Ace Strains and "Hot Soil?"

[Cryptlord9999]

If growing organically DO NOT USE TIGER BLOOM!!!! It contains synthetic chelating salts like EDTA which force feed the plants highly available nutrients and will destroy your microbial populations in your containers. The salt build up issue is most likely related to the PPM of your water and that its hard water.

 

[The Hatter]

If growing organically DO NOT USE TIGER BLOOM!!!! It contains synthetic chelating salts like EDTA which force feed the plants highly available nutrients and will destroy your microbial populations in your containers. The salt build up issue is most likely related to the PPM of your water and that its hard water.

Thanks for the heads up on the Tiger Bloom.

Rain water would be great if it rained here. I live literally in a desert.

 

[The Hatter]

I guess I should chalk this up to another learning experience. It's now several days after transplanting all my babies into their final pots in preparation for putting them into flower next week and even my watered down soil mix has burned my Destroyer. It has the dreaded leaf curl and claw. -sigh-

It's amazing these tough little plants have managed to survive my incompetence this far.

Here's what I've learned about the nutrient preferences of these 3 strains.

Nep Jam seems to be immortal regardless of how badly I mess up its soil. It burned the least in hot soil and it also suffered the least after I starved them all due to over compensating for the early nitrogen burn.

Orient Express likes very mellow soil to start with and seems ok in pretty "hot" mixes later in life.

Destroyer is an amazingly resilient plant in that it tends to recover from the horrible things I do to it very quickly but it is also the most sensitive. It burned as a seedling in hot soil, and it's now burning as a 3 ft tall adolescent after repotting.

I should probably add that my tap water, even after filtration, has a massive amount of minerals dissolved in it. It's very hard high ph water which I think is what might be the source of a lot of the problems as others have pointed out in this thread. I've noticed that the tap water here will kill most house plants after a year or two and it coats all the water fixtures in thick white mineral crust with time.

Thanks again for all the advice. The people in this forum are very helpful which is a nice break from the usual internet fare where I would expect to have some 16 year old stoner kid calling a me a "noob" for not getting everything perfect the first time.

 

[xmobotx]

@ this point you could use distilled ~not preferred but; anything potentially 'absent' in distilled should be in your soil ~maybe not in terms of 'living' water

if you want to do an experiment; do some barley sprout wash?

 

[The Hatter]

Hmmm, what is this "barley sprout" wash you speak of? Running water through barley sprouts before using it?

Distilled water will get very expensive quickly given the amounts of water I go through but I might give it a shot just to see if the tap water really is the problem. The relative humidity here is often in the single digits. Even in the controlled environment of the grow room its rarely above 40-50%. I thought about using old fish tank water but then figured there might be a lot of ammonia and other nasties in there from the fish waste despite it being a healthy tank.

What I've been doing is taking carbon filtered tap water and adding an organic mix of bloom and rose soil amending pro microbial slow release fertilizer to it. Then I let it sit for a day or two and use it as grow tea. I tend to water with the mix every other watering day. Both fertilizers are quite weak. 4-5-6 with micro nutes and I use a half dose of each.

The Destroyer is already recovering. I can tell its going to be a crazy triffid of a plant. I'm at around week 5 of veg now give or take half a week. It and one of the Nep Jams are almost double the size of the others.

 

[The Hatter]

I am going to go down to the local nursery to pick up some better nutrients and some molasses. Any suggestions on a good organic friendly fertilizer that is well balanced with micro nutes that is good for blooming?

The stuff I have now is a bit slow acting and weak and it won't flush well in the end. I tend to have potassium deficiencies from all the transpiration caused by the super dry air here.

 

[Husky Jackal]

Guano is pretty fast acting, make a nutrient tea from it.
But the most important thing in the soil mix is the humus component. If you can, start making your own compost and/or EWC, that will make a big difference in your grows.
Peace, HJ.

 

[The Hatter]

I started having problems with some of my plants after re-potting them.

Basically the soil seems to have too much nitrogen in it which is burning the Destroyer but not enough Potassium which is also starting to show as a deficiency in some of the plants.

Anybody know of a good organic fertilizer that has micro nutrients and potassium but no nitrogen?

 

[TanzanianMagic]

I started having problems with some of my plants after re-potting them.

Basically the soil seems to have too much nitrogen in it which is burning the Destroyer but not enough Potassium which is also starting to show as a deficiency in some of the plants.

Anybody know of a good organic fertilizer that has micro nutrients and potassium but no nitrogen?

Potassium and trace minerals would be woodash.

I'm switching to going beyond mere organics to using mainly rock dusts, woodash and compost.

I'm using:

Lavameal - Silica and trace minerals
Rock Phosphate - phosphorus and calcium
Maerl lime - Magnesium and calcium
Palm ash - Potassium and trace
Epsom Salts - Sulphur and magnesium

So you have macros (P,K), secondary (Silica, Sulphur, Calcium, Magnesium), and trace minerals.

You can add small amounts of Nitrogen with liquid mixes like Biobizz Grow. Mind you, air is 20% oxygen and 80% Nitrogen. Most plants can absorb Nitrogen from air, which is probably why it is the main factor in overfertilization/root burn. Of course only the legumes are famous for taking Nitrogen from air and storing it in their roots.

Teas and root stimulator (Rhizotonic is effective low cost) will do the rest. I'm also using R/O water with added Cal/Mag.

Also, if you transplant to the bottom of the pot and fill any space on the side of the rootball with light soil, you can add hot soil above the top of the rootball without risk of burning the roots. I find that plants love to be transplanted like that, there is no transplant shock at all, and they never stop growing.

 

[xmobotx]

i would guess that your soil will be fine given some time; amending it further could well present further problems

emphasizing 'feeding the soil' will always be your best recourse as an organic gardener

thus; compost tea, EWC {topdress &/or tea,} and the sprout rinse {yes just rinse off some sprouts} i have been soaking barley seeds 12 hrs {it doesnt take much} throw away that soak water and set the seeds up to sprout {as in a sprouter ~i used a paper towel in a covered coffee cup} once you have some sprouting seeds; rinse them w/ some water & use that to fortify all your water you water w/

a dozen seeds and a cup or so of water is enough for most folks hidden gardens ~you can just do it once as an innoculant

get your soil micro-life straightened out and ratios of nutes wont matter just so long as it's there {and using good compost/EWC assures that}

 

[The Hatter]

I've a learned a lot from this first real grow. The soil and water ph problems have all played themselves out now with no serious casualties and I have managed to keep the entire grow organic.

In the end I went with the Earth Juice line since it has a good reputation, I can custom tailor the P and N levels separately and its organic. I made grow tea with it which worked nicely.

I am not particularly fond of the FF soil I picked up but maybe I got a bad batch or something. Before I ever used fertilizer on my plants, the amount of salts that would precipitate out of that soil into the clay pots after watering was just insane.

It was obviously too nitrogen hot for seedlings which was my error, but even one of my 4 ft tall mature plants burned terribly after transplant into a watered down version of that FF bag soil. At the same time that the plants were showing nute burn from the nitrogen in the soil, they were all having issues with Potassium deficiency, not just in flower either.

I would blame my inexperience with fertilizing were it not for the fact that these problems were evident long before I used any. The water was suspect also but since I was filtering it, really it only leaves one other possible culprit which is the soil itself. Nothing else but seeds and light were added.

 

[xmobotx]

the problems w/ that soil mix mostly came about because it just wasnt ready yet; that and FFOF is mixed pretty hot

idk who advised the soil cos who tried to develop canna soils but they definitely picked up on the 'heavy feeder' dialogue

you might be interested to run a second cycle w/ the same mix un-amended/un-fed

EWC would be the only thing i'd add to the soil and id water from time to time w/ compost tea; aloe juice; and even the sprout rinse talked about in organic soil

basically these dont so much represent feedstocks as innoculants ~though that isnt precise {or even really accurate as re aloe}

italics; sorry i guess i already said that