What might cause an overabundance of Ca?

[Dignan]

This is a random question regarding a past grow of mine. Can you organics masterminds think of the various things that might cause a soil mix (with no apparent over-application of Calcium) to build up Calcium?

I won't get into the reason I'm asking this to keep from confusing things. (A hint: I suspect that when I was watering, I wasn't getting water to the entire medium... I wasn't watering thoroughly.)

Thanks. Peace-

Dignan

 

[BurnOne]

Dignan-
What is your water source? If you have a lot of minerals in your water, it could come from there. Are you using dolomite lime? What is your method?
Burn1

 

[Dignan]

Okay, if I can't get ya to play a guessing game, Burn... lol... I was using a soil mix consisting of IIRC:

3 parts Black Gold Organic (always had good luck with it)
2 parts perlite
1 part WC

Per gallon (bloom):
1 tbsp Dolo Lime
1 tbsp Bone Meal
1 tspBlood Meal
1 tbsp Mexican guano
2 tbsp Indo guano
Couple teaspoons Greensand

In 5-gallon buckets, under 400W HPS.

I was using bubbled tap water. I have a pH pen and I'm not afraid to use it, haha, but the only basis I have for my city water's PPM is the city water report, which I don't necessarily trust.

I'll tell ya the problem I had... regardless of the N in the soil mix OR my later feeding of AK Fish Emulsion, the plants were yellowing (Bottom-to-Top) after the 2nd-3rd week of bloom. Four different strains, all yellowing at roughly the same rate.

Discussions with a friend led him to believe that the medium wasn't being thoroughly wetted and it was somehow causing Calcium levels to lock out Sulfur. (Again, if I remember our conversation correctly.) He recommends that people always do an initial watering, wait a few hours or overnight, and then water again until a little drains from the bottom.

Thanks- I appreciate the help.

Dignan

 

[Verite]

Nine outta ten tends to be hard tap water that causes excess calcium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_water

 

[Dignan]

Thanks, V.

You know what, this is annoying for me to do but this was Winter 2005/2006 I'm referring to here, so my memory is a tad fuzzy ...

But I'm just now remembering that I was using almost exclusively RO water from the grocery store during that grow, so forget the tap water info. Sorry.

Dignan

 

[BurnOne]

Are you sure you wern't burning them? That sounds like a lot of Nitrogen.
Burn1

 

[Dignan]

Yeah, I'm sure of that. I'll try to find the old pics for ya.

[edit: I'm pretty sure, I should say... learned a while ago to never be too sure about anything when it comes to gardening.]

 

[Dignan]

Here we go. This was at 43 days. I'd been pulling yellow fan leaves left and right from about day 18 or so.

 

[BurnOne]

Man that's normal. The fan leaves will yellow just like that. You're fine.
Burn1

 

[vonforne]

@43 days those girls were right on time. I don't see any probs at all. Slight leaf tip burn but we aLL normally do that.

 

[Dignan]

Thanks guys.

 

[Suby]

Hey Diggums

Yeah those look beautifull, all deficient of toxicified plants should look half that good lol.
If your using dolomite lime or any other type of lime in healthy amounts combined with very hard water you can get a Ca overdose going, sometimes it's an imbalance.
I'm curous what makes you think it's a Ca toxicity???

Suby

 

[Dignan]

I'm curous what makes you think it's a Ca toxicity???

Well, an old grower friend was following along with the grow from a distance and he at first suspected N when they started rapidly yellowing at about 2 weeks. He told me to goose them with Fish Ferts because he thought it was too early for them to yellow as fast as they did.

When the yellowing didn't slow at all from the fish emulsion, I just figured that maybe once that N-Deficiency train gets rolling, perhaps it's difficult/impossible to stop it. But he- after asking many questions that I don't recall - started asking about my watering habits. Something told him that I wasn't getting the entire rootball wet when I was watering... and that somehow led him to the Calcium assumption, which he deduced was caused by the dry spots in the medium.

He's unavailable recently, or I'd ask him what his logic was in making that diagnosis.

Dignan

 

[Suby]

Yeah Ca is always tough to call, it can be a combination of problems.
I'm all about prevention, get plenty of solid source N in the veg and flowering mix, then you're sure it's not a def, that and dolomite and 90% of the time it takes it's course from there.
Water quality is always my main concern when I see anything wrong, once you rule that out you take a look at the starter recipe.
Water and then let them dry out but not completely, when you water then with plain water or tea sprinkle them heavily but not too much runoff.

Sub's

Hell I'll take them if you don't want them

 

[Dignan]

Thank ya, Suberrificus. Those plants are from Winter 2005, actually. I've been doing outdoor since then, no indoor grow, unfortunately.

After all I've learned by glomming off of you, I probably owe you a plant. You never know, maybe one day we'll meet and I'll start to repay that debt over a bowl of headies.

Thanks again.

Dig