Hi all, Soil grow with Runtz, using FFOF soil. LED lights. About 3 weeks in, trying to manifold. I haven't done any feeding yet. Can anyone help me with this deficiency? Looks like possible Mg deficiency versus light stress, but I'm not totally sure. Any help is appreciated! pH of the water going in is about 5.8-6.0. pH of soil (slurry) is 6.7. pH of runoff is about 6.2. I was going to try to slightly increase the pH of my water going in to 6.0-6.2 and add CalMag during next watering. If that doesn't work, then I need to decide if I need to do a light feeding or anything else folks think would help!
please calibrate your PH meter. Everything you are doing should be spot on for such a young plant in FFOF. I bet that meter could be in error. Also I would suggest do not feed the plant anything but ph'd water. my 2 centavos
I calibrate my meter each time I use it, so I think the numbers are probably pretty accurate. I really don’t want to feed yet, I was planning on waiting until flower. However, I don’t want whatever this is to get out of control! I’ve seen it twice now, it was also present on some early fan leaves I’ve now cut off. Could it be light stress? Any other thoughts?
light stress: the only way to know is what artificial sun are you using, its wattage and how close is it to the plant? FWIW I water with 6.5 to 6.8 ph
Looks like light bleaching . Ok you can use a cheap lumen meter . Not your phone with a an app . Amazon about 20 bucks. And its time to feed. Just 50 % veg nutrients . will be perfect. Here is an article . OR two ,, You can convert lumens into lux . Down load an app on your phone lol. 1 lux is one lumen . Problem solved . PPFD, PAR, Lumens, and Foot-Candle for Growing Cannabis - RQS Blog How to Use a Cheap Lux Meter to Increase Yields | Grow Weed Easy Only if you can afford. Please donate . https://www.metrodetroitanimals.org/
Thank you all for your replies. This makes more sense that it could be the lights (and a much easier fix). It did seem too early to have nutrient deficiencies, especially with good pH levels. It also lines up that it seems to only affect the older leaves which have been exposed to this light intensity the most. I use a marshydro TS 1000 LED light. I have it about 18" above the plant and am blasting it with 100% power. I will turn it down to 75% (manufacturer recommends 50-75% for vegetative stage), and then I'll educate myself on some the light parameters and obtain a lux meter. Thank you all again, hopefully this fixes things!
If all that light is for that baby plant you could turn it down to 50% and still have more than it can absorb. Baby plants barely need lighting to grow. Their roots are what matter first. Just like with clones.
In veg you only need 25 % of the light as in flower. Turn it down to at least 50 % Edited I posted this before i seen oleskoky reply. Not a copy cat
please let us know how it goes with dimming light. I would not dim the light but raise it since you have room and the plant can grow towards it thereby acclimating to the higher intensity as it grows up.
I always advise adding 20-30% perlite or clean river sand to any FFOF grow add more should you intend to add your own nutes later here good luck
Thank you all so much! She kept growing well today without much change in the amount of bleaching. Will continue to titrate the light intensity, I'll keep you posted on how she's doing!
yes please do. thats how we hone our craft. FWIW I am not a fan of FFOF. I have had a bag hot as hell and another that had seemingly no fert in it. Also some bags are buggy. There are better options imho but it is all I can get where I am at. FFOF, i think, was great soil in the past. Not so much recently. just my2 centavos
Bleaching doesn't seem to be worsening since making the change with lighting! I'm hopeful that was the issue. Other random question - do you all typically pH your water to a specific range when growing in soil? I've heard 6.0-6.4. My water just happens to be 5.8-6.0 consistently without adding anything to it. I was thinking of doing 6.2 so that I never get too low which became the core issue of my last grow. Soil pH (slurry) is 6.7.
For a while I was testing and PH adjusting my water every single time with 1 ml per gallon of PH down. It naturally sits a little higher on the scale and my water also has a good amount of calcium in it. After a while though I learned that my PH fluctuation didn't matter as much as I thought it did. I don't think it really matters very much fluctuating a few decimal points on the scale. My water week to week has slightly different PH just because I add liquid fertilizer every other time. I haven't tested it with a pen in over a year. Without a laboratory setting I don't think it's worth trying to micromanage down to decimal points. I'll test it only when I have issues these days. I'm usually sitting right around 6 + or minus a few decimals. The biggest change I made that helped with PH issues and other issues was starting a water tag every time I start a new plant. I write down everything that happens so I know what went wrong and I can reference it in the future.
ph of my water is in the 6.4 to 6.8 range +/-0.1. If I add ferts I definitely adj PH to be in that range. I sort of am like Olesmokey. I dont want the exact same PH every time. Some nutes are more or less available at slightly different PH ranges and some fungi and bacteria prefer slightly different PH ranges.
So Water ph. best 6.5. //////////////////// 5.8 /7.3 will work. Lower then 5.5 you will see issues . Trust me you will know when ph is too low. Higher then about 7.5 usually no issues . Over 7.5 start seeing some issues . I ph water from what i am telling you . Never check soil ph unless your strictly an organic grower with living soils .
Great, thank you all for your replies. I replaced my calibration solutions today and was getting 6.3 on the nose after two separate calibrations and 4 separate water samples. Maybe I'll stop checking so much and really only consider adjusting after I add nutrients. I'll keep you all posted on how things go! I ended up losing my last crop in week 6/7 of flower. I had been overwatering (every 2 days) and overfeeding (full strength fox farm nutes every other grow). I have no idea what I was thinking. The plant started crumping, so I finally checked pH and the run-off was about 5. Also started smelling mildew-ish. I think it was a combination of acidified soil, nutrient lockout, nutrient burn, and root rot. Developed wide spread budrot and had to abort. Very disappointing, trying to avoid such stupid mistakes this time around!!