Heat Stress + pH/Nutrient Issues = Loose Flowers - Please Help!!

[sam303]

I am having issues with my organic soil grow! No matter what I try I always seem to get these same symptoms.. high pH, high temperatures, some type of deficiency causing the leaves to yellow. I don't think I'l be able to reduce the temperatures much but am thinking of trying Mandala strains if I can find them. What is the best way to reduce the pH of the soil? I have garden sulphur in pellet form.. and have been using Earth Juice up/down to adjust the water/nutrient pH to 6.5.. but the mix still registers a high pH. Please evaluate my setup and tell me what I'm doing wrong.



SOIL:

How long has this problem been going on? 3 weeks
What STRAIN are you growing? Big Bud x Northern Lights
What was the establishing technique? (seed or clone?) Clones
What is the age of your plants? 6 weeks
How Tall are the plants? 15 inches
What PHASE (seedling, vegetative or flower) are the plants in? Flowering
What Technique are you using? (SOG, SCROG etc) Sea of Green
What size pots are you using? (Include how many subjects to pot) 1/2 gallon?
What substrate/medium are you using? What brand of soil mixture are you using?(percentage of perlite, vermiculite...etc?) 70% Promix, 30% Earthworm Castings
What Nutrient's are you using?How much of each with how much water? How Often? *Knowing the brand is very helpful* Earth Juice Bloom (1 TBSP), Earth Juice Catalyst (1/2 TBSP), Cal-Mag (5 drops) all added to 1 gallon
What is the TDS/EC/PPM of your nutrients used? Unknown
What is the pH of the "RUN-OFF"? 7.6
What method of pH test was administered? Using Strips? pH pen? pH Pen
How often are you watering? Almost Everyday (small pots)
When was your last feeding and how often are you feeding? 3 days ago, every other watering
What size bulb are you using? 400w HPS
What is the distance to the canopy? 15 inches
What is your RH Factor? (Relative Humidity) 44% with the light on
What is the canopy temperature? 85F with the light on
What is the Day/Night Temp? (Include fluctuation range) 78F - 86F
What is the current Air Flow? (cfm etc.) ~250cfm?
Is the fan blowing directly at plants? Just beneath them
Is the grow substrate constantly wet or moist? wet-dry-wet-dry
Is your water HARD or SOFT? Very Hard water.. pH 8.5 tap water
What water are you using? Reverse Osmosis (RO)? Tap? Bottled? Well water? Distilled? Mineral Water? Tap water bubbled for 24 hours, pH adjusted to 6.5 using Earth Juice up/Down
Has plant been recently pruned, cloned or pinched? Topped 4 weeks ago to create new clones
Have any pest chemicals been used? If so what and when? None
Are plant's infected with pest's? No

 

[GroworDie]

Dunno bout your issue but I really like that bathtub/growcloset setup. Looks convinent and efficient. Props!

 

[stinkyattic]

First- go grab a bottle of liquid pH indicator drops and compare the results from your crappy pH meter with the results from the drops, on your nute solution, not on the buffer. IF that meter is reading correctly, which I doubt btw, your pH is way high. For the record: Hanna makes shitty products. They sent some SUPPOSEDLY professional/research grade gear to my old lab for testing years ago and it was so shitty as to be useless.

How are you checking pH? Do you use the runoff?

Next- Yup, it's hot and dry in there judging by the leaf edges.
If your ballast is in the room, get it out.
Where does your intake air come from? Is the intake at least as large, preferably 2x as large, as the exhaust port?
What is the cfm rating on your blower?
Is there anything impeding air flow either intake or exhaust end? Hint: straighten out that duct run!!!

Do you have a window in there to hang an ac?

 

[sam303]

I have those ph testing capsules you can get from home depot.. maybe i can try those to test the meter's accuracy? I've been checking the pH by collecting the runoff.

If the pH does turn out to be high.. what's a good way to reduce it? Add sulphur to the soil? Is that organic? Is there a better way?

The ballast is already outside of the room, but I live in New Mexico and it gets hot. i don't think I can help with the temperatures much.. so I've ordered a Ceramic Metal Halide bulb and hopefully that drops the temperature.

You say it's dry.. the humidity ranges from 44 - 56% according to my gauge.. shoudl I boost the humidity? I have humidifiers.

The intake is completly passive.. whatever air is being pulled in underneath the bathroom door. The exhaust is in the ceiling.. a 400cfm panasonic whisperline that pulls the air through the light and dumps it into the attic. I know with the multiple bends though.. the cfms are taking a hit. I'l try to adjust that to improve the exhaust.


Am I correct in blaming my issues on the heat? Is the pH causing problems too? Thanks for the repsonses.

 

[stinkyattic]

No, don't add to the humidity- that symptom shows primarily in hot+dry conditions but just hot is enough.

The capsules I'm not all that comfortable with- liquid drops are cheap at the hydro shop, and you also will need some correct 'pH up/down' if it turns out to be incorrect. The whole kit shouldn't run ya more than about $20 and lasts for ever, lol!

Your biggest problem is your intake- under the door? Nope, not gonna cut it. Build a bafflw-box over a window, or replace the door with one from a scrapyard that has a big ass hole chopped in it with a pandafilm flap covering the hole on the inside, so that when the lights are on and the exhaust is at max (if you run exh only during lights on), the flap is open, but settles when the exhaust is off so as not to let in light.

Your lack of effective intake is killing ya.

 

[sam303]

Thanks, I'm gonna work on a creative way to get more intake.. What if I can't? Will reducing the temperature with a CMH bulb help any?

What do you recommend I use to reduce the pH.. i already use Earth Juice up/down to adjust the solution before I water it in.. if it turns out the soil is off what do I use to adjust it? Thanks again.

 

[knna]

In order to know how to lower your soil ph, you need to know before what causes it to raise.

Is the initial ph so high? or had it been raising?

If its the first, then change your soil brand. If if the second, wich is probable as you use hard tap water, you need to determine how hard it is. But high Ca content of hard water leads not only to raising soil ph, but a lot of problems with other cations uptake.

So the main way you will solve the problem is by giving up using hard water: buy a RO unit, or collect rain water and mix it with your tap, or use distilled water. After that, you may go lowering the soil ph progressively, but until correcting the original problem, nothing will work.

Peace,
knna

 

[sam303]

Thats good advice.. my source of high pH must be the tap water since it is loaded with dissolved limestone. The soil measured about 6.5 out of the bag and all I mixed in was earth worm castings. I will look into an RO unit. As far as correcting what's already there.. what works well?

 

[knna]

Dissolved limestone? Then forget to use it. You can use a small fraction of it so you dont need to add limestone to the soil, thats all. But use mainly RO.

After fixing the water problem, add citric acid to the water in order to go lowering ph progressively: citric acid is a weak acid wich dont change ph suddenly and its a chelating agent, so will improve somewhat micronutrients uptake (wich is reduced at high phs).

 

[KissOfDeath]

Hanna makes shitty products.

I totally agree. I've had nothing but shitty luck with them too.

Don't waste your money.

Right on, Knna. I'm on board with the RO filter too.

It's always best to know exactly what you're giving your girls.

 

[sam303]

well according to all your advices i bought a reverse osmosis filter. i will start using it today. i'm still trying to figure out how to increase intake, but i have been leaving the door open for a little bit each day. i also switched to a cmh bulb which reduced the temperatures a little bit. i don't know if the plants that were already flowering will recover or not but i put in a new batch of clones and the new growth from the cmh bulb looks very nice! the leaves on the old plants still have the curled up leaves.. but the new ones dont?! is it possible high ph is causing that symptom?

 

[sam303]

Reverse Osmosis is the shit! I feel this is along with switching to the CMH bulb were the two greatest things I could have possible done.. and the results are finally what I was looking for. Thanks for the advice everyone!

 

[stinkyattic]

Wow Sam, you ARE right on track! Nice work, and it's great to see it fixed ya up right.

 

[Johnny Rotten]

Another case of too much calcium screwing up everything. Calcium is not your friend in growing. It's more like the friend you have to watch at your house so he doesn't go in your bathroom and snatch your pills.

Glad everything worked out for ya....

 

[Suby]

This boils down to your water source.
Your starting water is hard and thus has a high Ph, this will raise your soil ph up everytime EVEN if you ph adjust.
Ph adjusting is temporary with respects to HARD water, hard water has calcium and magnesium and iron in it amoung other things, these elements are natural buffers.
If you test the solution when you mix and ph it then again the next day chances are it will have climbed back up again ph wise.
This is why hydro growers use RO, it's stable, ph neutral, and is a stable starting point to dial in a nutrient program, plus it has 0 to low ppm, the lower your water ppm the more agressively it will dissolve nutrients into an avilable form (more important when using hydro nutes IMo)
When using RO you need to add calcium and magnesium, I would recommend using 1TBS of dolomite lime in your soil mix next time to cover Ca and Mg and create a soil buffer and for now use the CalMag.
I find RO water too pure for organics without the use of dolomite or a Calmag type product, you can also mix RO with your tap water for an in between water source.

The taco leaf edges are from heat, if temps are too high then nutrient absorption will not be 100% and they evaporate alot of water complicating things further.

Also a good rule of thunb is 1gallon of medium for every foot of plant.
Your running under 1/2gallon of soil mix for a 15inch plant.
The soil feeds the plant in organics, the less soil the less microherd available to feed your plants, also more soil keeps soil ph more stable.
If you are watering everday then they are IMO already rootbound, a well rooted plant with an adequate soil mass will drink every 3 days at most in my grow anyway.

Glad things are looking up for you, keep us posted and consider adding solid nutrients in your soil mix next tiime, they will help things along soil biology wise without affecting ph drastically.

Suby

 

[Mossad]

Ya indoor in the summer is not good, takes a lot more money to be secure.
Unless you have some kind of flouro setup and I still don't like the smell and heat issues.

That is some very basic water, pretty basic around here too but not so high.

 

[sam303]

Glad things are looking up for you, keep us posted and consider adding solid nutrients in your soil mix next tiime, they will help things along soil biology wise without affecting ph drastically.

Suby

Thanks, I've been adding CalMag to the water every time I water, and have been using Earth juice. Recently I've switched to a 2:3 ewc-coco mix and have kept the same small containers.. the plants are 1.5 ft tall, not much spread though. They do look very healthy.. watering every other day so far.