Drunken Glory of ‘22

Day 44- I need to back off on the water nutes, I am forgetting the soil is strong enough. I will flush with plain water next time. Maybe I should do a plain water foliar feed? I’m still learning. But I think those B vitamins are keeping their metabolism high! Then I feel the need to spoon feed. After giving them much needed calcium, I start adding other things. Those Epsom Salts plus the amino acids on a plant with high metabolism receiving more B1, all while having lots of amended neem cake in the media, is going to be processing a sh*t load of nitrogen! Back to plain water. Another idea, maybe I will flush a little bit, and feed just CalMag. Day 48 I realized I haven’t gotten any pictures in for this week! Not that big of a mistake compared to the one I just corrected! The video is taken when they are back inside for the night as it a cold windy night, and they could use more light. I am not talking because I am sick and can’t talk to well. But it’s just quickly showing how they look after the whole ordeal I am about to mention. So I woke up this morning, and noticed all of the plants were showing subtle signs of a deficiency. Different deficiencies too! Some are going on the calcium deficiency, others potassium, some manganese even maybe a few others to be honest. Sometimes I could only see signs in the old leaves, and other times I would see signs in new leaves. Either way “most” of them were looking pretty good. But something about all this variability with different plants was oddly unsettling to me. I figured I had better stick the soil pH meter in there and make sure it’s not a pH issue. And to my horror, pH of barely 4.5!! More like 4.20! But honestly it was that low!!!! A miracle these plants haven’t locked out yet! But how did this happen? Yes it is all coming together for me. Every water I have been giving feed-water. I have been watering with a little runoff, but not enough runoff to manage what I was putting in! I’ve been “feed-watering” a lot more than usual because the pots are tiny and it’s super hot and mega dry during the days. Like 75-80 degrees (F) and 10-25% relative humidity lately. So no wonder they are drying out fast. All those salts left behind from last feed. So they built up, apparently pretty high. I didn’t think I was feeding too much, especially because I would get a descent amount to drain out the bottoms every time. Either way, I fed too heavy and flushed too little! So I brought out the foxfarm SLEDGEHAMMER!!!!! Did a quick flush, flushed with plain water to get the sledgehammer out, then a recheck on the soil pH meter. Comes out 6.8! So I gave feed-water at ph of 7 afterwords. They were dry enough before all of this, I conveniently avoided damping issues. Now they will dry out and receive plain pH 7 RO water on next watering. I still have lots of doubt as if I have any clue what I am doing! But so far so good. I try to support the microbes as much as possible, i definitely could use their support. And it might be because of the microbes, CalMag and fulvic acid, that has prevented lockout. But yeah the fact the pH in the soil was corrected with a flush, gives me a peace of mind. The other three from “The Hondo Titan” diary had high levels of sulfur to lime, the flush did not fix, so I repotted them in new soil with pH 7. Also those hydroton expanded clay pebbles become rich with acidic salts, because the water leaves and all the nutes and minerals are captured and stored with the pebbles. Good in small levels. But if the pot dries out every day, those pebbles will eventually make the pH meter smack the end suggesting less than pH of 3.5!!!!!!!! But no pebbles were used on these girls thankfully!!