Seriously Over This =[

I've had very good results with your guys tips. I've been doing organic teas in happy frog soil and it has been awesome. Another thing to note is I beleive my ph meter was partially to blame for my problems.

Now that I feel better about my garden I'm looking to make some changes again. I learned a lot in this thread and a lot in my garden since then.

Stick with us farmers kid. We'll take you to the top.

I know Ive been there. Everything i did made things worse. My best advice keep it basic

So I've been feeding 6.4-6.5 water to my ladies, noticed some sort of deficiency. So I checked checked runoff ph. It comes out at 5.7.

How does one fix this? Are amendments the only option? I thought it was as simple as feeding them a different ph solution?

5.7 is not that bad...
If your testing the runoff as soon as it comes out, it is going to be misleading. depending on your pot size and how root bound the plant is, the bottom part of your pot can be lower than top part or middle. so be careful. do another ph flush again and see if it varies.
Sometime when your nutes are used it changes the ph, in your case loweering. You can always raise your ph a point or so. then check.
Do a Good flush....

Wait, aren't you using Happy Frog soil now? If you are only using soil, organic teas & water then you don't worry about the PH and don't flush. What kind of deficiency do you have, can you post a photo that shows it? Are they in veg or flower? If the plants don't need to be moved to a larger pot then you just need to amend the soil. I use alfalfa meal, bone meal, kelp meal and earthworm castings when I mix my soil...just top dress with some earthworm castings and keep feeding your teas...

Just a side note: Not that you need a PH meter now but, if you are using it remember, it's a delicate piece of equipment and you should clean it with the proper cleaners and you must calibrate it at least every two weeks with calibration 7.0/4.01 solution. If your not doing this then you might as well not use it. just my .02
My very first grow was a success because I read and studied for nine months before I started my grow. And I bought good products and I was anal about checking and re-checking everything as I was growing in hydro and I didnt want anything to sneak up on me. I still had deficiencies but I made it through it. Now im in soil and Im basicly starting all over again. Im using roots organic and nutes but at just a 1/4 of what they say on the bottle.
I have a plant outside in plain FFOF and its doing GREAT with nothing but rain water. Actually its my best plant.
Good Luck, pic a way and stay with it, and experiment on the side.

I brokeded my meter. Abused it, done did badly to it. Shameful, I am.

Seamaiden said:

I brokeded my meter. Abused it, done did badly to it. Shameful, I am.

Click to expand...

You dont need a meter silly you! lol

This was a great and inspiring read. Glad to hear your back on the horse. And in soil!

gliders420 said:

So I've been feeding 6.4-6.5 water to my ladies, noticed some sort of deficiency. So I checked checked runoff ph. It comes out at 5.7.

How does one fix this? Are amendments the only option? I thought it was as simple as feeding them a different ph solution?

Click to expand...

Ive read over and over that runoff tests arent really reliable.

Someone on this site recently taught me the slurry method is pretty reliable. Also that trying to compensate low ph soil with a high ph solution doesnt really change things for more than a day or so.

Look at the general ph-nutrient uptake chart i attached, itll help you figure out where you need your ph and why. Although there are slight variations in soil and in hydro, and im unaware of the variables there, but it should be a nice visual aid to help out.

Im eager to see your progress, and im happy here learning along side you my dude. im on my first grow (after years of learning, finally lol) 2 weeks into flower almost 3. I use soil in 5gal buckets too. I drilled holes like crazy lol. And still have drainage issues. Until my roots really flourished i wasnt watering more than once every 7-10 days. Now that my girls are big they dry out after 5.

I dont want to judge or throw negativity in your way at all my man! BUT Im kinda seein a lack of love in that garden my dude, unfortunately. You need to clean up regularly and keep things nice. Keep tools fresh. Or bugs and disease will become a problem.

I know your busy, school is Insanity. But just like a friendship you gotta be around to make sure things don't go stale.

All that being said, im really happy you didn't quit growing. I hope to see some harvests soon. And ill be keeping up with your grow best i can homie.

Pce

I did the crazy hole drilling on the 5 gallon buckets too. 1/4" holes up the side about 4 inches also. Add more perlite to your soil mix, plus i added a layer of lava rocks for a drainage base.
Of course i had to water more often, but thats what i wanted. and when it came time to flush it was easier.
When you have a quick run off, you water is not in your pot long enough to soak up all the salts. so i just put the 5 gal bucket into another 5 galloner. put in my water and let it sit for a bit.
It let the water fully soak the medium and grab those extra salts. then just picked up the bucket let drain and did another flush.

Bannacis said:

I did the crazy hole drilling on the 5 gallon buckets too. 1/4" holes up the side about 4 inches also. Add more perlite to your soil mix, plus i added a layer of lava rocks for a drainage base.
Of course i had to water more often, but thats what i wanted. and when it came time to flush it was easier.
When you have a quick run off, you water is not in your pot long enough to soak up all the salts. so i just put the 5 gal bucket into another 5 galloner. put in my water and let it sit for a bit.
It let the water fully soak the medium and grab those extra salts. then just picked up the bucket let drain and did another flush.

Click to expand...

ILL

A lot of the lower stuff was dieing . There's those weird spots, they are white and only on the bottoms.

could lack of light be killing off the bottom? My canopy is really bushy, but the white spots are making me think it's a deficiency.

I switch to something called soco mix for this run, which is a heavily ammended organic mix. They really liked it. But there's these issues.


There's been a few changes. Moved to a new much cleaner space, lost space for brewing, so I'm using floranova, pro-tekt, cal mag, and bottled compost teas. If I have kelp or anything around I'll dose that once in a while but I ran out a little while ago.

I'm not opposed to going back to happy frog either. I did notice that it got really hard and compact, is there something I can do for that?perlite or vermiculite?
Is it something I should be worried about, hydro store guys mentioned it could be hard for air to get to roots or something like that...

not sure on the white spots, are they on all the plants lower branches? do you foliar spray, sometimes that can cause spots.
as to make soil less dense, add perlite. a good third mixture... your roots and microbes need plenty of oxygen. I also add vermiculite but at half of your perlite.
and the more holes in the base of your pot the better. compost teas feed the mico-beasties in your soil, any synthetics will hurt this. not familiar with floranova or pro-tekt, mixing a lot of diff nutes can be hazardous to your soil, also if adding a lot of liquid nutes can cause your micro populations to perish.

Flora nova is a two part grow+bloom for gh. And I thought I was keeping it really simple, I'm not mixing very much. Just the basics pretty with pro tekt.

I'm in grow bags for now, and would like to switch to plastic pots.

The white spots are on most of them. I actually stopped all types of foliar, although i have been considering starting again.

I've been really lazy as far as microbes to so thanks for the reminder, I'm going to dose them with some in tomorrow's

[QUOTE="gardnguyahoy, post: 1505289, member: 68670

Look at the general ph-nutrient uptake chart i attached, itll help you figure out where you need your ph and why. Although there are slight variations in soil and in hydro, and im unaware of the variables there, but it should be a nice visual aid to help

Pce[/QUOTE]
That picture is great, i saved it, and by the looks of it it's not too acidic, if anything phosphorous is starting to get low.

how's your water? tap, well, rain, ro? coco is not as forgiving as a peat based mix.

You can say THAT again! Good catch. ^^ I had to switch from well water to RO/DI. RO wasn't enough filtration.

I'm actually using tap. I don't believe it's too bad, I contacted the water company and it looked good on paper. Tbh I've not ppm tested it tho

how about chlorine or chloramine? any of that will be bad for any micro life in your medium. chlorine can be bubbled out, chloramine needs to be filtered.