Is change possible?

Never too late to switch, in my opinion. Might there be residual EDTA / other substances from your bottled nutes left in the final product? It’s possible. But to me, switching now would be better than waiting another month to switch to teas.

I strongly recommend you look into the KNF (Natural Farming) principles and protocols. Best thing I’ve ever done, as far as growing goes.

Nice plant, regardless!


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Beautiful plant you have there and you have more than one that are similar size? But, that also poses a problem for what you are contemplating due to the nature of organics. There are workarounds to get you headed in the right direction though.

First off, *I* don't feel that tea's will be sufficent for plants that size and not knowing the biology of your soil. But, I also quit using teas 6 or 7 years ago in favor of just topdressing, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. But both depend on the soil biology.

Bottled nutes are chelated and available for uptake right away by the plant. Organic stuff is mostly not, but soil microbes, root exudates and such do the chelating. This whole process takes some time to become established and why we love older soils so much since all this is well established.

What I'm thinking is gradually reducing the bottled inputs while adding gradually increased organic inputs to get this natural cheleating process going. A complete organic, dry, fertilizer like Espoma garden tone, or similar, would work well.

Just what are the bottled nutes you are using?
What is the makeup of your soil mix?

Knowing both would be very helpful with this for providing help/advice.

Wet

 

As @wetdog suggested, make the transition gradual as the soil biology and plant may take time to adapt.
Two things I would get for now is some kelp meal and neem meal/cake with which you can make kelp and neem tea to give to your plants.
Kelp is loaded with growth hormones and enzymes while neem has pest control properties. Both are loaded with nutrients and minerals.

Neem tea:
1/2 cup neem seem meal with 1/4 cup kelp meal steeped in 5 gal water for 24hrs
(optional: To this finished tea before watering add powdered aloe x200 at 1/4tsp per gal (or 1/4 cup fresh aloe juice) and fulpower fulvic acid at 10ml per gal)
For new soils or soils that are lacking this can and should be used at half to full strength and as often as once weekly.
This tea can be diluted up to 20 gallons depending on how much water you need.

For next round i highly suggest you research making a proper organic soil to fill your holes with. Here are a couple of places to start looking:
No-Till Gardening: Revisited
All Organic Recipes and Notes Compilation

 

I dont know much about growing outdoors but it looks like you are doing a good job. I always say to be cautious with water inputs as its a lot easier to recover from underwatering then from an overwatered plant. When you under water worst case is the plant wilts, but will spring back to life as soon as you water it (within a couple of hours) BUT overwatering will cause root rot, and depending on the magnitude of the damage recovering can take from days to never.

 

That's pretty much an on site judgement call, but not much of a worry outdoors in the summer. I had some stuff that needed 2x/day watering (tomatos in a too small container), and other stuff that was happy with once/week.

You're kinda on your own with this, but you could water to full saturation and then no water till it starts to wilt and how long that took. Water a day earlier than the number of days till the wilt started. Even sooner, come July and later when it cools off in Sept/Oct.

Wet

 

This year I got ambitious and planted my seeds very early but planted in my usual no till soil /20 Gallon fabric pots outdoors. So in some ways, we are in similar situations.
I am already noticing some signs that I may not have enough 'juice' in my soil to support healthy large yielding plants - which is what I want. So I am using more fertilization, especially foliar sprays, than I usually do.
As wetdog mentioned many conventional fertilizers are chelated.
We do have an organically approved chelators in humic/fulvic acids (I use BioAg products), and these can be mixed in with your teas or watered in with topdresses.
Perhaps in addition to the above, you can try some higher nutrient and quickly plant available organic fertilizers such as fish hydrolysate, guano, blood meal, etc to help with the transition to organics.



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I'm thinking that your best bet overall is, with these plants & mix, just continue with the GO stuff overall. Some top dressing or teas with the kelp and neem when you get it should certainly not hurt.

Scoob likes the notill recipe, I prefer the easy beginners mix, but neither of us follow the exact recipes, just the basic outlines. That "Organic Compliation" link he provided is so comprehensive that I would recc it over all others (Thanks Scoob!)

Anyway, besides the kelp and neem, you could start picking up various ingredients & amendments and avoid the "sticker shock" of getting them all at once. Making your own mix, from scratch, with individual ingredients & no bagged stuff is just far superior and way cheaper in the long run than anything made by a corp.

Starting now would put you in great shape for next years grow and not trying to learn and do everything at once. Organics does involve a good bit of time to get going, but once it is, it's very self sustaning.

Wet

 

That plant looks very well established and healthy. With a few steps i think you might do fine switching off of the bottles or at least only using them very minimally. As a disclaimer I dont have a lot of outdoors mmj experience or know your climate. I do have a lot of outdoor veggie experience and grow very large plants indoors...

Maybe give it a last bottle feeding and then topdress a good wide circle around the plant with about 2-3 inches of high quality compost plus a bit of neem and kelp. Next cover that up with a couple inches of dry mulch, perhaps some of those wood chips in the frame (use some good broken down, myco loaded ones from underneath). Lastly id try to water more deeply and less often to encourage roots to spread and go deeper into the native soil.

For feeding just the neem/kelp tea, maybe a couple casting or compost slurries and the above topdress might be enough. If you see signs of slowing down you could always add fish juice or a light dose off of your bottles. Aloe and malted barley are a couple other very cheap and helpful organic extras to add in.

 

Not the same but i know some people do use a neem meal tea for foliar im just not sure if its the same ratio as you would make the drench tea. you could probably try it diluted 1:4 and see how to plants react. If you can i would just get the oil though.

 

You can certainly get the job done with fish hydrolyslate/kelp teas.

You could also frame out a bed around each plant, cut and peel down the sides of the smartpot and fill w more/better soil. This could be used again next year. Get em in 2-500gallons of soil and you will have few worries.
RD

 

Soil volume is one of the only aspects in organic gardening where more is better!

 

Love that liquid fish. I had some hungry plants that just started yellowing. I mixed it @2tbsp a gallon and added fulvic - yellowing stopped on a dime. Girls prayed harder than ever.

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I can't go on the scale RD recommends but I'm moving up to 45 gallons by the end of the month. Hoping to see a big difference.
Maybe start the "No Till Monsters" thread lol....damn why hasn't that happened?

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you should be growing some good sized plants in a 45