Experience needed

Squidbilly said:

coco holds on to cal and mag so it's wise to 'buffer' the medium with some cal/mag after you rinse it. This way the coco will hold on to the cal/mag you supplemented and when you plant your seedling/clone/mature plant into it and water it with nutes the coco doesn't suck out the cal and mag. It's already holding onto some and won't steal it from your normal nutes. If you don't pre-charge your coco with cal/mag you may be fine. Not everyone does. In my experience, when I don't pre-treat the coco like this I usually see a slight cal/mag deficiency within 3-7days, however by that time it has corrected itself through the 200ppm cal/mag I feed them every watering, I just have to look at the damage until I trim those leaves off or they naturally bite the dust. When I pre-charge my medium with cal/mag that 3-7day cal/mag deficiency never appears. It's a result of it's first few feedings>if the coco doesn't have some cal/mag to hold ontop before you plant it, it's going to 'suck' some of it out at first. Like I said, if your supplementing with cal/mag they are usually getting enough by the time you notice the deficiency but charging your coco with cal/mag usually prevents this.

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miccyj said:

Quick question, how exactly do you buffer with cal/mag. I always have the same issue with a slight cal/mag deficiency a couple days in (which is corrected by the feed eventually and never gets to bad) when transplanting clones into new media, I like your idea of pre-buffering, do you simply rinse the media with a cal/mag solution or do you actually add amendments (i've heard of this, but I dont have any experience with amendments and I've never really looked into it).

I'm about a week or two away from mixing up 800L of media, so this could help me out, haha.

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TexasHank said:

Like Clearex?

It's been a long time since I tried one, but, I remember the plants yellowing earlier with max dose of clearex..

I have noticed that herb that i feed perfectly tastes smoother and better than herb that gets over fed and shows signs of burn..

I like to keep nice healthy green leaves up until harvest.. In soilless mix (coco) I feed about 1/2 strength with Dyna Gro 9-3-6.. I do water, feed, water, feed, etc.. So, alternating plain ph'd water and nutrient solution at 1/2 strength.. When the plant is all green and well fed I cut the feed even lower..

IMO, flushing near the end has become popular because so many people over feed their plants.. ESPECIALLY near the end of flower..

The plant uses tons of N early in flower... all of that stretching takes a lot of N.. After stretch, the need for nutes goes way down.. Developing buds do not use tons of nutes.. the plant growing 3-4x larger in the first 3 wks does..

By mid wk 5.. my plants only need fed 2 times ro so at 1/2 strength..

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miccyj said:

Quick question, how exactly do you buffer with cal/mag. I always have the same issue with a slight cal/mag deficiency a couple days in (which is corrected by the feed eventually and never gets to bad) when transplanting clones into new media, I like your idea of pre-buffering, do you simply rinse the media with a cal/mag solution or do you actually add amendments (i've heard of this, but I dont have any experience with amendments and I've never really looked into it).

I'm about a week or two away from mixing up 800L of media, so this could help me out, haha.

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Squidbilly said:

I don't ammend it with anything. I run a 60/40mix coco/super chunky perlite. I rinse both the coco and perlite with straight tap water, so after they are all rised and mixed together I like to run RO water with 150-250ppm of CalMag added through it.

So after I transplant into my pre-charged mixed I still water them immediately with nutrients. I haven't been getting those early deficiencies doing this so I am going to keep doing it : )

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miccyj said:

Thanks, I'm going to try this, I use a cement mixer to mix my media, so I'll add the calmag solution in there. Cheers

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