Defiency or Lockout?

[DankDoctor420]

I never used to water until run off using salt based nutes. you should always water 20 percent run off and do a flush if in soil or coco once a month for preventative measures. I would always get defiencies and not understand why, it was cuz i never flushed or checked my run off when i ran into problems. id feed every watering but not enough run off. causing the EC (ppm) to go way up in the soil. i just recently learned what i was doing wrong after years of lock outs. if your ph is off your plant will not be able to take in the nutes it needs as we should all know (with the exception of ph perfect nutes or organics) the same goes with not feeding til run off in coco or soil. if you ever have defiencies and your ph is right and you are feeding rignt. the first thing you should do is feed til run off with ph'd water as normal. test the run off with ppm/ec meter. if run off is higher than the ppm your feeding then there is too much nutrients in your medium so it causes your plant to lock out and not take in the nutes its needing. the way to fix this is to do a heavy flush when they need to be watered again, flush with ph'd water til you get your ppm/ec on the run off down to an acceptable range. you dont want your plants sitting in the run off so use a wet shop vac to suck it out or dry it with towels. you dont want to get root rot or your plants taking back in the run off water which can cause ppm/ec to go back up. just trying to help other growers understand this cuz i didnt until 3 years in. lol best of luck growmies. Im glad i picked this piece of the puzzle up and hope it helps others. peace and happy growing!!!