Earth Juice Users

[Scrappy4]

OK, I'm about to test my run off tomorrow. My plan is to test the run off of 1 of four plants. They have been vegging in EJ soil mixed with ewc. The run off of the soil was 320 ppm (.64 ec) on my meter(Hanna:duel) in the 3 weeks since they have been transplanted into this soil, the growth has been steady but slow, they grew up 8-10 inches(5gallon smart pots) in the three weeks, they have only been fed for two weeks at rates of 600 ppm then 200-300 ( .4-.6 ec) then back to 600 ppm(1.2ec) . So every other watering they get a little more of EJ tea or fish, then the light feeding they get catalyst and liquid seaweed. The soil ph seems good at ph 6.6 on my soil probe meter (accurate 8)but I will confirm on my Hanna meter.

So now they are close to flowering in a scrog set at 30 inches. I'm thinking they need more nutrients, so I will test one plant, and if it is real low, I will add either fish or Mex guano to all of them, if the run off seems high, I will run off test them all, and adjust individually.


I'm hoping to get them roaring going into flower. Is my plan sound? Scrappy

 

[Scrappy4]

Hey all,

In case anyone is interested, I've started flowering my second go-round with Dutchgrown's LUI 13... This grow will be entirely with EJ products plus Hygrozyme, Liquid Karma and molasses... the blow-by-blow can be found here.

Tac, FYI specifically, this will be my first full flower using EC as a reference, so your input would be particularly desirable... thanks for the help everyone has given on thread... go Team EJ!

FK

Dude, I'm still interested. While i have most of the line, I mix Up the EJ brews in with, fish, ewc tea, alfalfa tea, and G/B guano's. So it would nice to see. A more true EJ run.

What's your take on adding enzymes? I started a thread on it, but most felt they were not needed, in organic soil.

 

[FinestKind]

Dude, I'm still interested. While i have most of the line, I mix Up the EJ brews in with, fish, ewc tea, alfalfa tea, and G/B guano's. So it would nice to see. A more true EJ run.

What's your take on adding enzymes? I started a thread on it, but most felt they were not needed, in organic soil.

Hey Scrap, thanks for the interest... not sure about the enzymes, this is my first full run with them, but after reading JMan's study (it can be found here, if you've never read it- it's a worthwhile read and the reason I got involved with Earth Juice in the first place!) he's got me at least partially convinced there's something to it... figure I'll give it a go... the shit ain't cheap (at $137 a gallon), so if I don't see something big, I'll let it go!

FK

 

[Tactical Farmer]

FK has made a major improvement with his current round vs his last runs. im not sure how much a part my concepts played & the details of his changes but its a night to day difference.

What I think is clear to me & him from our past discussions is that he was thinking when leaf "issues" showed they were getting hungry when in fact they were overfed & locking out. Same mistake I was making at first, there getting spots & turning yellow better give them more food, crap its getting worse better give them more, crap these are really nute hogs, better add more amendments to the soil next time, crap same cycle again.

Scrappy - could you please use EC numbers when posting ? Pics are a HUGE help if your wanting good advice. My shot in the dark would be if your EC is under 1.0 then feed no more than a shot @ 1.0 mostly N but if your EC is over 2.0 then don't feed till it gets down to 2.0 or less.

 

[Scrappy4]

I went back and added EC numbers to my post.

The gist of it is, in the past i would have just gave my plants a big N boost now, but with slow growth in an untried soil, even though I think i know what's up, I'll play it by the numbers.

I understand the anti meter feelings and agree, untill, there is problems. Then you can guess, get internet expert advice or find out for yourself by trial and error. And even if you don't use them from day to day, you will have a better understanding on how to proceed.
In fact i love the compost wizard soil probe, I found i probably have overwatered my plants in the past, now i know, and i can catch ph problems fast without having to do run off tests. And the ph/ppm meter is great for making teas. So ya, you don't need them, but you can be a better grower with proper tools.....scrappy

 

[Scrappy4]

So I did my test tonight. The ph was high at 7.21 the average ec was 2.08 but ranged from 2.89 to 1.31. So I guess I need to work on the ph, and individually adjust feedings......scrappy

 

[Tactical Farmer]

2.89 to 1.31 is a fairly large gap but not horrible.

how big are the plants ?

sativa or indica ?

I would take a guess that the lower EC plants are looking better than the 2.89 unless there very large plants ?

If the PH is truly 7.2 then thats going to have some sort of negative affect, maybe manage a decent crop but nute absorption will not be optimum & growth will be weakened.

If your using lime that more than likely is the cause of the 7.2 - add some peat to your mix next cycle to acidify the soil.

(I think) lime use generally causes more problems than it helps for alot of people even though its highly praised & used amendment here.

From my experience, reading & common sense tells me mj likes lower 6's (6.3ish)

I would recommend feeding EJ teas very acidic (1/2 day bubble) for awhile to lower it naturally (without ph adjusters), if the EC is in the proper zone to feed.

 

[smoketrichs]

instead of paying those prices try this im gonna try it after i run through this bottle of cannazym http://www.soap.com/product/productdetail.aspx?productid=48209

 

[Tactical Farmer]

say what ?

please come back when you have sobered up

 

[FinestKind]

say what ?

please come back when you have sobered up

I think he was responding to my $137 a gallon Hygrozyme post. There's a whole thread here all about alternatives to expensive enzymes... unfortunately, I had already ordered the Hygrozyme when I was first notified. The "pack" seems to be leaning towards "pond cleaners", which makes sense...

FK

 

[Tactical Farmer]

$137 a gal, hello inflation... Damn them bankers, thats alot of dough but very well could produce extra yield to pay for itself or even gains.

Ive had a small bottle for 2 years thats about to run out - ive stretched it a LONG WAY but won't be buying it again due to the cost.

I made a rubbermaid bubble cloner with a ultrasonic mister inside that will root ANY strain without a second look in a week, 5ML EJ rootstock, 5ML Hygrozyme per 5 gal.

Its a miracle machine for someone not blessed with luck cloning. SO SIMPLE, just cut, place in hole, turn on, forget about for a week, happy green rooted clones.

No more gel, stem scraping, soaking, wilting, yellowing, its AWESOME. Haven't lost a clone in a year, 100% success.

Ill share more specs & pics if requested ?

 

[Scrappy4]

2.89 to 1.31 is a fairly large gap but not horrible.

how big are the plants ?

sativa or indica ?

I would take a guess that the lower EC plants are looking better than the 2.89 unless there very large plants ?

If the PH is truly 7.2 then that's going to have some sort of negative affect, maybe manage a decent crop but not absorption will not be optimum & growth will be weakened.

If your using lime that more than likely is the cause of the 7.2 - add some peat to your mix next cycle to acidify the soil.

(I think) lime use generally causes more problems than it helps for alot of people even though its highly praised & used amendment here.

From my experience, reading & common sense tells me mj likes lower 6's (6.3ish)

I would recommend feeding EJ teas very acidic (1/2 day bubble) for awhile to lower it naturally (without ph adjusters), if the EC is in the proper zone to feed.

The soil is two bags of Earth Juice's amazon bloom (1.5cf) mixed with a 30lb bag of ewc and was adjusted to ph 6.4. I also added two cups of alfalfa meal. It started out as 7, I added peat, it became 6, so I added dolomite lime to get 6.47 according to my notes. I only had two weeks of cooking time on the soil, i wonder if it is still cooking, and that is where these high number are coming from, like a bacterial bloom or something.

The ph was consistent in all the run offs. I watered good, then came back in an hour or two and watered again till there was run off. I sucked up the run off in a turkey baster, and got a small amount of each to test. Should I have let the run off flow more? Is there a better way?

The plants are about 26-29 inches tall from the floor and are in 5 gallon smart bags. They are still vegging, I fill up a scrog screen set at 30 inches, then flip to flower, so it will be fairly soon.

I have northern berry, sour diesel, recon, and power kush, so mostly indica dominates. They all look fairly healthy, nice and green but have slow growth. The two best looking plants have the highest ec (recon) and lowest ec(N. berry). Not much to go on there, eh?

I have only fed with water in the 5.5-6.5 range so far. I have went light on the nutes with one EJ tea, a couple of ewc teas, fish emulsion, none over 600ppm or 1.2 EC. The teas start with EWC with fungus growing on them from piranha, and gerber baby oatmeal, then i add brer rabbit blackstrap molasses and bubble. I have raised ph a couple of times with silica. Then the off waterings/feedings only had a little maxicrop liquid or liquid karma, and a little ej catalyst, in the .4-.6 EC range. All waterings have had small amounts of piranha included.


There is one thing that may be significant here though. The plants were in one gallon buckets with soil that had calcium carbonate lime instead of dolomite lime, so that one gallon may be effecting the whole bag? I'm not sure, it also could be all the calcium carbonate in my water. My tap runs 120ppm.

So once again my challenge is high ph going into flower.

I did read on the jmans nute study that thrive alive (or whatever it's called) is supposed to be helpful in high ph conditions. Anyone?

scrappy

 

[FinestKind]

$137 a gal, hello inflation... Damn them bankers, thats alot of dough but very well could produce extra yield to pay for itself or even gains.

Ive had a small bottle for 2 years thats about to run out - ive stretched it a LONG WAY but won't be buying it again due to the cost.

I made a rubbermaid bubble cloner with a ultrasonic mister inside that will root ANY strain without a second look in a week, 5ML EJ rootstock, 5ML Hygrozyme per 5 gal.

Its a miracle machine for someone not blessed with luck cloning. SO SIMPLE, just cut, place in hole, turn on, forget about for a week, happy green rooted clones.

No more gel, stem scraping, soaking, wilting, yellowing, its AWESOME. Haven't lost a clone in a year, 100% success.

Ill share more specs & pics if requested ?

I had an EZ Cloner, used it once, brought it back to the shop and sold it on consignment. Didn't work for shit for me- I don't know what I did wrong, but I also didn't have the patience to find out... At the same time, I discovered JJScorpio's cloning how-to, started getting results in the high-90% range, sometimes even 100%, in about 8 days, so I said "screw it."

However, with these LUI13's I've been having trouble again... I'm hoping it's because I haven't had perfectly healthy moms, but I don't know. They've been taking as long as 3 weeks to root, and I'm getting closer to 50% success... I've only taken them 2x, going to give it one more go with some nice healthy moms, and then I may just be interested in your contraption. (As long as it comes with a user's manual! )

FK

 

[Tactical Farmer]

The soil is two bags of Earth Juice's amazon bloom (1.5cf) mixed with a 30lb bag of ewc and was adjusted to ph 6.4. I also added two cups of alfalfa meal. It started out as 7, I added peat, it became 6, so I added dolomite lime to get 6.47 according to my notes. I only had two weeks of cooking time on the soil, i wonder if it is still cooking, and that is where these high number are coming from, like a bacterial bloom or something.

Sounds like a plenty strong mix for small plants, maybe too strong for them at the early stages ?

The ph was consistent in all the run offs. I watered good, then came back in an hour or two and watered again till there was run off. I sucked up the run off in a turkey baster, and got a small amount of each to test. Should I have let the run off flow more? Is there a better way?

Thats a good method, using 0.0 EC / 0.0 PH Reverse Osmosis water is the most accurate though.

The plants are about 26-29 inches tall from the floor and are in 5 gallon smart bags. They are still vegging, I fill up a scrog screen set at 30 inches, then flip to flower, so it will be fairly soon.

I have northern berry, sour diesel, recon, and power kush, so mostly indica dominates. They all look fairly healthy, nice and green but have slow growth. The two best looking plants have the highest ec (recon) and lowest ec(N. berry). Not much to go on there, eh?

Yep ? Indica's can obviously take stronger soil than Sativa's.

I have only fed with water in the 5.5-6.5 range so far. I have went light on the nutes with one EJ tea, a couple of ewc teas, fish emulsion, none over 600ppm or 1.2 EC. The teas start with EWC with fungus growing on them from piranha, and gerber baby oatmeal, then i add brer rabbit blackstrap molasses and bubble. I have raised ph a couple of times with silica. Then the off waterings/feedings only had a little maxicrop liquid or liquid karma, and a little ej catalyst, in the .4-.6 EC range. All waterings have had small amounts of piranha included.

I used a good amount of DE powdered silica (topdressed) to kill fungus knats & it raised my PH to 7.1 way out of my optimum range. my ec levels dropped VERY SLOWLY, feeding were forced to be halted & my final yield will be hurt. No lime was used at all which would have made PH issues worse. Im going to use DE silica very lightly in the future from now on.


There is one thing that may be significant here though. The plants were in one gallon buckets with soil that had calcium carbonate lime instead of dolomite lime, so that one gallon may be effecting the whole bag? I'm not sure, it also could be all the calcium carbonate in my water. My tap runs 120ppm.

So once again my challenge is high ph going into flower.

I did read on the jmans nute study that thrive alive (or whatever it's called) is supposed to be helpful in high ph conditions. Anyone?

Might want to try some plants next time will less lime or maybe none & just use more molasses for cal & mag ?


scrappy

 

[Tactical Farmer]

I had an EZ Cloner, used it once, brought it back to the shop and sold it on consignment. Didn't work for shit for me- I don't know what I did wrong, but I also didn't have the patience to find out... At the same time, I discovered JJScorpio's cloning how-to, started getting results in the high-90% range, sometimes even 100%, in about 8 days, so I said "screw it."

However, with these LUI13's I've been having trouble again... I'm hoping it's because I haven't had perfectly healthy moms, but I don't know. They've been taking as long as 3 weeks to root, and I'm getting closer to 50% success... I've only taken them 2x, going to give it one more go with some nice healthy moms, and then I may just be interested in your contraption. (As long as it comes with a user's manual! )

FK

Ive tryed just about every cloning method & machine, lots of fails, aero misters were very good but a diy ultrasonic is the ultimate.

Cloning is crazy voodoo - might want to conciser ultrasonic if your problems persist.

 

[Scrappy4]

I used a good amount of DE powdered silica (topdressed) to kill fungus knats & it raised my PH to 7.1 way out of my optimum range. my ec levels dropped VERY SLOWLY, feeding were forced to be halted & my final yield will be hurt. No lime was used at all which would have made PH issues worse. Im going to use DE silica very lightly in the future from now on.

Kind of a catch 22, isn't it? You want to use nutes to lower the ph, but the plants will not take them up due to high ph. I wish there was a magic bullet. I think mine are going to be short on N, right after the flip, but I'm not sure how to address this, with high EC numbers. I may do a top dress with mex guano. Being somewhat insoluble it should be better, than a big soluble N hit, right? Or would a N foliar spray be mo better?

I did not think the soil mix was too hot, myself. But he run off would not be totally true with some insolubles in it, would it?

I had much better luck with fully amended soils just fed from ewc teas. I may go back to that route next run. My first two runs in 2010 returned over 4 zips of dry bud per plant the first two runs, the last two returned 2.5 or so. My mojo may lie with amendments rather than feedings.

 

[Tactical Farmer]

right on, total catch 22, its a tough call for me on your N at flip situation ? Possibly play it safe & "meet half way in the middle" decision wise & just give them a "normal" shot of acidic ej grow at flip then keep a close eye for N yellowing during stretch ?

If they are low on N & start to yellow - you can N foliar several weeks into flower & top dress some guano to ride through flower ?
______________________________________________________________________________

i wasn't aware silica powder had a major long lasting ability to raise soils ph like that, lesson learned.

the silica did an amazing job of increasing the stalk & branches though.

im still going to pull a decent "average" crop @ EC exceeding 3.6 & PH over 7 but not near what "could have been".

* Ive found Dry guano difficult to use with my methods because it doesn't give readings in teas till its had some time to break down in the soil. You might see a strange EC spike up when this type of dry amendments become available later on.

I went through a phase of amending heavy & watering which was alright but its a give & take kinda thing where you have to ride out mistakes & give up some control. Its pretty easy to overdo things that can't be undone. im not saying its a bad idea though but those things should be considered.

On the flip side some of the advantages are, less time consuming, cheaper, dry supplies last longer (storage wise) & ferts can be found locally.

Again, its a give & take, im kinda doing a hybrid of both, just leaning more towards the liquid control side of things.

 

[milehighmedical]

.

 

[FinestKind]

I followed Tac's advice and gave a heavy dose (2TB per gallon) of Grow at the flip... I do, however, transplant from 1/2 gallon containers to 3 gallon containers when I start flowering, so it really is A LOT of nutrient solution to get from completely dry Pro-Mix to saturated (takes about 70 gallons for 42 3-gallon pots)... needless to say, I am three weeks in and everything is still very green. I think I'll be following this technique again, although I may dial it back just a hair so as to get some Bloom in there too (like 1 1/2 TB Grow and 1/2 TB Bloom or something.)

 

[Scrappy4]

Well I fed last night. As you might remember my run off ph was 7.21 average. I fed an EJ tea of EC .65, to the plants with lower EC numbers and cut that in half for the ones with higher EC numbers, and they all got 2 tsp of mex guano as a top dress. I added 5ml of cannazyme per gallon just before feeding, the ph was 3.92. It looks like they took it well, at lights out they looked a little more perky anyway.

Depending on how they respond, I will feed another tea, then in a few days, water for a run off test again, or do another test next watering.

Any reason not to do a run off test with tea? As long as you subtract the EC of the tea, it seems doable, anyone? scrappy