phxazcraig
- 543
- 93
i thought nutrient uptake is more demanding during flower depending on the plant needs.Now that the plant is flowering, seeing its own mortality and slowing down the nutrient draw will be dramatically reduced.
It’s gonna be hard for someone to swoop in and say yeah that’s your issue. There are so many different factors that come into play. If your environment isn’t dialed in then it’s gonna be harder to dial in your nutrients. I would recommend you try a lower EC in and that may help. Each nutrient is different depending on if your running a base nutrient or if your switching nutrients at flower. It’s gonna take some trial and error on your end to figure out the issue.Let me try another shot at this, kinda hoping Aquaman will jump in at some point.
If you want to see what happened in my previous (and only) coco grow, look HERE: https://www.thcfarmer.com/threads/explosive-growth-in-coco-coir.136487/
I'm not going to rehash what happened in this thread when you can simply look in the old one. There are LOTS of pics and comments there. I'll say this, I got a nice crop from the last grow.
Now I'm trying to understand what happens to plants in flower, in coco, relating to salts build-up. I tried to follow both Aquaman and Cocoforcannabis recommendations for watering and feeding schedules, and that includes at least 20% runoff with each and every watering. My waterings were very frequent, up to 7x per day (every 2 hours, plus one at night) in full flower.
So again, here is the gist of it. Before flowering my plants sucked in all the nutes I gave them, and my output EC was typically 300 units smaller than input. After flower, that reversed, and the longer the plants flowered, the higher the runoff EC became even as I was reducing the overall amount of salts. At one point my input was 1000, but my outflow was 2000!
Here is the question: Why did the outflow EC continue to rise higher than the input even with 7x daily waterings with runoff amounts that were about equal to 80-90% of the input? It seems impossible that I could water at EC 1000 with lots of runoff, then repeat that 5 more times before the lights went out and at the end of that my runoff EC was higher than it started in the morning?
I'm not looking for a fix until I understand the cause.
Or - if I simply can't get a cause - then I'll try some fixes. I have an issue with the idea of feed-flush-feed-flush (which I think is a good idea to try) because I'm running a drain-to-waste feeding system with a 30 gallon bucket of nutrient solution. I'd almost have to engineer a second system running in parallel. And I don't think everyone else is having this issue, so I'm trying to understand what's going on.
@Fromunda506 is correct and plays into exactly what I was saying. You feed the plant and the amount of nutrients your plant can use is dictated by your environment.. so if your environment is not dialed in your plant are not uptaking the full amount of nutrients that they could if proper environment is maintained. So the plant only uses what the environment allows it to leaving salts behind causing salt buildup. Which is why I recommend using less nutrients for your next grow and see if that fixes your issues. This is why Joe blow a 1000 miles away could be using the exact same nutrients and growing media as you and have completely different results cause humidity temp and lights all dictate nutrient uptake.I'm not asking to troubleshoot an issue that hasn't happened yet. I'm looking for the technical reasons runoff EC goes up even with 20% runoff and frequent feedings. I can only figure evaporation as the cause of an EC increase, which seems impossible considering the amount of runoff I had going on. Do plants themselves push salts out of the roots?
This.The reason she continues to accumulate salt the more food you flush through her is because she is not taking all of the nutrients out of each feed. She is drinking the water, using all the nutrients she can, and leaving the remaining salts in the coco. So each time you give her nutrients at that level, you are increasing the amount of residual salt. At least in my set up, 1000 ppm is very high and will cause buildup. Everyone’s system is different, but it sure sounds like what you’re describing. Good luck getting it sorted out. You’ll be a better grower on the other side of it. Cheers
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?