Are these plants hungry?

[Olderfart]

Good luck with it Olegren. The jury will be out on my screwed up grow for a while. At this point, it looks like I will get some bud off the two problem plants if the buds keep filling in, which so far they are doing in spite of the pathetic looking plants they are attached to.

The younger plants are now upped to ~1000 EC, likely to go to ~1200 tomorrow. The symptoms coming on don't look worse for now, but the jury will be out for a while on them as well.

As to your comment on EC being the better unit, you bet it is. Your meter will read in either millisiemens (eg 1.0) or microsiemens ( eg. 1000), but other than that choice of units, EC is always the same units. So called ppm meters actually detect conductance, i.e. EC, and then convert it to the ppm numbers anyway, which would not be such a nuisance if different companies didn't use different conversion factors which is where the confusion comes from. IMHO, sticking to EC is the best option.

Anyway, I hope you manage to get your grow on track soon.

 

[Creature]

"The vendor mentions that calmag is a part of the solution already."
You're running half their recommended feed.
CEC is a thing. You have to maintain that buffer in coco throughout the grow. Pre buffered just means it's ready to go from the bag.
Do your due diligence and research growing in coco.

Don't take my word for it as I don't grow in soil. :smoking:

 

[Flux]

Is coco that much better then soil ? I’ve been seeing this epidemic of plants yellowing out in flower to the point of leaves just shriving up and falling off....... seems like things have gotten so technical and scientific. I grow in soil with ph’d water and occasionally add a few things here and there I can literally count them on one hand! I’ve never had a plant yellow out like the ones I’m seeing and have absolutely no interest in switching to coco after scrolling around here.

 

[olegren]

@Olderfart - Right back at you, amigo! If it's any consolation, I had similar issues in a previous grow, and the buds kept swelling. The plant never looked good after she hit flower, but she produced some perfectly decent smoke; frost and all. As others have pointed out, they are such hardly plants... it's difficult to kill them. Our inner perfectionists just want to maximize I suppose, and if I recall correctly you do one grow per year -- so I can see it feeling a little more unsettling at that point.

@Creature - I take your point and will do some more reading. I tried to do a lot of preparation and reading up front. I understood that buffering was meant to prep exchange sites and avoid the medium stripping required nutrients from the feed early on. However, I interpreted that more as prepping the medium so that it is balanced at the onset, at which point I assumed all things needed to remain in normal ratios throughout subsequent feedings. If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that this buffered CEC effect is worn down over time, in effect perpetually removing some of these ions from the feed and depriving the plant of them. Chemistry was never my strong suit, but I'm hopeful that I will come out the other side of this hobby with a better understanding.

@Flux - Your plants look great. You're not wrong. This is my 6th grow (Counting a couple that were really non-starters); and my first in coco. I've traditionally gone with soil and would agree that it's easier. More recently, I decided I wanted to drop the bottle so to speak and shift to organic soil growing. However, since I had these autopots and was really intrigued by coco, I thought I'd give it a shot while I was building my organic base. I'm still a beginner, but my understanding is that coco protects against a lot of common root problems given its ability to get air to the roots and keep nutrients moving to the plant. I don't think it's a better medium per se -- just different (with different pros and cons) -- and therefore a little more interesting to me at the onset of this grow. I will say that, going into this, I thought it would be a lot less hassle, but so far that has not been the case. But both of these plants have the craziest root growth of any of my grows. They're everywhere. I'm kicking off my earthbox organic grow as soon as these are done. That's not to say I won't come back to coco; just not for a little while.

 

[Prescription Blend]

@olegren sorry I didn't see this to help earlier, you can tag me if you have questions in the future and that way it will send a notice.

Is there any update to how they are doing, did lowering the light intensity help? I do think these plants look hungry and some autos need more food then others so it is difficult to dial it in. As far as your question about pH, since your starting out with RO water you should expect to need pH up for adjustment. For people using well/city water sources the pH balance comes out to balance itself. The difference is due to RO water not having any carbonate minerals that buffer pH where well/city water typically does.

Hope to hear what turned out for these in the last few weeks.

 

[olegren]

@Prescription Blend - Not to worry. I appreciate you chiming in. I stopped updating as the grow progressed, but I'm delighted to share some updates. I'll also mention that some of the YouTube materials you shared (as well as @Only1Sky 's amazing test run with Rx Blend) helped immensely in troubleshooting. That thread was where I learned I had been mixing the nutes wrong all along. (To be fair, your instructions call out an order -- guess I missed that part :smoking

I think I have a couple things going on. One of my autovalves seems to be acting a little wacky. I think that has contributed, in part, to the issues with one of these plants. The poorer looking plant of the two is sitting in a deeper nute mix 24/7. I need to test the valves a bit more thoroughly to be sure, but every time I've looked, the rougher one is holding more water than its neighbor - and the level seems to be the same no matter when I look.

Anyway: I ended up going to about 1.4EC after these latest posts, and it mitigated most of the problem. I also adjusted lights, as I think @Simplicio was correct in that they were exacerbating the issue. I could never catch the typical signs of light burn, but I wonder if more intensity wasn't complexifying deficiencies and pushing things further out of balance. Anyway, to Simplicio's point -- complicated things a lot. Looking back, a lot of it did pick up in conjunction with my ramping up ppfd.

I ended up adding in about 2ml CaMg to each gallon of Rx Blend at full strength -- then diluting to the 1.4 EC in res. That curbed a lot of the problems. Did have to pH up a little bit to keep it in that sweet spot of 6.2ish. Color never got quite back to perfect - but close - and the rapid deterioration halted. The one plant that continues to show more severe yellowing is the one with the suspicious valve. Either way, the changes saved the day. Leaves were dying off en masse, so I'm surprised they came as far as they did.

The grape plant, which is by far the better looking of the two, is even showing some signs of nute burn. This is day 75, so I'm just keeping them comfortable until I start seeing ambers.

 

[Prescription Blend]

@olegren they look good for having that stress early on, I'd say you found the cause and corrected it pretty well! Using RO you will have to pH adjust, another option you might think about trying is to blend your RO back to regular water to get 100-200ppm of hardness. That way you keep the natural pH buffer and might not need to adjust it.

1.4ec is about 75% strength and that seems to be where most autos like it. If you have a nutrient deficiency at the same time as excess light its like sending mixed signals to the plant where the light is say "grow" but the nutrients are not there to build new tissues so all the mobile nutrients get sucked out of older leaves and you can see multiple symptoms at once. You seem to have caught it in time though.

 

[olegren]

@olegren they look good for having that stress early on, I'd say you found the cause and corrected it pretty well! Using RO you will have to pH adjust, another option you might think about trying is to blend your RO back to regular water to get 100-200ppm of hardness. That way you keep the natural pH buffer and might not need to adjust it.

1.4ec is about 75% strength and that seems to be where most autos like it. If you have a nutrient deficiency at the same time as excess light its like sending mixed signals to the plant where the light is say "grow" but the nutrients are not there to build new tissues so all the mobile nutrients get sucked out of older leaves and you can see multiple symptoms at once. You seem to have caught it in time though.

@Prescription Blend - Can't thank you enough for the insights here. I've considered pulling my water back in or mixing. I think I might do that for the flush that I should probably start now that they're close to done. We have fairly hard well water here. It's usually about 300ppm if I bypass softener (which I always do if I'm going to give it to the plants). Would probably be smarter to dilute that down as opposed to wasting $$ on pH up, huh?

 

[low_and_slow]

Is coco that much better then soil ? I’ve been seeing this epidemic of plants yellowing out in flower to the point of leaves just shriving up and falling off....... seems like things have gotten so technical and scientific. I grow in soil with ph’d water and occasionally add a few things here and there I can literally count them on one hand! I’ve never had a plant yellow out like the ones I’m seeing and have absolutely no interest in switching to coco after scrolling around here.

It's not the coco it's the autopots, more like autorots based on what I've seen here recently...

 

[Tom Bombadil]

Is coco that much better then soil ? I’ve been seeing this epidemic of plants yellowing out in flower to the point of leaves just shriving up and falling off....... seems like things have gotten so technical and scientific. I grow in soil with ph’d water and occasionally add a few things here and there I can literally count them on one hand! I’ve never had a plant yellow out like the ones I’m seeing and have absolutely no interest in switching to coco after scrolling around here.

New growers see the potential for bigger harvests with coco (has merit for sure) which is just a style of hydroponics really, and try that route.. Some are successful, many apparently have issues.. It takes alot of attention to detail and precision for coco to go well.. if a person has that type of personality, it can be easy... if not it can be a pain ..I see the same with people using ocean forest and bottled nutes pretty often too.. synthetics can be great or really bad.
GL to OP either way