Deficiency, pH problem, or what??

Hey y'all, I posted about this yesterday and didn't get any love so I'm trying again cause I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Lower growth looks healthy and dark green, but about halfway up the plant the leaves start yellowing with red/purple spotting on the edges. The red/purple is getting incrementally worse by the day.

Growing organic in soil (homemade mix of compost, perlite, vermiculite and coco coir). My temps are good, 68 at night 78 - 82 with the lights on. RH is good, 46% - 56% day and night. pH for the nutrients/water is good, 6.5 - 6.8. No idea about soil pH tbh.

Watering every 2+ days depending on soil moisture level.
Feeding 1/4 cup of the following solution each watering:
1 Gallon Batch:
12 mL BioCanna Bio Flores
10 mL BioCanna BioBoost
5 mL General Organics Cal-Mag
2 mL BioCanna BioRhizotonic
Using Earth Juice Natural Up to adjust pH when needed

I increased this to 1/2 cup of nute juice with each watering last week but things aren't getting better. Could I increase this anymore without burning anything?

Pics below of the worst affected plant. White Widow at 29 days into flower.




More pics in the original post:

In case anybody is curious, it turned out I had a bum pH meter. This was nute lockout due to a high pH in the soil. I just lightly flushed with some water, pH'd to 5.8, and the runoff was coming out at 6.9 - 7.2. I'll be flushing with more pH'd water until the runoff comes out +/- 0.2 from the solution.

I run organic(ish) and this was the first time I tried to buffer my pH. I always read you don't need that for organics but figured it couldn't hurt. Now that I have a good pH meter I might keep it up for a few grows and see if it helps, but I'm going to go back to not worrying about it if I don't notice a difference.

You're treating a soilless mix like you're growing in organic soil. I would ph all feeding between 5.8 and 6.1. also make sure you're watering until you get a little runoff. If u do those things you should coast into the finish line. Best of luck man

It’s your mix ... was coco rinsed ? ... buffered ? Compost needs some time to breakdown for use.

Coco can run to low 5’s ph and ready to use compost can run neutral ( 6 to 8ish ) ... so ph issue there on what to run.
Which has probably cause this lockout of elements , no matter what feed you add.
Coco / compost blends can be run but after compost is ready. Which takes a few weeks .

MyBallzItch said:

You're treating a soilless mix like you're growing in organic soil. I would ph all feeding between 5.8 and 6.1. also make sure you're watering until you get a little runoff. If u do those things you should coast into the finish line. Best of luck man

Click to expand...

Do you think feeding at a ph of 5.5 would be too low? I was going to do that until the runoff was testing closer to 6.5 then going back up to around 6.0 to finish the grow. I was thinking that might help neutralize the soil pH a little faster.

Budzbuddha said:

It’s your mix ... was coco rinsed ? ... buffered ? Compost needs some time to breakdown for use.

Coco can run to low 5’s ph and ready to use compost can run neutral ( 6 to 8ish ) ... so ph issue there on what to run.
Which has probably cause this lockout of elements , no matter what feed you add.
Coco / compost blends can be run but after compost is ready. Which takes a few weeks .

Click to expand...

I was trying to make my own soil. I put all these together and let them cook for a few months in my garage. It get's pretty hot where I live so this was about 85 F - 100+ F. I figured letting everything breakdown for a few months would essentially create soil out of these ingredients. I was planning on adding something like peat moss to mix it down because the pH is off and I had some nitrogen issues early in the grow. Almost all of my plants had "the claw" when they were just getting started. For my next grow should I try to find some topsoil to mix in instead? Or just start from scratch and follow one of the soil recipes out there?