ShLUbY
Well-Known Member
After seeing his recipe, I'm inclined in that direction also.
OP, a couple of things. Your liming agent should be ~1cup/cf. You have 1/4 cup of OSF for a bit over 2cf. No surprise the soil pH is 6.2 and likely the Ca is mostly consumed. Should have been ~2cups of OSF.
OSF is nearly pure CaCO3. Good stuff but does not provide any Mg. I use dolomite which provides both Ca and Mg and the 'Cal Mag' issue never arises. Plus I don't need to go hunting a Mg source. The dolo is also stupid cheap locally, being ~$4.50 for a 40lb bag. The same size bag of OSF is nearly 10x as much, to me, due to shipping. It certainly doesn't work 10x better, but, YMMV. It's way too late to add any now, but don't forget it when you reamend after harvest.
Checking runoff is nearly useless for soil pH. Do the soil test like ShLUbY detailed for you for a much more accurate picture. Even using test strips with this method works well. I use them quite a bit for a quick 'ballpark' figure and dig out the meter very seldom.
That's about all I wanted to add, ShLUbY has already asked other questions that I had and no need to repeat them. LOL, don't think there is any need for more phosphates when you reamend, that should still be covered.
Wet
The pH of the soil is fine imo, actually preferred for me. His picture suggests a Ca def. but if you notice, he has a ton of calcium in the soil between the bone meal and the gypsum. That's why I have such a hard time considering that there is a deficiency in anything. I think his phosphate excess is locking out all kinds of nutrients into salts in the soil. Also if he is brewing up bacterial teas, he's limiting the diversity of life in the soil, and there are not enough predators making use of all the bacterial biomass to produce exudates for the plant. Or maybe he's unintentionally flushing out nutrients with wet dry cycles and runoff... or maybe he's been leaving the soil too dry over the period of the grow and the plant is having difficulty getting nutrition due to decreased microbial activity. Too many variables at this point. He needs to give us some answers
