Ok, so here's a little background info before I get started. Soil: Coast of Maine Stonington Blend Grow room is a 39"x39" htg grow tent Light: 315w CMH Nutrients: Stonington blend plant food, fish bone meal Compost: Coast of Maine lobster compost Pots: 5 gal smart pots Problem strain: Blue dream Water is filtered by a 2 stage water filer and sits in 20 gal reservoir until use. Reservoir is rigged with a float valve to automatically fill. Watering happens when the plants ask for it. I don't have a schedule. Bug prevention: I use either neem oil or rosemary oil with some dr. bronner's peppermint soap, and spray every couple of weeks during veg. Haven't really had a problem with bugs so far as far as I can tell. The soil is a bagged "super soil", but the guy at the grow shop mentioned that it wasn't quite as strong as a traditional super soil, such as subcool's. So I picked up a couple dry amendments (the stonington plant food is 5-2-4 and contains several organic dry amendments that are commonly used in other super soil recipes) I top dressed with the plant food and the fish bone meal once a couple weeks ago, i think about a 1/4 cup of each per pot, and top dressed with compost. My other plants (especially the indicas) LOVED it. and have been growing happy and healthy since day 1. The problem: My Blue Dream (HSO) has clawed leaves and burnt edges. Did I go overboard with the nutes? I didn't think they would react this badly to a little extra dry nutrients, especially ones with such low water solubility. As this is an organic run, I haven't even thought about pH, but from what I've read that shouldn't really be a problem with this type of soil. Pics:
i'm no expert ,so i would wait for other advise, but yeah it does look like a bit of nute burn on then tips. maybe ease off food and just water for a while or even a wee flush. i would also think of adding some calmag to make sure they dont get a deficiency, i found from flower week 2 onto 4 thats when it seems to occur the most . if your ph isnt spot on or too much of a certain other elements can stop calcium and mag from being absorbed into the plant i'm sure that filtered water takes the calcium out?
Yeah, that's my thought as well. If it's just nute burn, all I can really do is wait it out. I don't think it matters much. I'm in the market for a new sativa anyway. This one has gotten weaker every generation while my other plants thrive. Maybe I'm not giving her the care she needs, but I haven't been overly impressed anyway. The buds smell great but the taste is not great. The last run she didn't grow one stem strong enough to hold the buds, and they were the smallest buds in my tent. She took up half the space in the tent, and yielded less than either of my other strains, which took up about 1/4 each. I apologize for my irrelevant rant. I just had such high hopes for this one, haha.
Nute burn, plain water next time. I advise against flushing, it can end up causing more problems. It's not too bad of a burn, the plant should start recovering in a week or two with reg water for the time being until she looks hungry agiain.
i believe some people like to do a small flush after the veg to wash out old salts before adding flowering food but you would not maybe recommend unless you burnt them bad? i tend to take it easy on the nutes normally. like a half strength sort of dude. the only time i pepped it up a bit. it did burn, but like you said it did soon recover and didn't get any worse
Yes, I did. I'm sorry if that's what you were referring to. I thought you were assuming I used bottled nutrients. I apologize for misunderstanding. when you said plain water next time, it kind of threw me off, haha. I top dressed once AFTER a watering, as the directions suggest. I didn't think that one top dress would burn 'em out so bad.
I use zero strength nutes in my water, haha. Just organic soil with compost and dry amendments. Flushing with a super soil isn't really helpful and can degrade the soil, which is bad if the soil provides all the nutrients all the way through flower.
It's all good man ! Everyone has different terminology and it's forever changing haha ! Since you said you already had supersoil, I'm guessing that top dress might have been a bit much for that plant. I'd always wait for multiple opinions, everyone usually has some good advice to offer.
good info dude. never used a super soil, yeah i see what you mean about flushing in such a soil. i tend to get a basic soil mixed with perlite, like maybe a weak food in it.keeps it going through most the veg then i add my own food when it looks like it needs it.
That's how most of my grows have been in the past man. Works great and gives results that speak for themselves! I just wanted to take a fully organic approach and see if it worked better for me. This is my first run doing this style, and things have been pretty smooth up until now. And even this is only a minor hiccup. My outdoor plants in the same soil (and clones from the same plant) look incredibly healthy. You can actually see a line on them where the bugs can't take over. The dead, weak leaves on the bottom get chewed to hell but the top like 7/8 of the plants (varies a little by strain obviously) can't be touched. Haven't been sprayed with anything out there. They are mostly an experiment to check for resistance and whether one of my strains that hermied is genetic or something I did wrong. No better judge of strong genetics than mother nature, in my mind.
I’ve been growing in the same soil for awhile now. I found it to work best when I only run water, microbes (fish Sh!t is my choice) and sugars to feed microbes. I use aphrodites extraction from nectar for the gods. Just a splash in my water, no need to ph check. It’s pretty much just sucrose and glucose sugars in the form short carbon chains that feed both the microbes and the plant directly. Insane results for such a simple recipie.