That acid soil should dissolve the CaCO3 and MgCO3 pretty quickly, so I expect your next slurry test in about a week would show a higher pH.

The question is how much of the dolomite lime to add. I would guess that a couple or three heaping tablespoons worked into the soil around the roots of small plants would help, and proportionally more for bigger plants. If you wanted to be scientific about it, you could take X grams of soil and Y grams of dolomite lime and mix them together and then make a slurry and let the slurry sit for a couple of days for the lime to dissolve and the see what you pH is. If that amount gave you .1 pH unit improvement, then three times as much should give you .3 pH units (theoretically--there are so many variables that you have to fly by the seat of the pants a bit too, but that's all part of the fun (or pain) of organic gardening--that it hasn't been reduced to a simple chemical equation).

One more thought (and I think it's a pretty good one): Talk to your county agent or a master gardener or the local garden club or someone who is knowledgeable (and not a BSer) at the local garden store (a dedicated garden store with a good reputation, not a home center with minimum wage drones who just happened to get assigned to the garden center that day), and tell them that a slurry test shows your pH is 4.x and you want to raise it, and what do they do? (You ideally want someone who knows what a slurry test is and who has actually corrected their soil, not someone who's going to just parrot something they heard.)

It seems like "top dressing" lime (i.e. just pouring it around the base of the plants and maybe working into the surface soil a little) is popular, but I'm going to guess that if that works at all, it's going to work on a time scale of months or even years, not days like you probably want.

One more thought: Do you know any cannabis growers in your area, or know someone who does? You kinda live on the northern edge of a major west-coast pot growing area, so there may be some old hippy grower with dirty fingernails who can get you straightened out in no time.

Golly, that got long. It's an interesting problem. I hope something in there might be of use. Time for me to get back to work. ;)

Good luck and post updates!
 
Hey Domina, This was a previous post of mine found in my journal: I wanted to share with you how I test the soil before transplanting to a larger container. This is done to further understand how the medium is responding to the water before larger amounts of nutrients are introduced.

First, put about 2-3 ounces of soil in a plastic cup...

dry.png


Then measure about 3-5 ounces of water (1 part soil 2 part water)...

dry_with_water.png


Next, test the pH and PPM levels... For this test; the first readings were a pH level of 7.5 and 110 PPMs.

dry_and_water_being_tested.png


After measuring the pH and PPM levels — I mix the water with the soil and ensure the soil is fully engulfed. The mixture will sit for about 10 minutes while the water saturates the soil.

soil_and_water_mixed.png


Next, I measure the pH and PPM levels once more...

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The first testing of the soil produced results that are satisfying and I'm looking forward to see how the girls respond to this line of nutrients; as it performs optimally in the pH range of 6.3 — 6.8 and the PPMs are between 300-500. The mixture produced results of a pH level of 6.5 and 443 +/- PPMs; meeting the optimal range.

That video of preparing a soil slurry that @Scientific posted is great as well!! Side note; Scientific, your follow up post (#94) is superb. Thank you for that.

:Namaste:
 
Scientific said:
Cool. So assuming that's a correct value, and knowing that you're not using any commercial fertilizers that are formulated to be more available at non-ideal pH, and knowing that you live in an area that probably has pretty low levels of mineral content in the water, I'm going to guess that that's a magnesium deficiency that's causing that interveinal chlorosis in your leaves.

It might be something else that's causing the yellowing, but I don't thing that the exact mineral really matters at this point. What matters is that for once I think we might have a genuine case of nutrient lockout because the pH is too low for magnesium absorption (or something else absorption).

If it was my grow and I wanted to stay organic (rather than just pouring a bunch of pH-adjusted FloraGro on it), the first thing to do would be to correct that pH upwards, obviously. You could do that with pH Up which is just potassium salts, which your plant would like, or you could buy a bag of finely powdered dolomite lime (a.k.a. "Dolomite") which I think is about half and half calcium carbonate (i.e. chalk) and magnesium carbonate. Mixing that into your soil as much as you can without disturbing the roots too much should lower the pH and add some magnesium at the same time, so it could conceivably kill two birds with one stone. That acid soil should dissolve the CaCO3 and MgCO3 pretty quickly, so I expect your next slurry test in about a week would show a higher pH.

The question is how much of the dolomite lime to add. I would guess that a couple or three heaping tablespoons worked into the soil around the roots of small plants would help, and proportionally more for bigger plants. If you wanted to be scientific about it, you could take X grams of soil and Y grams of dolomite lime and mix them together and then make a slurry and let the slurry sit for a couple of days for the lime to dissolve and the see what you pH is. If that amount gave you .1 pH unit improvement, then three times as much should give you .3 pH units (theoretically--there are so many variables that you have to fly by the seat of the pants a bit too, but that's all part of the fun (or pain) of organic gardening--that it hasn't been reduced to a simple chemical equation).

One more thought (and I think it's a pretty good one): Talk to your county agent or a master gardener or the local garden club or someone who is knowledgeable (and not a BSer) at the local garden store (a dedicated garden store with a good reputation, not a home center with minimum wage drones who just happened to get assigned to the garden center that day), and tell them that a slurry test shows your pH is 4.x and you want to raise it, and what do they do? (You ideally want someone who knows what a slurry test is and who has actually corrected their soil, not someone who's going to just parrot something they heard.)

It seems like "top dressing" lime (i.e. just pouring it around the base of the plants and maybe working into the surface soil a little) is popular, but I'm going to guess that if that works at all, it's going to work on a time scale of months or even years, not days like you probably want.

One more thought: Do you know any cannabis growers in your area, or know someone who does? You kinda live on the northern edge of a major west-coast pot growing area, so there may be some old hippy grower with dirty fingernails who can get you straightened out in no time.

Golly, that got long. It's an interesting problem. I hope something in there might be of use. Time for me to get back to work. ;)

Good luck and post updates!
Click to expand...
Before you do any of that you need to find out what your waters ph is. If you arent phing your water properly it will overwhelm your soils ph when container gardening. I would start by phing water to exactly 6.5. Thats the sweet spot in soil. Then do a really big watering and add CalMag to get it inti your plants. PH after mixing in the CalMag. The plants will grab some mag out of the huge flush and the soil will come inline a bit. Then 2 hours later do it again. Another power soaking with CalMag again. Then the next day do a full watering yet again til you get runoff. Test that runoff. If your runoff is now much closer to 6.5 or possibly even at 6.5 you are now getting ahead of the soil. If not the soil is the problem not the water. If thats the case you likely have alot of peatmoss in your soil. As it breaks down it plummets the ph. Figure out where the problem is first and get your water perfect and fully saturated. Then you know the true amount your soil is out. I bet its your water. Its almost always water. PH it after everything is added. Organic Nutes generally lower mine from 8.4 to 5.2 so I have to up it to 6.5 every grow. Heres a ph chart for soil showing unlock points. You can see how 6.5 is the sweet spot.
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Then research balanced soil mixes. Balanced means ingredients that when mixed in proper amounts settle at ph 6.5 to 7. There are a million different ones for weed all arriving at the same end ph. Dont mix and match the recipes as it will unbalance the soils ph. Find one that works for you and make some up in a tub. Then repot into it asap if your soil cant be corrected. Only look at recipes with coco and perlite. Not peatmoss. Peatmoss will drive you crazy. Especially when you recycle it. But first correct your water and get CalMag in there right now. I will send my recipe. Its fairly complex in the number of ingredients but it balances. You dont nescessarily need to use my recipe just read it a couple times then start searching others. You will learn a ton quite quickly about soils. Living soil recipes are far better at maintaining steady ph.
 
4 gallons Blue Sky Supersoil
4 gal coco
4 gal perlite
2 gal ewc (earth worm castings)
1.5 cup bloom pure
1 cup oyster flour
1.75 cup prilled dolomite lime
.25 cup blood meal
.25 cup guano
1 cup unsteamed bone meal
.5 cup gypsum
4 heaping cups composted steer manure
.5 cup azomite
3 teaspoon powdered humic
1 cup alphalpa meal
.5 cup bulb food
.5 cup feather meal
.5 cup powdered soft rock phosphate
.5 cup kelp meal
.5 cup granular rock phosphate
1 cup basmati or white rice
.5 cups diatomaceous earth
.25 cups Epson Salts

It makes 15 gallons. Add about 3 gallons of water to it in the tub after its fully blended dry. Then fully blend it again to heavy damp but not wet. Put a lid on it and stir it up fully every 5 days or so for 30 days minimum as the ingredients decompose the ph changes and the soil isnt hot anymore. Leave a small crack for air to get in as the soil sits and cooks. Thats how this recipe works but find one that works for you. Then next grow you will be so much happier and not chasing your tail.
 
Ok Im caught up. Heres a few tips... Its a crash course on basics of growing and it applies to almost all plants. Weed in particular. Read it a couple times and then you will know a ton about basics and almost all problems will disappear


Organic or not? Thats the main question.

Organics is when you use microbes to feed the plants. Mychoryzae is directly involved in this. To understand it you need to know the circle of life. Your soil has nutrients in it but the plants cant just use them yet.
In order to use them they need to be put through the circle of life. Also roots cant grab useable ferts that are over a half inch away so plants evolved a very cool system of baiting in nutes.

Plants store sugars in their leaves. When water and nutes come into a plant and travel to the leaves where photosynthesis occurs turning them into sugars, they must displace something out of the leaf to make room for more so... the plants circulation system moves sugars out of the leaf and back to the roots and deposits the sugars right on the roots. Sugar is the bait. It attracts fungus of which mycchoryzial is the biggy. Organics doesnt work without it. Mych eats the sugars on the roots and in the process also eats dirt. Feeder microbes love mych so they move in and eat the fungus which contains dirt ( ferts n-p-k) then predator microbes move in and eat the feeder microbes and poop them and the digested dirt and fungus out on the roots. Plants can now use this twice digested dirt. So sugar attracts fungus which attracts feeders which attracts predators which poop the manure within a half inch of the roots.
So.... If you choose organics you need microbes which you get thru compost teas and composted manure or earth worm castings. You need mycho which you can add to waters or teas but mainly you heavily dust the rootball with it at transplant time.
And you must use organic foods and nutes or else the inorganic ones kill the microbes and the plants starve.
All that is useless if your ph isnt 6.5 because no matter how much poop is on the roots the plants simply dont have the ability to absorb nutes in a bad ph. The chart shows ph levels vs nute unlockings. 6.5 is the happy zone where all are quite unlocked.

If you choose to go non organics then your nutes must be in a form that plants can absorb similar to microbe poop. Humans must trick plants now so we add nutes to a solution then add a chelating agent. (pronounced keylating) It is something organic that a plant will allow into its roots. usually a salt. It must also be the opposite charge ( positive or negative) to magnetically attract nutrient molecules so the end result is a salt molecule that the plant will let in that is magnetically coated with n-p-k.

So heres the confusion... you cant mix organics and non organics.
The nutes you are using are meant to be used as a complete system. You must find out if its an organic system or not from their website. Then you must stick very closely to their feeding schedule or your plants wont get a balanced diet and they wont grow well.

All that being said you must also understand that phosphorus is what carries nutes thru your plant. Without it feeding stops so a phosphorus deficiency or lockout and the entire thing stops.

Flushing vs soil drenching....
Flushing isnt possible in organics. The magnetic properties in chelation are also there in organics but without chelators. Humic acid does it instead. You cant flush in organics because the humic acids magnetically hold everything so "flushing" is literally just washing all your good stuff right out the bottom of your pots attached to humic acid molecules.
Flushing is used in non organics to wash the salts out. Plants let salts in but after they lick all the n-p-k molecules off the salt they spit the salt molecule back out. It collects on the roots. Salt is a dehydrator so when it coats the roots it stops water absorbtion and you get lockout so you must flush hard to rinse all the salts out. Thats ok in non organics because you then immediately feed with a ppm formula on the clean roots.
Both ways work very well but you cant mix them.
Soil drenching is when you use properly ph water to completely saturate your soil to the point of about 20% excess runoff so add 1 gal of water. If you get 20% of a gallon runoff your fully saturated. Its used mainly to get proper ph throughout your entire soil and in veg it allows your roots to grow into every part of the pot so the roots are within that magic half inch of every microbe. Your roots dont grow much in flower once stretch is finished so in veg you must up pot to your flowering pots and allow about 2 weeks before flipping to allow the roots to fill the new pot. If not it was pointless to up pot as the roots cant use the new dirt.

Watering....
This is really crucial to understand as many people talk about it but they dont really understand it.
In veg you water because the plants need it but you also use it to get the roots to chase it and spread out to fill the pot so...
You fully water to complete soil soaking. Then you let the plant almost completely dry out. As the moisture goes down to the bottom of the pot the plants roots chase it. Thats why they say to let the plant dry out between waterings.
When you get close to flowering you up pot to a larger pot with fresh soil. You let the roots fill it my chasing the water. Then you flip to bud and stretch immediately occurs. As the plant transitions it still grows roots and still needs veg nutes to stretch but it also needs flower nutes. The flower nutes are in your soil but only enough for about 4 weeks of flower so about 2 weeks into stretch when stretch starts to slow you convert to flower feeding. Otherwise at about 4 weeks you run out of soil nutes.
Once stretch has stopped and flowering is going bigtime plants eat alot. As your roots are no longer growing you dont need to let soil dry out so much between waterings. You water more to allow the plants to eat faster. When stretch has completely stopped you water about every 2nd day. In flower plants eat more so they need more phosphorus to move the food. Thats why the p in n-p-k number gets higher in flower food.
 

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