100% Perlite Hempy question.

Porky101 said:

Feed at ph6

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Amazing that is the final fix. I was about to come back and say that.

I have some monster cropped clones doing very well and when I measured today the PH was between 6-7.

I've been feeding too low a PH for all these years and I never knew it. PH 5.2 will grow it but deficiencies will show.

I just fed all my flowering plants and veg plants and clones at PH 6. I'll know in a couple of days if it was the final fix.

Here are a few of my plants as the sit today.

I've run 100% Hempys for a few years.Perpetually with different strain. Sucessfully even. I still run solo cup hempys,now with calcinined clay added.I've also ran coco and perlite hempys using coco loco.Good runs also.
The thing with all perlite hempys is they run like a well oiled machine and will grow trees,even in small containers,until they don't.Might be an environmental shift,ph,or just that one particular cultivar doesn't like it's conditions.When everything else environment,feed ph etc. is "dialed" in and you still have issues,Media/Medium is usally the culprit IME and opinion in regards to all perlite hempys.

Perlite doesn't have good CEC or cation exchange capacity or an ideal water retention retention ability.However it does wick execeptional well and has a unique water holding ability.
Possibly why Hempy himself decided to run vermaculite in his final mix.
Perlites water retaining ability isn't ideal but the res under the hole and it's wicking ability.is what this is for.I've never run a verm+perlite hempy.Don't care for the messy vermaculite.Clacinined Clay(Turface) is my substitute for vermaculite.
Coarse perlite, the horticultural grade we use doesn't absorb as much water as finer particles so it'lll help to mix some in.Also you must wash perlite thoroughly.Perlite dust sludge will have you chasing your tail an dreaded PH ghost. In 100% perlite hempys,PH issues can or remedied quickly as the product is inert
I feel ph is supposed to swing in any and all media. 5.8-6.3 I've found is a nice range.Meaning,if making your nutes to hand water, don't keep adjusting the solution to be exact. The next watering when made, adjust up or down. I just feel and have seen the drift allows for certain elements to be absorbed throughout a range.

I have since moved away from flowering in 100% perlite hempys.I still use my hempy mix in my flowering girls system(PPK). I have a veg tent full of healthy hempy solo cups seedlings and clones. But they have the mix of the turface and perlite.

This isn't a knock on perlite.Just some thoughts and my own personal experiences with it to help understand it.Once I understood the media/medium? My hempy runs were pretty flawless.
Maxibloom was my base nute at the time.I tried others,but maxibloom was what fit my environment,grow style,and the girls seemd to prefer it over the others I tried at the time.

Roger A. Shrubber said:

i don't run 100% perlite anymore, because i was having similar problems...if i didn't water every day, they dried out too much, but when i did water every day, by the third or fourth day, it looked like they were over watered, i would let them dry out a little, then they started with the drying out too fast shit....
i went to 70% coco coir, 30% perlite, and all those problems went away. now i water every other day, till i just start to get a little run off (by the time you see it start, it's going to put out at least a pint) have no problems with looking overwatered, and every other day seems like plenty to keep them growing rapidly.

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I'm moving to 70/30 coco/perlite as soon as these finish up.

PH 6 changed everything. Apparently, PH was the last issue.

It's been a frantic few months for me. I've been pretty obsessed with fixing my grow. I wasted a lot of time/money trying this and that and just found my last issue today. Turns out, I had a lot of water/nute problems that were compounded by using 100% perlite hempy.

First, I learned I have been feeding at 50% of what I should and even at that, that my buildup was twice the PPM it should have been because I wasn't allowing enough runoff. To make matters worse I have been feeding at PH 5 rather than 6 causing further lockout.

The PH issue was causing me to grow stems not leaves. It was causing stretch and almost translucent looking leaves even when I fed full strength.

After only a couple of days of PH 6 + nutes at the correct PPM I see more leaf growth and tighter node spacing and my leaves are turning solid green.

My lessons learned:

Get a TDS meter and a PH meter and feed at 750-1000 PPMS and PH6 from rooted clone to chop.

Get away from 100% perlite and move to 70/30 coco/perlite.

why 5? did you not have a meter at all? or did you misread something? yeah, ph 5 will cause all kinds of problems, lockouts of N, M, P, phos., molyb., sulfur....

Earlyriser76 said:

Get a TDS meter and a PH meter and feed at 750-1000 PPMS and PH6 from rooted clone to chop.

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There you go!!!
Essential tools for a serious farmer.
I never go by recommended doses from the manufacturer, they are just ballpark estimates.
You HAVE to use meters to fine tune your nutes, no guess work allowed with a 3 month plant, it has to be balls on from the beginning or your going to fuck the plant and yourself in the process.
Also at around 6 weeks, push up your ppm to 1200, your plants will like you for it
Good luck

i've started using the drops again...i was buying cheap meters and adjusting them, but they've started to drift so badly i can't adjust them back into range....gonna get one of the 40-50 dollar units eventually, but i'm cheap...and know just enough about electronics to know that there's about 75 cents worth of shit inside that plastic case...
the drops never drift out of range...learn how to use them and you'll always have a reliable benchmark...yellow with just a hint of orange is perfect for coco....

Roger A. Shrubber said:

why 5? did you not have a meter at all? or did you misread something? yeah, ph 5 will cause all kinds of problems, lockouts of N, M, P, phos., molyb., sulfur....

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Because I'm stupid. I Listened to some guy on the internet that said he didn't need PH down with his tap if he used the Maxi series. Assuming Maxi had some lowering capabilities I never measured PH accurately until I got a PH meter just last week. The drops were not accurate enough for me and I also have the tape.

Finally I broke down and bought a pen and calibrated it and am a better man for it.

Roger A. Shrubber said:

yellow with just a hint of orange is perfect for coco....

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With coco/perlite should I be using CalMag at every feeding when using tap water?

Earlyriser76 said:

With coco/perlite should I be using CalMag at every feeding when using tap water?

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with tap water probably not. you want to either buy pre-charged coco, or buy the blocks and rehydrate it and charge it on your own. i buy the blocks, rehydrate it, allow it to dry for a few days, then i'll add 2 gallons of 500 ppm cal-mag solution and mix it in real well, and let it dry out a little. then i only have to add cal-mag once a week, unless i have a plant that's a particular pig, then i might hit that plant with an extra dose a few days later

Back with an update. My plants look GREAT! Never ever better.

PH6 and 900 PPM are magical numbers. I should have a hat made.

Went to water today and the new PH pen is broken.

I have the PH strips, the drops and 2 broken PH pens and don't trust any of them.

The drops say it's PH 4.0 the pen 11.5 and the strips don't seem to change no matter how many drops of PH up I put in my nutes. Everything is 5.5.

Earlyriser76 said:

the new PH pen is broken.

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invest in a good pH meter.

rkymtnman said:

invest in a good pH meter.

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I guess I let the thing dry out 1 time and it's hosed. 15.00 one time PH test.

Earlyriser76 said:

I guess I let the thing dry out 1 time and it's hosed. 15.00 one time PH test.

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yep, letting them dry out will ruin the most expensive meter too.

Earlyriser76 said:

Went to water today and the new PH pen is broken.

I have the PH strips, the drops and 2 broken PH pens and don't trust any of them.

The drops say it's PH 4.0 the pen 11.5 and the strips don't seem to change no matter how many drops of PH up I put in my nutes. Everything is 5.5.

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the drops don't lie if you use them right...turn the bottle upside down and hold the little tube in front of the color scale...try to get as close to the 6.0 yellow you can, with just the slightest tinge of orange, and that's good for coco....should be right about 5.8
those strips have to be labelled for agricultural use or they're probably for food service use and need a much stronger solution to effect them....i know that because i bought a box (small, fortunately) of them, and had to figure out what i was doing wrong.....buying the wrong shit was what i was doing wrong.

Add some humic acids via diamond nectar or use an actual quality nutrient, toss the ph at 6.2 - 6.3 n run it.

Chelation, it's what for dinner.

Moved to coco/perlite 70/30 and running both hempy and fabric pots. These plants that I transplanted were showing signs of lockout.

Plants look healthier in 70/30 fabric pots than 70/30 hempy buckets even though they were all treated the exact same way. The ones in the fabric pots improved faster even though it's only been a week or so since transplanting.

It still looks like i have the same problem in the coco hempy buckets as I did in the perlite hempy buckets but the fabric pots are not showing lockout like they were. The plants in the fabric pots have pretty much fully recovered from the lockout but the plants in the hempy buckets have not improved to the same degree. Fabric pots appear to have made a significant difference for whatever reason which is unknown and unexpected to me.

The plan now is to transplant all those still sick 70/30 hempy plants into 70/30 fabric pots and see if they are faster to recover.

Earlyriser76 said:

Moved to coco/perlite 70/30 and running both hempy and fabric pots. These plants that I transplanted were showing signs of lockout.

Plants look healthier in 70/30 fabric pots than 70/30 hempy buckets even though they were all treated the exact same way. The ones in the fabric pots improved faster even though it's only been a week or so since transplanting.

It still looks like i have the same problem in the coco hempy buckets as I did in the perlite hempy buckets but the fabric pots are not showing lockout like they were. The plants in the fabric pots have pretty much fully recovered from the lockout but the plants in the hempy buckets have not improved to the same degree. Fabric pots appear to have made a significant difference for whatever reason which is unknown and unexpected to me.

The plan now is to transplant all those still sick 70/30 hempy plants into 70/30 fabric pots and see if they are faster to recover.

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My most successful hempy run was done in 100% perlite. Easy to flush and drains rapidly. https://www.rollitup.org/t/thc-bomb-exploding-w-pics.842487. Got nearly 14 ounces off of 4 plants. I'm finishing 4 GG#4 clones in coco / perlite hempy buckets with a lava rock reservoir and I'm dumping coco after this run along with the lava rock reservoir and switching back to 100% chunky perlite. I don't like all of the weird problems coco has with cation exchange as it relates to calcium, magnesium, and potassium. It's just an unnecessary variable that I don't want to deal with in my grow room. Perlite is clean, drains fast, cheap, and highly effective.

With all the money you have invested in your garden why would you not have a PH and TDS meter? Consider it a lesson learned. I keep 2 ph meters and 2 tds meters at all times in the grow room. 1 to backup the other in the event of a failure. Your grow is high value. Treat it that way.