Correcting poor drainage on established in ground plants

[FeltchWyzard]

Hi everyone!

I'm in a bit of a tough situation right now. I'm working with a partner and he insisted on digging holes for our plots,then putting fabric pots into these holes with the bottoms cut out. We made the holes about 4 inches bigger than the pots around the edge and back-filled the native soil loosely around the fabric pots as we filled them with our super soil mix. We put about an inch of perlite and rice hulls at the bottom for drainage(under the fabric pots) and under that is a layer of chicken wire to keep moles out. We are using 65 gallon smart pots, with crosses cut in the bottom so as we filled and back filled we could lift the pot to 'blow out' the bottom and end up with an additional 20gallons or so and not have a fabric bottom (hoping this would provide good enough drainage). Our native soil is pretty clay-rich and never seems to completely dry out. Very clumpy.

Things were going fantastic at first,fast healthy growth all around. Eventually,though, plants started to refuse to perk all the way up and we have found stem rot on several plants. There have been some leaf discoloration and scrunching/twisting/purpling on growth tips and the bud sites have spread out and are starting very small. I am convinced at this point that this idea of buried fabric pots is either drowning our roots or at least keeping oxygen flow highly restricted. He is convinced that the super soil i researched is terrible (moonshine mix) and that all of this is my fault for keeping him from feeding high strength synthetic nutes(i don't think these have any place in an organic super soil situation,but please correct me if I'm wrong).

My question:

What can i do to improve drainage on 6-8ft plants that are in this situation?

Is there anything i can add to my watering mix to help alleviate water logged roots?

I have thought about excavating the native soil around the pots and cutting away the fabric,then refill with perlite mixed in. Does anyone feel that this might damage the roots too much? If this is my only solution, it's going to be a long week...

Thank you guys!

 

[plantingplants]

First figure out if it'd really drainage. Dig another hole and fill it with water.

Second, moles don't damage plants, gophers do, and chicken wire haslarge enough holes for them to get through. So check for gopher mounds nearby.

 

[FeltchWyzard]

How long should the hole stay wet after filling with water?

Here are some pictures of what is going on. The Dutch treats(the first couple pictures) have turned purple stalks and subbed,scrunched new growth.

The holy grails have grown into weird bunches, lots of close branching and tiny node sites.

The tangerine dream have very stunted bud sites and scrunched new growth.

I've found grey stem mold on 4 plants of the latter two strains, found since the beginning of the second month of veg,which to me indicates root rot. I've heard it's unusual to have this occur before flower.

I find weird discolorations all around.

Everything is telling me that i have a fungus or other root rot. I'm not watering until the top couple inches of soil are dry, which is why i am guessing drainage problems are keeping stagnant water pooling.

Any other ideas i'd love to hear.

Thanks again!

 

[FoothillFarming]

Everything looks over watered for sure. How often are you watering? If I were you, and the holes are staying too wet, I would dig a trench for water to get relieved. Just a small one, 2" will do. Also looks like lack of Ca to me.

 

[HillMizer]

I'm with Footsy. Fix the nutrtion and the drainage. Start digging dig moats and trenches and places for the water to go (especially for the rains!) It looks like you have a lot of perlite that's helpful. I'd make moves before you lose plants and/or yield

They'll grow with less than perfect drainage, but you can't water very often. Dig around and check the moisture all the way down. We've been learning that you want more Ca 90% of the time.

The Ca will help with some deficiency, it adds aeration structure to the soil, it helps create resistance against fungi as well. Don't use cal-mag on the soil! Use gypsum.
Super soils usually have too much K and probably Mg too. The often have greensand, sul-po-mag, dolomite or mag sulfate. The oystershell is too slow.

The purple stalks may indicate that you have more K than P. A quick acting phos source might be useful.
I like dicalcium phosphate (precipitated bonemeal) if you're in a Cali grow town it's easy to get. If not maybe a feed store.

You're not getting much nutrients into the plant due to soil conditions. Try foliar and see if you can get some perk. I've had luck saving them with foliar of hydro fert like dynagro. It's cal nitrate and mcp and mkp and micros. Some milk and some kind of phos tea might help.

Spray the stem with h2o2 and then maybe serenade? This seemed to get me by in the past. Clear the soil away from the stem until you expose the crown and can see just a little root.

Good luck been there before myself

 

[FeltchWyzard]

Thanks for the help,guys. Definitely going to spray some light feed and try the dicalcium phosphate. I didn't know that calcium aerates! Bigtime love for you two. I'll maybe rent an auger and make a couple little wells on the downhill side.

My partner has been fighting me over watering. We also had a split over burying the pots. I thought that was only something you should do in dessicated environments. Would it have any advantage at all in the pacific north west?

He wants to water like hydro, every 2-3 days. I tried to tell him this is much different. He is financing,so it's his word at the end. Hes actually blaming me for these problems,saying the soil is weak and has no nutrients. I'm getting it tested tomorrow. Needless to say, this is our last grow together and we'll likely leave both thinking that the other ruined this grow. However, i have a few plants in pots that I'm not watering as often,and those ones are rocking it.

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

Water less.

Mix more perlite into your soil.

Test your run off water for ph and ppm. Tell me what they are.

Treat the root zone with azos, mykos, gh rapid start, and rhizo blast.

Spray the plants with immunex fungicide, and optic foliar transport. Mix them both together and use one ounce per gallon.

If you haven't been feeding the plants anything then start feeding them earth juice bloom, micro and catalyst, and hi-brix plant molasses.

Don't bury your smart pots in a moist environment. just get bigger pots, they go up to 1000 gallons. Don't cut open your smart pots. I have 9 foot plants in 65 gallon smart pots. They root through the bottom right into the ground with no assistance.

Don't dig holes in super wet environments.

Stick to growing sativas in super wet and/ or hot environments.

Show your partner this response.

 

[FoothillFarming]

Yup, agree with above post.

Perfect watering = leaves perky and praying

needs water = droopy stems, and leaves

Too much water = perky stems with droop leaves

 

[caterpillar710]

You have an anaerobic layer where the bottom of the pot meets the perlite because it has to become completely saturated before water will be capable of moving to the more coarse material

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

Ya your partner doesn't understand how root systems work at all.

 

[FeltchWyzard]

Thanks for the support,all y'all. Wonderful rule of thumb, Foots.

So we dug up a plot and the soil was not soaking,but still damp. The native soil was clearly darker and moister than the top and the top was still somewhat damp. If you sat on it,your butt would be damp after 20 minutes or so. This is after 8 days with no water or rain and temps in the low 80s.

Doing a foliar tonight and have ordered some of the goods you guys have recommended. Sending soil samples in,should take about 5 days to test for nutrients, not sure if I'll be able to test for pathogens with the money i have left over.

Tested pH with drops(filled cup with soil and water,waited 20 minutes, pulled water and tested) and it's definitely in the 6.0-6.5 range. Water-in was 6.8 (I've had it tested before and have a blue lab but need a new probe).

It was strange- the mix of water & soil ppm reading was *lower* than just the water going on,so I'm not sure what to take off that other than a somewhat bogus reading.

Thanks again!

 

[jtk707]

I use a bamboo stick to poke 20 or so holes in each plant . Helps with drainage for sure . Good luck

 

[slownickel]

The troops at work! Great recs!

To water correctly, you both need to learn how to water correctly, most folks don't know how to water.

Depending upon how much woojoo juice and other crazy stuff, you probably went way over board on Mg as do many.... hahaha

What you can do, is to dig around the bags and make an open air space between the soil and the bags. A trench if you will aka french drain. In a couple of spots, dig down deep enough so that you have a couple of holes that go deeper than the bag itself.

Chances are you have roots in the subsoil and there you are having rot, from the bottom up as the main roots are sitting in water. Taking a fine calcium carbonate and make a paste out of it and paint the trunks where they hit the soil. Slop it on good, from the soil and up another 4 or 5 inches. This will drive the pH of that immediate area very high. This will knock back nearly any microbiology, a pH of 11 or so.

Stop watering around the stem. Stay several inches away with your watering. You need that area to be fairly dry.

When you water, think 50% water loss (dig) and then a light irrigation. When you did down again and it is getting nearly dry, another light irrigation. Then when the plants are telling you they need more water (drooping stems as mentioned earlier) not drooping leaves, then a good watering all the way through. It is important you learn to read your plants. Make them ask for water. With those light irrigations, the lower leaves will begin to stand up. They should all be standing up....

When you see water entering into those holes, you went a bit too far. You can fill those holes in with rocks, wood, chips, etc... it is for airspace.

A good amino acid instead of a synthetic would be a great help to the roots, as well a good ascophyllum nodosum seaweed, say 10 ml per plant or so on the soil. Milk too! Those all reduce stress. The synthetics are all salty.

Glad to see you in the company of giants! Soar!

 

[Tonygreen]

Im not gonna give you soil advice but I will say one thing I learned the hard way. No partners! Good luck dude!

 

[FeltchWyzard]

Great advice,all around, got my gears churning! I am going to dig several holes around the pots with a post hole digger and use a post setter to get a few deeper holes through the caging with some thick bamboo(i can't dig a trench below my pots because there is caging at the bottom of the holes, so i can push tunnels in the holes of the cage. Hopefully this will do)

Good call,TonyGreen! Humans are cannabis' greatest pest!

Just to settle a quick issue, i know 6.2-6.7 is the usual range people aim for with organic watering, is it possible that my 6.8 110ppm well water is causing issues? Every 3rd or 4th watering we add some supplements and i pH to 6.2 on those. Should i make sure i am always pHing down? My soil showed around 6.0-6.5

 

[slownickel]

It would behoove you to have a water analysis. You need the whole picture.

At 6.8 there should be a minimum of problems. You are just putting on too much water.... and for sure, since the water is not moving, you are missing calcium as all have mentioned...

 

[FeltchWyzard]

Hash Zeppelin, do you mean immunox? The spectracide stuff? That's myclobutanil and i don't think it would be ok to use at this point in flower.

 

[FeltchWyzard]

Alright,guys! Been hard at work on this. So far I've unburied them and rocked them a bit to try to tear any roots that extend into the clay. Once the soil is a bit drier again I'm going to hoist them at an angle and have my girlfriend scoop perlite under while the bottom is exposed, then do the other side and hopefully lift&level to get a good sized perlite layer under the soil mass. This will also put it at higher elevation from the surrounding dirt, so runoff doesn't stay in the soil. Oh and since the caging around the plants rests on the native dirt I'm removing, i have been placing bamboo stakes in a grid pattern so it now rests on those,which rest on the top of the pots.

Last night i uncovered the root crowns, luckily they weren't mushy or discolored! I spayed them down with serenade & hydroguard and in acouple days i'm going to use Actinovate and trichoderma (rootshield). I wonder if gliocladium would help, I've got some of that.

The plants have perked up a bit, the center stalks are still a little messed up looking but maybe after the perlite and i drench them in a z7 solution,hopefully that will do the trick!

Oh! And today I'm going to paint on that calcium carbonate.

 

[slownickel]

Read your thread again. Your partner might not be so wrong.

Take your worst plant and throw some gypsum on it and wash it in good.

As for as the huge effort your are making, I would have just made a hole next to the bag, fairly deep and left it as a french drain. If you can, fill it in with rocks. The water will go there and create a low spot to get the water away. Breaking roots during flower is scarey.

Get a soil analysis quick and see where you are. Take one from your best and one from the worst. Take composite samples, two or three handfuls from half way down in the bag, try and get one from down deep and mix them together. Dry them out at a low temp and send them to a good lab. I recommend Spectrum. I think the cost is $42 for the complete K2 analysis. If you check out several other thread I post at, look at the results from Spectrum, the recommendation and the RESULTS of folks listening to an analysis. Pretty much everyone was guessing wrong. The analysis showed them reality and then they fixed it. In less than a week the analysis results come back.

Spend them money, fix the rest, dial it in. I would also send a water sample in and get it over with. DIAL IT IN. No more of that expensive woo woo juice. All that crap is made of the some basic elements, in a much less expensive form.

What you will find, is those that dumped on the right forms of calcium for their problems or that had naturally occuring high calcium (a Maui grower, that explains that myth) in available in their soils.

 

[FeltchWyzard]

I have a water analysis somewhere around here. Everything was pretty minimal and it was 108 ppm, mostly bicarbonate. Had some calcium and magnesium, zinc & iron. With my results they also had a scale of whether this was excessive for plant feeding purposes and everything was at the lower end of the scale. They told me it was great water and i shouldn't really ever have problems with it. I'll try to dig it up though.

I got a couple soil samples to the same ag lab a week ago,i should check up on it tomorrow. I did a top soil from the healthiest, a bottom from the same, a top from the unhealthy,and a bottom from that one. Should cover my bases, i feel.

Friend's been feeding GH nova and m.o.a.b. saying that the fact that they aren't nute burnt after that tells him there's not enough in the soil. I figure if the plants have root issues,they won't be absorbing those extra nutes,so of course wouldn't burn. Is this correct? I've seen those plants getting a little worse. The stem rot is advancing,killing off branches. That was what led me to believe we had some stagnation or drainage issues in the first place, we started getting what appears to be botrytis(stem looks like it's carved out,loses its green, and then eventually gets powdery dark grey mold, kills the vegetation on that stem)on stems that weren't in moist areas. And that was in June when it first started happening and it had been pretty dry out. At this point I've found it happen over 20 times between 8 plants,all on the lower side of the hill. Is there anything else that would cause that to happen?

I did order gypsum and I'm going to try it as soon as it gets here and let you know how it goes. How long would that take to break down and absorb and show results? I have some cal-mag, should i try a foliar with that beforehand? Would it make sense to try to find some chelated calcium? Monterey Foli-cal?

I've been doing some foliar sprays on the plants I'm experimenting on(they haven't been root drenched with nutes) , just two rounds of cutting edge's main bloom mix at half strength, with some silica, seaweed extract, and actinovate to see how it would fare and it looks like the new growth is a bit healthier, darker. I did some foliar feed thinking if there is drainage issues causing root damage, maybe i could correct some of the health issues by introducing nutes to the rest of the plant. They definitely look like they are doing better & better, and i don't expect a full comeback at this point in their lives.

Also when i dug up a plant there wasn't very much root to break at the bottom. Maybe a couple little tips. I think at this point I'm desperate enough and i don't see lifting them enough to stack some rocks underneath would be too damaging. I'm also going to cut the fabric at the bottom back to make sure there isn't any extra hang time down there.