See you are getting it. Less is more when growing in my opinion you can always increase nutrients you can not take them out. (You can leach/flush them) my point was you may be surprised how well plants will do with out a over abundance of Nutrients. 
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So just a day or two ago I just recently top dressed with 1/2 oz of organic soil acidifier like this to the two pots in the back:
I think I may have overdone it with this 1/2 oz as I am quickly noticing some odd discoloration on some of the leaves on the back two plants only:
Front plant here with no discoloration like this at all:
Next course of action i’m going to let them go for a bit and if it gets much worse flush like crazy again and top dress again with the grow dry amendments.
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Do you have any recent pH and ppm reads of the runoff?
@Sixpackdad pH and ppm readings for today are as follows:
Back right plant - 7.28 pH / 786 PPM
Back left plant - 7.39 pH / 700 PPM
Front plant - 6.05 pH / 263 PPM
Please note that I think my pH pen may be off calibration reading about .2 pH high as I am testing using my pen and also comparing that to the pH tester drip kit from General Hydroponics. When testing with the drip kit it seems like the pen is reading a bit too high based off the color. Picking up some calibration solution and probably another spare pen from the store this weekend.
Additionally, I have heard no higher than 900 PPM in veg so I am under the assumption that my back plants are okay as far as PPM, but I want to get my PPM’s up on the front plant, however I top dressed all three of them a couple days ago, just only added the soil acidifier to the back plants when I top dressed. Thinking maybe I could top dress with a bit extra of the dry amendments across the board. I also heard that the soil acidifier takes awhile to start to adjust the pH of the medium so i’m hoping it begins to lower in the coming week or so. I will test runoff again in a couple days to see if it starts to come down, otherwise I think i’m going to have to flush the back two again heavily with water adjusted to 5.8.
Edit: Just for reference if it’s not clear in the pictures, back left plant is the smaller of the three exhibiting the discoloration, back right plant is the larger plant with the discoloration.
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You got it, you want your runoff to have a pH of 5.5-6.1, ideally 5.8, in coco. If I am following you correctly, the front plant isnt really showing any symptoms and it has a good pH. The ppms are a little low, I’d get here up to around 500.
You need to get the pH of the other two plants down to 6.1 tops, the closer to 5.8 the better. 900 is fine for ppms, but wash it away and start over once your at 5.8-6.1.
Do you use any calmag? Where does your water come from?
I am in an amended coco/perlite potting mix called roots organics. The water or nutrient solution is pH’d to 5.8, and my pH coming out is usually right around 6. My ppms in my nutirent solution is around 400ppm of added nutes. I increase or decease to keep my ppm of the runoff around 1000.
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I agree 100% I will flush immediately need to see this pH come down by a large margin. As far as calmag goes I am using this:
https://www.amazon.com/Botanicare-CAL-MAG-Plant-Supplement-Formula/dp/B004JKBMRW/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=botanicare&qid=1549850988&s=lawn-garden&sr=1-5
I was using 1ml / gal of this every watering but earlier on I was having severe nute burn issues so I cut this down also to 1/2ml / gal and watering with plain water every third watering.
My water is “de-chlorinated” tap water that I let sit out at least 12 hrs before use. Tap water is around 150 ppm and like 7.5 pH out of the tap.
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Sounds like you got a plan. Best of luck!
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@Sixpackdad So after two days of flushing with approximately 5.8 - 6.0 water with 1/2 ml of the Botanicare per gallon i’m stuck at 6.5 pH with both of the back plants. At this point i’ve probably flushed at least 5 gallons of water through each plant. Through this process PPM’s have also came down to around 350 each plant. I have to do this over a period of days to allow my tap water to gas off the chlorine.
What would you say at this point? Continue to flush for the next day or two to try to get to 6.0 - 6.1 or go ahead and top dress? I’m thinking the Dr. Earth i’m using with the 6% humic acids will also work to bring the pH down further along with whatever remaining soil acidifier is left in the coco (if any).
Flushing generally takes 3x the pot size and usually all at once to get back into range. What pot size are you in?
I’m using three gallon smart pots but probably about 2.5 gallons or so of coco in each. Taking that into consideration I think i’ll hold off on the top dressing and attempt a 3rd round of flushing tomorrow. I need to stock up on a few more gallon jugs!
Quick update guys, the grow continues!
At this point two of the three plants are getting crazier by the day, it’s like a race to see who can get closer to the light. The 3rd smaller plant that I almost lost is also holding its own, however i’m sure it won’t ever get quite as big, at least I hope not as I think i’m already pushing my luck on my grow space.
I decided to pick up a better quality pH pen over the weekend as well, I ended up going with this pen:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0096N8OWI/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Here are some of my most recent pics, if anyone can clearly identify sex let me know, this is my 2nd grow and only my first grow with non-fem photoperiod seeds.
All of the above pictures were taken yesterday 2/19, the below picture was 4 days prior on 2/15:
I was nervous at the start of this grow as I was getting some slight tip burn followed by some strange discoloration after top dressing with the soil acidifier in an effort to get my pH down. I got so nervous in fact that I also picked up the GH line of liquid nutrients, which i’m using on the seedling visible in the solo cup in the first two pictures, however honestly after this experiment with the dry amendments and seeing how rapidly and well the plants seem to be responding even without extreme obsession and babysitting I am all in with my hydro organic adventure. Going to see this grow through then look for a way to eliminate my chemical Cal-Mag and GH pH adjustment chemicals for a truly 100% organic grow next go round. More updates to come!
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Congrats on the turnaround, dude. I am thinking of trying some organic nutes in a grow or two. I’ve been using ILGM nutes since I started growing. I like them, they’ve produced some nice bud. The downside is they are pricey, but a lot of the custom stuff seems to be. There’s a few folks on this site using really low cost organic nutes and doing fine. What line of organics are you using?
Thanks man! Lately i’ve been educating myself on the organic side of things in general, there definitely is a bit more information to digest in regards to creating a living biology in the medium and tons of different amendments to choose from. This grow all i’ve been using up to this point is this:
Primary grow dry amendment that I pre-mixed with the coco and top dress with about once a week:
And i’ve been using this occasionally as well, supposedly this is supposed to make the plants more resistant to stress:
I think in general one of the most interesting aspects this go round to me was the fact that these plants were looking pretty rough earlier on, surprising to me just how resilient they are and how quickly they came full circle.
I think one of the selling points of creating your own compost is the price per gallon ratio compared to liquid nutriets, it definitely seems more complicated but i’d say you can save quite a bit over the long term. Next grow i’m going to also pick this up:
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They are resilient. I toasted my plants in my first grow - bad pH, too many ppms, high temps, plants to close to the lights, but they made it and the smoke was OK.
The price is right on that Boogie stuff. Any idea how many plants that will produce?
This is what I am looking at, as it is from the same manufacturer of the soil I use.
The aurora folks said thats good for 2-4 plants in a 10 gallon container. 90 bucks for 2-4 plants is steep.
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I’ll have to do some digging to get a rough idea as to how far the boogie brew will go, but I think it will last quite a while, only thing is I think you need an air stone to prepare the compost tea. If you get some time dig into some of the videos on this YouTube channel, this is where i’ve been drawing my latest organic inspiration:
Search for the “Learn Organic Gardening at GrowingYourGreens” YouTube channel, i’m sure this will keep you occupied for quite some time, if you can find that channel search his channel for “boogie”, he has several interviews with the Boogie Brew owner that go in great detail to a point where you’d probably best have a horticulture or chemistry degree to fully comprehend.
Also, Boogie Brew also has a site with quite a bit of info as well.
They have a couple videos that also go through what goes into creating your own compost, however obviously the boogie brew is the path of least resistance i’m sure.
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That guy annoys me but yet i cant stop watching his videos LOL. He does do a interview with a cannabis farmer that uses that boogie brew she was all like “I LOVE NEMATODES” He is also a huge fan of Rock Dust to get trace minerals into your soil. He has a lot of great videos. the channel is Grow your greens. He is who i drew inspiration about possibly growing a microgreen garden for profit. I am seriously thinking about this type of operation and just hitting the farmers market to sell the end product.
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Yes boogie brew has a video that will tell you everything you need to make your own brew. You can get all the components from him or just order a bag already made like i said The host is super annoying but yet i cant stop watching his channel lol
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@Rayofsunshine I completely agree 100% lol. Both the owner of the Boogie Brew and the Grow your Greens host irk me, however no doubt they know the methods of organic gardening like nobodies business and you can clearly see the passion in both of them, that keeps my attention. I have also been telling my girlfriend about the microgreen farming as well. We live in an apartment with limited space and that does seem like something you can do with limited sq footage, that may be my next project also. Diving into his videos really does start to make me evaluate basically everything I do in life in regards to our diet and habits on a daily basis.
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Alright guys, I did a thing this time for sure:
Scrog net will be here tomorrow. Going to try to get some semblance of a canopy put together and sending them into flower in a couple days, don’t want this to get any more out of control than it already is!
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Bushy for sure!