Skybound's Journal

Whoops bad link. Here

Anyone make DIY calmag?

I'm always paranoid when venturing into new territory. I think your plan seems solid. Watch the girls and see how they react. You using Epsom for a Mag source?
www.420magazine.com
 
In your opening sentence you stated mixing Epsom with the calcium, but Epsom has a lot of sulfur which will quickly react with calcium and automanufacture gypsum right in your container. Calcium must always be kept separate from sulfates when in concentrates.
 
Thanks. I’m not sure I ever even got as far as mixing in Epson salts- got tired of frazzling my plants with radical ph levels. My conclusion was that the calcium carbonate stuff wants to ph everything to neutral. Milk- tries to do the same for a while, then turns very acidic as it sours. By the time my Calmag arrived in the mail the plants were looking pretty sad.
 
Weaselcracker said:
Thanks. I’m not sure I ever even got as far as mixing in Epson salts- got tired of frazzling my plants with radical ph levels. My conclusion was that the calcium carbonate stuff wants to ph everything to neutral. Milk- tries to do the same for a while, then turns very acidic as it sours. By the time my Calmag arrived in the mail the plants were looking pretty sad.
Click to expand...

Is your opinion that there's no known viable/workable secondary calcium source? I already scrapped one of my tanks and remade mix #3 for the week. I don't want to take any chances. I found a different source of CalNite that has a slightly higher concentration of Ca to N, but that aside, every other source of Ca I can find would require trace sized doses. Calcium EDTA looks good on the surface, but the EDTA is poisonous at higher concentrations, plus when I bought the shit, it was advertised as having more sodium than calcium. They've since omitted the sodium language from the description, but they're not fooling this guy.
 
Honestly I don’t have the knowledge to say for sure. I thought I’d maybe learn something from you if you found a way to make it work. The vinegar eggshell thing for me didn’t work at all as you maybe saw. That stuff seemed like it might be fine for a soil grow but the ph was stubbornly wrong and It turned into something truly horrific smelling when I left it on the shelf for a while. Fwiw in the time I tried I didn’t find anything on hand in the ‘folk remedy’ department that worked for hydro.
 
Weaselcracker said:
Honestly I don’t have the knowledge to say for sure. I thought I’d maybe learn something from you if you found a way to make it work. The vinegar eggshell thing for me didn’t work at all as you maybe saw. That stuff seemed like it might be fine for a soil grow but the ph was stubbornly wrong and It turned into something truly horrific smelling when I left it on the shelf for a while. Fwiw in the time I tried I didn’t find anything on hand in the ‘folk remedy’ department that worked for hydro.
Click to expand...

I saw a video, I believe I linked it in one of my threads, but the PH of the acetate was slightly acidic the way he mixed it, though he used egg shells and clearly a different volume of vinegar than I did because I weighed out 378.5 grams of the Calcium Carbonate I bought from Kelp4Less and put that into the whole gallon of vinegar and gave it a day to work. It went up to around 11,000 TDS, and the PH when I tested it was down in the region of 4.8, yet when I put it in my tanks, 6.5, like WTF bro??? This is on the heels of 2 days with just calcarb concentrated in water.

Oh well, I'll crack the nut soon. I honestly only need 10-20 ppm of calcium and the rest I can get from the CalNite. I was having great results before with the regimen I was running, so I'm basically running that again, cept the K I have up to 200 and the N I had already cut down to 95. I think I need to find a source for chloride now? I read that less than 2ppm can be problematic and I have 0ppm of it. I suspected a minor P def, but now I think it's that ... intervenial chlorosis that is almost impossible to see, but I noticed it when taking leaves to test brix. We'll be in the sweet spot real soon, this I am certain of.
 
I need some advice from you organic cats out there. So I finally made peace with the reality that if I want to up my calcium, I need to embrace using foliar sprays so I went out and got me a 1/2 gallon pump sprayer so that I can have the wand for reaching into tight spaces and I need some tips on how to do it. I feel like a first time doper asking seasoned junkies how to shoot up, lol. I've resisted using foliar sprays for years and years, despite the fact that I wash every single harvest.

So, how do you do it? I'd like to spray from the underside up so that I don't have to worry about getting into each room a few mins before lights out, but I'm afraid I might get me COBs wet which would likely make them pop and die, so should I spray from the top down? I suppose I can lower the intensity to 10% for like an hour if I need to spray from the top down. Also, how often should I spray? Everyday? Once a week? I'm trying to add in more calcium. My current mix I believe is much too strong so I'll likely toss it and start anew, but generally I only want to add another 20ppm to what I already supply to the roots, so an extra 20%. I can mix the spray to the desired ppm, but IDK how often is needed to accommodate.

Any other tips would be most helpful too. Being such a noob at foliar, IDK what questions to ask. TYIA!
 
Also, side question, has anyone ever played around with Triacontanol?
 
I have the product that this is made of (calcium carbonate) as well as a glycine chelated calcium with organic N in small QTY, but IDK how to generally use foliar sprays, or how often I should spray. The good thing about buying into nutes for life is that once ya buy them, you have them for ...well..., so you then spend the extra money on something else, lol. Aside from the calcium nitrate that I do use, I have 3 other calciums that I don't, Amino Chelated, EDTA chelated and Calcium Carbonate. I didn't know the carbonate could be used as a foliar, but I do now. I mixed the Amino chelated because at the time a few hours ago, it seemed to be the safest bet. I can adjust the strnegth up or down as needed, but once again, I don't know how to do the spraying aspects.
 
Skybound said:
I have the product that this is made of (calcium carbonate) as well as a glycine chelated calcium with organic N in small QTY, but IDK how to generally use foliar sprays, or how often I should spray. The good thing about buying into nutes for life is that once ya buy them, you have them for ...well..., so you then spend the extra money on something else, lol. Aside from the calcium nitrate that I do use, I have 3 other calciums that I don't, Amino Chelated, EDTA chelated and Calcium Carbonate. I didn't know the carbonate could be used as a foliar, but I do now. I mixed the Amino chelated because at the time a few hours ago, it seemed to be the safest bet. I can adjust the strnegth up or down as needed, but once again, I don't know how to do the spraying aspects.
Click to expand...
I have cal carbonate to but this stuff is aviailable to the plant immediately it sticks to the underside of the leaf and when the plant need ca it takes it!
 
ilikemsticky said:
I have cal carbonate to but this stuff is aviailable to the plant immediately it sticks to the underside of the leaf and when the plant need ca it takes it!
Click to expand...

but if it's made from cal carbonate, then I assume cal carbonate is also available to the plant. My problem with it came when I put it in my res and it held my PH high like, like magnetically strong. I still want to verify to be certain, but I also assume that spraying alkaline stuff up top won't hinder the PH in the res. And if true (God, I hate saying that), I'll be fine to take some of the calcarb concentrate that I didn't throw out yet and mix it with a little RO and some Yucca (surfactant/wetting agent), but I still need to get that. I also made some calcium acetate from the calcium carbonate that also screwed up my PH and now it's collecting dust as well. I don't mean to be rude, but I'm never buying another brand of anything again. I have all of the raw materials and can emulate most anybody's recipe, or craft my own as I do in my custom feed charts. Sure I will continue to expand my collection of raw materials, and especially organic inputs as my synthetic collection really can't get much bigger, the rest of the shelf (metaphor) will get filled with organics, and ultimately my grows will do better for cheaper, yield more of hopefully higher quality of most other hydro growers. I realize my ambitions are high, but I am willing to endure the pain of failure and the financial expense that goes right along with that, so in that regard, I'm paying my dues.

Sorry for the rant, I realize now that paragraph is about twice as long as it needed to be, but in my defense, it's about half as long as I want to make it, lol.
 
ilikemsticky said:
you don't put this In your res you spray it on its a way to get calcium to the plant immediately im not sure what you were asking!
Click to expand...

I know that now, I learned the hard way. Then I converted it to something else and learned again. But I still have the calcium carbonate, so I'm not going to buy more. I can just make my own Xtreme Garden CalCarb w/o actually shelling out for a new brand of something.

My original questions were about how people that regularly use foliar sprays, how's the procedure, and I spray up from underneath and how often do I need to spray to supplement the calcium? Is it something that I have to match every irrigation cycle?
 
Hey Skybound, I feel ya, if I crank up the G13 Haze too much it will make me buzz round like a bee.
Like was said, lower thc, higher in cbd, you need a more relaxing stone, make you feel more comfortable.
Best of luck.
 
Highya Skybound,

I remember Doc Bud stating that if you don't use his kit, the foliars won't make a noticeable difference (something like that). I also remember him saying the foliars are for creating a specific exudate from roots to attract certain bacteria at the root level to ready certain nutes for uptake. I'm not sure this can happen in hydro.
I use calcium carbonate in soil because it's the form most readily available to the microherd for quick transformation to calcium to uptake into the roots.
 
With much due respect to DB, the papacy once held the position that parishioners should not read the word of God for themselves because they lacked the wisdom and understanding to comprehend the scriptures. Fast forward several hundred years and Gideon's puts a bible in every Hotel room in the continental USA. I respect Doc immensely, I do, I am a religious practicer of his Bud Washing technique, but that aside, I believe I can use many different organic inputs in conjunction with an extremely balanced and dialed in feed regimen, religious use of Aerated Compost Teas (ACTs) and lowered EC. My studies are showing that a lot of salt users have their EC almost twice my levels. If I had to assign an adjective, I'd say my feed is very watered down despite my achieving the elemental PPM that I seek. I've analyzed all of the ingredients in Doc's 9 products and come to find I have most. I do not intend to get them all, but there might be one, maybe 2 more things that he puts in his sauce that I may still get, but my focus now is to get more organic products, Yucca being the very next one as Yucca is a natural surfactant and will make foliar sprays more wetter and easier for the stomata to allow entry.

IDK if you're familiar with Capn Style, but essentially, it's just potted rockwool cubes that is top fed from a recirculating res. I am able to emulate both DWC and a soil grow if that makes any sense. Of course I lack certain qualities of each media, but then I also enjoy that the liabilities of each have been mitigated, and even though I do use compost tea twice a week every week, I confidently believe that I don't even need the tea and my grows would be just fine.

Another thing, "high brix" cannabis is not my intended goal, but rather it's the path that I'm already on seeking perfect nute ratios that aligns with the pursuit of high brix that I have in common with kit users. For most of them, it's just magic dirt, but for me, it's the constant study to learn the magic behind and I already know more about high brix cannabis than I will ever be able to accomplish. I believe I could accomplish totally high brix, but I would have to assume an immense loss of yield which is why I grow in the first place. So in short, I'm trying to make my weed better, but not at the expense of my yields, most certainly not at the repetitive expense of purchasing someone's brand, even Doc's, especially when I have most of the raw ingredients.

Kit users water, what? once a week? By the end of bloom I water 3 times every day. I'd be willing to drop one of those cycles, but I don't think I'd be able to get away with only feeding once a day by the end of bloom as my root system is just too robust. I will need to find the acceptable balance though.
 
Back
Top Bottom