Another update for you all:
What a difference a week makes. Keeping my fingers crossed the right girl darkens up a bit, but I’m so pleased. Thanks for the support, folks.
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Wow, what a turnaround! This thread has been very informative. Thank you for sharing.
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Another update for everyone, as long as the mods don’t mind. This is one week’s difference:
Still amazed at how these plants can come back. Something to remember the next time I make a mistake.
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Nice job!! Plants in veg are pretty much always salvageable and yours weren’t on the brink of death or anything. I bet it feels great seeing them green back up. Best of luck finishing them!
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it takes a bit to get familiar with new growing methods. when i went super soil /organic growing it took me about a half dozen grows to get to where the plants and i wanted to be. and i have been growing for 40 plus years.
very important “as above so below” i made same mistake thinking the super soil had everything the plant needed. well it did to a point. but once the plant out grows the pot and the roots have totally filled the pot and consumed everything that was there for them to eat you gotta feed and or top dress. the food/nutes get used up at different rates as they are depleted, causing all kind of problems.
as far as watering goes the “lift the pot method” is best till you get a feel for watering. lift a good wet pot it feels heavy, lift a dry pot it is light weight. easy peasy the plant [weight of pot] will tell you when it is time to water or not. just lift the plant.
dont sweat the mistakes you are a better grower from the lessons learned. anyone can grow a pot plant its a weed, but it takes a bit of effort, research and learning to grow the pot plant with the killer buds that everybody wants. you are in a great place here at OG. lots of great people with great help to offer. look at al the replies & info.
keep at and you will get there soon enough. i still am learning things after all these years that continue to make me a better grower.
enjoy the grow 
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Word 
Bank that knowledge.
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Excellent, now you can flip to flower! 
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Haha that was going to be my comment 
Great job bring them back.
So you just brought down the ph in your soil and they greened back up?
Or did you feed them again after getting ph in check?
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Good point, a problem solved without knowing the solution applied is useless for the rest… 
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From my understanding he went with my advice of an extreme flush out and a follow up with a compost tea and foliar
I think we concluded the main culprit was the biochar that was in the soil since it was mixed in at a 10% ratio and drove the ph alkaline in the 8s
I believe the tea was the roots organic terp tea he brewed for em and actually already had on hand luckily when suggesting a general compost tea to him and a foliar spray till the root zone is no longer compromised, and still root drenched since the flush out helped correct ph closer to under 7 first couple days of pics and u could def see the plants were eating again and the lush green fading back in.
Now they are looking absolutely phenomenal! Hats off to u good sir for bringing those babies back around, had a feeling a tea and a week and they would be looking that good again. Adjustments made and grow on! Can’t wait to see ur babies in flower in the next couple to few weeks
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Hey guys, just seeing these notifications. Let me grab some dinner and I’ll type it up!
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Alright! So, @AzSeaindooin420 filled you guys in on most of it (thanks again!). Lots and lots of flushing brought the runoff of the left plant down where it should be, and the right plant was stuck at a higher pH. We figured it was due to all the fresh biochar I introduced when transplanting. This particular biochar has a pH of 10+. In any event, I decided to consider the runoff readings of the right plant to be ok, since I was never going to flush that biochar out of the soil, and it was put in there purposely. As @AzSeaindooin420 mentioned, I then watered each pot with a worm compost & Roots Organics Terp Tea Microbe Charge, brewed overnight and then diluted 1:1. Half the tea went into the soil, and half was used as a foliar drench.
Within a couple days I saw the plants begin to green again, but the right plant was still lagging behind. I top-dressed with KiS’ nutrient pack, and then watered-in Recharge. I also did a foliar 3x in a week of Roots Extreme Serene (edit: had the wrong foliar listed).
Along the way I also switched to filtered water from the grocery store (Primo), because I was starting to suspect that my well water and city water were both pretty poor. The plants agreed and immediately started to look better 
Shortly after my last post, I resumed some LST, defoliated, and flipped. Here are the before and after shots:
Within a day or so, I got a RO system set up and switched to this water for good. I’ve been watering 64oz/ea everyday, but they’re starting to want more, according to my meter. I’m pleased to see this!
Here are the plants today:
You can see I’m working on setting up Blumats, since I have a vacation planned soon. I’m hoping the roots won’t mind a little breakage, but I’m still hesitant to bury the carrots!
The only issue I’ve seen in the last few days is a calcium/magnesium deficiency. I attribute this to switching to RO, since my well/city water was hard and the Primo water was remineralized. Today I watered with a low-dose of Roots Calmag, and and tonight I’ll foliar the left plant with Bush Doctor Calmag. I’ll continue to add a bit of calmag when watering.
Thanks again to all of you for your advice and support. I’ve got some more training to do on the right plant tomorrow, just to bring the canopy level, and I’ll probably work on getting the Blumats dialed-in. I’ll keep updating as they begin to flower!
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@BoldestRoast plants look great, very happy for you!!
Nice move on the blumats w/blusoak!! Dial back those carrots tho, they’re not deep enough to sense midway, so you may have a runout. I can see you have the pots in solid catch saucers, good move. They will help retain some of what would leech away, further aiding in your retention of water and help the carrots be a bit more accurate. A good rule of thumb is go to the halfway point in depth when choosing carrot or Maxi.
Thanks! So, the carrots are the 9” maxi version, and the smart pots are 11.5” tall, so they’re definitely in there deep.
My tensiometer is buried 6”, and that’s where I’ve been keeping tabs on my moisture content. I typically hand-water down to 5 cbar, and the plants dry to about 20 cbar 24hrs later.
I setup the Blumats following the latest video from Sustainable Village, dialing to a hanging drip, and then tightening 1 triangle’s equivalent, since I’m relying on gravity. I’m at work right now, so checking my camera, I don’t see that any (or enough) water has yet made it to my tensiometer to move the needle towards “wet.” Lights are still out for another 90 min, but it looks like I’m at about 18-20 cbar. Perhaps the Blumats are slowly watering… I’ll know more when the lights come on, and definitely by the time I’m headed home for the day.
If you’ve got any feedback on the Blumats setup, I’m all ears. Thanks again!
Edit: I’m not sure if I’m correct in calling the Maxi’s carrots; perhaps that term is reserved for the 5” version. Apologies for any confusion!
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Ok the maxi’s are even better, even if your not bottoming them out at the soil surface, it still gives you a options if you later decide to run bigger pits or even go to a bed. Your definitely good there.
I’m not familiar with your particular tensiometer, I have the digital blumat one. Here’s where shit can get a little tricky tho with any tensiometer. Odds are our soils composition are not the same, and because of that we both can have different hydrostatic pressures that our plants find suitable. But it’s a good thing that you have one just to use as a reference.
That’s good that you referenced sustainable village for the set-up and tuning. But… this is just a starting point. You’ll have to watch the plants from here on out and make minor adjustments +/- every day. What ever you do, make sure that you allow enought time for these changes to happen within the soil and for the plants to respond. Once your comfortable with how the plants look and are clearly growing, snap on a clear cap to cover and protect the dial and valve. Any debris that gets in between the valve and screw cap will not allow the valve to close fully and you’ll have a run-out. But the idea with blumats is that happy medium between wet/dry. Just enough moisture coupled with alot of oxygen, so moderately damp would be a good word for that target range.
I’m running a pump system using the blusoak configured in a double ended manifold with 2 supply lines, just in case of one not working. But for me that’s a very slim chance as I only use mine for 0ppm that is produced directly from my 350gpd water system, them pressurized in a 2 gal accumulator @100psi, then to the garden. So for me to get a run-out could be a complete catastrophic event as my system is strictly an On Demand.
Lol, your good, but yes, the carrots are 5".
But the main advise I can give is to attempt to get the soil damp, not wet. It keeps them drinking and allows proper healthy ion exchange.
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Wow, thanks for all that, and it sounds like you’ve got a real awesome setup! I actually called SV today to talk through some stuff. Unfortunately, I’m not able to reach the 2 psi that my Blusoak (no flap to fold over) requires, as I’m limited by ceiling height. I picked up 4 drippers for each plant tonight, at Izzy’s suggestion, and I’ll work on dialing them in tomorrow. Back to hand-watering for now!
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All good my guy, happy to help! If you have any questions in the future with the blumats, feel free to tag me or DM. I’ve been running them for several yrs now indoors and out. Good luck and remember, minute adjustments are essential for accuracy.
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Glad to see you got these girls looking healthy again 
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Thanks for giving us a rundown on what helped.
Glad you grabbed some blumats, I’ve been using them for years with great success.
I’ve only used the 5 inch carrots with all different size pots from 1 gallon to full home depot buckets hand only used 1 carrot. I bought a bunch of drippers cause I thought I would need them for the bigger pots but I didn’t, I just made sure my blumat was at the right distance from the drip line to make sure the whole pot would be moist. Plus I read the drppers clog alot easier than just the regular drip line.
I’ve read you can stick your drip line into a straw and jam the straw into center of pot so when the line drips it brings moisture to centre of pot and wicks out from there creating a more uniform moisture zone. I would do it but I run dry amendments and have to top dress right underneath my drip line.
There a thread at icmag that has all yhe info you could ever want on blumats. I believe it has over 5000 posts. Almost positive this is one of if not yhe first guy to bring blumats to the cannabis scene. Much respect for sunnydog aka the drip king
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Thanks, @Justblazin. The Blumats were a bit tricky to setup with my short ceilings, but I think I’ve got it down now. I put the Blusoak away for now, and I have 4 drippers on each pot. I found that thread on ICMag, and I’ve read through the last 40 pages, working my way backwards. I didn’t realize I could setup such a low-cost pressurized system with Amazon parts and, in my case, the .5 bar pressure reducer from SV. I may construct that for my next grow.
For now, here’s what I did: Main reservoir is a 5 gallon bucket filled to the 5-gal mark, sitting as high up as possible. Above this line, I installed a 1.5” PVC adapter with a large hose to act as an overflow line, back to a 13-gal lower reservoir. Lower reservoir has a submersible fountain pump running on a timer (30 sec/hour), with a smaller, 1/2” line back up to the 5-gal bucket. This way I can maintain relatively constant pressure for the Blumats. When I hand-watered, I typically saw 20 cbar when dry, and 5 cbar after watering. My Blumats now maintain an 8-12 cbar level, and my plants are loving it.
I’ll get some new pics up soon. 
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