ph????? LC mix not buffering for me

[BurnOne]

richyrich-
You would be fine with your tap water. Just let it sit in an open 5 gallon bucket for 24 hours and all the chlorine will evaporate. I'd try that first.
Powdered dolomite will provide plenty of Mg. as long as it stays wet.
Go by the recipe exactly with half your grow using tap water like I suggested and do the other half like you said. That way we can work together to find the source of your problem.
This is very interesting indeed.
Burn1

 

[richyrich]

The plug-n without any other funky additions or water sources. When you start making alterations, you can expect results that vary from what someone following directions closely would get.

I agree and I am gonna claim the water source. I have done a lot of reading in here and I believe most in here use bubbled tap water and I am not. I am using RO water. There really isn't anybody in here using RO water that I have read about to make any comparisons to. The only thing is what people have posted in this thread hinting towards the RO. It's not going to hurt to try the calmag and see what happens. If it don't work then all supplements are out and only straight water in.

I dont think many people know what House & Garden Root Excelurator is. Here you go.




And here is a report from their website

http://www.house-garden.us/roots excel report.pdf

 

[richyrich]

richyrich-
You would be fine with your tap water. Just let it sit in an open 5 gallon bucket for 24 hours and all the chlorine will evaporate. I'd try that first.
Powdered dolomite will provide plenty of Mg. as long as it stays wet.
Go by the recipe exactly with half your grow using tap water like I suggested and do the other half like you said. That way we can work together to find the source of your problem.
This is very interesting indeed.
Burn1

It sure would be nice to just use tap and not have to mess around with a filter and replacing parts and having a big collection drum. I already watered all of them last night with the addition of sensical. So, until the next watering we will see if there is any turn around. If not I will go to the tap as suggested.

Interesting indeed. This is kind of undiscovered info regarding the use of RO water with organic soil. I couldn't find much on it. I'm sure lots of people are using it but have not shared anything. I do not mind at all trying things out. All I know is I have awesome roots right now. In hydro, I battled brown algae for two years. It kept on destroying my roots so this is a big change for me. As I mentioned that sticky is in the infirmary. I stumbled across an old thread when researching my problem. One person hinted towards it being algae and not the typical root rot (bacterial or fungal). I posted away with my journey to discover the problem then and I figured it out. Nobody use to talk about brown algae until I named the culprit. Now you see a lot of posts speaking of it and the use of Physan20. The sad thing for me is that even after all of that and finding out what it was, my room is infested with microscopic spores that will forever plague me in hydro. That is why I switched to a soilless hydro feed to waste method last time and I found myself hassling too much. So, I loved the ease of the LC mix you have in the sticky and I went this way now.

I'm sure this will get figured out. Thank for the help again.

 

[Dignan]

richy- I know many people who use RO water in organic soil grows. It's not unusual at all. Hope that gets you one step closer to fixing your garden.

Peace-

Dig

 

[Suby]

First off that's not a Ca or Mg deficienty in my book.
I grew in coco for awhile and after a few grows in coco you spot it a mile away, you have no chlorosis at new growth shouts and no "praying" for magnesium...

I see a few things, remember godliness is in the details.

RO water = no calcium, no magnesium, no iron = no good.

RO is VERY easy to sway PH wise, it's a pure form of solvent that desperately wants to dissolve unlike tap or saturated water that already has dissolved solids in it, thus regular tap water ppm ~200 will keep you ph in check better.

Potassium Hydroxyde is a NO-NO, a major NO-NO.

Accelerators, rooters, etc...skip it until you have things figured out, use a little molasses and plain water and your roots will do fine without it, plus they do little to help organic soil IMO.

I would try tap water mixed with RO to a ppm of about 200 and cut off all other nutes other than LK, don't feed it every time, maybe you have used too much of a good thing, plain water never killed a plant in LC's mix.

Your on the right track we have seen this kind of thing before and found aswers.

Suby

 

[richyrich]

richy- I know many people who use RO water in organic soil grows. It's not unusual at all. Hope that gets you one step closer to fixing your garden.

Peace-

Dig

I figured it wasn't, I just couldn't find any threads about so to ease my mind or use in a process of elimination. I will get there along with all of the help. Thanks again.

 

[Suby]

Also remember bone meal has alot of calcium in it and it breaks down reasonably fast, even if dolomite breaks down slowly it's not the only source of it in this mix.

If you think it's a mag deficienty a light foliar of epsom salts (magnesium sulphate..and yes not organic) will let you know right away and seing as it's not being fed at the roots it won't make things worse

You could have seen some residual heat from a few pockets of nutrients in your soil, 2 weeks of composting is minimum for me, this mix should get the full 2 weeks, especially when going up a pot in size.

S

 

[Dignan]

A friend's garden, Given nothing but RO water, IIRC.

 

[richyrich]

I just read the thread "the organic truth of ph" this one

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=85117&page=1&pp=15

I dig now. I know what to do. Any ph below 7 is cool. No ph up needed.

 

[BurnOne]

I think it's one of these things...

1- The soil mix and/or blood/bone/kelp was not mixed well enough and there are dry spots where water isn't getting, or hot spots of blood.

2- One of the packaged products is contaminated/old (spoiled or out of date).

I just can't help but suspect the root stimulator.

You have received some good advise from experienced growers here. Whether you take our advise or not is up to you.

We're here for you Dude.
Burn1

 

[3BM]

I used RO water in soil and had success adding cal/mag to about 150ppm as you describe. In addition, I also cut my tap water with RO water to about 150ppm and had success with that. Finally, I bubbled tap water of around 225ppm and used that to great effect. I mean this only to imply that you have options. No one thing is the solution for you, unless it is ... does that make sense? When you make it relevant to your plants, and your grow it will flow naturally. All the advice you are getting is great, and from experience. However, making it relevant to you is your task. I recommend a controlled experiment. Set up a control and test one variable at a time. This is time consuming, but worth the investment for perfection in my opinion. Best of luck brother, I loved your algae thread. It helped several of my friends.

3bm

 

[richyrich]

I think it's one of these things...

1- The soil mix and/or blood/bone/kelp was not mixed well enough and there are dry spots where water isn't getting, or hot spots of blood.

2- One of the packaged products is contaminated/old (spoiled or out of date).

I just can't help but suspect the root stimulator.

You have received some good advise from experienced growers here. Whether you take our advise or not is up to you.

We're here for you Dude.
Burn1

I've had my thoughts about the mix too. I did mix it all together very thorough though. During my waterings I soak them pretty good. The pots get real heavy.

Could it be possible that there is too much blood meal in the mix and it is causing a nute lockout. I don't know how it works with organic soil, no experience. Though, in hydro I have experienced nute lockout that looked similar on the leaves in hydro from too high of a ppm in the rez but it was easy to tell because the leaves were also fried, crispy. But, I don't see this to be the case either because I just put some new clones in the same batch of mix and they are looking great. Small clones would of burned for sure. And it still takes me back to why these current plants did not get all funky until the 4th week of veg, when they got big. They too looked great for a little while and they have all been fed the same. Once they got big, then problems.

I could not say for sure if any packages were old. I bought everything from a very busy farm supply. All of the boxes looked clean and new. Nope, scratch that I just looked at the boxes and they have a date stamped on them, Nov 09. They are good.

I can't say for sure about the root stimulator. I did use it for 3-4 weeks and things were ok. I know it it derived from leonardite and has benes in it.

It's been about 2 days since I added the calmag supp to my RO water and I don't see much change yet. I still have a yellow zebra party in my grow. I need to transplant in a few days to 5 gallon buckets from the 2 gallons. I have 80 gallons of the same mix already done up. I'm not sure if I want to use it. I have to transplant and flip real soon and I am out of time to experiment. If my soil mix is screwed up possibly I think I am just gonna trash it all. I think for right now I need to go get something out of a bag that I know will work. Maybe some FFOF or roots organics and added perlite and lime. Towards the end I can just bottle feed.

Here are pics of what I used.

 

[richyrich]

I used RO water in soil and had success adding cal/mag to about 150ppm as you describe. In addition, I also cut my tap water with RO water to about 150ppm and had success with that. Finally, I bubbled tap water of around 225ppm and used that to great effect. I mean this only to imply that you have options. No one thing is the solution for you, unless it is ... does that make sense? When you make it relevant to your plants, and your grow it will flow naturally. All the advice you are getting is great, and from experience. However, making it relevant to you is your task. I recommend a controlled experiment. Set up a control and test one variable at a time. This is time consuming, but worth the investment for perfection in my opinion. Best of luck brother, I loved your algae thread. It helped several of my friends.

3bm

That algae stuff was a nightmare. I am glad it helped your friends. I had to get away from a recirculating rez so bye bye hydro. Now I am trying with dirt and my thumb is still black. I have not had a bumper crop in over 2 years. Now I screwed up even the tried and true LC soil mix. I mixed it the way it was supposed to be. I used some liquid karma but folks in here use it with no problems. The ph up and the root stim, who knows. The root stim is for hydro and soil according to directions. All I know right now is that my plants need to be trasplanted real soon and flipped or they will out grow their space. They should of been flipped a week ago. I can't go any longer.

Here are more pics of my funky plants. They were taken with the hps hortilux on. They look like crap but they are growing fast vertical. The roots are fantastic. I think its best to trash my mix because its the problem or what I put in. No more figuring it out time. It's safer to scrap it. I would make another batch but there is no time for it to incubate. I need stuff out of the bag that is nearly ready to go.

 

[3BM]

Hey if you need something right out of the bag look into the moonshine mix. Just a few bags of FF (OF, HF, LW) and it seems to work great for those guys. I can empathize with the urgency of your situation. When its time, its time. Experimentation is a luxury we dont always have.

I used a bagged mix with success a while back. I added 1 bag FFOF, as much ProMix, and then some perlite. This mix will feed well for a week, and then you can start feeding like its soil less. If you have the hydro mind, why not utilize that skill set? Im really just trying to offer something that might help, I dont mean to argue against the LC mix or any of the other fine suggestions that have been made. Keep that faith, you have the skills to produce a fine harvest

 

[richyrich]

Hey if you need something right out of the bag look into the moonshine mix. Just a few bags of FF (OF, HF, LW) and it seems to work great for those guys. I can empathize with the urgency of your situation. When its time, its time. Experimentation is a luxury we dont always have.

I used a bagged mix with success a while back. I added 1 bag FFOF, as much ProMix, and then some perlite. This mix will feed well for a week, and then you can start feeding like its soil less. If you have the hydro mind, why not utilize that skill set? Im really just trying to offer something that might help, I dont mean to argue against the LC mix or any of the other fine suggestions that have been made. Keep that faith, you have the skills to produce a fine harvest

Hey, thanks. I agree completely. I respect the knowledge and experience of all that was given to me here. Everything I have learned about organics has been from these same people and that is why I tried it, I was sold.

 

[richyrich]

I have one question though. When I transplant into the 5 gallon buckets I will be adding around 2.5 gallons of bagged soil. Will the old 2 gallons of LC mix screw it up if it is the mix that I messed up? That question has been bothering me.

 

[BurnOne]

richyrich-
Forget everything about hydro. Organic growing is a completely different animal entirely.
I still don't think it's the soil. A mix like LC's is almost impossible to screw up.
I'd say give up the root stimulator first.
Do you have spider mites???
Burn1

 

[pseudostelariae]

it seems to me like worrying about nutrients that come over 100$ per bottle defeat the purpose of organic growing.

i am now on my third organic soil grow and things are going swimmingly, but my first two looked basically the same as your plants do now, so i will chime in with my experience.

the RO water is no good..i was sold on the idea of pure water when i read about it, so we did the RO thing and everything was awesome until about 4 weeks in when i was hit with major cal/mag deficiencies.

i never actually fixed the problem, but the grow finished albeit slowly. buds were crispy and tasted badly. i did the whole freak out and flush/feed/flush..wasn't pretty

even though i don't know exactly what went wrong, i know how i fixed it.

our mixes are very similar..i used 1/3 peat 1/3 ewc and 1/3 perlite. to each gallon i add a tsp of kelp meal, a tsp of dolomite, and a tsp of glacial rock powder. it seems you use a lot more dry amendments.

i saw you have a big sack of ewc..use them! forget the RO water, or don't, but either way you should stir in a good handful of worm castings to all the water you use. i have read it does away with chlorine and other unwanted chemicals. you also have kelp meal..use it!

my recommendation would be to drop anything that comes from a bottle, and start brewing weak ewc and kelp meal teas for veg. i think that would cover anything but phosphorus.

i think i read that you mixed a good amount of blood and bone with your soil? i guess there isn't anything to be done about that, but personally i have found that feeding with teas rather than amending the soil works better. i have had nothing but trouble by adding dry amendments to my mixes.

i guess i can't add much info on how to fix the problem, but i had the exact same problem and changing my methods has my new cabinet packed with gorgeous green ladies.

 

[richyrich]

No, I don't have any bugs in my room except for a very few gnats. I have a no pest strip up for them that I bring out for a few days as needed. I have had the mites and thrips in the past and know how to battle them. I eradicated them because I have not had any in over a year and half.

The pic you saw with all the plants in the one big tray need to be transplanted and then half of them will go into another tray of the same size. They need to be flipped but I have been waiting to see some turn around or recovery from the deficiencies. I don't know how much bigger I can let them get.

I bought a few bags of FF Ocean Forest today. I am still going to do a little bit of experimenting I guess. They need to get better before flipping. They are all the same strain and I am going to take a few of them and transplant in various mixes. I will put one each into the following.

LC mix that I have already made.

Ocean forest with 30% perlite and powdered mikes.

Ocean forest with 30% perlite, powdered mikes and lime.

I am going to drop everything and only use RO water. Seeing that adding sensical did not help I am less inclined to believe tap would help. But, I will reserve certainty until I see how things go after trying what I'm up to now. The reason I am trying one without lime is because I have grown with just FFOF and perlite before with a few plants and they grew fine with my RO water. I just want to see if I can see any difference. The reason I didn't stick to FFOF and perlite was because I had to go to the bottle half of the way through. It was great just feeding RO water the first half. Then I started reading the just feed water all the way through threads and here I am now. I guess I have to learn and pay for my experience through mistakes and experimenting, like most things.

I had a few questions on feeding the microherd. Should I incorporate molasses or do you think I could use the liquid karma. If I use he karma, how much and how often. My plants usually need watering every 4th or 5th day until they get into the last couple of weeks of flower and then they drink every 3rd day.

As always, thank you for the help. It is greatly appreciated.

 

[richyrich]

it seems to me like worrying about nutrients that come over 100$ per bottle defeat the purpose of organic growing.

i am now on my third organic soil grow and things are going swimmingly, but my first two looked basically the same as your plants do now, so i will chime in with my experience.

the RO water is no good..i was sold on the idea of pure water when i read about it, so we did the RO thing and everything was awesome until about 4 weeks in when i was hit with major cal/mag deficiencies.

i never actually fixed the problem, but the grow finished albeit slowly. buds were crispy and tasted badly. i did the whole freak out and flush/feed/flush..wasn't pretty

even though i don't know exactly what went wrong, i know how i fixed it.

our mixes are very similar..i used 1/3 peat 1/3 ewc and 1/3 perlite. to each gallon i add a tsp of kelp meal, a tsp of dolomite, and a tsp of glacial rock powder. it seems you use a lot more dry amendments.

i saw you have a big sack of ewc..use them! forget the RO water, or don't, but either way you should stir in a good handful of worm castings to all the water you use. i have read it does away with chlorine and other unwanted chemicals. you also have kelp meal..use it!

my recommendation would be to drop anything that comes from a bottle, and start brewing weak ewc and kelp meal teas for veg. i think that would cover anything but phosphorus.

i think i read that you mixed a good amount of blood and bone with your soil? i guess there isn't anything to be done about that, but personally i have found that feeding with teas rather than amending the soil works better. i have had nothing but trouble by adding dry amendments to my mixes.

i guess i can't add much info on how to fix the problem, but i had the exact same problem and changing my methods has my new cabinet packed with gorgeous green ladies.

Your experience is the only reply I have received that helps explain why the cal/mag deficiences have come on so late, 4 weeks in. Nobody has been able to explain it except for you with experience. That is what has been bothering me the most because I thought I had finally succeeded. My plants were so beautiful and then they took a dump. What a big let down. After battling brown algae in hydro for so long after continuous failure, it sucks. Before I was plagued with brown algae, what I call the hydro herpe because you never get rid of it and you don't know when it will show, I was really good at hydro and I had bumper crops. And what some of you have said about us hydro guys and our ph meters makes me laugh. You learn that the ph is so crucial to hydro that we will go to our grave with our ph meter in hand. Which one do I choose to take with me because I own several, haha.

But, then here is the thing like most threads. People start showing you all kinds of great plants grown the same way with RO water. What do you do. I can only think to trial and error some more. I'm going to start off using the RO and if things do not turn in a couple of weeks I will go RO and half bubbled tap. Thanks for sharing the experience.