Please help, first time grower! I think my plants have Iron deficiency / Nutrient lockout

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elementhc

Active Member
Week4@inCharge said:
Pretty much this, trying to do the Canadian style grow of Canucks, and how do you know, This question for the 5x5 grower that started this thread, how do you know the soil\media pH is too high?
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I have been watering at Ph 6.5 up until my last watering which was at 6.0 the run off from my last watering was Ph 5.8. Last week my new growth started growing in bright yellow and that was the first sign of any issue with the plants. I have tried to do research and my conclusion was iron or zinc deficiency but I don't know how to determine if it's a nutrient lockout of an actual deficiency. I have a new ppm meter coming in tomorrow and I plan on doing some ppm measurements of the run off even though I'm not sure what range they should be at.
 
Autodoctor

Autodoctor

Well-Known Member
I would run 24in at 20/4 and need to be feeding every time you water. I will stick with a good organic soil for my autos
 
Week4@inCharge

Week4@inCharge

Well-Known Member
elementhc said:
Maybe that was the issue I think I PH my last tea before I started it not at end of cook before I applied it. Could that have screwed things up?
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Hard to say, but for sure check the ph of the tea before applying it, and seems like you might have flushed out some of those amendments you applied to the Coco there. So testing the EC of the runoff is a very good idea. Since your not using synthetic nutes and are solely relying on the amendments in the Coco... watering with runoff is a bad idea. your flushing out the good stuff..only reason watering with runoff when using Coco is recommended is because most growers use synthetic nutes (salt fertilizers) that can build up in the media, but your not using these type of fertilizers... so don't water to runoff anymore. You won't really know till you get some measurements, but it's my suspicion from what I've seen so far here.
 
Masterdank420

Masterdank420

Well-Known Member
It is not recommended to add dry organic amendments that require time to break down and become available to plants in coco alone. The microbial life required to make organic amendments available will also break down the coconut fiber, limiting the coco’s ability to hold minerals by the time the organic amendments have mineralized. Coco breaks down way too fast to use it like a soil mix.This is where the worm poop comes into play.A proper organic soil mix provides the structure to hold and house microbes that coco alone can not. Coco has mainly a negative surface charge that holds primarily positive mineral cations like calcium, magnesium and most of the trace elements. Microbes and organic acids are the main storage units for anions that coco can't hold like the macro elements nitrate, phosphate, sulfate, etc. found in a soil with good structure needed to support life. Worm poop is the work around.
 
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elementhc

Active Member
Masterdank420 said:
When doing organic dry amendments in coco, don't add teas for microbes add worm poop instead. It will help with water retention as well and give a place for the microbes to hang out. About 25% of the Medium needs to be worm castings or it wont work. Never let the pots get completely dry or the microbes will die. They need to be alive for the dry amendments to be broken down into chelated nutrients. Ph the water in between 6.0 and 6.5. I've done it this way before and it works. it's better using soil though, mostly because the ph tends to buffer itself if watered correctly. The reason your plants are dying is because the microbes aren't able to do their job.
Edit : you can still add tea too lol.
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I have worm castings that I use in my teas should I top amend with worm castings now to fix these deficiencies? I made some cal mag foliar spray to try and give some immediate help should I be doing this? Thanks for your time!
 
Week4@inCharge

Week4@inCharge

Well-Known Member
Masterdank420 said:
It is not recommended to add dry organic amendments that require time to break down and become available to plants in coco alone. The microbial life required to make organic amendments available will also break down the coconut fiber, limiting the coco’s ability to hold minerals by the time the organic amendments have mineralized. Coco breaks down way too fast to use it like a soil mix.This is where the worm poop comes into play.A proper organic soil mix provides the structure to hold and house microbes that coco alone can not. Coco has mainly a negative surface charge that holds primarily positive mineral cations like calcium, magnesium and most of the trace elements. Microbes and organic acids are the main storage units for anions that coco can't hold like the macro elements nitrate, phosphate, sulfate, etc. found in a soil with good structure needed to support life. Worm poop is the work around.
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well said, for the new grower here, worm poop is also known as Earth Worm Castings. I knew that Coco coir was not a good idea for organic grow but not sure why, thanks for the detailed response, might have to copy and paste this.
 
Masterdank420

Masterdank420

Well-Known Member
elementhc said:
I have worm castings that I use in my teas should I top amend with worm castings now to fix these deficiencies? I made some cal mag foliar spray to try and give some immediate help should I be doing this? Thanks for your time!
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At this point you should probably ditch dry amendments. I deleted this post to give a more detailed explination. Go get some liquid nutriments, either organic or not but make sure its all bio-available. You can also get powdered synthetics that tou mix into water. Cheers
 
E

elementhc

Active Member
Week4@inCharge said:
Hard to say, but for sure check the ph of the tea before applying it, and seems like you might have flushed out some of those amendments you applied to the Coco there. So testing the EC of the runoff is a very good idea. Since your not using synthetic nutes and are solely relying on the amendments in the Coco... watering with runoff is a bad idea. your flushing out the good stuff..only reason watering with runoff when using Coco is recommended is because most growers use synthetic nutes (salt fertilizers) that can build up in the media, but your not using these type of fertilizers... so don't water to runoff anymore. You won't really know till you get some measurements, but it's my suspicion from what I've seen so far here.
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That's exactly why I never watered to run off till my last watering but people in other forums were convincing me that I always have to have run off even after I stated I'm using organic dry amendments.
 
Masterdank420

Masterdank420

Well-Known Member
elementhc said:
That's exactly why I never watered to run off till my last watering but people in other forums were convincing me that I always have to have run off even after I stated I'm using organic dry amendments.
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Yeah Man I agree 100%. run off is a big no no for organics period. You want to give just enough water to saturate the medium. Watering until Runoff will flush out and down microbes and chelated nutrients.
 
E

elementhc

Active Member
Masterdank420 said:
Yeah Man I agree 100%. run off is a big no no for organics period. You want to give just enough water to saturate the medium. Watering until Runoff will flush out and down microbes and chelated nutrients.
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So my best bet is to go get all new liquid nutrients (bio available) and switch to feeding when watering? I'll have to do more research on how to feed liquid nuts everything I have been learning so far has been about dry amendments .
 
Masterdank420

Masterdank420

Well-Known Member
elementhc said:
So my best bet is to go get all new liquid nutrients (bio available) and switch to feeding when watering? I'll have to do more research on how to feed liquid nuts everything I have been learning so far has been about dry amendments .
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Yeah man, it's too late too add the worm castings, they have to be mixed in prior to planting. Either feed em with a bottle or you'll lose em. The instructions are on the bottles, and if you're unsure you can usually contact the company directly.
 
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elementhc

Active Member
Masterdank420 said:
Yeah man, it's too late too add the worm castings, they have to be mixed in prior to planting. Either feed em with a bottle or you'll lose em. The instructions are on the bottles, and if you're unsure you can usually contact the company directly.
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When I started my grow I added 15%-25% of ewc in the medium including the dry amendments I guess that is all used up by now?
 
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