DEEDS ROOT CITY

Blister · Feb 6, 2014

Calcium is slow moving, but not immobile. Chinense like habs require higher than normal amounts of calcium otherwise you get leaves that cup upwards.

Calcium works best in a PH range of 5.4 – 5.8 in hydroponic set up and 6.5 – 8.0 in soil and Calcium lockout happens when the PH of the growing medium gets below these two values. This means that if you are growing in soil you should not let your PH dip below 6.5 and when using hydroponics then this number is 5.4 as then Calcium will not be available to your plants and they will show calcium deficiency.

Toxicity

First of all Calcium toxicity is hard to diagnose and it is almost impossible to do from just observing the leafs but you can observe calcium toxicity by getting signs of Magnesium, Potassium and Manganese deficiency as too much calcium will lock out these three elements and in some cases you can also get Iron deficiency symptoms.

Deficiency

Deficiency of Calcium is more common but not as commons as for example Nitrogen or Potassium deficiencies. Calcium Deficiency starts with young leaf tips yellowing and getting yellowish spots. If no Calcium is added to your plants growing medium then these yellowing leaf tips will also spread to older leaves and young leafs will start to curl at the edges and new shoots can show deformation signs and also show some weakness in the stems and branches. Calcium deficiency can also exhibit stunted and slow growth of young plants and young branches. Another Calcium deficiency symptom is a hollow stem but this can be seen only after the plant has been harvested or by squeezing the bigger stems and if they feel hollow you may have a too low calcium amounts in your soil or fertilizer.

- See more at: http://www.autoflowering-cannabis.com/secondary-nutrients-calcium-magnesium-sulfur-for-cannabis.html#sthash.l7W4CfVd.dpuf

Upon second look it appears that you may have a calcium lock out in the thai chili as well. I had been originally watering with tap water. All my plants started out ok, but then took a turn for the worse. Yellowing leaves like the one shown in the Thai chili. In my case it wasn't a lack of calcium, but a lockout of calcium. My tap water is around 500ppm on it's own. When I added 700ppm of nutes that brought my total level up around 1200ppm with way too much calcium and not enough magnesium to balance it out. The imbalance between cal-mag and all the nutrients locked the calcium out. Things turned around as soon as I switched to RO water.

Neil

Nick08* · Feb 6, 2014

Thanks for all the input guys! I hope I'm not confusing everyone, but kinda sounds like I am... I am growing both hydro and soil now since I'm keeping the office plants.

This pic is a soil grown Douglah (Office): This pic is a hydro grown Thai (home):

All 3 of my soil plants; 2 Douglah's and a Brain Strain (Soil brain is also the plant with the crazy cat-bite looking leaf) are showing similar symptoms of the leaf curl/mottling. Soil is crappy Miracle Gro potting mix I got last minute at Rite-Aid (didn't think I was going to keep the soil plants long term, or I would have probably tried something like Ocean Forest). Overall I'm pretty happy with the way the hydro's are coming along, it's the soil I don't seem to have a handle on yet...

Blister said:
Leaves cupping upwards is a tell tale sign of calcium deficiency. In this case it could be either locked out or a lack of calcium. Calcium can be locked out due to a high ph level or it being out of balance with Magnesium (which should be at a 2:1 ratio of calcium to magnesium). In your case I'm leaning towards a deficiency. Calcium is readily available in a hydro ph range between 5.5 and 5.8. Since you are already ph-ing your water down to this level you should probably add a bit of cal-mag.

I would also like to add that in my limited experience 700ppm is a bit high during the vegetative stage for chili plants. I had to reduce my nute strength down to 500ppm in order to get the leaves to flatten out. It's a bit of a different story when they are laden with flowers and pods though. I don't know how high the nute strength should be at the moment, but it is higher.

Neil

I for sure thought my hydro plants were not getting enough Calcium or Magnesium so I ended up buying a Cal/Mag supplement and added it to the hydro plants about 1.5 - 2 weeks ago. I think it has definitely helped with the hydro leaf curl especially on the Brain, its leaves have "straightened out" a bit since adding, so I'm happy with the hydro results. Since the soil plants were curling as well, I decided to water with some of my hydro nutes mixed into a gallon jug, including cal/mag but it has not seemed to help the soil plants any.

From my experience I would agree 700ppm is too much for the chile's... especially the super's. However the Thai, and tomato seemed to do OK with it. 500ppm is going to be my target for my next round of hydro starts... but like you, I am a little lost as far as what strength to do when the plants are trying to produce (like they are now). Which is why on my most recent round, I tried to put them in the 600's to see how they do.

On a slightly different topic:
One really odd thing I noticed yesterday: so on 2/4 when I did a nute change, the Brain went in at 5.5 pH, and 606ppm. Now I know pH will climb over time, and nutes should lower as the plant uses them, but I double checked things yesterday 2/5, and the brain was already at a pH of around 6.2, with ppm's in the 900's!? WTF? Not enough water was gone to have the concentration jump that much, and I thought the pH climb would be slower, so I'm a little lost on that..

stc3248 said:
Those yellowing leaves could be lack of light...but I dunno. Your plants look very healthy overall and I would avoid making any drastic changes to what you're doing. If you were in soil my fist recommendation would be to check PH, but y'all are speaking french with all that hydro stuff to me.

I don't plan on making any major hydro changes, because like you said, things seem to be progressing pretty well for me in that department. Since you recommend checking the pH of the soil (which the leaves in question are in soil) I guess I might just have to get myself a soil probe. Should come in handy for my outdoor stuff anyway... I'll report back with my findings once I'm able to get this done.

Jeff H said:
Yeah, those leaves look yellow due to lack of light, but that wasn't the pic I was referring to. I was looking at the one that Blister quoted. I guess I thought that was the Thai because you were running the highest nutes in it. 700 isn't too high but it is definitely on the high side.

Not sure I agree about it being calcium though. Calcium is an immobile nutrient. It is either there when the leaf forms and the leaf looks normal or it is not there and the new growth is shrived and stunted. I'd put my money on early stages of nute burn. Lower the nutes a bit and see if those leaves flatten out.

One other question, are the PPM numbers you are quoting just the added nutes or are you quoting the total of nutes + water. That makes quite a difference. My water is around 200PPM, but I have heard of some water up over 400.

So you don't think 700 is too high for super's in vegetative? Mine always seemed crumpled looking... but maybe that's because at first I wasn't checking pH, and didn't start using any cal/mag until about 2 weeks ago?

Since the leaves in question are from plants in soil that already has some light fert built in... I can't really lower the nutes any. I can stop watering with additional hydro nutes, but the only problem there is that the crinkled leaves formed when I was just watering with plain tap water. The additional hydro nutes were only added later to correct what I thought was a deficiency (but it doenst seem to be helping... or hurting for that matter, things are just the same).

The PPM numbers quoted in all my listings are INCLUDING water. My water is about 120ppm, 8.0pH by itself, and those numbers are after mixing the nutes + calmag + pH Down into the water.

On a slightly different topic, I would be interested in your thoughts on the green text above that I put under blister's quote.

Just wanted to say thanks again for everyone's perspective, and input. Couldn't get all this stuff dialed in without THP!!! :clap:

Nick08* · Feb 6, 2014

Blister said:
Calcium is slow moving, but not immobile. Chinense like habs require higher than normal amounts of calcium otherwise you get leaves that cup upwards.

Upon second look it appears that you may have a calcium lock out in the thai chili as well. I had been originally watering with tap water. All my plants started out ok, but then took a turn for the worse. Yellowing leaves like the one shown in the Thai chili. In my case it wasn't a lack of calcium, but a lockout of calcium. My tap water is around 500ppm on it's own. When I added 700ppm of nutes that brought my total level up around 1200ppm with way too much calcium and not enough magnesium to balance it out. The imbalance between cal-mag and all the nutrients locked the calcium out. Things turned around as soon as I switched to RO water.

Neil

Do you just buy RO water, or do you have an RO unit? If so... which one?

Blister · Feb 6, 2014

Nick08* said:
Do you just buy RO water, or do you have an RO unit? If so... which one?

I buy my water. It's $5.50 CAN for 5 gallons. There are cheaper places in town ($3/5gallons), but they are on the other side of town and the convenience of getting water on my way home is nice. It's the simplest way to eliminate potential water problems and it doesn't require any test instruments because RO water tends to be very low in ppm.

Now that you mentioned that you've been watering your soil plant with hydro nutes it kinda makes sense that you're having curing problems. If you've ph'ed the water down to 5.5 and are pouring that into your soil plant, you're probably locking out calcium because it's too low. If the link and info I posted above is to be believed, calcium in soil gets locked out at a ph below 6.5.

I don't think 700ppm is "too" high for chili plants, but I too have noticed crumpled leaves. I had to dial my nutrients back to 500ppm before I noticed the leaves starting to flatten out, and have new growth be nice and flat. Given that I don't have much experience with hydro I can't say that this applies to all nutes across the board. But if you read your plants and would like flat leaves, I suggest that you keep lowering the nutes until you start to see flat new growth. For me 500ppm with RO water was the sweet spot during vegetative stage. I've since upped my nutes now that they are producing buds and peppers. I'm fumbling around until I can hit the sweet spot where they stop bud drop.

Neil

Nick08* · Feb 6, 2014

Blister said:
I buy my water. It's $5.50 CAN for 5 gallons. There are cheaper places in town ($3/5gallons), but they are on the other side of town and the convenience of getting water on my way home is nice. It's the simplest way to eliminate potential water problems and it doesn't require any test instruments because RO water tends to be very low in ppm.

Now that you mentioned that you've been watering your soil plant with hydro nutes it kinda makes sense that you're having curing problems. If you've ph'ed the water down to 5.5 and are pouring that into your soil plant, you're probably locking out calcium because it's too low. If the link and info I posted above is to be believed, calcium in soil gets locked out at a ph below 6.5.

I don't think 700ppm is "too" high for chili plants, but I too have noticed crumpled leaves. I had to dial my nutrients back to 500ppm before I noticed the leaves starting to flatten out, and have new growth be nice and flat. Given that I don't have much experience with hydro I can't say that this applies to all nutes across the board. But if you read your plants and would like flat leaves, I suggest that you keep lowering the nutes until you start to see flat new growth. For me 500ppm with RO water was the sweet spot during vegetative stage. I've since upped my nutes now that they are producing buds and peppers. I'm fumbling around until I can hit the sweet spot where they stop bud drop.

Neil

I have toyed with the idea of buying water... but it'd cost me about $20 a week to fill all my buckets! Not reasible for me... so I've also thought about getting myself an RO unit at home.

I watered with hydro nutes AFTER the curling. I was watering the soil plants with just plain water, and the leaves were curling... so I thought I had a deficiency of some sort. It wasn't until after the leaves curled that I started watering with the hydro nutes...

Blister · Feb 6, 2014

That makes sense. I'm running small scale and one jug lasts me pretty close to a month. I suspect that will go up after I pot up my plants and move them out into the sun later this year. Unfortunately that's the only option I have at this point. An RO system is more than I'm willing to invest in at this point.

Given that calcium is a slow moving nutrient, I'd give the plants a bit more time to show improvement.

Neil

Nick08* · Feb 7, 2014

Blister said:
That makes sense. I'm running small scale and one jug lasts me pretty close to a month. I suspect that will go up after I pot up my plants and move them out into the sun later this year. Unfortunately that's the only option I have at this point. An RO system is more than I'm willing to invest in at this point.

Given that calcium is a slow moving nutrient, I'd give the plants a bit more time to show improvement.

Neil

I'll see how they look after the weekend, and update.

and on another note... FIRST OF MY ROUND 2 POPPED OVERNIGHT!!! :woohoo:

And the winner is... Brazilian Starfish!

My money was on Bahamian Goat, seems like quite a few others have been having fast germs with that variety. Its been exactly 7 days.

Nick08* · Feb 7, 2014

Just got back to the office after a day in the field, and one more Starfish is up! Should be interesting to see what pops over the weekend.

stc3248 · Feb 7, 2014

Cool! congrats on the newborns! I grow in MG every year with great results. I use the Moisture Control type though.

Nick08* · Feb 7, 2014

stc3248 said:
Cool! congrats on the newborns! I grow in MG every year with great results. I use the Moisture Control type though.

Good to know. For whatever reason, those leaves started curling and I thought the plants were hungry. When you use the MG soil have you found there's is enough nutrition in there for them even when they start to bud?

stc3248 · Feb 7, 2014

I don't feed them for at least two months after plant out. By then if they're producing much it will be time to give them some food weekly. All I do is some compost/kelp tea once they're outside, but honestly they really don't need anything for a while.

Nick08* · Feb 8, 2014

stc3248 said:
Those yellowing leaves could be lack of light...but I dunno. Your plants look very healthy overall and I would avoid making any drastic changes to what you're doing. If you were in soil my fist recommendation would be to check PH, but y'all are speaking french with all that hydro stuff to me.

Do you have a soil pH meter you would recommend?

JJJessee · Feb 8, 2014

Just passing on some late night research from a 420 site
The Milwaukee 600 everyone spoke highly of at about 20 bucks

Several had bought a Hanna instrument for about 3x that price and they said Hanna was junk except maybe on the higher end products.
They also dissed the real cheap ones from the big box stores, said you were better off using strips.

Nick08* · Feb 8, 2014

JJJessee said:
Just passing on some late night research from a 420 site
The Milwaukee 600 everyone spoke highly of at about 20 bucks

Several had bought a Hanna instrument for about 3x that price and they said Hanna was junk except maybe on the higher end products.
They also dissed the real cheap ones from the big box stores, said you were better off using strips.

Thanks Jesse!

That one looks like a liquid pH meter though, isn't it? :think:

Which actually isnt a bad thing... I've been meaning to look into researching a new liquid meter for my hydro stuff, and this will save me the time! Price seems reasonable too. The drops I'm using are such a pain, and not very accurate.

Still thinking about getting myself a soil probe too, might as well nerd-out over getting my soil perfectly dialed in as as well! :lol:

stc3248 · Feb 8, 2014

I use the cheapo needle type...like $5, but prolly not the most accurate.

Nick08* · Feb 8, 2014

Weather really sucks, and I got bored waiting on lunch to digest before I go try to sweat out my hangover at the gym, so I snapped a few more progress pics to share...

TOMATO:

Thai:

Douglah:

Brain Strain:

Whole Room:

I Cannot believe how big these things are getting!!

And how many flowers they are putting out. Pretty soon I'm going to have to trim the Brain if it keeps growing at the same pace.

Oh, and I totally forgot to mention... but yesterday I ate my first ever hydro tomato!!! :party:

First ever hydro anything, for that matter. I was checking the ripeness of them, and the one basically just fell of the vine and into my hand, it was delicious! I wasn't sure if I would be able to tell any difference in flavor due to the nutes or anything, but I could not. It just a very FIRM, FRESH, JUICY cherry tomato... the exact opposite of what's coming out of the supermarket around this time.

Hoping any day now the first of one of those Brain flowers will begin its transformation into some gnarly poddage!!!! :pray:

Thanks for stopping by!

JJJessee · Feb 8, 2014

+1 on the mater. What variety? Are there varieties that are better suited to indoor hydro because of size or whatever?

That Brain is PUMPING flowers!!!

Devv · Feb 8, 2014

Plants look super!

JJJessee said:
That Brain is PUMPING flowers!!!

Yes it is!

That many flowers at the nodes indicates a really healthy plant!

Are you helping it with pollination?

stc3248 · Feb 8, 2014

Those plants are looking freaking fantastic! You need to take the "Rookie" out of this glog's title!!!

Nick08* · Feb 9, 2014

Thanks guys!! :cheers:

JJJessee said:
+1 on the mater. What variety? Are there varieties that are better suited to indoor hydro because of size or whatever?

That Brain is PUMPING flowers!!!

It is called "Natures Bite's" It was actually given to me as a small sample from a seed company client at work. You know, that's a great question. I'm not really sure... but I suppose a determinate variety would probably be better suited for indoor since they wont turn into a giant tree, maybe something like this: http://bonnieplants.com/products/vegetables/tomato-varieties/determinate-tomatoes/sweet-n-neat-cherry-tomato ? But I'm not really sure how I feel about determinates... especially if it was going to be a plant I wanted to rely on all winter for fresh edibles. I think now that I know what I'm getting myself into growing a tom indoors, I'll just to a better job at suckering, pruning, and staking/training. I'd really like to be able to set up a mini indoor garden that could be utilized for my winter needs (plenty of peppers, but not just peppers) almost like my own living salad bar :rolleyes:

I know, right!? I'm pretty astonished at how many are there, and that pic is only the initial fork... there's buds/flowers all over!!

Devv said:
Plants look super!

Yes it is!

That many flowers at the nodes indicates a really healthy plant!

Are you helping it with pollination?

Good to know about the flowers @ the nodes = healthy plants. I'm constantly second guessing my nute strengths, and pH, and everything... but I guess I should go a little easier on myself.. seems to be working out just great!

I'm actually not doing anything with pollination currently. I thought about it.... but wanted to see if they would take off on their own. Since peppers and toms are self pollinating, I figured (hoped) that when I added the fan it would provide enough airflow/movement the pollen would get around in the flowers. In addition to the small fan you can see in the photos, I also have two 6in can fans mounted to holes I drilled in the closet door, and connected to a thermostat. If it gets over 85 in there (and it'll get over 100 with the 600w bulb running), both fans automatically kick on; the upper fan blows the hot air out, and the bottom fan draws cool fresh basement air in. There's decent plant movement with the one fan running, but when the can fans kick on they really get a good breeze.

stc3248 said:
Those plants are looking freaking fantastic! You need to take the "Rookie" out of this glog's title!!!

Coming from one of the site's pro's... I take that as quite the compliment!! :dance: