This is my first grow. I’m getting brown spots on leaves. I have checked the ph of the runoff and it was 6.48 in and 6.5 out. I believe I might have been starving my plants. I top dressed with plant tone which is 5-3-3. 5 gallon fabric pots with happy frog and ocean forest mix
Looks like a calcium deficiency to me. Your ph is perfect for soil. No runoff tds numbers to tell if they are hungry or not, does not appear to be off first glance. Try some calmag to see if it helps, it will take a little time to know its working. Watch the new growth to see. Good luck
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Correction. Your will not have much if at all new growth except the budz since your in flower
Thank you , I did start feeding with a mix of flower fuel and cal-mag 4 days ago. After I tested my runoff that’s what I guessed the problem was. Hopefully things will improve
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Tds is important too. Tells alot. Try to keep a 1000 or about 2.0 ec during flower
Love the floor protector too by the way lol.
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I haven’t had a chance to educate myself on the proper way to test and decipher ec numbers. I have been learning so much other information just to get to this point. I think I better get studying.
So does the ec number translate to the amount of available nutrients in the runoff? I’m sorry for my ignorance on this subject.
Give it time. B4 long u will understand all the lingo. Basically we use the 500 scale for tds but there is some meters that use the 700 scale. BUT the numbers are both derived from the ec "electrical conductivity " and that number is a constant. 2.0 ec at 500 scale is 1000 tds(2x500), where as the 700 scale at 2.0 ec is 1400 tds. Its alot i know but u will learn.
The ec or tds of the runoff will tell you how much nutrients is in your soil. If your above that 1000 tds, i back off for a watering or two, but if below that i keep feeding or start to feed. Hope this helps
It definitely does help. I have an alpera ph, ec meter. It seems to have been a very wise investment. I learned the ph testing first, but haven’t messed with the ec function yet. I will use your advice and see where I am at. Overall my grow has gone really well except for these annoying spots.
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I really think you need calcium more then anything. So you know, you can have a higher tds and still have a calcium deficency. The tds will tell you how “hot” the soil is, but not which nutrients your are deficient/excess
Oh ya, i use the apera ph20, and the ec20. Nice meters, good move and wise of you for a first timer.
I think you are spot on with your calcium deficiency diagnosis. It was all I could come up with, but being inexperienced, I just wasn’t sure. Hope I didn’t stunt my bud production too badly. Should I use cal- mag with every watering?
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I would every other, some ppl do everytime, i do 1tsp or 5ml of calmag on my water only days
Okay. Again thank you so much for the help. I really do appreciate it.
I agree its a calcium def need to give some cal/mag in ur next feeding
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It seems like it is getting worse. I have been watering with cal- mag , and alternating with flower fuel every other watering. The buds don’t seem like they are suffering, but don’t seem to be fattening up. I did another ph runoff test and it was 6.48 in and 6.48 out.
@Twin, It looks like your soil is running out of nutrients. I went through a similar situation a month or so ago. After transplanting a Bruce Banner and a Black Widow into 5 gallon pots. They looked great for about four weeks. Then about a week after the light flip the BB (left), started showing signs of calcium deficiency, and then one deficiency after an another. The BW (right), was doing much better but it also started looking hungry at about week 3 of bloom.
I tried feeding them nutrients high in calcium, iron, P, and K. This helped, but they still did not look good.
In the meantime I that ordered some nutrients for a hydro grow that I was planning. I emailed the nutrient company about adding cal mag to my RO water. Here is the reply from them.
Hello,
With Mills, Basis A has calcium and Basis B has magnesium, so adding additional calcium or magnesium shouldn’t be necessary, even if you’re using RO water and/or growing in coco.
Since the nutrients are already in balance, if you do start seeing signs of calcium or magnesium deficiencies (or the plant just starts to look a little hungry overall), we recommend just raising the Basis A&B (in equal amounts) by a few ml/gal while keeping everything else as-is instead of adding a calmag additive.
This is because we find that usually what happens is that plants tend to show signs of a calcium or magnesium deficiency before other deficiencies. So if you use CalMag, you treat the calcium deficiency, but are more likely to see other deficiencies start to pop up. So what happens is you end up playing whack-a-mole going from one deficiency to the next, when really they just need a little more of everything. Because of this, we recommend adjusting the Basis A&B as necessary to keep them dialed in instead of calmag.
Hope this helps, if you have any other questions, just let me know.
Since he described exactly what I had been going through. I decided to give The Mills schedule on the two problem plants. Starting with week 4 of bloom. Well it certainly turned things around for the better. This is them at 7 1/2 weeks into bloom.
You may want to consider a good balanced nutrient schedule. Here is some info on what I ordered
I think I may have been under feeding them, and maybe under watering them. This is my first grow, and everything I have read says new growers over feed and over water. I am feeding mostly organic. I don’t think I was top dressing them often enough. I also wasn’t using a moisture meter. I assumed because water came out of the bottom of the fabric pot, I had wet my soil enough. My meter told a different story. I hope I have found the problem.