Like RP said, I take my leaves off once they are 50% damaged.
As for your micro's, I mix in dolomite lime into the soil to provide more Calcium and Magnesium and help buffer the pH in case there are any "issues." I feel like it gives me a little wiggle room. I will also use a product called Earth Tonic every now and again to add more micros. Earth Tonic is basically sea water. It's ingredients include, "
Gulf Stream ocean water, Himalayan crystal salt, colloidal clay, nettle's tea, and the biodynamic preperations BD500-508." Sea water will have everything you need when it comes to micros and is beneficial in small amounts. I use 1 ml/gal every few weeks. There are other products out there to get your micros, if you are worried about it, find the one that works for you and follow the directions. EJ makes a good micronutrient supplement from what I hear. I chose Earth Tonic because it's made by crazy hippies who are way out there, but know what they are talking about.
Here's the intro from their web page:
http://www.progressearth.com/index.php/products/detail/4/tonic
"Earth Tonic is a biodynamically enhanced sea mineral concentrate containing literally all Earth-bound elements. This results in over 90 elements for your plants to choose from rather than the 17 elements in most hydroponic nutrients.
Think of
Earth Tonic as biological minerals, like a tool kit for life. The ingredients include Gulf Stream ocean water, Himalayan crystal salt, colloidal clay, nettle's tea, and the biodynamic preperations BD500-508. The ingredients are prepared and potentized in proprietary ways. The result of this alchemical summit isover 90 naturally occuring elements, humic acids, naturally occuring vitamins, and primary metabolic compounds unique to the properties of the specific plants and herbs contained within.
By providing these tools to plants and the microbes that help them, we are harnessing the full potential of life by increasing the nutrient density of our food and catalyzing the nutrient cycling capabilities of microbes.
The magic of soil is the living microbes. There's another universe down there, up to 500,000 bacteria can fit in the exclamation point at the end of this sentence! Plants use most of them, but microbes use every single element on the periodic table to create the compounds that allow them to do their work and that result in the materials that form plant food. What if you hired someone to build a house and only provided them half of the tools?
For instance, a hydroponic tomato can be grown using only 17 elements, but it ends up with more than 17 elements in its tissue...what are we missing?"