Locked out in living soil

I posted a few days ago about my plants that got flooded with the drip system while I was out of town. My plants in flower got flooded as well, but nothing happens to them and the babies in veg look like they went through war. Purple stems, very hard, droopy leaves. Pretty sure the pH fluctuated because of my water again and I know that you don’t need to always pH your water with living soil, but the pH comes out of my tap at like 8.7 regularly . also, I tested the ppm stand out of the faucet they come out at 500. The pen was calibrated, I even went and bought a brand new one just to make sure I wasn’t an idiot and calibrated it at the store.
I’m going to start doing a 50-50 mix of filtered tap water, and ro water and add a little bit of Cal mag to compensate since the water here is unpredictable . I mixed up the water yesterday, and after adding the Cal mag, the pH lowered to 6.4 which was perfect.

my question:
Would you transplant into fresh soil?
because that soil was basically flushed for four days
I don’t want to stress them out anymore but I transplanted one of them just to see if there would be a quicker change but I’m wondering if I should just do the whole batch.
I have had problems with every run since I moved here because of this water.
Almost to the point where I may start going back to Coco and running salts again.
Any advice would be awesome
I waited four days before I watered them again
Obviously, it takes a little time for things in soil to bounce back but this is driving me nuts.

The water you add has virtually zero affect on actual ph at the root zone. Droop is almost always due to a lack of moisture or bad drainage; unrelated to ph. The easy fix for your plants is to transplant to fresh soil mix with some active compost added. As long as there are plenty of minerals to buffer ph and a source of compost in the mix (ie worm castings) you should not worry too much about ph.
The secret to keeping a living soil grow long term is compost; namely worm castings. Active microbes found inside every earthworms gullet consume massive amounts of organic matter thereby lowering ph somewhat. In turn the soil composition will buffer ph to the proper range. So as long as you provide organic matter, compost, and minerals ph lockout will never occur.
If your tap water seems like it is problem stop using it. I know someone here will say tap water is fine but that is not my experience. The tap water where I live will render a living soil as sterile in 90 days. This is due to the level of chloramine and fluoride added to the municipal water supply. So I use only water collected from my dehumidifier or rain buckets. Ph is never even a thought & the plants stay green and happy.
If you simply transplant to a larger containers of fresh soil mix with added ewc your plants will look much happier. If you give them an organic tea a week or so later they will fucking pay you homage. Stop “flushing”… that’s not helping. Good luck & happy growing

Oh and btw if you don’t currently add granular mycorrhizae to your soil or use a mix that has it already you should look into that. Nothing helps with absorption (ph) like fungi can.

They look thirsty over anything else. But yes it’s time to topdress with castings and keep soil moist as much as possible. You could also throw some 5-5-5- or any all purpose dry amendments under the castings.

I disagree with the statement about water PH not mattering. Your water is 500ppm at 8.7ph. That is most likely highly alkaline. The issue with this is the build up of calcium bicarbonate. Your PH will rise to high. Do you have a water report? Please share if you do.

Also I would recommended not adding any calmag. You most likely have wayyyy more than enough calcium in the water. Even at 50% ro you are running 250ppm. So ditch the calmag. You may want to add langbeinite and some foliar sprays of epsom salt.

They definitely look thirsty, but they are not, when I got back, they were sitting in a pool of water about 3 inches deep. That timer went on over drive or something but probably because of me, some how someway I made a mistake.
I added some worm castings,and mycrobe complete. I haven’t had a plant is sick and I really really long time.
At this point, I think my biggest enemy is patience. I’m just sitting there helpless trying to figure out something to help them.
Richard drysift
Thank you, I believe you are absolutely correct about it.
I had another set of plants that were on the same timer with the same water, and they were in flower. They are totally fine. But I was top dressing that group of plants with amendments for their flowering cycle and for some reason they just took it in stride.

So did you pot up to a larger container?

If you have issues it could be the small container size. Rootbound

SnidleyBluntash said:

If you have issues it could be the small container size. Rootbound

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It’s odd, so they slightly improved when I said them, a little worm, castings, foliar fed some amino’s. As a last ditch effort, I said, I was going to transplant them into a bigger pot, fresh soil, and see what happens.
This is what I found

Those pots look tiny for those plants unless my eyes are playing tricks on me. Are they quart size? If so then you would have to water twice a day for plants that size in those small pots. Definitely root bound, thirsty, hungry, who cares about the flood, they look thirsty again. Up pot in a good soil and they will explode you'll see. Also frazzle the roots a little so they arent growing in a circle, and sprinkle some rooting hormone on them, then transplant, and water. For water as hard as yours I think a camper water filter might work, you hook it up to the hose outside. In the future if you use a dehumidifier you can use that water too.

Cpappa27 said:

Those pots look tiny for those plants unless my eyes are playing tricks on me. Are they quart size? If so then you would have to water twice a day for plants that size in those small pots. Definitely root bound, thirsty, hungry, who cares about the flood, they look thirsty again. Up pot in a good soil and they will explode you'll see. Also frazzle the roots a little so they arent growing in a circle, and sprinkle some rooting hormone on them, then transplant, and water. For water as hard as yours I think a camper water filter might work, you hook it up to the hose outside. In the future if you use a dehumidifier you can use that water too.

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I transplanted into bigger pots with fresh soil, gave it microbes
Been monitoring it, the leaves are starting to turn green again, but they are still curled and the stems are still pretty rigid
Gonna give it another week before I make any changes but I’m pretty sure that’s what the problem is
I have to start off in 1 gallon pots and work my way up because of space
I have a 4 x 4 tent and a 2 x 2 tent
The 4 x 4 is for me and what I like to have fun with, and I test random strains in there
The 2 x 2 is when I find the plants that I want to keep. I will breed them in there.
It’s very time consuming, but once I start breeding in the small tent, my big tent turns into my veg tent to hold the parents, when they are finished in the small tent I take clones off of the parents and put them back into the small tent
And then test those seeds in the larger tent. I pray to God, they get better,
The fact that I didn’t transplant immediately is probably why it’s taking so long because I did transplant one plant immediately and that plant is doing better than everybody else.
Also, the smallest of all my plants in those containers bounced back quickly and it’s probably because it still had space .
When it comes down to it, I think that my light was way too powerful for the size of plant and they outgrew their space very quickly because of it. Plus the bad timer that flooded them with water. They got flushed in living soil while the light was pushing them to their limit.
Light is down to 50%
It’s an HLG 600rspec
Everybody’s in fresh soil
Gonna see what happens

Cookiezealous said:

I transplanted into bigger pots with fresh soil, gave it microbes
Been monitoring it, the leaves are starting to turn green again, but they are still curled and the stems are still pretty rigid
Gonna give it another week before I make any changes but I’m pretty sure that’s what the problem is
I have to start off in 1 gallon pots and work my way up because of space
I have a 4 x 4 tent and a 2 x 2 tent
The 4 x 4 is for me and what I like to have fun with, and I test random strains in there
The 2 x 2 is when I find the plants that I want to keep. I will breed them in there.
It’s very time consuming, but once I start breeding in the small tent, my big tent turns into my veg tent to hold the parents, when they are finished in the small tent I take clones off of the parents and put them back into the small tent
And then test those seeds in the larger tent. I pray to God, they get better,
The fact that I didn’t transplant immediately is probably why it’s taking so long because I did transplant one plant immediately and that plant is doing better than everybody else.
Also, the smallest of all my plants in those containers bounced back quickly and it’s probably because it still had space .
When it comes down to it, I think that my light was way too powerful for the size of plant and they outgrew their space very quickly because of it. Plus the bad timer that flooded them with water. They got flushed in living soil while the light was pushing them to their limit.
Light is down to 50%
It’s an HLG 600rspec
Everybody’s in fresh soil
Gonna see what happens

Click to expand...

Now just give it some time and they should bounce bag fairly quick. I would say a week or so youll notice they are perking back up. Right now they are pretty stressed so its understandable they arent happy. Keep us updated. Good work.

I think they are starting to bounce back. In an attempt to save space I transplanted some of them from 1 gallon to 2 gallon pots. I should’ve went straight to my finishing size, but I think I’m gonna start top dressing veg nutrients so that I don’t have to transplant as often.
I use Big Rootz and the stuff is awesome but you have to have a huge pot unless you top dress.
The other component in all of this is my light. hlg Rspec600. I couldn’t figure out why the plants in my small tent we’re always doing so much better than my large tent.
I turned the light down to about 50% and everything seems so much happier. I’m going to slowly increase the power when they are a bit older.
Now, since I’ve had all these weird things happen have multiple plants at different stages of life. The whole point of all of this was to continue trying to make seed for a strain I’ve been working on. In that I had a runtz mint that was pollinated by strawberries and cream. One seed out of 15 popped. I revegged the pollinated plant and a seed had to have fallen from her because a baby seedling popped up right at the base of it, and was just resting on top of the soil. I’ve been growing it out and sure enough it is definitely a runtz mintz baby. Assuming it was pollinated by the same strawberries and cream.
Anyway, that’s my goal
I have two seeds of these two really cool plants and I’m just trying to get them to make babies.
I’m not much into trendy stuff, but once these ladies are stable, I’m going to add in a Swazi because the high and terpenes in that plant were amazing.
anyway, what I’ve noticed is when my light is turned up, the plants are not happy whatsoever, and I almost think that this life is too powerful for a tent grow.
I appreciate all of your help, and my plants are definitely doing better, some of them are still struggling a bit, but they are on their way up. I’m putting a photo of my revegged Swazi in there. Looks like crap but she’s coming back from the dead.
There’s one that just does not want to get right.

Every plant pic posted is in dried out soil, some to the point of pulling away from the edges of the pot.

The plants also need a good feeding with a complete base mix. Make sure to water lightly before feeding as not to feed on dry soil.

They are in super soil
They were watered yesterday
I believe I need a cover crop to retain the moisture. I can’t water every day I would be overdoing it.
They are all recovering from having a timer for go wrong and drown them for four days.
That’s why they look like that
The point was to update the thread, as when it started, they looked a lot worse