LITFA was a lesson that took me awhile to learn! Now when I read a thread about somebody pouring nutes to a three day old seedling and then asking why it's dead, I think LITFA man!!! LITFA!!
I am learning this lesson all the time. My first two grows, i poured all kinds of teas. Botanical and compost. Both grows had ph issues. 3rd grow, I was busy with a new baby, so I ignored the grow kinda. Ya know the bare minimum. No ph issues. This grow, I went back to my teas- More ph issues. Next grow- Im gonna leave it the fuck alone
I love how I can forget about the girls for 4-5 days, come back and their leaves are all drooping, bummed out, 'n under appreciated, then you give 'em a splash of water and the next day they're all perky and amiable again. They seem to enjoy a little thirst. LITFA, another lesson in organics.
Love this post. Have a friend that's having trouble asking me what to do come look at em should I make a tea buy a bottle wtf. I told him just flip em flowering and quit freakin out. When you're used to the plants reacting almost immediately to a hydro system with chems its a weird learning curve when you're in living soil and they grow at their own pace. Less is more in most situations.
Easy .... No lime/oyster shell flour/what what in a peat based mix. Dollar to a donut, if I'm not in the ballpark I'm at least in the parking lot. Wet
Sorry Wet, here's my mix. It has lots of humus and lime 50% recycled soil 25% homeade compost/homeade EWC mix 25% vermiculite/perlite mix per 5 gallon bucket -2 cups of granite dust -1 cup of a fertilizer mix containing equal parts kelp meal crab meal neem seed meal alfalfa meal dried powdered comfrey dried powdered dandelion dried powdered yarrow Bone meal 1/4 cup of calcitic lime 1/4 cup of gypsum layer of Borage leaves on top as a green mulch I think the reason I ran into ph issues was overuse of a kelp/alfalfa tea that I didnt even need but as stated I have problems with LITFA. I did not dilute it as much as I should have. I used it at about 50% strength instead of the usually recomended 1 cup to a gallon. This was a long ferment. The ph on the FPE's get down around 3. Its just too low for them to be able to handle at that strength. Live and learn though right? I think folks get confused and think that ph issues are not possible with organics and thats not true. Organiphiles use this to bring folks over from the dark side, but I think a more true statement would be that organics is wayy more forgiving as far as ph. You dont have to adjust your water. Its safe from 5-8 ph-wise, but you cant just continually dump super low(2-3) ph or super high ph(9-10 or higher) on them all the time and expect them to just take it.
Irie67 Still in the parking lot I think. *I* use 1 cup lime for each cf (I also use 1 cup of gypsum). CF=~7.5 gallons, so 5 gallons is ~2/3 cf=2/3 cup of lime. 1/4 cup seems light (to me) and I've never really noticed gypsum to have much in the way of pH buffering. That's JMHO and why I use full amounts of each. Could be the teas. I use them pretty strong, but not very often. Every couple weeks, maybe and more like a 25%+ dilution. No new baby, just old and lazy. Still, you're right about continually dumping super low pH stuff on them and expecting them to take it. Very valid point. The mix looks yummy. Wet
Yeah I cut my gypsum in half and had no ill effects so I'm figuring im in no need for another bag in the future. But ill use oyster shell over lime anyday. Being from the Pac nw there's plenty of oyster industry to serve that niche market and I won't be fueling the market for limestone. Though I didn't know about gypsums high sulfer content in hindsight may have been part of an issue I had in my first mix when I didn't know how much of this and that and just put in a cup of everything per cuft. I had a real problem uptaking phos. Perhaps the sulfer did its job as an anti fungal and effected phos uptake. I was also having issues with cold temps in my basement too so who really knows right * shrug*