Here we go with another peek into the tent. Hopefully this will be the last time I bitch about the weather, at least until it gets hot enough that I'm cursing the heat. :no: It's been the coldest March in decades around here, and I'm glad to turn the page to April. Temps in the 60s and 70s this week so the girls should all be much happier. Things are cruising along fairly well, though the low temps have definitely been impeding the growth somewhat. But just in the last day or so that I've had temps in the 70s inside the tent, I've seen a big improvement. They're all still ground huggers due to the cold and me needing to keep the lights right on them for warmth, but I expect them to shoot up quite a bit in the next week.
The other thing worth mentioning is that I've been dealing with some problems with a few of the plants. A few days after feeding last week, I started seeing some light chlorosis and spotting. It seemed unlikely that there was a deficiency going on, since they'd had a full regimen of nutes and cal/mg. I thought it may be cold roots affecting nutrient uptake but ruled that out since I never had the tent drop down into the 40s. It's sometimes tough to identify a problem in the early stages, so this took a bit of work. For the sake of newer growers who may be reading this, here's the process I used:
1. Don't panic - rushing into a 'solution' when you don't know what the problem is can often make things much worse. Flushing, dumping nutes into the plants, kicking your dog - none of these are necessarily helpful and you will probably regret it later.
2. Rule out environmental factors - in my case, other than cold temps, things were OK. No pests, humidity problems, inadequate lighting, etc.
3. Check soil conditions - I'm using a proven, quality soil mix with organic nutes. pH is much less critical with organic growing, but I still tested my runoff at the previous feeding and all pots were within 6.3-6.5.
4. Overfeeding or underfeeding? I am using a soil mix with no amendments, so these plants needed some food during week two. They were given a feeding and responded well initially with no sign of burn (it's very hard to burn with organic nutes anyway).
5. At this point I must have some sort of deficiency OR lockout issue. Given the fact that I know these plants have been given everything they need at their age, I am ruling out deficiency. Must be a lockout issue, but either way the plant is not getting all proper nutrients and I have to find out which ones are missing.
6. Determine whether your deficiency/lockout is mobile or immobile - mobile nutrients travel quickly through the plant so issues are spotted first on older growth. Immobile nutrients travel slowly so older growth will look fine while new growth suffers. In my case, all irregularities were on new growth so I knew I was looking for an immobile nutrient deficiency/lockout.
7. Confer with some of my AFN master grower mates (or visit the infirmary) and research the heck out of it - as things developed it started to look more and more like a calcium lockout, which was puzzling given the fact that my soil mix contains dolomite lime and I just gave a dose of cal/mg with the feeding. But as these things often go, it could also be a lack of zinc or a couple other micronutrients.
8. Take action with foliar treatments until the problem can be resolved in the soil - I gave a
light solution of FloraMicro which contains some N to green things up, a good shot of calcium, and loads of other micronutes that the plants need. That way if I misdiagnosed the deficiency/lockout, hopefully the correct thing would be in there. I used 1/4 of the recommended amount for young plants, which amounted to something like only 20 drops in my small spray bottle. I also added a couple drops of plain (not anti-bacterial) dish soap as a wetting agent. Remember you can always spray again if needed, but if you mix this too hot, you may severely stunt the plant or worse. The treatments continued once a day for 3 days until the plants showed no signs of the problems getting worse.
9. Find the source of the problem, hopefully - sometimes you never figure these things out for sure, but in this case I believe I found it. I have been using humic acid in my tap water during bubbling to neutralize the chloramines that are deadly to my microherd. Specifically GO Diamond Black which is part of my nutrient regimen. I am unsure how much I put in my 5 gallon bucket a week or so ago, but it was a pretty good splash of it. Then I gave more as part of the normal feeding routine which I am following. As I did more digging into this, I found a number of people with calcium lockout issues due to an overdose of humic acid in the soil. The light bulb went off for me at that point. I have also read that the liquid form of humic acid made of leonardite is less effective and can also cause issues with other nutrients if used too often. I am now using a pinch of worm castings for the humic matter in my water and I will no longer use the Diamond Black product in the future.
10. Take long term action if necessary - since I feel fairly confident that I had found the culprit, I simply watered the plants with a tablespoon of molasses and gave them some time to recover. I have discontinued the foliar treatments because all new growth seems to be free of any signs of deficiency. I'll keep an eye out for problems in the coming days, but it appears that things are in good shape now.
Now, after all that, here are a few pics. They just woke up so they're a bit droopy:
Day 15:
Magnum - As you can see, she had some slight chlorosis but the treatment stopped it short of any spotting. This plant is in the largest pot & has clearly been putting more energy into roots. It's catching up to the others now, though.
TD - This one was affected the most by the lockout, which surprised me a bit given how robust the DP genetics are. New growth is looking great and she's growing well again.
WW - She has some light spotting but not nearly as bad as the Think Different. Otherwise doing very well and smelling skunky already.
Cobra - Showed no signs of problems from the lockout, and after a slow start is doing very well.
SMR - A touch of unhealthiness from the lockout, but she's still at least twice the size of everything else in the tent. Smells like green bananas.
DD - This one got some food and is finally getting past the ugly baby stage. Hopefully all three dragons will move to their outside home in the coming weeks.
MD1 and 2 - The big one has bushed out big time since getting in the Happy Frog soil, and the little one is starting to look like it may be a decent plant after all.
I know this was a long one - thanks for hanging in there! :Sharing One:
On day 8 I gave the first feeding and the response has been good. I have used GO nutes before but this is the first time I have run the entire lineup. It's a bit of a bit of a pain to mix up 6 different products, but since I have the whole box set I want to see the results from using them all. I also went with the full week 1 dose as recommended by GO rather than cutting it down. I went too light on these nutes last time, and after doing a lot of research, it seems that the best results are coming from growers who are more on the aggressive side. I am confident that I have a healthy soil environment, so I will keep up the full strength feedings until the plants tell me I'm wrong. With an organic grow the microherd will buffer the pH in the root zone, but I still use some organic pH up for my own piece of mind. The solution was 6.5 and runoff was between 6.35 and 6.55 on all pots, so I'm very happy with the pH of the Sunshine Advanced #4. I added nothing to it and it's right on the money. On to the pics!
