First Grow: Living the Dream

- plants were controversially defoliated at the start of this week, nervous about this but it's my first grow and I'm open to experimentation - last wk I recognized that I had a deficiency, lower/older fan leaves were yellowing, dying and showing signs of a cal/mag deficiency - with a little research on cocoforcannabis.com I was able to establish that this indeed was the case and I realized I had been feeding my plants incorrectly basically for this entire grow - I discovered the meaning of Electrical Conductivity (EC) which is the measure of the amount of salt in your fertilized water (amount of nutrients inside the water) - until this wk I had been watering the plants alternating between plain PH'd water and fertilized water, this is an incorrect method to feed plants in coco coir - I have learned that when you alternate like this in coco it causes a salt build up in the root zone and EC readings to sky rocket to dangerous levels - When EC is too high at the root zone it interferes with the plants ability to absorb water (osmosis) - Also, my PH levels were consistently too low (around 5.6-5.8) at the root zone, causing the plant to not be able to absorb CalMag (as it's absorbed at 6.2) - I learned how to accurately measure run off, both for EC and PH - EC and PH run off values will be closely monitored for the duration of the grow Solution: - EC readings at root zone at this stage in the grow should be approximately 1600, mine were approx 2800! Danger zone! Should be approx 300 more than in flow - plants were flushed with half strength nutrient water at double the regular amount at a 6.5 PH - after waiting 10 mins, more of the same water was added creating a small amount of run off - EC run off readings were approx 1400 for Tangerine and about 900 for Blue with a PH for both in the 6.3-6.4 range - higher PH should solve my the deficiency issue - EC should correct itself with consistent fertigation events - will aim for 1-2x daily fertigation for the remainder of the grow, always with nutrients added to the irrigation water Results: - defoliation seems to be affecting the plants positively, in the pictures from initial defoliation to end of the week, plant looks like it's fattened up and pointing it's leaves skyward - could also be a result of the flush - overall plants seem to be doing well and ready for wk 5! Learned a lot this wk! It's been a lot of fun to problem solve and I'm super happy to have found cocoforcannabis!