Slownickel lounge, pull up a chair. CEC interpretation

[reppin2c]

This thread is like the trim scene haha. Drama for days and it's sucking people in. Was this a soil balancing thread?

I like how schrews is like...how worth It, double digits over here, I hung out with my dog and chick, looked sexy AF doing it. You know cuz that's what a schrews does. I just wonder how many years of nutes are in that soil seriously. Got a pickup, got the spot on lock...what cant this guy do?

Sent out the hemp patch soil yesterday. I won't be posting the results lol.

 

[EasyGoing]

Toddler cock contest? Break out the Vernier caliper.

 

[reppin2c]

This thread is going down hill

Sprinkling gypsum on it

All better. It's a good thing I showed up, you are welcome. I've been saying that alot lately

 

[led05]

Could’ve been different way to word it, but I think the point is that in the big pumpkin world, 500 (OTT measurement was actually 491) is not big at all and without additional feeding I ended up with a gourd at maybe 1/2-1/4 it’s potential. My cec was 10, I didn’t feed k when there was a visible def, etc. I’m happy with what I got partly because I don’t know what it could’ve been. Analogous to a 7 lb plant that could’ve been 12.

I vote feed, but only if your soil numbers are right and none of the bullshit, heavy nitrate/low mineral bottles. When you say cannabis is easy to grow, sure, it grows in ditches in Russia. To get 3-4 lbs/light indoors withought fungal or insect pressure, keep up with nutrient demands effectively on trees, or pull a crop with the last month of the growing season being rainy and losing less than 1% to mold is not easy.

RE indoors, for this plant that's mainly my playing field.

I disagree though, if you build your soil right, have right light spectrums and decent RH 3-4lbs per 1000w is the norm.

Build the right soil, use some teas & Ca in flower and leave the plant alone and all good, at least that's how it works here. Being a clean freak and having OCD doesn't hurt either.

 

[jidoka]

It seems (no weights yet) my do almost nothing plants are either as heavy or heavier than my fed a fuckton plants. But there are other variables so I don't have any conclusion. Lightweight soilless seems to respond better than heavy high tcec to feeding.

On veggies when I go to places that do pay me I get them to run some tomato or pepper plants "so we can do real sap testing". They always fail. It's a shocker

It's also easy to get yield. It is grinding out the micros to end 5 yr old constant mite infestations that is the hard part

 

[led05]

It seems (no weights yet) my do almost nothing plants are either as heavy or heavier than my fed a fuckton plants. But there are other variables so I don't have any conclusion. Lightweight soilless seems to respond better than heavy high tcec to feeding.

On veggies when I go to places that do pay me I get them to run some tomato or pepper plants "so we can do real sap testing". They always fail. It's a shocker

It's also easy to get yield. It is grinding out the micros to end 5 yr old constant mite infestations that is the hard part

I tend to agree and have said since begging... too many people with new or even a few years experience , or even a decade or more are always chasing their tails fixing mistakes in pursuit of "perfection " I also like to tell friends to grow a couple peppers or tomatoes next to their Canna (ones who struggle) and it's amazing how well they do with the veggies, mainly because they ARE NOT focused on them, the clear point being, their the annomally and mistake, not the plant, leave it alone, don't over complicate and rely on good living soil, note soil & alive

What's your sweet spot ranges for CEC, I expect it to vary somewhat by region but in general? I personally like @ 20-25, leaves control but also not a beast to move if off

 

[jidoka]

My heavy dirt is at 39.5 tcec. Good news is it starts at 1% K so I don't have to fight that battle

Edit...1 thing I always see, Mo and Co are always low. Everyone should pay attention to them

 

[led05]

My heavy dirt is at 39.5 tcec. Good news is it starts at 1% K so I don't have to fight that battle

Sounds about right out there, here 35" of rain and 100" of snow makes that a tough situation, thats a wet ground all year ... we need the sand and silt here not to be over saturated


Albeit near same latitude you get about twice the sun integral , I remain jealous, at least for this particular plant

 

[EasyGoing]

So how does one keep their EC up without feeding? That is what determined my feeding schedules, and amounts this year. I was able to visit and probe a bunch of gardens this year. Everybody doing "water only", unless they were in native soil, had a soil EC of 0. My crop, I could feed heavy, and 5 days later my EC would dip below .5. Shoot, I would top dress 2-4x the recommended amount, then slam the plants with a liquid feed, and throw a foliar on them. EC was very hard to keep up.

I was thinking about BYF, and how he said he would do a heavy feeding once a month. My EC would be zero after a month. I guess the answer to that is when depending on organics, EC's can be very low since microbes do the work.......? Not sure why chemistry and biology wouldn't be the winning answer.

 

[jidoka]

You have amazing water if you can get to zero.

But yea, great question. I got around that cause my base had 1% k and 30 ppm P. I was able to load a fuckton of sup r green without running my ratios out of whack. My EC never went above 0.4 or dropped below 0.3. Microbes did the lifting.

Get it out of whack and you got to chase it.

Or keep it in whack and give it a balanced top dress and straight up crush. Lotta skill involved. And not a lot of top dress formulas being shared

 

[orechron]

The EC issue is why many of the large plant growers favor 3-5 yards of soil.

This year I put some plants in 1 yard dumb pots at a last minute attempt at a season and the mixing yard fucked up my order. First load came at 7.6pH, 600ppm P, 1.2 EC, lower calcium than I'd like and the second load came at 6.8pH, 130ppm P, 0.2 EC, good base saturations. Gypsum and a bit of pacific gro used on the first, bone meal hand mixed into the second and additional pacific gro. Despite the pH being high in the first section, that high EC grew plants 30% larger and I was chasing EC all season on the second section.

 

[EasyGoing]

So.................

Wouldn't that mean that feeding your plants will provide the soil the energy (EC) that water only will never accomplish? My soil is loaded, and most people would say overloaded. If I just watered, believe me, bugs would happen. Giving a balanced feed almost over rides my slightly out of balance soil. So that must mean something. It can work the other way too. Good soil doesn't mean healthy plant, as you can feed the wrong elements at the wrong time of year. Balance, balance, balance.

However, wouldn't one assume that balanced soil, with a balanced feed is the answer?


Also, Jidoka. When I say zero, I mean zero. I have a soil probe from Germany that does a great job. However, not sure why but soil tests always display the EC about double what my meter says. Must be some conversion rate that the labs use. It was amazing sticking my probe in hundreds of........... soil pots............... and finding how many people are growing with zero conductivity. All of them were in light weight soil.

The EC I shot for all year was to stay above .5 and below 1.3. It was a roller coaster ride though. Feed and top dress, probe the next day and the ec was up to 1.3. I would test exactly the same amount of time after the same amounts of water volumes applied ensuring mostly even saturation levels for accurate EC testing. The next day the EC would dip. A week later the EC would need to be raised again. I would be able to bring her back up with some liquids, but after about 2 - 3 weeks, it would need another top dress. Which also lead me to believe a conversation with GreenHands was accurate, about the N cycle being burned up in about 3 weeks. This conversation was about "flushing" before harvest, but correlates to this conversation as well. N drives EC.


As for top dresses, the main ratio's are easy. 1-2-1. It's the micros that need attention. I really want to find a company that will make a custom blend, that I can adjust the micros with sulfates. Then add a shit ton of gypsum, lol. The main problem with top dresses are too high Fe in our organic world. Need to find a way to leach Fe.

 

[growingcrazy]

Wouldn't the ultimate goal for the season be to see no change in your soil test numbers?

If you fertigate multiple times a week (ala mr. nickel) with a dialed amount, your soil numbers would never change.

That is dialed farming.

 

[EasyGoing]

I disagree. For example, take K. You want low K in veg, but that has to raise in flower. So your base saturation % must change right? However, there should be something said about getting nutes to the root tips. You can get nutes to the tips without changing the saturation %. I can attest to that. Last year I was void of Ca, but the constant top dressing of gypsum kept my root tips taking up the needed amount of Ca.

 

[growingcrazy]

I disagree. For example, take K. You want low K in veg, but that has to raise in flower. So your base saturation % must change right? However, there should be something said about getting nutes to the root tips. You can get nutes to the tips without changing the saturation %. I can attest to that. Last year I was void of Ca, but the constant top dressing of gypsum kept my root tips taking up the needed amount of Ca.

Yes you would have some swing in base %. I guess I should have said very little change instead of none.

If we know the daily plant use of nutrients we can make micro doses daily that don't sway the base or profile of the mix,much. All the while making adjustments based on growth stage.

When we talk about the swing of Ca and K we are talking about fairly small amounts here, are we not?

I am sick as a dog, sorry if I am not making sense!

 

[EasyGoing]

This is why we need SAP or tissue testing. My little secret, but soon, here in my county, after permits, builds, ext ext. There might be a lab willing to do those tests. Can't wait.


Here is a mind fuck, and maybe just an anomaly in my grows..... However....... When I get a soil test back and I am in excess in one element, in the past I would tend to not feed that element anymore till the excess would minimize. However, I would actually get better results keeping up with the feed that included the element in excess. This all comes down to what's available to the plant. P being the biggest. If you have 5x the amount of P in the soil, but only 15% of that is available, your still deficient.

We need tissue and sap testing.

For me, soil tests three times a year. Spring, month before flower and two weeks into flower. Then sap or tissue testing in between to see what the actual plant needs. Now if there was a meter that would do all this in the field, I would pay ANYTHING for it! Get on it tech nerds!

 

[EasyGoing]

I would love to hear others opinions on some grow "facts" that don't seem to apply to this paradigm of growing. I will take these one by one, and others can feel free to add their own tidbits.

Excess P causes low microbial activity (fact)

Well, I find that hard to believe and here is my theroy as to why. With calcium levels in the mid 70's and above, the soil is able to breath. Ca molecules are large, which creates more air space between molecules. With Ca that high, Mg is low. Mg has small particles, and will clog up your soil in excess.

What do microbes need to survive? Air.(among other things) So the question I pose......... With higher levels of Ca, causing more airspace in the soil, does higher levels of P still cause microbe death? I say no.

What evidence do I have to this? My top dressing all season long would disappear quickly. That and healthy plants. I will post up my test results when I get around to them, but I am willing to bet my P levels are off the charts, and my microbes should be dead.

Can anybody tell me a better way to measure the microbe activity in the soil? Under a scope it looks poppin, but I don't know soil microbes all that well. Did a fair amount of study on microbes in teas, which I am sure has a huge amount of carry over.

 

[jidoka]

I think what happens when you feed heavy you shut down the microbes so you get no contribution from any of your non soluble soil amendments. You are essentially feeding hydroponically at that point. The thing to watch for is which way does your organic % move yr over yr

 

[Avenger]

https://www.wardlab.com/soil-health-services.php

 

[EasyGoing]

I think what happens when you feed heavy you shut down the microbes so you get no contribution from any of your non soluble soil amendments. You are essentially feeding hydroponically at that point. The thing to watch for is which way does your organic % move yr over yr

So, you guys have been asking how to get high levels of Ca into a hydroponic type set up......... Do we have an answer?