Nutrient Lockout in Organic Grow?

GiovanniJones · Feb 20, 2020

Hi all, I posted some issues in the Plant Problems forum earlier this evening. Several plants in my grow aren't looking too hot, and based on the pics I posted, I was told that a possibility is salt buildup causing nutrient lockout. At least that's how I understood it. You can see pics of the leaves here.

I wanted to bring it up in this forum too, because this is the Organics forum and the help here may add to the help I'm getting over there.

Basically, I used the recommended amount of Gaia Green's kelp meal, as well as their recommended amount of Power Bloom to top-dress a couple of weeks ago. Since I used two amendments, I was told that I should have used less of each. This makes sense.

My original thought process was that kelp meal could help growth by adding micronutrients, but that I wouldn't overdo it because it's all natural amendments with no bottled nutes.

Am I understanding correctly that I may have overdone it? I thought that in organic grows that plants just takes what they need, but I guess I'm wrong. I'm going to water with a bunch of runoff tonight so see if it helps.

Anything you could add to this to help me learn would be really appreciated. Thanks.

Richard Drysift · Feb 21, 2020

Kelp has some sodium but should not cause a salt buildup; no idea what's in the power bloom but 2-8-4 seems low enough. Looking at the plants I'm wondering why you are keeping them in such tiny pots.
In a living soil grow you need to keep the mix active in order for whatever you add as inputs to become broken down and be absorbed by the plants root system. This is only possible if the mix has been provided with a form of compost which provides microbial and fungal activity needed to keep soil ph in range. To keep ph in range in soil all you need to do is keep adding raw organic materials like worm castings. Mycorrhizae is also important as it attaches to roots and assists with absorption.
Top dressing with a couple npk inputs won't do much without an active mix to begin with. I suggest getting some fresh soil with added ewc and transplant them to a bigger container. Sprinkle on some myco and place the root ball into the new pot. Giving the roots more room in an active mix should help but I doubt the damaged leaves will recover.

GiovanniJones · Feb 21, 2020

Hi Richard, thanks so much for the response. I'll try to answer your questions, but not to act smart! Rather, I'm just going to honestly say what my thought process was at the time to have my errors in thinking corrected.

Richard Drysift said:
Looking at the plants I'm wondering why you are keeping them in such tiny pots.

Since I wanted to grow organically, I started with a living soil and used the recommended pot size guide from this website. I vegged for 5 weeks. What size pots would have you recommended?

Richard Drysift said:
In a living soil grow you need to keep the mix active in order for whatever you add as inputs to become broken down and be absorbed by the plants root system. This is only possible if the mix has been provided with a form of compost which provides microbial and fungal activity needed to keep soil ph in range. To keep ph in range in soil all you need to do is keep adding raw organic materials like worm castings.

I started with a living soil that contained 40% earth worm castings and top-dressed a couple of times with earth worm castings. I also watered on occasion with a small amount of molasses in the water to feed the microbes in the soil. Is there any mycorrihizae in EWC? Should I have added some at the onset?

Really appreciate your help, thanks so much!

PadawanWarrior · Feb 21, 2020

GiovanniJones said:
Hi Richard, thanks so much for the response. I'll try to answer your questions, but not to act smart! Rather, I'm just going to honestly say what my thought process was at the time to have my errors in thinking corrected.

Since I wanted to grow organically, I started with a living soil and used the recommended pot size guide from this website. I vegged for 5 weeks. What size pots would have you recommended?

I started with a living soil that contained 40% earth worm castings and top-dressed a couple of times with earth worm castings. I also watered on occasion with a small amount of molasses in the water to feed the microbes in the soil. Is there any mycorrihizae in EWC? Should I have added some at the onset?

Really appreciate your help, thanks so much!

Your plants look pretty unhappy right now. Maybe lockout from a messed up pH, or from too much nutes? Just a guess, but I'm no expert. Mykos is good stuff and they have a wettable version too, but it's not gonna work miracles for the problem you're having. I would still recommend getting some though.

Xtreme Gardening Mykos Mycorrhizae

America's #1 source of pure mycorrhizae. Mykos is a natural & organic single species of beneficial soil fungi that helps increase nutrient & water availability.

www.xtreme-gardening.com

Teag · Feb 22, 2020

GiovanniJones said:
Hi all, I posted some issues in the Plant Problems forum earlier this evening. Several plants in my grow aren't looking too hot, and based on the pics I posted, I was told that a possibility is salt buildup causing nutrient lockout. At least that's how I understood it. You can see pics of the leaves here.

I wanted to bring it up in this forum too, because this is the Organics forum and the help here may add to the help I'm getting over there.

Basically, I used the recommended amount of Gaia Green's kelp meal, as well as their recommended amount of Power Bloom to top-dress a couple of weeks ago. Since I used two amendments, I was told that I should have used less of each. This makes sense.

My original thought process was that kelp meal could help growth by adding micronutrients, but that I wouldn't overdo it because it's all natural amendments with no bottled nutes.

Am I understanding correctly that I may have overdone it? I thought that in organic grows that plants just takes what they need, but I guess I'm wrong. I'm going to water with a bunch of runoff tonight so see if it helps.

Anything you could add to this to help me learn would be really appreciated. Thanks.

If you look at the power bloom ingredients it already has kelp in it and has all the micro nutrients that a plant needs.

Yes it does appear you have overdone it. And you are correct that plants only take up what they need and in organic grows they will direct a herd of microbes to break down what nutrients the plants want. BUT, you can still add too much fertilizer with any growing method you try.

If it were me and I'm no expert, I would think about trying to wash off the top layer with the extra fertilizer. If it forms a caked layer of fertilizer the plant will never recover...but these plants look pretty bad. Probably not going to recover without developing hermies if they can recover at all.
GL

Richard Drysift · Feb 22, 2020

I think these guys are right; maybe you just gave them too much of the dry nutrient. Just because it says it's organic doesn't mean it's safe for living soil, especially in high doses. Either way if you have more mix I would still go up a pot size if you have the room. Giving the roots more room is always a good idea. Then water only for awhile; don't "flush."
There are guidelines but no set formula; following instructions on nutrient labels always led me to disaster. Less is more. I had similar problems as you have now with liquid "organic" bloom boosters myself. These dayz i opt for a slow release natural fertilizers like chicken manure and organic spikes for bloom phase directly in the mix at final transplants. Then just give water; no top dressing or teas needed. Amend after each harvest. Your mix will get better each time.

GiovanniJones · Feb 22, 2020

Richard Drysift said:
I think these guys are right; maybe you just gave them too much of the dry nutrient. Just because it says it's organic doesn't mean it's safe for living soil, especially in high doses. Either way if you have more mix I would still go up a pot size if you have the room. Giving the roots more room is always a good idea. Then water only for awhile; don't "flush."
There are guidelines but no set formula; following instructions on nutrient labels always led me to disaster. Less is more. I had similar problems as you have now with liquid "organic" bloom boosters myself. These dayz i opt for a slow release natural fertilizers like chicken manure and organic spikes for bloom phase directly in the mix at final transplants. Then just give water; no top dressing or teas needed. Amend after each harvest. Your mix will get better each time.

There's a place near me that mixes and sells living soils with a base that is 40% worm castings. Those guys told me that if I use their soil and only top dress once in a while with more castings, I should be able to do a healthy, successful grow. If he's correct, it seems incredibly simple. Does this sound like a possibility? If you want to see their website, here it is.

Fwiw, I had some seedlings grow for a few weeks in nothing but their earthworm castings and the little plants looked perfectly healthy.

Kushash · Feb 23, 2020

Richard Drysift said:
I think these guys are right; maybe you just gave them too much of the dry nutrient. Just because it says it's organic doesn't mean it's safe for living soil, especially in high doses. Either way if you have more mix I would still go up a pot size if you have the room. Giving the roots more room is always a good idea. Then water only for awhile; don't "flush."
There are guidelines but no set formula; following instructions on nutrient labels always led me to disaster. Less is more. I had similar problems as you have now with liquid "organic" bloom boosters myself. These dayz i opt for a slow release natural fertilizers like chicken manure and organic spikes for bloom phase directly in the mix at final transplants. Then just give water; no top dressing or teas needed. Amend after each harvest. Your mix will get better each time.

Hi Richard!
He is occasionally using molasses in his watering to feed the microbes. I always feel it’s bad for new growers to use molasses. What do you think?

Richard Drysift · Feb 25, 2020

Yeah use molasses in an tea; the soil gets very little benefit from it directly without aeration. In a bubbling tea sucrose is an easy food source for the microherd to consume quickly; it's meant to induce them to reproduce which happens rapidly when air is pushed through. They only live a short time so if they don't have to look for food it gives them more time for sex. That's supposed to equate to higher populations of microbes.
When you just dump molasses water on the soil without aeration you feed the "bad" bacteria along with the beneficial microbes. You want to favor them by growing lots of beneficial microbes through aeration so they "win" their tiny battles against the evil anaerobic bacterial empire.

ChrispyCritter · Mar 1, 2020

IMO transplanting to larger pots will help a lot. It always does. Do that firs t, lots of microbes, and take other steps as needed. Ill probably stir it up here but I like using Recharge. Seems to balance my organic soil mix for the plants to easily use. Far fewer defincies. Also I'm using TM7 this run for t he first time. My plants look better than ever and I'm almost nervous to say this but no defincies or burnt tips or yellowing anywhere. So far. I'll know later how it turns out of course but so far im ecstatic. I use other !microbes too. VAM, Photosynthesis Plus and Mammoth P. That's just what I like.

Wizard of Nozs · Mar 4, 2020

GiovanniJones said:
There's a place near me that mixes and sells living soils with a base that is 40% worm castings. Those guys told me that if I use their soil and only top dress once in a while with more castings, I should be able to do a healthy, successful grow. If he's correct, it seems incredibly simple. Does this sound like a possibility? If you want to see their website, here it is.

Fwiw, I had some seedlings grow for a few weeks in nothing but their earthworm castings and the little plants looked perfectly healthy.

You may want to check out the no till area of the forums. A lot of people there have completed grows with the mix they used and you can use that information to dial in your own mix. If you're using smaller pots, make sure to also use some granular amendments that break down slower.

GiovanniJones · Mar 29, 2020

Now that some time has passed, I think that my problem is pretty clear to me now. What a dumbass I was.

Before transplanting into 3-gallon containers, I started with a living soil that I purchased locally, already well-amended with nutrients. I mixed in some Gaia Green 2-8-4 and Gaia Green seaweed kelp as per package instructions. My leaves took a nose-dive about two weeks after that, so while the products I added were composting in the soil mix, it was getting hotter by the day. Once it cooked for a good two weeks, the soil was too hot any my plants couldn't handle it.

I might try a similar process next time, but I won't amend the soil at all. I'll try this:

Just add the organic stuff in small amounts as top dressing every few weeks.
I'm going to use Uncle Ben's topping technique on my plants.
No defoliating whatsoever.
I'll use veg nutes all the way through and focus on keeping healthy, green leaves as much as I possible can.

Sound good?

ChrispyCritter · Mar 29, 2020

All of it sounds good but why don't you preamend and cook your soil? Problem solved. You can topdress some things if you feel you absolutely must if your plant needs it. I never defoliate and I plan to use Uncle Ben's topping style next grow. Nevermind about cooking suggestion. I do that but I build my soil and don't use any other nutes during grow. I see you do. My bad. I used to use Dyna Gro foliage pro all the way through. Worked great.

Bignutes · Mar 29, 2020

Start by taking a ph pen and take water at 7 ph (adjust it to 7) and run it thru a small pot of soil, collect the runoff and ph your runoff, shoot for a ph of 6.0-6.3 if you have more inert media, go with 6.5 if you have mostly soil. Also check the ec or ppm of your runoff, this will tell you your ferilizter strength. With a ph and tds pen you'll dial in your grow.

If your ph is above 6.3 adjust it by cutting in some peat moss.

If your ph is too low add lime to bring up.

To validate the above seed some beans at different ph's in small pots like you normally do. When the plants are responding well to a certain soil ph go with that, the ones that aren't when you pot up with new proper ph soil they'll rebound quickly.

GiovanniJones · Mar 29, 2020

Bignutes said:
Start by taking a ph pen and take water at 7 ph (adjust it to 7) and run it thru a small pot of soil, collect the runoff and ph your runoff, shoot for a ph of 6.0-6.3 if you have more inert media, go with 6.5 if you have mostly soil. Also check the ec or ppm of your runoff, this will tell you your ferilizter strength. With a ph and tds pen you'll dial in your grow.

If your ph is above 6.3 adjust it by cutting in some peat moss.

If your ph is too low add lime to bring up.

To validate the above seed some beans at different ph's in small pots like you normally do. When the plants are responding well to a certain soil ph go with that, the ones that aren't when you pot up with new proper ph soil they'll rebound quickly.

Thanks, I've been thinking about ordering a decent pH pen for my next grow. Cheers.

GiovanniJones · Mar 29, 2020

ChrispyCritter said:
All of it sounds good but why don't you preamend and cook your soil? Problem solved. You can topdress some things if you feel you absolutely must if your plant needs it. I never defoliate and I plan to use Uncle Ben's topping style next grow. Nevermind about cooking suggestion. I do that but I build my soil and don't use any other nutes during grow. I see you do. My bad. I used to use Dyna Gro foliage pro all the way through. Worked great.

Most of the changes I've considered came from Uncle Ben's suggestions. I wonder if he's still actively posting. I was thinking of using the locally-made living soil and just amending if necessary with Gaia Green's all-purpose fertilizer and maybe a small amount of blood meal for the extra nitrogen to feed the leaves. Even throughout the flowering period, my focus will be to keep the health of the leaves and let them take care of the buds. I also recently purchased a good, inline water-filter because I have a small garden-hose setup in my basement, so 99% less chlorine next time.

Wizard of Nozs · Mar 29, 2020

Why not just start out with a base of peat moss and make your own soil? That way you know exactly whats in it and wont have to amend it again. Stuff like nitrogen can be gained without using a huge amount of amendments for it by using a cover of clover planted which will continuously feed nitrogen to your plant without overdoing it. It looks like you're going a little harder than needed with the whole thing. It's very simple to amend and no till. You should never have to worry about anything after the grow starts other than giving it water.

GiovanniJones · Mar 29, 2020

Wizard of Nozs said:
Why not just start out with a base of peat moss and make your own soil? That way you know exactly whats in it and wont have to amend it again. Stuff like nitrogen can be gained without using a huge amount of amendments for it by using a cover of clover planted which will continuously feed nitrogen to your plant without overdoing it. It looks like you're going a little harder than needed with the whole thing. It's very simple to amend and no till. You should never have to worry about anything after the grow starts other than giving it water.

Hey, I'm answering this as a noob, just trying to understand better. I've read that even the best soils you can purchase, like the US version of Fox Farm Ocean Forest, can only feed a plant for a month or so before it runs out of nutrients. Is this not correct? Even for an indoor grow?

I've read in some places that living soils can run out of food quickly, while others have said that once you have a good soil, all you have to do is amend with 20% EWC each time you reuse it. I get that the concepts are generally pretty straightforward, but there's so much confusion because of conflicting info online. Thanks for the help, it's appreciated.

Wizard of Nozs · Mar 29, 2020

Fox Farm doesnt use amendments that break down slowly like crab meal and the like which takes weeks to months to break down fully. In a good mix, you'll find not only short term amendments but ones that take much longer to break down. Then you add worms to that and clover as a top cover which replenishes nutrients by itself, you get a mix that can grow way more than one plant over and over. My own medium, I just cut the main branch, and replant right beside it. In my other grow journals, I used a 20 gallon home mix for over 3+ grows before I even thought about putting anything more in it.

No till soils are made so that they dont have to be re amended like that because the living environment is constantly replenishing the soil or medium of choice. EWC dont need to be added at all if you simply already have worms present. I use them in 5 gallon and up pots with great success too. The smaller your container, the more likely you'll be to re amend, but I've found that with 20+ gallon fabric pots at least, you can go for more than 3 full grows before needing to think about doing anything.

GiovanniJones · Mar 29, 2020

Wizard of Nozs said:
Fox Farm doesnt use amendments that break down slowly like crab meal and the like which takes weeks to months to break down fully. In a good mix, you'll find not only short term amendments but ones that take much longer to break down. Then you add worms to that and clover as a top cover which replenishes nutrients by itself, you get a mix that can grow way more than one plant over and over. My own medium, I just cut the main branch, and replant right beside it. In my other grow journals, I used a 20 gallon home mix for over 3+ grows before I even thought about putting anything more in it.

No till soils are made so that they dont have to be re amended like that because the living environment is constantly replenishing the soil or medium of choice. EWC dont need to be added at all if you simply already have worms present. I use them in 5 gallon and up pots with great success too.

Ok, I'm going to to it! A good starting mix in 5-gallon pots with earthworms in each pot and a bunch of clover seeds on top.
Does that sound about right?
How many earthworms to begin with?

Nutrient Lockout in Organic Grow?

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