MegaCrop +CoCo Early flower problems

[Mañ'O'Green]

@Waira has you going in the correct direction. 1 gallon of bottled water will dilute 2 gallons of tap water. Are you sure there are no water stations around. they are everywhere here for .30 a gallon. PH is a suspect in this allong with you base water.

 

[MesaBoogie]

@Waira has you going in the correct direction. 1 gallon of bottled water will dilute 2 gallons of tap water. Are you sure there are no water stations around. they are everywhere here for .30 a gallon. PH is a suspect in this allong with you base water.

yea I've actually switched to bottled water to test it out. The progression is still happening on these younger plants moving into flower. I've now switched to General Hydroponics 3 part plus bottled water. Too soon to say for sure but I dont think there is any improvement.

Could this be mostly light stress under the autocobs ? Normally as soon as I see the leaves start to curl up on the edges I back the light off in early veg. Is maybe this just another way of showing itself in early flower ? I keep them around 25" above the canopy.

Is light accumulative ? From snooping around other autocob grows it seems that this is an ok distance. BUT, I have to run mine 24/7 to keep temps up.

 

[Waira]

...damn, the coco is still CEC wonky,...CaCO3 is not very soluble under growing conditions pH range... roots may not be happy either, so that compounds things...
Too much light is a possibility, not burning, but stressing,.. 24/0 sched' is of little benefit in most cases, but I get the need to keep T's up.... if tops look the worst, it's a contributing factor very likely,...

 

[MesaBoogie]

Mañ'O'Green and I were talking a wile in live chat, we discussed my watering practices. I water every other day when the coco is about 30% saturation left. With an accurate 8 ph/water probe the top half of the soil is around 6.5 and the bottom half of the soil is about 5.5-60 on the wet/dry scale. Am I letting the soil dry out to much causing the issues ? I'm guessing you're familiar with the accurate 8 as you recommended it to me a couple years ago lol...Sadly the PH part never worked.

 

[Waira]

... not sure what you mean Mesa, about it not working? You just gave me two different readings, that make sense too,.. Different areas in the pot will have minor pH differences, in and out of the root zone, top to bottom (where all the stuff is concentrated),... I'm sure MoG mentioned coco needs to run in the low 6's, upper 5's for best results,... rock hard water makes that very difficult, and dumping loads of pH adjuster spikes the hell out of the ppm's too,...
the A8 isn't the finest piece of gear you can buy, keep in mind - it's acceptable for what it does, and for the money... $200 gets you a Blue Lab beauty if you want to drop the coin,.. I don't no need for such exacting pH readings in soil or coco,... Could be that coco isn't the best medium for it either, though I can't see why?
Some A8's just die and lose accuracy, depends on how nicely it's treated. mine is 6 years old and still works fine, tested against slurry pH runs to see. My old grow client kept his is a stupid storage closet outside with all the other chem shit for his landscaping, and it killed his A8 in 6 months!

 

[MesaBoogie]

Different areas in the pot will have minor pH differences, in and out of the root zone

I was just referring to the moisture levels in the pot, reading that off the A8. The PH testing never worked for me with the probe, it always sat at 7 in every soil. I figured that might not translate well when I wrote it lol.. If you look at those #'s I previously posted on the WET scale of the probe am I letting the coco dry out to much ? Hopefully that makes a little more sense now.

I have no way of testing the in pot soil, but I religiously ph my water with a blue lab pen to 5.7-5.9 and make sure to get good run off.

 

[Waira]

right! ... what'd I say?

Coco should never get any kind of dry, it's why it works well as a type of hydro medium... the whole point of it's benefits and superiority over peat based soilless is how coco drains and "breathes" well, and it's spongy texture resists compaction,...