Babies for 2nd grow are hurting... WTF am I doing wrong???

I have read and read and then read some more...

Great sticky threads but my diagnosis does not seem to be working.

This is my set up...


Here are my growing conditions...

Soil:
4 part Org Potting Soil
4 part Peat Moss
1 part Perlite
1 part Vermiculite

Lights:
24/0 on a T5 2' x 8 veg bulbs w/ plants 3-4" away from the tallest


Humidity and Temp...


Watering every other day and just started nutes (Canna Veg) 1/4 strength every 3rd watering.

PH is at 5.8 as I am mixing half rain water with half RO. Rain is low and RO is high and balances to 5.8.


These are clones off the first grow which is Nirvana Master Kush from seeds.


First time for cloning and they were stressed hard but did root. The soil I rooted in was different as it was straight out of the bag potting soil. Ended up being very dense after a few waterings and seem to have a lot of nutes already in it. They were rooting slow so I re-potted them in the lighter mix trying to dissolve the hard ball of dense soil around the roots with with a spray bottle of water and not break any roots.

This is what I am dealing with...


Bottom leaves are turning yellow/grey.

I found this chart and went by the symptoms...


I think it looks like a deficiency of N, P, K and Mg. With the issues of the of the previous soil also considered root lock so I flushed with Sledgehammer and them upped the nutes to 50% strength. They are responding to that effort a little after 5 days still getting more yellow/grey leaves on bottom. The pic above is from today and was green 3 days ago.

These girls were supposed to be going into flower box in a couple weeks but doesn't look like they are going to make it. My other girls are in they're 5th week of flower and doing great!


Thinking about douching the whole second run and starting over. Ordered more seeds from Nirvana (Bubbalicious, Papaya and Aurora Indica) a couple weeks ago and should be here soon.

Can you guys help me out please?

Probably a pH problem. You're running a really acidic mix, and need to add dolomitic lime or garden lime to stop the pH dropping due to leaching from the peat moss.

MajorCoco said:

Probably a pH problem. You're running a really acidic mix, and need to add dolomitic lime or garden lime to stop the pH dropping due to leaching from the peat moss.

Click to expand...

Dolomite lime is slow release...It will be no good in a week or 2

ShazMo09 said:

Dolomite lime is slow release...It will be no good in a week or 2

Click to expand...

Yeah. He needs to mix it into the soil before planting....next time around.

MajorCoco said:

Probably a pH problem. You're running a really acidic mix, and need to add dolomitic lime or garden lime to stop the pH dropping due to leaching from the peat moss.

Click to expand...

I came across this article that has me concerned about your recommendation.

Dolomitic lime is calcium magnesium carbonate. It has about 50% calcium carbonate and 40% magnesium carbonate, giving approximately 22% calcium and at least 11% magnesium.

When you buy garden lime, it has been ground into granules that can be coarse or very fine, or it could be turned into a prill.
Dolomite lime fertilizer is certainly allowed in organic gardening. It is not inherently bad, but how it is used in the garden is often detrimental.
[h=2]Why Are We Told To Use Garden Lime?[/h] I touched on this before when I talked about pH. The belief is that minerals in your soil are continuously being leached by rain and consequently your soil is always moving towards more acidic.
Dolomite limestone is used to counteract this, to “sweeten” the soil. It can do that, but that doesn’t mean it’s good.
Minerals may or may not be leaching from your soil. If they are, it could be partially because of rain, but there are other reasons, too.
If your soil is low in organic matter, which is often the case, it probably can’t hold onto minerals very well, especially if it is low in clay and high in sand and silt. If you have lots of clay, you probably don’t have much to worry about.
Chemical fertilizers cause acidity, so if you use them, that is part of the problem, too.
Whatever the cause, dolomite lime fertilizer is not the answer. Let’s look at why garden lime is probably not what you want.
[h=2]Here’s The Important Part[/h] The main point I want to make is that even if minerals are leaching from your soil, it doesn’t make sense to blindly go back adding just two of them (the calcium and magnesium in dolomitic lime) without knowing you need them. You might already have too much of one of them. We need to think a little more than that when organic gardening.
Your soil needs a calcium to magnesium ratio of somewhere between 7:1 (sandier soils) and 10:1 (clayier soils). Outside of this range, your soil will often have drainage problems, your plants will often have health problems and insect and disease problems, and you will have weed problems.
One of your most important goals in the garden is to add specific mineral fertilizers to move the calcium to magnesium ratio towards this range.
The problem with dolomite lime? It has a calcium to magnesium ratio of 2:1. That’s way too much magnesium for most soils. Magnesium is certainly an essential mineral. Too much of it, however, causes many problems, compaction being one of the most common, but also pest and weed problems.
So if you add dolomitic lime to your lawn every year, chances are you’re just causing more compaction and weed problems.
[h=2]When Should You Use Dolomitic Lime?[/h] You should only use garden lime when you have a soil test showing a huge deficiency of magnesium in your soil.
Even then, calcitic lime (calcium carbonate) is generally the way to go because it has a small amount of magnesium and often a calcium to magnesium ratio of about 6:1, with a calcium content of 30% to 40% or more.
Instead of dolomitic lime, I use calcitic lime regularly in my garden, but even then, only when I need it. A soil test is the main way to find out if you need it and I’ll talk about soil nutrient testing often on my website.
Adding fertilizers based on the results of soil pH kits just doesn't make any sense (that's a good article that will show you why).

If you have any thoughts on dolomite lime, I'd love to hear them below.


Wouldn't it make more sense to check the PH on my run off and adjust from there?

MajorCoco said:

Yeah. He needs to mix it into the soil before planting....next time around.

Click to expand...

So what would you recommend for these girls?

So I went to Ace and picked this up...



Going to mix a very small amount into the soil as far down as possible without disturbing the roots. Also going to do a foliage spray with nutes at about 1/4 strength and a little bit of CalMg until they bounce back.

Wish me luck.

That should help. Good luck!

Do you have a pH pen though? It would have been good to do a run-off pH test first to see what you get before and after the lime is added in. Always go easy on any fix you're trying too. Last thing you want to do is throw things too far the other way.

BTW, your humidity is way too high for the big females. Unless your meter is different than mine and the top is temperature, its saying your RH is 80% with a high of 88%. I don't like mine to go above 70, usually not even above 60 is their sweet spot.

Also, I've had my best results using ffof dirt for the first 4 months, and about half as much lime that people suggest. I mixed 5 gallons of soil, people suggest 1-2 teaspoons per gallon, I put like 2-3 teaspoons in 5 gallons. Haven't had to treat with cal mag in weeks and my plants are healthy as ever.

I understand about the ratio and lime maybe being a problem, but plants use the shit out of magnesium (its an essential component to the chlorophyll molecule) especially in flower. If the lime ratio has magnesium imbalanced then you could treat with some calcium nitrate from time to time to keep the ratio closer to the same.

I would advise you to goto straight coco and water based nutrients. No guannos or teas
Forbid 4F
&
Nematodes
&
Throw out all your mighty wash & azamaz
&
You WILL be 10x the grower and more successful than you ever imagined.

MajorCoco said:

That should help. Good luck!

Do you have a pH pen though? It would have been good to do a run-off pH test first to see what you get before and after the lime is added in. Always go easy on any fix you're trying too. Last thing you want to do is throw things too far the other way.

Click to expand...

No PH pen yet but next on the list now obviously. lol I should have done a B&A agreed but did go very light on the lime and washed it in with a mild lime white was to kick it off. Did find another mistake I have been making that most likely brought this PH problem to the front. I have been using 5.8 PHed water when it should have been more like 6.8 for soil. Going to give them a good flushed and PH the run off today.

Thanx MajorCoCo

ThorGanjason said:

Also, I've had my best results using ffof dirt for the first 4 months, and about half as much lime that people suggest. I mixed 5 gallons of soil, people suggest 1-2 teaspoons per gallon, I put like 2-3 teaspoons in 5 gallons. Haven't had to treat with cal mag in weeks and my plants are healthy as ever.

I understand about the ratio and lime maybe being a problem, but plants use the shit out of magnesium (its an essential component to the chlorophyll molecule) especially in flower. If the lime ratio has magnesium imbalanced then you could treat with some calcium nitrate from time to time to keep the ratio closer to the same.

Click to expand...

Did not realize the RH was such an issue. I am down in central FL and we have been having a shit ton of rain and heat. Box temps were getting over 90% on a regular basis so I installed a 5k btu a/c in the side of the box to cool things down. Working great so far holding a steady 76-78 barely using the compressor. Limited on space in there so unless the RH is a deal breaker I really don't want to give up space to a dehuey.

Really should have waited to mix my own soil til I was more knowledgeable but live and learn. The big girls (1st grow) are in MG with minimal issues. When I started this for person medicinal use I never thought I was going to need a degree in botany. LOL

Thanx ThorGanjason

eyeball696 said:

I would advise you to goto straight coco and water based nutrients. No guannos or teas
Forbid 4F
&
Nematodes
&
Throw out all your mighty wash & azamaz
&
You WILL be 10x the grower and more successful than you ever imagined.

Click to expand...

You hit on something there eyeball696... The reason I recently attempted to mix my own was to lean toward a more lightweight potting mix so I could have more control over nutes. It would be so nice to be able to have one easy mix to work with and not have to worry about all the BS. All I am attempting to do is grow a few girls for personal medicinal use. Not worried about the highest yield possible or the best smoke anyone has ever had, just want to grow a few on a low maintenance regiment. After this issue was actually considering going back to just a bag mix with some perlite to lighten it up but now going to do some research on straight coco and maybe try it on 1 or 2 out of my next grow.

Thanx man

So if you have read from the beginning of this thread you would know I was dealing with "lockout" caused by very low PH because of a soil mix I made with a large amount of peat moss and no lime. After receiving advice from the very knowledgeable members I was able to save them. THANK YOU ALL!!!

I fixed the problem by adding a small amount of lime to each pot and flushing with a lime white wash solution with a little epsom. Continued flushing with PHed water for a week to 10 days and then started them back on 25% nutes. It has been close to 3 weeks now and they are responding well. I took a peek at the roots and they were bright white and starting to wrap the pot so I transplanted and stuck them in flower. They are 6 weeks old stunted and about 8" tall. These are all Nirvana Master Kush clones and stretch a lot in flower. I only have about 30" of vertical grow space so wanted to flower this run with shorter plant rather than the 18" tall ones before.



Considering this is where they were....




Here is a pic of my veg area with some more baby girls that are thriving in the same soil with lime and epsom added. 4 more MK, 2 Face Wreck and 1 bag seed.




Here is some pics of Bubblicious that is getting close. My first full grow and can't wait to taste. I am a little confused about when to harvest as I have read many threads and everyone seems to have a different opinion. She is at 7 weeks into 12/12 and trichs are still clear. Started fresh water flush at 6 weeks because the flower period is supposed to be 8-10 wks and wanted to make sure all nutes were flushed.



Thanks again for all the help.

Good to see it all worked out. Thanks for the update. It's all good experience too, so I'm sure you're looking forward to the next round

I love a fairy tale with a little conflict and a happy ending. Or a massage with a happy ending. Or a grow with a happy ending. But especially the massage

Looking awesome man, +rep for following advise and getting your ladies back into shape.