I was rereading The Rev's book and he claims either is fine. I did see he says to use less of the powdered but that could just be a comparable weight thing.
What, in your mind, is/are the significant difference(s)?
@Azimuth how are the plants doing?
Not that great tbh.
The mother I was trying to save got pushed over the edge by the 1x flush so that was the first casualty.
The smaller plants are all showing N deficiencies but that may have more to do with the change of feed than the flush. About a week before the flush I decided to switch from my liquid JLF's to top dressing my dry crumbles and my guess is that between the time it takes to have those organic inputs broken down enough to matter, and the time it takes for the microbe infrastructure to reorganize itself to deliver the newly available nutes, a lag of at least 2-3 weeks is likely.
I'm just getting to the end of that period and it doesn't look like things are getting worse so I'm assuming the system is stabilizing and ginormous growth is dead ahead.
We'll see.
Where are you at? how many top waters vs reservoir fills?
The flush took a week plus to work off given the water bank stored in the soil. I just did the second top watering after adding my top dressing, and did add a little to the reservoir to keep those roots doing their thing. But I'll plan on keeping the soil much less wet than I have been.
What are your plants happiest at on the water stick meter?
That's a tough question. My meter is one of those double probe jobbies and the directions say not to put them near rocks which is near impossible to do given the 30% hydroton in my mix. So I can't just slide it in and take readings wherever I want. Instead I have to try multiple places at different levels to even get a reading which is a real pain. I'm planning to get a single stick probe version and, between that and the switch to perlite, things should be easier to monitor going forward.
Add to that that I have to keep my canopy very low and access to test locations is spotty at best.
The plants are still getting used to their new reality so what level they're happiest at is unknowable at this point, but they seem happy enough at lower levels on the meter. Down in the 4-6 level I don't see any wilting and my guess is the microbes are much happier down there, but that will be something I'll have to learn over time.
How about another brix reading?
That's the bright spot as an 11 reading was seen yesterday. Maybe I'll be able to leave bugs behind me.
I still need a better process to extract that one damn drop of sap from the leaves. What a complete pain in the ass! And that's not something I'll likely be doing very often if I can't get it done easier, so any tips there would be much appreciated.
Did the dolo water help or hurt?
I haven't actually done dolo water yet. I used my WCA and got a flush of calcium spots and haven't tried it again as I've been doing some reading on The Rev's calcium water. Don't seem to be getting new spots so that could have been a one off.
I could mix up a batch using the powdered version, but the prilled I'll have to order which I haven't done yet since I'm still pondering my course of action.
You should be starting to see changes by now.
The plant just flipped 3 weeks ago had the calcium spot issue, but now seems to be cranking along and that's the one I got the 11 on.
I do have my next plant in my new mix (perlite replaced hydroton) that I just up potted to its flowering container so that one will be a better test as I can run it with less water from the start.
That one's a seedling of a CBG plant
(for a guy that doesn't grow seedlings I sure seem to be growing a lot of them all of a sudden) so I'll see what differences I can observe with lower water levels early on.
Azi, how are they looking today?
Things seem to have stabilized. No new calcium spots, the N issue does not seem to be spreading so I feel I may be getting to the end of the transition process and results from here on will give me a better sense as to what the new combination of things is capable of.
. Squeeze it manly