hey mc,

unfortunately, RKY"s home for wayward teens, clones and seedlings is NOT accepting new patients at this time.

don't stress about the superthrive dosage. it's just B vitamins and a rooting hormone. like SME said, don't overuse it . i use it on the little bit of grass that i call a "lawn" here. all the neighbors are jealous and I won't give up my secret weapon. use once/week on your lawn.

when are you planning on going 12/12?

Without time for a full update... The Incredible Bulk is nutrient burning even worse than yesterday.


Since I'm new to soil, would someone explain this to me please? My runoff last night was 742. Do I need to just completely flush this one with plain pH'd water?

Thanks!
MC

flush.
that's not nute burn. nute burn starts at the tip and it's more yellowing than the dark brown you got.

i'm no soil guru. but a good flush never hurts in soil or hydro.

any improvement?

so here's a question for the soil people: if you flush with 0 ppm water, the runoff should eventually get close to 0 if done enough times? or is that not necessarily true?

rkymtnman wrote:any improvement?

so here's a question for the soil people: if you flush with 0 ppm water, the runoff should eventually get close to 0 if done enough times? or is that not necessarily true?

Since soil buffers nutrients and decomposes, you'd never get it down to zero even if it was sterilized first. Also a flush with his clean tap water is a good idea but results (good or bad) take time to show in soil because it buffers.

That's one reason I like hydro; you see results much faster when you make changes. The downside is you have to keep an eye on it more because problems show up faster too. Pros and cons...

Hey MC,

Being a "soil-less" soil grower, I thought I would chime in here.. RKY, GR and especially SME have all helped me along immensely, and I have also learned a lot via trial and error.

So, absolutely, your grow medium acts as a buffer, and does mitigate the effects of whatever you are doing with food/additives/PH etc. Over the past year, I have found that mixing a little dolemite lime in with my mixture prior to planting has helped to maintain a pretty good PH level. Also, I do a full flush at three points...once before flipping to 12/12, once after 30 days of flowering, and then twice over a 6 day period just prior to harvest. To me, a full flush is at least one gallon of water per gallon of soil (e.g. 5 gallon pot needs 5 gallons of water).

The guys have mentioned PPM, which I understand is especially relevant for hydro.....I don't measure the PH of the soil, so what I measure is the PH of the water going in, and then the PH coming out. When I see the PH out getting too low (hot), I will add a little more PH up to my next feeding/watering...this usually helps to prevent the girls from burning....usually! I aim for about 6.5 or so in the rinseate...
When I get lazy, and the girls show signs of nute burns, I generally will flush with RO mixed with just a little CalMag to help stabilize the PH of the RO water, as I have read a few times that straight RO can be unstable in terms of PH...it seems to do the trick...

A local grower here gave me some advice about watering with a gallon of straight RO prior to every other feeding...I don't do that all the time, but when I do it, the girls seem happy !

It really is a matter of pros and cons...I spent 5 days in the hospital, came home, and simply had to water the girls, and they bounced back just fine....my understanding is that if I was running a hydro set up, or ebb and flow, etc, that could have been catastrophic...

So, I guess they are slower to react and respond, both good and bad...

They look pretty good, so you are doing something right! And as I learned, make sure you stop using Superthrive once you flip to flowering!

Keep on Keepin on!!

Peace
ICB

Thank you everyone for your replies.

RKY, unfortunately I haven't been able to flush until just tonight as I was working late last night and this morning. When I finally did get a chance to flush her in the evening, she looked worse than yesterday.


I'm not surprised to see this as I've not been able to try and remedy her problem. Which is.... Well as near as I can tell, after reading Nietzsche's plant abuse chart, Cervantes, and what everyone here has suggested, her problem is likely:
1) pH related
2) Boron deficiency (related to pH fluctuations and imbalance)
3) Calcium deficiency (because Boron is crucial for Cal uptake)
4) Perhaps she needs more water... ?

Based on this, and what everyone has suggested, I flushed with plain tap water tonight, pH adjusted to 6.5. Here's what the watering looked like:

Flush:
4 gallons of tap water
pH: adjusted down to 6.5
TDS: 80 ppm

Initial Runoff:
pH: 6.9
TDS: 756 ppm

After flush Runoff:
pH: 6.5
TDS: 120 ppm

I'm hoping that this will help correct the problem. I'm reading that 1/2 nutrient strength solution will be in order for next time I water her.

All other 4 plants are looking pretty great. I will take more photos of them tomorrow, I only had time for the flush tonight. It takes a while for 4 gallons to go through 1 gallon of soil!

ICB, so it looks like you measure your pH going in, and going out. And the pH gets lower over time, so you adjust the pH of the water in up to say 6.7 until you get back to 6.5? That's what I'm reading in your comment, and how I tried to accomplish my flush this time.

And yeah, 5 days in a ebb/flow system w/o water... complete death. My very first system was ebb/flow with tomatoes and peppers, fed 3x daily. We had a power outtage one day, and they missed 2 feedings. I go downstairs, and they're almost completely dead. I tried to revive them, but that was just a waste of time... I got nothing useable from those plants. That's why I switched to DWC. With DWC, even if your power goes out, your roots still have water. They won't have as much oxygen without a pump running airstones, but they'll have a few days at least. I had my air pump shut off for 4 days in my DWC system about 6 months ago, but the plants still lived and yielded decently.

SME, I agree on hydro pH. That... well that was way easy for me. I kept my DWC filled automatically with a float valve, so the pH crept up gradually over time as 7.0 tap water dripped into the system. So, I'd just add a little pH down every other day. Simple.

What's the most irritating about this whole thing though, is the claim from Canna that with these nutrients and soil "pH doesn't generally need to be adjusted blah blah blah...unless you have hard water > 7.5" I don't know maybe they're right. Maybe I'm toying with it too much after adding the nutrients. Seems completely backwards to me, but why the hell would they recommend it in print on their feeding chart if they didn't have some idea what they're talking about?

Meanwhile, all of the other plants will need water tomorrow, so I'll be using only pH adjusted tap water, no nutrients. I'm not flushing them though, just watering. I will be using a small quantity of Superthrive as it will likely be their last watering before transplant later this weekend. By a small quantity I mean 1 drop per gallon.

Thank you all again. Any further input is welcomed and appreciated. I'll get more pics up tomorrow.
MC

Here are the photos that I promised yesterday:



As you can see, the Incredible Bulk is still looking sad since last night. I know her damaged leaves won't get any better looking, but it's tough to tell if she looks yet worse. Based on what I can see in photos, she looks to be about the same. I'll be watching her new growth like a hawk though.

I think that everyone is looking pretty good. It's funny how much the "weirdest looking plant" switches so often. It started as MM1 in seedling with a broken stem, progressed to IB with curled growth, then PC2 crawling on the ground, then PC1, now IB again. I guess I predicted differences among the strains, but I didn't anticipate this many differences between them as the environment and their treatment has been largely identical. Previously, I've only grown 2 strains max at the same time, using the same hydro DWC solution - their buckets were plumbed together. Having read that "soil is a buffer" before, and from all of you, I thought pH fluctuations wouldn't matter as much as in Hydro.

I'd like anyone's opinion if I'm right about my pH diagnosis. So far my watering has been (always pH adjusted to 6.5 prior to application): nutrients, wait till dry, plain tap/RO water, wait till dry, nutrients, wait till dry, plain tap/RO water, etc... Is there anything I should be doing differently?

One of my soil-master friends said that he shoots for 6.3 with nutrients and in the soil. He uses a different medium, mixed soil (1/3 fox farms ocean forest, 1/3 potting soil, 1/3 organic compost mix I believe... that's what he recommended for my outdoor tomato garden at least but I don't know for sure) so that may create a difference, but should I be shooting for the same 6.3 pH?

Note to self: tomatos and other plants outside look pretty bomb. Next grow, consider same soil mix.... I've got legitimately 6' tall cosmos, started from seed, growing in a cinder block. For instance:


That cosmo, I started by direct planting seed in the beginning of June. Would you like to know how many times I've fertilized it with anything? One. One time I did a foliar feed with a homemade (sloppily homemade I might add) compost tea. Other than that I haven't even watered it since before the 4th of July.

SO I think I just convinced myself to do my whole next grow with the same soil mix. Boom baby.
MC

I'm really trying not to panic about this leaf damage, but now it's happening (just a little) to Pineapple Chunk #2 as well. If it progresses as fast as it did with the incredible Bulk, she'll be looking pretty bad in 2 days. I'm trying to do very little at once, just change 1 thing or so at a time to see what helps. I need some opinions today, so please help me out if you can.

The garden looked like this last night:

garden heights 9-19.jpg (920.08 KiB) Viewed 26866 times

garden9-19.jpg (1017.04 KiB) Viewed 26866 times

Here is the Incredible Bulk. She looks the worst out of all of them:

incredible bulk tips 9-19.jpg (718.79 KiB) Viewed 26866 times

incredible bulk rust tips 9-19.jpg (637.31 KiB) Viewed 26866 times

Pineapple Chunk #2:

pineapple chunk2 9-19.jpg (889.08 KiB) Viewed 26866 times

pineapple chunk2 9-19 2.jpg (967.76 KiB) Viewed 26866 times

Pineapple Chunk #1

pineapple chunk1 9-19.jpg (704.51 KiB) Viewed 26866 times

Money Maker #2

money maker2 9-19.jpg (710.94 KiB) Viewed 26866 times

Money Maker #1



They were all pretty dry, so I watered all of them, using just under 1 gallon per 1 gallon pot. Water was plain tap, left for 24 hours to dechlorinate, pH adjusted to 6.4 (overshot 6.5 just a bit) and TDS of 90 ppm. I used 4 drops of Superthrive in 4 gallons, so no overdose there.

Is there any chance the tip burn might be caused by overuse of Superthrive somehow? It was the only variable I added before the IB started looking as bad as she does, and I way overdosed her.

I would really like anyone's help in diagnosing and helping me fix this problem. I will say that the IB's new growth is looking pretty normal still, but it is quite immature. I think you can see that in the picture.

Thank you in advance!
MC

this morning the burn spots on the pineapple chunk 2 and money maker 1 have gotten worse. In a day they'll look like the Incredible Bulk.

I'm concerned about this, and why it's happening. Is there any chance this is a something communicable and not water or nutrient related? If it is nutes, how do I fix it?

I'll post pictures this evening

MC