How much castings do you top dress with per gallon?
I use 2 heaping solo cups, which I think are 18oz, per 10gal pot per week. With that I use the following formula for my top dressing. My topdressing is the exact minerals in my mix in the exact ratios as the mix.
6 tbsp per gallon of soil in the pot =60 tbsp divided by 4 weeks because those 60 tbsp in a 10 gallon pot with a full rootball only last for 4 weeks. So 15 tbsp of minerals per week per pot, or to make it easier, 1 cup of Gaia 2-8-4, which isn't Rev's recipe, but it's the exact same minerals. So here is exactly what I use.
15tbsp Gaia 2-8-4 and 1 tbsp high P bat guano to equal 16 tbsp (1 cup) per week. Gaia is a tad short on slow release P so the guano helps here.
My routine has been 1 teaspoon/gallon of pot size of my meals and minerals blend and 3-4x that amount of castings misted in well each week. Recently I was starting to get a bit of an N deficiency which seems to have stopped after I added a mulch layer of compost.
That could be a Ca def too, tightening the soil and restricting air, or possibly your reservoir filled and saturated your soil choking air. Keep an eye open and analyze deeper if it happens again.
I don't have a lot of extra leaves to FAFO,
I had to google FAFO, too funny
, I FAFO my entire life all day long and had no idea what it meant.
. I'm an FAFO'er! lol
so I'm wondering if I should increase either or both of my weekly top dressings.
I use 1.5 tbsp topdressing per gallon per week and 5 times that in EWC if that helps.
I use about a half cup, per gallon of soil, of EWC per week. Thats in late veg and thru stretch. It slows down after stretch. You will see what I mean, the pot surface levels won't drop as much. About the beginning of week 5.
It coincides with water intake becoming identical each day. This is the yield zone. When plants find this rhythm and you cater to it by reducing water a bit to just what they need, and not clogging the surface with too much EWC, they hold their brix and add weight really fast. Ride this as long and steady as you can.
From the end of stretch until scenescence starts is the money zone.
Scenescence is the ripening zone. They still need minerals to ripen but not as much organic matter. So stick with the top dressing but don't worry that they aren't eating as much EWC.
The M&M mix works out to about 3 ounces per plant over the course of the grow, and that has seemed to be sufficient in the past, but if the plants are going to be revving higher with the new combination of things I'm thinking they may need more inputs along the way.
They will. High end athletes eat more. Your grow space may get stinkier around week 4-5 if your brix stay up.
Get those leaf temps down. If not you will see issues in 10-14 days. You are .13 kpa higher on the leaf than the atmosphere, so the leaf is warmer than the air. It will try to hold the moisture because of physics, instead of the air wicking it away.
Atmospheric carbon is being restricted from coming in and water is being restricted from leaving. Transpiration is compromised right now. I'm glad you got up early, now you see the truth AND why it's vital to see that 10 hour mark. Thats the reading to make adjustments by and now you know why. You will see people scoff at VPD and even get rude about it being snake oil.
Don't argue with them, they aren't educated. Let them miss out. Too much light, now that LED has taken over, is ruining more plants than over watering is.
VPD is actually the environmental factor that plants use to set their stomata to, and stomatal regulation is the throttle of the grow.
Everyone thinks it's light. Light is just a factor. Now you know how that factor works.
Shoot for 1.35-1.45. That's the spot where a cannabis plant can work hard all day long without stress. Then start shovelling the food and minerals in. They eat a lot at 1.4.
I double-dare you to try and keep up.
When they are really revving in an optimal VPD you can actually measure the soil surface dropping if you pay attention, just like you can watch your car's fuel guage drop when you open it up on the highway.
Best part Azi, is that you still have room for improvement
. You're just getting to the good stuff, you haven't really started using it yet
So everything you are learning about brix here, make sure you apply it outdoors to your inputs. That's absolutely paramount to what your trying to accomplish.
Make high brix inputs your outdoor goal for next season and everything will get noticeably better and far more stable.
A stable plant creates a stable atmosphere around itself, and VPD gets easier. Another layer of balance.
Sky's the limit!
rolleyes
)
