Soaked some seeds on 8/1, went into soil on 8/3. They’ve been looking good for the first two weeks, but two days ago, I noticed that some of them are starting to have curled and dry/crispy leaves.
Today, half don’t look so good. I noticed this starting yesterday, and they look worse today.
The only thing that’s changed in the past few days, is the plastic lid was removed and they started downhill afterwards. I put the lid back on and keeping it misted in there with some water in the tray.
These are in a soil mix, with hydroton as a mulch layer on top. I’ve only bottom watered in the tray, no nutes added. I do not PH adjust my tap water, but i know it’s high, probably too high, >8.
Well i think you answered your own question imo when you revealed you don’t ph adjust your water. You won’t get any plant to survive with water ph that high. Also you have to consider the high ph of untreated hydroton. The runoff from that hydroton will also increase the ph just like rockwool would. You won’t have to worry much about the hydroton since you are bottom feeding but keep it in mind if you start top feeding. This is all ph problems. Adjust your water
also you should be feeding nutes by now so some of this could be starvation. So definitely mix up a quarter strength nutes and ph adjust your water and you should be good to go. Rule of thumb-start nutes at 3rd set of leaves
These hydrotons have been re-used multiple times, but if they continually leach high PH in the runoff, I may have to move over to rice hulls as a mulch instead. I am using ricehulls now as aeration, recently switched from perlite.
Thank you for the advice and response. I will have to break out the PH meter to try to get the water down to something more reasonable.I was hoping the dolomite lime in the soil would buffer the PH for me.
Trying to move to ‘water-only’ soil, but i’ll mix up some mild nutes to see what helps.
Yeah give thatva shot…as far as the hydroton something you can do in the future is boil em before reusing…also let them soak in a vinegar solution. Soaking in vinegar is supposed to neutralize the hydroton. Ive never done that myself but have seen multiple people say they do that. What I did to neutralize mine was first rinse them real good and then let them soak in 5.5 ph water for like 3 days and then rinse them again and theybelwere good to go. Hope the info helps and hope it is a accurate observation. Good luck moving forward
I’d say something has been stressing them all along. Those are 3 weeks old from when they germinated?
These are my plants at three weeks from popping, just in promix without adding anything. Only one feeding of fish emulsion by the time this pic was taken.
