Potassium deficiency or lock-out? FFOF organic grow

Hi everyone! Having some more issues and wanting to dial in before flipping to flower. Growing in FFOF + perlite + worm castings with dr. Earth dry amendments.

i am currently about 3 months into vegetation but noticing yellowing of the bottom fan leaves despite adding dry amendment fertilizers (dr earth homegrown)

What is interesting to me is that I just added about 3 gallon more of FFOF (3g to 7g pot transplant about 1.5 weeks ago) but I’m still having yellowing if the bottom fan leaves.

I did a dry amendment tea with bat guano and dr earth home grown two days afo, and notice quite a lot of new growth at the top immediately, but am still having yellowing of the bottom fan leaves.
I’m curious why is this happening? I’ve had about 6-8 yellow fan leaves now. It goes from green to yellow and drops off... then a next set of fan leaves do this. I dont know if it’ll stop anytime soon without me intervening

Also shouldn’t the new 3 gallon of FFOF be sufficient for the next few weeks but its not and is relying on me to add more dry amendment. I wondering if its a PH lock out since ffof is more acidic... any guesses? It’s only occurring to fan leaves only so far, dont think its a light not penetrating issue and is starting to move closer up the branch.

Just added some lime topdressed yesterday hoping to see if this helps but kinda lost right now, waiting for this problem to fix then i can flip to flower, thus this problem is wasting some time... should i consider flushing with water?

i am about to make a soil just like that i ordered everything on amazon prime day are you ph ing your water to tell you the truth its not looking good possibly a nutrient lockout from low ph

I'm thinking your soil is depleted and needs some more nutrients, top dressing with dry amendments takes awhile for you to see any change as it needs time to break down and become available to your plants. I use dolomite lime and I've been told not to top dress with at as it get to hot when it breaks down(think that was the reason but not 100% sure)
I would get myself some Neptune harvest fish and seaweed to start feeding it as your soil is probably spent and its gonna take time for top dress to be available. Tha stuff is a good organic bottled fertilizer, I've also used pure blend products but I don't like them as much, I find I can taste the pure blend in the after taste of my smoke so stopped using it.
Just my 2 cents
Hope that helps

Give it a week or so for the new amendments to break down. Don't do anything drastic....how many top dresses have you done in the past 3 months prior to transplant?

Dank Bongula said:

Give it a week or so for the new amendments to break down. Don't do anything drastic....how many top dresses have you done in the past 3 months prior to transplant?

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Yup that's why I killed everything in soil. I know for a soil rescue you can use liquid nutrients which are immediately available but I'm not sure I'd be in a rush to do that since I don't do soil.

Dank Bongula said:

Give it a week or so for the new amendments to break down. Don't do anything drastic....how many top dresses have you done in the past 3 months prior to transplant?

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I did three top dresses before transplant and two top dresses post-transplant. Today I flushed the plant completely, a lot of brown residue came out, kept flushing until clear water residual. It perked up really nicely (no pictures). I wonder whats the importance of watering until there is dripping coming from the bottom of the pot? I just realized I never fully watered since after the transplant, just whatever enough to wet the soil and prevent any drippings. Could this make things more concentrated in the smartpot and cause lock out? Sorry lost all vocabulary since its been such a long day.

I remember that watering until runoff is important for chemical nutes, but since I'm using organic dr. earth dry amendment i thought they were unrelated... maybe there was a buildup causing pH lock out. We will see, i still saw a lot of yellow leaves when bringing it back in. More pics to come.

"just whatever enough to wet the soil and prevent any drippings" do you mean prevent drooping?
If that's what you meant, that could be a problem...your organic soil should never be anywhere close to dry enough to droop your plants as this would kill off alot of if not all your good stuff in your soil I believe it's called the micro heard or something like that.
Your soil should always be moist, never to wet never to dry, I personally wouldn't water till 10% runoff, maybe a couple drips out the bottom is ok but if there's alot of water coming out of your pot your washing out your dry amendments out of your soil
Hope that helps

You want your soil to be fully saturated. Allows your roots room to grow. If your soil dries out too much, it can create hydrophobic spots that will repel water.

When I water, I start with breaking up the top soil then I throw some water in the bottom saucer and a little on top....let it all soak in and 15min later go back and water more from the top. There should be some run off in the saucer but not so much that the plant can't suck it all back up and redistribute over 30min or so. There's a line there where you don't want to leave them sitting in standing water, but you want to allow time for them to suck it back up. Watering takes me atleast 30min so I use that time to defoliate inspect and adjust. Anywater left in the saucer after 30mins gets discarded.

Been two days since i flushed it. Did not add any dr earth amendment after flushing, not sure if i should have since i just topdressed previously. Seeing new growth, looks healthy, but still yellowing of the bottom fan leaves. I gave 30 mls of doctor bush bembe 0-1-3 for potassium, will be gone for the weekend. Hoping to come back to a healthy plant........ waiting to fix this issue so i can flip it already although not sure if this will be solved.. maybe i should buy potassium-mg- sulfate 0-0-20 (down to earth brand)

If you're doing a living soil, you only want to water 5-10٪ water to soil volume. In other words, if you have a 10 gallon pot, water in 1/2 to 1 gallon. Dry amendments take time to break down, longer if you have no microbiology to break it down. Don't water to runoff, you're just wasting microbes and nutrition. Get some grokashi and malted barley straw and mulch the top of your pots to get some fungal dominance going. Your dry amendments will break down faster if you do.

And some EWC ,enough to cover the top of pot.Mix it in with the Dr Earth.Id say no on the 0-0-20 stuff.If you want a quick fix Fish hydrosolate 2-3-1.Neptune Harvest if in the USA.Plant still needs N so give it a balanced pkg like your Dr Earth.

Second the Neptune's Harvest, but that's only a bandaid until your soil gets the nutrition the plant needs. I also second needing more N. Bas craft blend is also a great balanced nutrition. Also the bas big 6 micronutrients w/ humics. I'm not trying to sell you on bas. It just takes out a lot of guesswork, but you can easily source everything yourself.

Been feeding it tons of nutes... and tea... i think the FFOF i replace it with was bunk. Probably an old bag or something. Anyways it seems to be better, no leaves are worsening. But here are a pic of the two leaves i removed. I notice this one is scorched at the middle of the fan leaf, theres another like this (not pictures), i couldnt find this a common problem is it still potass deficiency?

If there's just one or two leaves at the bottom of your canopy that look like that, could be the lack of light. If my canopy is super dense and the bottom leaves aren't getting any light they get fuct up, but I just ignore it cause I figure it's the lack of light.
As long as the rest of the plant looks nice and healthy

ekillah said:

Been feeding it tons of nutes... and tea... i think the FFOF i replace it with was bunk. Probably an old bag or something. Anyways it seems to be better, no leaves are worsening. But here are a pic of the two leaves i removed. I notice this one is scorched at the middle of the fan leaf, theres another like this (not pictures), i couldnt find this a common problem is it still potass deficiency? View attachment 4936841

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well how are they doing?

osowhom said:

well how are they doing?

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Thanks for checking in man. So overall i think there was some potassium or magnesium deficiency. If you wanted my opinion, i think its related to transplanting to a bigger pot, and mobile nutrients are leaving to help ROOT growth.
I’ve seen this happen with my indoor house plants, everytime i transplant it to a new pot, some of the smaller leaves seem to yellow off and die. Theres never any new leaf growth happening for a week or two. When you do start seeing new growth and look at the bottom of the pot, the root has reached the bottom holes.

As of right now I am in day 28 of flower! Everything is looking good. Right now trying to learn a bunch of controversial things and seeing which tactic I will end with (my first grow btw). Couple things on my mind are:
1) how long to feed dr earth dry amendment for in flower, when do i stop
2) flushing or not
3) whether i should decrease the light intensity of my LED light in the final two weeks to decrease temperature and mimic fall such as in nature or maybe even increase night time ie. 11 on/12 off

ekillah said:

Thanks for checking in man. So overall i think there was some potassium or magnesium deficiency. If you wanted my opinion, i think its related to transplanting to a bigger pot, and mobile nutrients are leaving to help ROOT growth.
I’ve seen this happen with my indoor house plants, everytime i transplant it to a new pot, some of the smaller leaves seem to yellow off and die. Theres never any new leaf growth happening for a week or two. When you do start seeing new growth and look at the bottom of the pot, the root has reached the bottom holes.

As of right now I am in day 28 of flower! Everything is looking good. Right now trying to learn a bunch of controversial things and seeing which tactic I will end with (my first grow btw). Couple things on my mind are:
1) how long to feed dr earth dry amendment for in flower, when do i stop
2) flushing or not
3) whether i should decrease the light intensity of my LED light in the final two weeks to decrease temperature and mimic fall such as in nature or maybe even increase night time ie. 11 on/12 off

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You dont stop,this dirt will be used again and again.Feeding on week 10 of flower will help the next round.
Feed the dirt not the plants.Thats all i got. lol

ekillah said:

Thanks for checking in man. So overall i think there was some potassium or magnesium deficiency. If you wanted my opinion, i think its related to transplanting to a bigger pot, and mobile nutrients are leaving to help ROOT growth.
I’ve seen this happen with my indoor house plants, everytime i transplant it to a new pot, some of the smaller leaves seem to yellow off and die. Theres never any new leaf growth happening for a week or two. When you do start seeing new growth and look at the bottom of the pot, the root has reached the bottom holes.

As of right now I am in day 28 of flower! Everything is looking good. Right now trying to learn a bunch of controversial things and seeing which tactic I will end with (my first grow btw). Couple things on my mind are:
1) how long to feed dr earth dry amendment for in flower, when do i stop
2) flushing or not
3) whether i should decrease the light intensity of my LED light in the final two weeks to decrease temperature and mimic fall such as in nature or maybe even increase night time ie. 11 on/12 off

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Don't flush. Flushing is for toilets. Never flush organic soil.
Good luck friend!

Two great pieces of advice.
Love the flushing is for toilets...lol
So unless you took a number 2 in your soil I would say no flush

JimmiP said:

Don't flush. Flushing is for toilets. Never flush organic soil.
Good luck friend!

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What about when to stop feeding? I think thats what a lot of people mean by “flushing”, and just continue with water. Dr earth flowergirl has nitrogen in it and i dont want to give nitrogen until the end do i? Thus why i considered it flushing, but really letting the plant take nitrogen from its leaf instead