New growth quite yellow, 1 month old plant

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I have a new ph meter, ec meter, and some cal/mag. was thinking about going to straight ro water and supplementing with cal/mag.

This is the 2nd time I have had "random" problems with a few plants, I know something has to change im just not sure what. I will definitely be more cautious about what perlite I buy, also I haven't used any rock dust before but I must admit that azomite sounds very interesting. So next round will include some azomite, natural perlite, and straight RO water with additional cal/mag.

**The interveinal chlorosis looks like a mag defeciency? The top of the plant is light green as well, will get better pics tonight.

 

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Now im armed with some functional equipment. Flushed this plant with amost 25liters of R/O water that had 75ppm of cal/mag in it, ph'd to 6.0. Water initially came out at 6.7, with a ppm of 700-1000. I kept flushing until ppms were less than 300, runoff ph was around 6.5, so I then added 200ppm of bloom, which dropped the ph to 3.5 with ppm of 300 (was only a small small amount of bloom). Watered that into the plant and run off came out at 6.07 with a ppm of just over 300. Lets hope this will clear things up, did I do this correctly?

I believe I should be doing a feed, water, feed, schedule instead of feed, feed, feed.. mhmm. And more run-off at watering time!

 

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It looks to be nute burn to me. It is just on the tips of the new growth. If the nutrients in the perlite are not organic, you do not have an organic grow. Growing organic is kind of like being pregnant--you either are or you aren't. Chemical nutrients will kill the microbes in the soil. If you are growing organic, pH should not be an issue. If you are not, it is critical. We worry less about the pH of the soil if it is close to 7, but it is not really the soil pH that is the issue, it is the pH of what you are feeding the plant and the pH of the run-off. I am not familiar with the green pill type of pH measurement, but IME, I have found nothing to really be accurate except a quality meter that is regularly calibrated. We do need to know the pH down to an (accurate) tenth.

I just did a ppm test of run off water I gave to a 2 day old sedling, ppm was at 700!!!

I grabbed some pre-mixed soil I have been using, put r/o water in to the point of saturation then added some more, water came out with a ppm reading of 750-800! &$*# $&#* miracle grow perlite!

**edit**

Did the same thing with plain pro-mix hp, saturated it with ro water, let an oz or two drain out, run off tested at 700ppm. Should I be rinsing the pro-mix before use?

 

[zem]

hey there next, you can just flush this soil out enough and then add dolomite lime and water with 1/2 strength ferts. i had been trying to tell you that you are over feeding since the beginning of this thread the flush/ph/feed light is foolproof imo and helps whenever you are having multiple or unknown issues

 

[zem]

Hushpuppy why would perlite have readily available ferts in it?

 

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at the beginning of this thread I had only fed them a half doze, once.. and all you had to say was I didn't need to have 20 - 30 items at my disposal to grow a super plant. Then you quoted Wetdog saying having more additives than growing books you have a problem.

thanks for verifying the flush/ph/feed, too bad I didn't do that 2-3 weeks ago mhmm

 

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Anyone have some pro-mix to test run off ppm?

 

[Hushpuppy]

Hushpuppy why would perlite have readily available ferts in it?

I was reading in an earlier post that Next was using some Miracle Grow pearlite that had nutes in it.

 

[Hushpuppy]

I think I also read where you had used some organic materials along with synthetic nutrients. I don't recommend doing this at any time unless you really know what you are doing as the 2 different types of materials can conflict. Organic materials are (usually) raw materials with microbes in them to break down those materials to feed the plants. You generally want to run the pH in this material around 6.7, and if left to its own, it will many times balance itself out to around 6.7 due to the action of the microbes and the chemistry of the raw materials. However, if you begin adding other materials that are synthetic in function, the synthetic materials (generally) need to be run at a much lower pH of around 6.0. If this is added to organic materials then the conflict begins and usually ends with the microbes dead, and a bunch of chemically reactive materials in the medium that continue to throw off the pH. You end up with a medium that doesn't want to be either organic or synthetic. At this point, you either have to flush the medium A LOT to get the organic materials out (and you may still not be able to get it all out) or give it a standard flush to remove the synthetic nutrients and go back to full organics. However to go back to full organics, you will need to reintroduce new microbes and begin feeding with organic nutrient teas. This should allow the pH to stay in the 6.7 range and begin to feed the plants again what they need.

I don't recommend any flushing for organic growing as it shouldn't be needed unless a major issue has occurred that requires the removal of some of the materials.

I do recommend that synthetic grows in soilless mediums be flushed once about half way through the grow. Flushing every month should not be needed, and shouldn't be done unless there is some real issues going on. You have to remember with flushing, once a medium is flushed well, the medium is relatively clean, and is back to square one on nutrients. Not every soilless/synthetic grower does mid-grow flushing(nor does everyone need it), but I think it is a good practice to prevent issues of chemical buildup that can cause problems later in flower.

 

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Thanks hush,

I understand the importance of keeping it all organic. Was a simple mistake, I thought all perlite was an inert material. Anyways.. lots of people have used "miracle gro perlite" with organic grows and had no problems, but it will not be used in my next grow. I will find some better stuff, I see that pro-mix makes some have ever used it?

Flushing to get the organics out isn't really going to work considering the only nutes I have are organic, the only sythetic ferts used was the perlite and maybe hygrozyme? but I think thats an enzyme

You hit the nail on the head with the 6.7 Ph. All of my plants had a run off ph of 6.7, I know ph doesn't matter as much with organics, but what ph would you recommend watering with for my next grow?

Due to the recommended no flushing of organic growing I may have taken that advice it a litte too far, and I wasn't giving the recommended 30% run off, it was more like 10%. I had 5, 16L pots and was using about 40- 50L of water per feed. Also I only gave them a plain water feed once in almost 2 months, I think alternating between nutes and straight water may help?

So there's 5 plants, 3 are happy, 2 are not. The 3 that are happy are almost ready to be chopped down, trichs are just turning amber. The other 2 are taking a little longer, due to genetics, as well some nute lockout / nute burn. So the flushing was done to remove nutes from the amost ready plants, and hopefully fix up the not so healthy ones. Sounds like I should of left the ph alone at 6.7.

My main concern at the moment is that with the "Plain" pro-mix still in the bale, I take a cup full, wet it with RO water, get some run off, and it checks out at 700ppm. No miracle grow, no nothing, plain ro water with 7ppm going in, and 700 coming out! After a small flush, its all under control, just seems odd. Apparently I need to be flushing the pro0mix before using it.

Next round I wont be doing multiple strains, it just doesn't work out when you feed them all the same, but they each have their own individual needs. My next round will be with clones, so I will have more uniform results hopefully. I have the seed planted, I have been checking run of ppm and ph, and I have been watering until the run off matches up with whats going on. The seedling is in like a 4 oz cup and it takes about a cup of water to get things even with the going in, and coming out. I used normal water to germinate, since then its been RO water with 75ppm of cal/mag and a tad of myco madness, and a few drops of hygrozyme. Final ppm is about 100, is that alright? I've been using hygrozyme at a rate of 1ml/L.

 

[Hushpuppy]

FFirst, for the seedlings, you don't need to use the hygrozyme. Its not necessary at this point. In fact, I don't use hygrozyme at all during any of the veg stage. I only use it in the flower stage to clean up errant chemicals and help make any extra stuff more available to the plants. Right now, there is little that is available to the plants in the medium except what you put in.

The 700ppm is probably just the micro particles that are in the medium. The fact that you are running a small amount of water through and checking the ppm is the reason for the high ppm. If you were to take that 1 cup off medium and pour a gallon of wate through it and then take the gallon of runoff water and check the ppm, you should find it to be very low. I doubt seriously that the micro materials that are registering even have any affect on the medium, plants or pH chemistry of the medium.

You said something about alternating between nutes and plain water: Due to the recommended no flushing of organic growing I may have taken that advice it a litte too far, and I wasn't giving the recommended 30% run off, it was more like 10%. I had 5, 16L pots and was using about 40- 50L of water per feed. Also I only gave them a plain water feed once in almost 2 months, I think alternating between nutes and straight water may help?

What nutes are you feeding with? are they organic nutes? The reason I ask is that if you are feeding with synthetic nutes then the Myco madness is useless as the microbes will die.

 

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Hi hush,

Thanks for the reply, I am using Earth Juice, grow boom meta-k micro and xatalyst. Should all be organic..

Interesting about the micro particles, I did not know that..

I was under the assumption that hygrozyme was beneficial at all stages of growth? I was using it at 1/4 strength or so. Are you saying with an organic grow, hygrozyme is useless?

Thanks agian.

Peace.

 

[Hushpuppy]

Hygrozyme is beneficial to all grows whether organic or synthetic (in my opinion) But in the early stages of seedlings, and even through early veg, it isn't very important, especially if you are managing your microbe herd well.

The key to hygrozyme is what it actually is. When microbes break down raw materials and make them available to the plants (a process called chelation), They actually use enzymes that they produce in their bodies to do the chelation process. The enzymes are what actually do the work of chelation. Hygrozyme is the enzymes from these beneficial microbes, which has been farmed and extracted from beneficial microbes, and bottled.

When you add hygrozyme to a medium of hydro application, these enzymes float around and do the same things that they would do if they were being spit out by the microbes that you put in the soil. It is, however, a little more random than the way the microbes would do it. But for your application, where you have seedlings in basically innert medium, the enzymes are just sitting there doing nothing because there is nothing for them to do.

On the other hand, if you are also adding microbes to the medium, then they are going to the plant and forming a symbiosis with the plant at the roots. There still isn't much for them to do yet as there is nothing there for them to chelate other than the medium itself. But once you begin feeding the plants the organic materials, the microbes will go to work grabbing the elements and making them available to the plants.

Later in the grow, as the plants get very big and their demands ffor nutrients goes waay up, the microbe herd may not be able to keep up. At that point the enzymes in the hygrozyme may be quite beneficial as it supplements what the microbes are able to do. The hygrozyme is also good at binding with and locking out some of the more useless chemicals in the medium that may be detrimental to the plant. Although this benefit is far more useful for synthetic grows than organic grows as there is more likely to be a significant amount of unused chems in the synthetic nutrients such as salts.

Since you do seem to be fully organic, I would read up on microbe herd health and focus on taking care of them as they are the caretakers of the plant. I would still use the hygrozyme but only during the fflowering when it would really be helpffull as that stuff is quite expensive.

 

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Awesome information! Thankyou thankyou!

I will def use it with the next feed on the older plants, due to the problems that have arised. If I damaged the micro heard, sounds like this is the next best thing I can do to try and get these plants finished.

 

[Hushpuppy]

very possible that the zyme would help them get the nutrients that they need and lock up any toxic build-ups.

 

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Fuzzy pics for some reason, but this is how she turned out.. funky plant

View attachment 20150225_190254.jpg

View attachment 20150225_190307.jpg

View attachment 20150225_190318.jpg

 

[Hushpuppy]

Looks very good. some tasty looking buds for sure

 

[Kraven]

Nice finish, good looking nugs.

 

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For a sick plant, she did have a decent finish. Not much bulk but she did her best. I hung her up to dry the day I took the pic. She started out one of the biggest plants in veg, but probly had the lowest yield. I think im very lucky she pulled through, still don't really know what caused things to head south. Lessons were learned.. Thanks guys for all your help!