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health Brown spots on pods
- Thread starter Hermansen
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Will do.solid7 said:
I guess my plan for now will be to flush, then decrease the amount of nutrients, while keeping the amount of calmag the same - increasing the ratio of calcium in the solution for a while.
Now the question is whether to increase or decrease the frequency of the feeding? If I were to increase the frequency then I would of course decrease the amount of solution each time. I have the impression that it is normally recommended to feed often in coco?
Also that blossom end rot can be caused by inconsistent watering.
By the way I also found out that the canna coco does contain Iron, just much less than at least the other hydroponic nutrient I have from them. (Aqua Flores)
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Hermansen said:
In general, I find that if you're doing soil, DTW, or container gardening, it's much better to feed/water more often, but in LESS volume. Superficial watering, as opposed to deep soak. Instead of saturating your container every time, give it a quick hit, and move on. You'll quickly figure out how often to water, so that the plants get what they need. I find that growth is much more rapid this way.
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Just fine tune that process to the point that you don't incur wilting. Wilting is caused by a loss of turgor pressure, and we don't really want to do that, if we're trying to maintain optimum plant growth. If your plant wilts between today's light watering and tomorrow, water a little more tomorrow. (no "fine tuning" in the same day - let it be wilted until the next watering - but get it sorted quickly)
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Back your nutrient solution off by around 200 ppm, to start with.
That's very interesting. In the past few months of reading around, I've only read the exact opposite concerning peppers - saturate soil, then let it dry out a few inches from top before watering again. I'm growing in containers, and following this procedure only water 1-2 times a week, I'm assuming. I might try varying this according to what you've said on a couple of plants and noting the difference. Is there reasoning behind your way, or is it more based on experience?solid7 said:
bongcloud said:
Yes, there's plenty of good reason. Especially if you're growing in hydro.
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I have said this so many times... it's critically important to growth, that you have maximum oxygen levels in the root zone. Want better growth? Get more oxygen in there, while not screwing anything else up. You can be the best grower in the world, when it comes to diagnosing deficiencies, understanding nutrients, etc, etc, etc. But environmental variables have the biggest impact on growth. Want better growth? Up your game. Fine tune your environmental variables. Saturation watering is easy. It's practical. Done properly, it's completely safe. Frequent/lesser volume watering is a nice little hack to supercharge a grow.
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Water can either be used to pull oxygen into the root zone (when done properly), or it can be used to displace oxygen from the same (when done improperly). More frequent waterings of less water and nutrient draw surface air down. You are doing it more often. So, there's the logic. Plants drown when water displaces oxygen, and close up the air spaces. Literally, they drown.
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When you deep saturate, you have a perched water table in your container, or sometimes in your ground soil. This decreases your overall oxygen holding capacity. And the area that this perched water table occupies, is only ever going to be bone dry, if the entire container is. It's ALWAYS the wettest part of the container, because it's the saturation zone. Its where gravity dictates that your water ends up, and where other laws of physics state that it's going to stay, unless forced out by pressure, or taken up by evaporation or wicking.
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This is backed up by science and personal experience. In fact, if you've ever researched the 5-1-1 mix by a guy named 'tapla' on one of the other forums, he advocates a coarse aggregate of pine bark, peat, and perlite, in the 5-1-1 respective ratio. I personally don't like that mix, because it doesn't play well with organic amendments. But the reasoning is sound. And you have to water it alot. Take the same idea, use a denser mix, and water it a little less. You'll get the same effect. It's a very good strategy for hydro. Even better if you can automate it.
If anyone finds this in the future and are wondering about the seemingly low and/or missing micronutrients in the canna coco a+b solution, I think I have found the answer.
These nutrients are designed to be used either with the canna coco profesional plus coco coir (which I do), or a natural coco coir that is buffered and soaked with canna's own COGr buffer agent - both of these routes, according to the maker themselves of course, should load up the coir with all required micronutrients so it won't have be supplied each feeding.
Whether this is a perfect solution or not isn't something I feel prepared to judge yet, as this is my first coco grow
(Also I don't know if you need to use the buffer agent again after flushing your coco)
My tomatoes seem perfectly happy with this system, but the peppers maybe not so much - although there could of course be other reasons for this as mentioned earlier in the thread.
I will update the thread after following the tips I have received here for a while with the results, big thanks to both Chilidude and solid7!
Also take a look at my tomatoes, pretty satisfied with my first tomato plants ever (Featuring some sun damage in the lower portions, because I didn't have time to harden them off and the summer started out a lot warmer than normal for Norway this year)
These nutrients are designed to be used either with the canna coco profesional plus coco coir (which I do), or a natural coco coir that is buffered and soaked with canna's own COGr buffer agent - both of these routes, according to the maker themselves of course, should load up the coir with all required micronutrients so it won't have be supplied each feeding.
Whether this is a perfect solution or not isn't something I feel prepared to judge yet, as this is my first coco grow
(Also I don't know if you need to use the buffer agent again after flushing your coco)
My tomatoes seem perfectly happy with this system, but the peppers maybe not so much - although there could of course be other reasons for this as mentioned earlier in the thread.
I will update the thread after following the tips I have received here for a while with the results, big thanks to both Chilidude and solid7!
Also take a look at my tomatoes, pretty satisfied with my first tomato plants ever
(Featuring some sun damage in the lower portions, because I didn't have time to harden them off and the summer started out a lot warmer than normal for Norway this year)Attachments
Hermansen said:
Well, Ghe nutes are pretty expensive stuff anyway and once my supply of the stuff runs out, i might just switch to the much cheaper alternative one part coco fertilizer i am currently testing out for you guys. Canna coco a+b must be good because it have plenty of users amongs the growers of the green stuff, but you just need to dial it in for your growing.
That is exactly what i do. When its hot out i may have to water a little everyday but its not a huge deal. About 1qt per day/per plant when its hot out is about what keeps mine happy. When its really hot i put a bit more in the saucers of the fabric pots. When its under 85F most of them can go for days without watering. The mix im testing with a high amount of pine bark though requires closer attention but the plants seem to love it.
Hermansen said:
That whole Monsanto thing is going to be a pretty limiting factor.
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If you don't buy certain nutrients on principle, then your idealized solution, is to make your own. Even then, you'd have to be sure that a company like Monsanto isn't supplying the nutrients that go into a "roll your own" solution.
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One of the easiest ways to make a complete fertilizer, and escape the multi-part marketing bullshit, is to make your own fish and seaweed fertilizer. That's pretty much the only way that you're going to get away from companies like Monsanto. Of course, Monsanto may have dumped something in the ocean that the fish ate, so there's that...
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To be honest, Monsanto is in all of our lives, whether we like it or not. I just don't have the energy to focus on that. And if you're buying at a grow shop, you're being supplied a constant stream of misinformation. I'd rather take my chances with Monsanto, than trust advice from a grow shop.
Yes, I know it's probably not going to make a difference in the long run, it was just an easy thing to do there and then. My local grow shop is a weird place, but quite fun, really more of a "freak fashion" shop as they call themselves. I wouldn't trust their advice for anything serious at all
So when I flushed it the other day the ppm I measured in the runoff was quite low, around 150 ppm. However the pH was quite high, around 6.85.
Are you supposed to measure the first runoff, or later in the flushing process?
It didn't swing much anyway, just got more similar to the flushing solution I was using... (first nothing, then ph'ed water, and then ph water with calmag near the end)
This was actually pretty much in line with what I measured when I took some coco and soaked it in distilled water about a week earlier - which I thought was because I had gotten some newer coco from the top that hadn't been saturated yet.
Anyway, I adjusted the watering to happen every day and reduced the total solution (including calmag) to 550 ppm, with pH of 5.75, and I'll monitor it closely.
I also thinned out some older, large leaves and some side growth from the bottom of the plant to improve air circulation.
See the attached picture of a side shoot from the bottom which I think is pretty young, I thought it looked a lot better than what the older leaves higher up does?
Are you supposed to measure the first runoff, or later in the flushing process?
It didn't swing much anyway, just got more similar to the flushing solution I was using... (first nothing, then ph'ed water, and then ph water with calmag near the end)
This was actually pretty much in line with what I measured when I took some coco and soaked it in distilled water about a week earlier - which I thought was because I had gotten some newer coco from the top that hadn't been saturated yet.
Anyway, I adjusted the watering to happen every day and reduced the total solution (including calmag) to 550 ppm, with pH of 5.75, and I'll monitor it closely.
I also thinned out some older, large leaves and some side growth from the bottom of the plant to improve air circulation.
See the attached picture of a side shoot from the bottom which I think is pretty young, I thought it looked a lot better than what the older leaves higher up does?
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In case anyone finds this later I will keep updating my progress
After flushing and reducing the nutrient solution strength the pods are looking better, but the plant in general have been suffering a lot.
It got some damage after I forgot to turn the light timer back on for an entire weekend, so they were in constant full light for a couple of days and got a bit burnt. Not sure if it was actually related to what came after or not.
Since then the leaves have just gotten worse and worse - older leaves have been getting yellow areas with brown/black spots within them, new leaves are curling upwards like crazy, and some leaves are just kind of wilting/dying from the outside and inwards. Until yesterday I chalked a lot of it up to very humid basement it has been growing in because of the warm weather outside (been at about 22 degrees C and 75% RH in the "grow room"), and therefore the plant hasn't been transpiring enough.
Then I decided to take a look in a 45x magnifying glass yesterday and I saw this little translucent f*** running happily along on the underside of a yellowing leaf. Took it to work today and checked in the microscope and I am pretty confident that it is a western flower thrip.
Maybe it has transmitted a virus, maybe they are just having a feast, maybe the humidity is the main issue, but I guess they are making a right mess of it all combined.
I took the plant outside today, far from my other outside plants, and we will see what happens I guess. I will update again.
I just hope it wasn't too late and they have already infected two other plants growing in the same room - they are in a hydroton bed ebb and flow system which is new to me. (Also included some pictures of this, because I think it will be pretty awesome - I covered the hydroton with some rip-stop nylon because it seemed like some algae were really loving the moist and "sunny" conditions) I guess it won't be the biggest problem in the world if they are infected as well, since it has just been 2 months since they germinated and the season can be whenever I want it to be.
Also I wanted to create a bonsai/bonchi from it, but if it's infected I guess that's out of the question as well.
On the bright side the pods are delicious for snacking, and it is still producing well enough
After flushing and reducing the nutrient solution strength the pods are looking better, but the plant in general have been suffering a lot.
It got some damage after I forgot to turn the light timer back on for an entire weekend, so they were in constant full light for a couple of days and got a bit burnt. Not sure if it was actually related to what came after or not.
Since then the leaves have just gotten worse and worse - older leaves have been getting yellow areas with brown/black spots within them, new leaves are curling upwards like crazy, and some leaves are just kind of wilting/dying from the outside and inwards. Until yesterday I chalked a lot of it up to very humid basement it has been growing in because of the warm weather outside (been at about 22 degrees C and 75% RH in the "grow room"), and therefore the plant hasn't been transpiring enough.
Then I decided to take a look in a 45x magnifying glass yesterday and I saw this little translucent f*** running happily along on the underside of a yellowing leaf. Took it to work today and checked in the microscope and I am pretty confident that it is a western flower thrip.
Maybe it has transmitted a virus, maybe they are just having a feast, maybe the humidity is the main issue, but I guess they are making a right mess of it all combined.
I took the plant outside today, far from my other outside plants, and we will see what happens I guess. I will update again.
I just hope it wasn't too late and they have already infected two other plants growing in the same room - they are in a hydroton bed ebb and flow system which is new to me. (Also included some pictures of this, because I think it will be pretty awesome - I covered the hydroton with some rip-stop nylon because it seemed like some algae were really loving the moist and "sunny" conditions) I guess it won't be the biggest problem in the world if they are infected as well, since it has just been 2 months since they germinated and the season can be whenever I want it to be.
Also I wanted to create a bonsai/bonchi from it, but if it's infected I guess that's out of the question as well.
On the bright side the pods are delicious for snacking, and it is still producing well enough
