Oh, man, the plants are not happy about something. Opened the tent up today and they’re looking a little crispy. I’m assuming it’s the TM7 I watered with yesterday. Goddamnit… I haven’t watered with any fulvic/humic acid in almost a month and I went light with it yesterday, only used a half-teaspoon in three gallons of water. Leaves are lighter green, I’m seeing lots of brownish/yellowish areas… Shit… Okay, water-only from here on out.
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That’s too bad. Will the be OK? Getting crispy overnight is highly unusual. Here I was admiring everything and thinking damn, those look incredible! I’ve never had wifi or the #43 variant, but I saw this recently and thought of you:
What’s TM7?
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Haha, yeah, I just watched that video the other day, when I was searching for WiFi43 info.
TM7 is BioAg’s humic acid. The “7” denotes that in addition to the humic, it also contains seven micronutrients, which are boron, iron, I think copper. Can’t remember all of them offhand. I usually water with it once around day 30 of veg and once at some point during flower, but I do it during flower a little earlier, like around week two or so. I agree that overnight is a little fast, so I looked at what I added to the water ten days ago (actually eleven) and noticed that I did an MBP topdress and watered that in with a little aloe, coconut and potassium silicate. Maybe that’s the problem? I dunno.
Plants’ll be fine, they’ll just be looking a little rough for a week or two. I’ve wayyyyyy overdone it with fulvic acid before, fried the shit out of my plants and they still turned out okay. But I’m pretty irritated. I told myself I was gonna go back to the basics and treat my plants the way I treated them when I first started growing, about five years ago, which was really pretty much water-only. Instead, I’ve been adding shit to the water again. From here on out, it’s gonna be water-only. That’s when I’ve always gotten the best results.
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Oh well, that’s how it goes. Like you said, I’m sure they’ll be fine. 
I’ve never added any fulvic/humic or any of that other stuff. What’s it supposed to do? Chelate the other nutes and facilitate cation exchange? I figure it’s prolly in the mix already, like from the EWC and malted barley, yeah?
I don’t even add molasses anymore. Just don’t see the benefit if the soil mix is good. Again, though, I’m a lazy grower. I try to get all the shit sorted up front so I can just sit back and admire their spirits, see if any really vibe with me.
The one thing I do see time and time again in my organic soil, both inside and out, is that the plants do not like it when the soil dries out, even for a little bit, just barely making the leaves droop. When the soil dries out enough to cause leaf droop, about a week later I start to see yellowing of lower fan leaves and then they get crispy. Doesn’t matter if it’s veg or flower. If the soil dries out multiple times between waterings over a week or two, I find that the leaf tips and margins start to get crispy/burnt. It’s always related to drying out and nothing else as far as I can tell. Maybe that’s part of what you’re seeing?
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Nah, I’m pretty certain it’s not from a lack of water. I water every other day without fail. Even when I said I went a little light on the watering a couple days ago, I just watered with eight cups of water instead of the usual ten or eleven cups. Definitely don’t ever let my soil dry out. I don’t think it’s that.
And yeah, fulvic/humic acids are chelating agents or whatever. I’ve used them too much and too often before and seen the plants suffer, so I was easing way back on it. I think from here on out, until I switch to no-till, I’m gonna use it once a grow.
And you’re right, the EWC/MBP should definitely be enough. The problem is that I read that fucking no-till thread on grass city that bluejay (Mountain Organics, whatever) posted and I keep trying it out, despite the fact that I keep getting burned (literally) by it. I thought that if I stretched his watering schedule out over the course of a month, instead of the recommended twelve day schedule, it wouldn’t be as intense, for lack of a better word. But no, it doesn’t seem like it. It might work when you’re in a 30 gallon no-till situation, but it absolutely does not work if you’re growing in five or seven gallon pots.
Funny that you mentioned molasses, I’ve never used that either, except in my AACT’s, but I was considering adding some molasses and BioAg fulvic yesterday. I changed my mind at the last minute and went with TM7 and nothing else. Shoulda just fucking watered my plants with, uh, water…
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Ughhh… Y’all see this shit?
Just brutal. I’m not sure what’s causing this, but I have to believe that the TM7 had something to do with it. Water-only from here on out.
Plus-side, the nugs still look pretty good…
When I was moving the plants out of the tent to water today, they were swaying big-time. Definitely gonna have to stake and tie pretty soon. But shit, man, those leaves… They’re making me depressed haha!
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That looks all too familiar, but i do not know what the cause is in my environment.
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Are you growing in soil? If so, what mix? I’ve only been using Coot’s mix and I do think that fulvic/humic acid are unnecessary. Maybe once in veg, just to get everything going, but every time I use them more than once, shit ends up looking like the above pictures. Water-only, water-only, water-only… haha.
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Soil, but it’s a hodge podge of what i throw in there when i mix it and I semi-regularly added either fish emulsion or FF Big Bloom. Kind of all over the place, I know i need to be more consistent. After watching @nube’s Pura Vida run, I’m trying the water only recipe he posted, What's your organic soil recipe? - #71 by nube. I have that soil mixed up, cooking for a few more weeks before I can give it a go.
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Okay. Interesting. Like I said, I use coot’s mix and that’s always worked really well for me, but only when I ease back on everything and just do water-only. My last few grows, I’ve been adding more and more stuff to my water and it’s ended up frying my leaves like in the pictures I just posted.
Fucking humans… I dunno why we think we can improve upon nature… haha. We can’t.
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Yeah, i agree. I keep trying to throw more ‘things’ at the plant to make it better, but really, just let it grow and keep the area clean.
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The thing with Bluejay’s watering schedule is, these pots he is using are already a year in when he starts the thread. So when adding all the extra aloe, malted barley, coconut water, bioag, silica, etc. doesn’t burn his leaves because the soil is already depleted.
When he tried to go water only with blumats, he was getting deficiencies and thats when he started his glycerin extractions and foliar feeding with those.
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They don’t look that bad, man. But if the leaf stuff happened over night directly after applying that TM7 stuff, I think you’re right - it’s prolly the culprit. The buds look choice and I’m sure the issue will reverse itself or at least not get worse. Plenty of foliage left on the plant.
About the soil mix, if Coots is working for you, keep it up. But, as they say around here, when in doubt, LITFA. And KISS. IMHO there’s no need for added complexity if you’re just growing for yourself, not in the choice of pots, equipment, medium, lighting, or nutes. It ain’t called weed for nuthin.
Also, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a small KNF grow that impressed me. Most of the time, people are using the shotgun approach and imho most of the time their plants look sickly. But I also pay no attention to those things nor seek them out, so I’m not exposed to a lot of them.
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Yeah, it’s weird, because I’ve kind of gone in the opposite direction. I feel like most people, when they first start growing, go overboard with adding all kinds of shit and then slowly realize that less is more. When I first started growing, I was almost completely water-only and only started adding more stuff to the water as time has gone on.
Water-only from here on out.
What’s a “KNF grow”?
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Korean Natural Farming, which typically employs fermented plant extracts to feed organic and no-till soil. It’s a great way to operate in a sustainable and zero-waste manner, but it doesn’t seem to work very well for small grows.
I guess I shouldn’t have inadvertently conflated KNF and no-till. They’re not the same, and one doesn’t require the other, but I’ve frequently seen them promoted by the same people.
No-till sounds good in theory, right? Good bacteria and fungi win out over bad ones and then colonize the soil, and would have to restart that war against the bad guys if you destroyed their colonies and mycorrhizal structures, so we leave them intact because they might not win every time, and instead get better if left undisturbed, like in an old growth forest. Sounds good to me!
Surely no-till can be great if done carefully, but it’s very space-intensive because it requires a large volume of soil. This is why I haven’t gone for it, being a low-income renter who’s moved around frequently my whole life. I can transport soil in tubs when moving, but not whole 200gal beds or 30gal cloth pots.
Also, I haven’t seen a persuasive and controlled test of no-till’s benefits over time compared to the same soil mix in pots, reused and re-amended, but I’m just a peanut gallery on this one. I’d love to see some side-by-sides. Maybe they exist and I just haven’t sought them out?
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Ah, okay, yeah, like with the kubashi or whatever? Bokashi? Kobashi? I’ve seen that, looked way too labor-intensive for me haha.
I was actually planning on switching to no-till starting with my current grow. Bought four thirty gallon airpots, bought a big ol’ 4’ x 4’ tray to set them in, drove all the way to friggin’ Inglewood because that was the only place where I could get all the stuff I needed in bulk to make the amount of soil required. But it was keeping me up at night. For real. I found myself in bed, tossing and turning, feeling like going no-till was a serious commitment that maybe I wasn’t ready for and not able to sleep. I was worrying about it and that right there made me realize that I should just stick to five and seven gallon pots haha. If I’m up at night, worrying about a grow that I haven’t even started yet, something’s not right haha! Plus, I like being able to move the plants and stuff, take them out when I water, get a good look at them etc.
I do think that no-till works, but it works best (and is easiest) if you’re in a situation where you have some mother plants, you take clones from the mothers and throw them in your no-till pots. For someone like me, who starts from seed every grow, it just doesn’t make sense. And I still have that “moving around” mindset, too, even though we’re pretty established in the house we’re in now. Not going anywhere. But I still have that “I wanna be able to carry all my shit out in one trip” mindset. Although I have too much shit now. I guess I’d take my AT600 in one hand, the AT200 in the other, put my bag of seeds under my chin and say,”Later!” haha.
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well said - takes awhile to learn that many times LIFTA is the best solution before you get into problems trying to grow better when you are already doing just fine
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I mixed up a 15-gallon pot with coots mix and ran the “no-till” recipe in that for about two years. Yes the soil got better and better. There is something to be said about composted cannabis plants feeding young cannabis plants.
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Yeah like @nube said… no till generally works best in larger areas so using a no till approach in pots means bigger pots to avoid running into early problems… but somewhere along the lines you’re going to encounter something that will need you to unpot and re amend your soil. Generally a no till bed (size depending) can go up to 7 years without an issue but again it comes down to space. One thing though, if you get it right its a charm and gives you amazing flower. If i was flowering in pots id have a few batches of soil cycling between grows over no tilling pots…
On the KNF note… yeah its been tagged into the no till way of growing … Its ok for some things but for the most part if you dont know the history of your inputs it can completely fuck you up. Peeps out here fermenting all these fruits and veg riddled with poisons pesticides and fungicides which you in turn are amplifying a million fold. Korean natural farming works in Korea using imports indigineous to their area , same as how Columbia and Brazil use the same sort of method , they just use inputs indigineous to their areas… also this is large scale farming. So unless your inputs are coming from either your own back yard or from a source that you know is clean and organic can you actually as a small home grower be sure of what youre doing.
KNF works great for me but its not gospel…i mix it up with a whole bunch of things and its become Sun Valley natural farming now lol.
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Yeah, @Sunvalley and @ReikoX I’m not knocking no-till at all. It’s definitely where I’m gonna end up I think. At some point anyway. It just makes sense. At the same time, if I’m laying in bed worrying about it… I dunno. I’m not a worrier at all, so the fact that I was all stressed about it said something to me.
I’ll switch to no-till at some point, though.
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