@ Freedom4all – Hey dude, as I've been reading through Eyes' excellent Organic Grow thread, I couldn't help but notice your despair over the fact that you've spent over $1500 on your organic grow and are still rather unhappy about the way things are going. As I was reading through your posts, the one thing that struck me as the most obvious problem with your girls was the fact that you added no lime to your mix 'cuz you ran out of money. Lime is the all important ingredient that puts your soil into the ph "sweet spot" i.e. a ph range that is somewhere between 6.5-7. If your soil ph is much above or below these numbers, it results in "nutrient lock up," and when that happens, it really doesn't matter how many organic nutrients you throw at your plants, they will not be able to take those nutrients up.
Your best bet is to go to the nearest farm and feed store in your area, because they will generally have much better prices than you can find anywhere else. Anything that you can buy locally is optimal 'cuz you don't have to pay shipping on it. As you already know, shipping costs will kill you when buying organic soil additives. For instance, I bought a 6.75 lb. bag of Esponma's Organic Garden Lime at the local feed store for just $5.99. If I'd bought that bag of lime online, the vendor would have tacked on at least another $10 in shipping fees. So to avoid that, buy what you can locally and find your nearest Farm and Feed store.
When mixing organic soil, the recipe I used called for 1 C. of garden lime per cubic foot of soil mix. This works out to about 1oz. of lime (2 tablespoons) for each gallon of soil mix in your pots. Since you've already got your girls potted up and growing out, you will need to add lime to water. (I just did a test run to find out if lime dissolves easily in water, and it does.)
So you don't shock your autos with a very sudden big change in ph, I'd go real slow and add just 1 tsp of lime to a gallon of water and watch your plant's reaction to it. If the plants don't freak on you, do it again the next time you water so that you SLOWLY adjust the ph levels until your plants look better. You may have to do this 5 or 6 times. Watch your plants' reaction carefully, and when they start to look better, that's when you need to stop adding lime to your water.
Additionally, another free source of lime (i.e. calcium carbonate) is eggshells! It's a good idea to save all your eggshells, rinse them out real good, and then pop them in the microwave for about 5 minutes to kill off any salmonella spores that may (or may not) be in the shells. Be sure to put a separate container of water in your microwave too, so you don't blow your microwave up. Once the shells have cooked, grind them up as fine as you can (I use a small food processor) and top dress the soil with the ground shells, scratching them into the surface with a fork or something.
The shells will break down very slowly over time, but it's an excellent FREE way to make sure that your girls get all the calcium they need and your ph stays in the sweet spot. I always add ground eggshells to my soil mix because they not only provide calcium, they act as a "slow release ph up" that keeps the soil in your pots from becoming too acidic over time.
By the way, all the over-the-counter ph up or ph down additives that you can buy are fairly temporary fixes. Lime, eggshells and oyster shells are the long-term solutions to ph problems.
Sure hope this helps.
Sorry for being so long winded…
just doing some mellow planting of some PFB's ive been wanting to try for a gooood gooood while now..but aint been feeling great at all actually,so if i tank this grow or aint happy with it i'll redo it this fall.or winter sometime.Im gonna have me some of that smoke my yrs end LOL!
