Potassium Deficiency? - Living Soil (Day 28 Flower)

Hi Guys,

I hope that you are well.

Please can someone just confirm if this is Potassium Deficiency. If not, any help is truly appreciated.

Plants have been extremely happy up until recently. I fed the plants a tea I brewed with Alfalfa, Kelp & Worm Castings a week after I top dressed with the same + gypsum.

I am relatively new to Living Soil so I am learning as I am going. From what I have read, feeding too much calcium can have a negative effect on the uptake of Potassium. I have been using a Korean Natural Farming remedy foliar solution with Water Soluble Calcium Phosphate as one of the ingredients to help with Mildew.

I have realized that I have given the plants quite a bit of Calcium in the past 2 weeks through foliar and my best guess is that has caused an issue with the uptake of Potassium. The reason being that out of the amount of plants I have only 3 of them are showing these symptoms and they have been the ones that have gotten a bit more of the KNF remedy I am referring to above as they have had some minor mildew issues.

If it is Potassium Deficiency, could I just apply Potassium Sulfate as a foliar to rectify? Or should I be adding it to the soil instead?

I dont think adding will solve it if its being blocked by excess Ca.
Not really sure but there are a lot of KNF people in the organic section.
Or perhaps add KNF to the title .

Sulfur can be used to neutralize calcium carbonate in medium, however it will take a few weeks to a few months depending on the composition of the medium. Probably won't help here, but thought I'd mention it if someone has too much lime added to their medium and wants a slight remedy.

Adding K won't do much if it's not in a suitable uptake range due to alkalinity.

Thanks for the replies.

So after a bit of scouting around and doing some testing, I have realized that my original analysis was wrong. The two or three of the other plants that I have started showing very mild symptoms. Browning spots on the leaves. They did not receive any additional foliar spray containing the WCAP. I tested the ph of the soil and its between 6.2-6.8.

The other thing is the situation seemed to have worsened after I treated with Potassium. It seems like Potassium is the issue, blocking out calcium uptake. I have recently started using Potassium Sulfate and obviously my dosages were off. While it really boosted the bud development of 2 of the strains in my run. One strain has definitely not responded well.

I flushed the plants with water and sprayed then with Water Soluble Calcium and the plants have responded positively. I have added some dolomite lime as a back up @60ml (4tbls) to 20l (5gallons) of soil. Will monitor the situation and see what happens.

I will add a post to the organic section just to get some additional assistance with dealing with the potassium issue.

Its really weird how its strain specific.

to me it looks like a combination of magnesium and potassium deficiencies. both of them in early stages. top dressing can take time for nutrients to be available to plant. dolomite lime isnt a bad thing, will help buffer ph.

its common for different strains to require different feeding levels. some folks take notes to help with future grows.

consider feeding with a balanced bloom liquid solution to provide what she needs now until she stabilizes.

personally, i run Maxibloom start to finish. I can top dress or make solution with it. Best of luck to you

Top dress maxibloom?