Howdy Organics, I'm running into a bit of a problem... So, to start, my city water is complete shit with far too much calcium...thus without RO I was effectively locking out magnesium. Now that I've gone organic, I'm beginning to see problems with my RO water...still getting a magnesium/cal deficiency because theres none present now and I'm not adding cal/mag to supplement. Of course I've ammended with dolomite, but its just not enough magnesium for RO water. Should I continue to use RO water and foliar epsom, or will the mechanics of organics not be impeded by the excess calcium in the tap water and I can put the RO aside? Or would it even be acceptable to supplement cal/mag...my siutation is kinda of unique so if it must be done, it must be done...
Calcium well over 400 ppm. If I put tap into my humidifiers...it kills the filter after 2 fills...that shitty, lol. Visible color difference, its just atrocious.
Look into general organics they have organic calmag. I use ro water and been using that and I've been having great results.
If you have your soil mix properlyammended you shouldnt need any supplements even with ro water. Just dolomite alone may not be enough or you may have not added enough should be 1 cup per cubic foot of base soil.
I really feel as though its not enough, and ammending with epsom is really pointless and I know it, its water soluble, might as well just water it in. I did some research and found that brown rice flour has stupid high amounts of magnesium. I'm going to add 2 cups of it to my soil for the next run...pending a seal of approval lol. Foliar kelp and soil drench should maintain it without the use of epsom.
Yah I looked up the magnesium levels in Kelp, its really not as good as we all think it is (For magnesium at least, and in all honesty, while it does have a good amount of micro's, I'd recommend buying a Kelp concentrate if your looking solely for high micro levels, and well, cytokins too. Just can't produce those levels in a 5 gallon bucket in less than a week.) I do believe that once I can get it balanced out, homebrewed kelp tea will indeed maintain it (and far more cost effective.) https://www.planetnatural.com/site/age-old-kelp.html not a bad price though. Enough for a whole run imo (192 Gallons of solution) I've been tossing in a half cup of kelp and a half cup of alfalfa meal in my compost weekly so I can build micro levels for future soils, maybe solve the problem all together. Also helps to keep it alive and movin and give my lactos bacillus somethin to do.
The fastest way might be a top dressing with 1 tbls of lime, scratch it in and water with 3-4 cups...Give her 7-10 days to improve and treat again if necessary... Before I would treat I would make certain it is in fact a deficiency and not a lockout... I like w89 solution...50/50 tap will cut your cal ppm in half....I used tap with 600 ppm with no problem in the past but, went to filtered...
Whats wrong with a bottle of calmg? their are organic versions out there. i live on a well and tap comes out at 477ppm recently installed an RO and got down to 30 ppm. But i also noticed mt RO raised my waters PH to 8.3 from a steady 7.0 Have you noticed any rise in PH after goin through your RO?
If it was me I would do the lime topdressing and a nice kelp/molasses tea. If that isn't enough to fix a cal mag problem then it probably wasn't a cal mag problem to start with.... I can't imagine you being THAT deficient that these remedies wouldn't help.
Kesey, Have you heard of calcitic lime? I honestly don't know much about it, but I'm in the process of starting an organic veggie garden along with my organic "herb garden" and one of the gardening sites I frequently read mentioned calcitic lime as an alternative to dolomite. Supposedly it has a better ratio of cal and mag or something. I'll dig up a link: Dolomite Lime - How Using Garden Lime Is Likely Hurting Your Garden I'm curious to hear everyone's opinion on how this relates to growing cannabis and if calcitic lime is something we should be using instead of dolomite. I have no idea.
mjm and Jerry gave you the answers already. Top dress with lime and feed with kelp tea. Kelp meal > soluble kelp any day of the week. I am unsure what "levels" kelp might not have but I do know you can acheive complete mineralization from just kelp. If by levels you are meaning NPK numbers just let those go in your mind. Good dirt and kelp tea is all a pot plant really needs.
I am not intending to dismiss the remainder of your post by deleting it but I wanted to comment on this part of your post. In principle I agree with you but as in most things that are technical and necessarily required to be accurate, the devil lies in the details. The Ca component of a bottled Ca:Mg product is a result of a fairly standarized process using ground limestone as the starting point. If the start-to-finish process is performed in the US it can result in three grades of pure calcium carbonate: technical grade, food grade, pharmaceutical grade. This is a well documented process and quite easily researched without much difficulty. I emphasize US based processes only because they are the processes most extensively documented and publicly available for research. The Mg component of a bottled Ca:Mg product can be a bit more tricky depending upon factors as far reaching as country of manufacture, processes used, source of ingredients, and chemicals used in the process. It is very, very important to consider in the selection of a product if any other elements or metals exist but which are not indicated on the typical "NPK" analysis chart the consumer sees. This is particularly true if there are percentages of any of the other elements such as N, P, K, listed innocuously on the label as these acids (typically) can negatively impact an otherwise balanced soil medium. Alteration of pH is of great concern with some products. Nitrates and phosphates are two potential adultarants that can be found in a bottle of Ca:Mg. If the label also indicates percentages of either or both of these elements read the fine print to determined from what they were derived. Zn, Fe, Mo, are other elements to be aware of if listed on the label. If any of these are present on the label in all likelihood they are in the chelated form. I generally agree there is "nothing wrong" with a bottle of Ca:Mg, but there are many considerations to be given to where the ingredients were sourced from (country), process by which the ingredients were derived (acids, nitrates, phosphates), and the presence of heavy metal concentrations that might be of great concern to a consumer (state fertilizer database). The details are important to those that might have great concerns about what they ingest.
By "levels" I mean the amount of magnesium found in it? Lol Idk what would make ya think a concentrate is less than its raw form. Like I said, in specific to micro levels. No offense guys, stop regurgitating jerry and ITG. It makes you look like zombies =/. Need some new ideas bounce around, new experimentation. I'm starting to learn less, lol. I don't make a whole thread to hear the same thing over and over again