Is this calmag deficiency or excess?

Plant Is in a mix of promix and botanicare growilla been giving plain water for awhile just recently top dressed with gorilla bud after I had seen early signs of calcium deficiency. Been watering with plain water and compost tea it's about day 25 in flower. Any ideas what's causing this. Ph of water usually 6.3 - 6.5

It's hard to say. Looks like a little nitrogen and magnesium def. Also some plants simply yellow their leaves when it gets close to harvest time no matter how meticulous of a gardener you are. Giving too much plain water will leach out nutes as well.

Looks like they are hungry; are you trying to feed with compost tea only? They could be deficient in macros; some of those spots could be mag rust but they surely need a boost of soluble N as well. This is where organics gets tricky....

Top dressed with growilla bud dry amendment fertilizer it's a 2 5 4 npk has most of the. Macro and micro I think. How long does a top dressing take to go Into affect

That depends upon how active your soil mix is. It takes as long as it does for the soil microbes to break it all down and make it available to your plants for absorbtion. Top dress with worm castings if you can to increase microbial activity but it will take time for it to work.
What you need is soluble organic NPK; I would give a small dose of liquid fish and/or a guano tea. In organics you've got to give them what they need in the mix way before it is needed. Next time try adding some cow and/or chicken manure to the bottom layer of your containers for a slow release of N when it's needed later in flower.

What is your water source?

Classic calcium deficiency. Rust spots around the veins of the newest growth. Did you add any lime to your mix before planting in? I find that promix tends to only put enough lime in the mix to last a short amount of time (enough to put on the ingredient list basically). I often found my lime dissolved about halfway through flower due to the acidic waterings of 6-6.5 pH (dissolving it slowly over time). Once its gone, the Ca bank of your soil is gone, and so is soil pH buffering ingredient. once i started adding 1/4c to every 5 gals of promix, never had that issue again.

i would try topdressing and scratching in some dolomite lime or oyster shell flour. since you're ph'ing your water to the acidic side, it will dissolve with every watering. so maybe 1/4cup ish will get you through to the end. You could maybe get away with a couple TBSP even.

and FWIW, it's pretty tough to give them excess Ca that would affect plant growth. Native soils are chuck full of Ca, and they evolved with that. That is the reason why Ca def affects the newest growth first, they didn't need to adapt to move Ca from old tissue to new tissue, because the soil usually has an abundance. excess Ca would probably cause other issues with your media before it affected the plant growth from excess. For example, keeping pH too high, and locking out trace minerals/micros like Fe, Zn, etc.

and i agree with an above poster... maybe a little Mg def too (in the lowest growth in the one lower shot). so i would do dolomite lime, which has Ca and Mg, and will dissolve with each acidic watering, releasing ions in the process for the plant.

this is the ingredients in the bud
Derived from: Langbeinite, Fish bone meal, Alfalfa meal, Oyster shell, Earthworm castings, Bat guano, Feather meal, Volcanic ash, Seabird guano, Kelp meal

when I do compost tea I brew with ewc kelp meal mendo honey Neptunes harvest fish hydroslyte

I water with ro mostly plain unless I do compost tea. I sometimes add General organics calmag to the tea

If I add a 1/4 cup of dolomite lime with that spike my ph too high?

Sounds like you are doing everything right. When i first started in organics my plants looked similar by mid bloom & I had to use the same brand calmag you are using which helps absorb everything else. Add the gen org calmag at 10 drops per gal when using RO; you don't need anywhere near the tsp per gal as suggested on the label. It can build up salt in your mix if given too heavy but at 10 drops per gal it's safe to give at every watering or tea. It's actually kind of hard to supply soluble calmag in the beginning but if you keep amending with oyster flour, garden gypsum, lime and composted eggshell in time you won't need to add anything to the water.

How are ur yields compared to synthetics in a soiless medium?

sourdieselyumyum said:

this is the ingredients in the bud
Derived from: Langbeinite, Fish bone meal, Alfalfa meal, Oyster shell, Earthworm castings, Bat guano, Feather meal, Volcanic ash, Seabird guano, Kelp meal

when I do compost tea I brew with ewc kelp meal mendo honey Neptunes harvest fish hydroslyte

I water with ro mostly plain unless I do compost tea. I sometimes add General organics calmag to the tea

If I add a 1/4 cup of dolomite lime with that spike my ph too high?

Click to expand...

i don't think so, but just start with a couple tablespoons to be safe if you're worried. looks like you're about 4-4.5 weeks in anyway, so you probably won't need 1/4 cup for that short of a time to get to finish. like i said, it will dissolve the lime a little at a time and help your girls out a bunch.

out of curiosity, how much of that fertilizer did you add to add to your mix? because if you added enough... you wouldn't even have to be making teas all the time, you could just run water only. that's what i do!

i know it's a little expensive, but you should invest in a soil pH pen, a good one, not one of those cheapies. probably cost somewhere between 100-175$. worth every penny. really helps you narrow things down when you're working with a soil mix and trying to figure out what's going on. it's worth it just to know where you're at. over time you'll learn how to read your plants responses to what the soil is doing, and use the pen just to make sure your hunch is correct.

sourdieselyumyum said:

How are ur yields compared to synthetics in a soiless medium?

Click to expand...

to date, i have not achieved the yields i once got when i was using age old organics bottles (never used a true synthetic line in my life). That's when I figured out that promix didn't put enough lime in their medium. So with you pH adjusting your water all the time, as i once did, leads me to believe that your liming agent (along with calcium and mg) is gone!

i'm about 18-20 months into my living soil journey, and having a water only garden. still figuring out how to push these plants to what I know their potential is. I'm not far off, just have a little ways to go still.

Actually have a blue lab soil probe pen ph when is best time to check before watering or after?