theloadeddragon
Well-Known Member
Sounds like itOrganics are generally concentrated compost teas made with things like Worm castings, various guanos, kelps, and naturally occurring minerals. The chemical nutes get most of the NPK and trace minerals from chemically combined "salts"
Which is an Ion + Anion forming an electrically neutral salt.
The Organics, if you distilled down the contents you could get back to some "salts" as they combine at random as (+) and (-) ions and anions are attracted to each other.
Here in (IMO) is an issue, as with the chem ferts we add these salts to water and in solution they disassociate and in and out of solution can recombine into salts which cannot be uptaken by the plant...hence the "lock out" The bacteria in the gut and during composting makes the animal wastes into soil like material that plants can naturally absorb as needed without your medium constantly looking for a stable environment (+/-). As the plant may use these chemical salts unevenly, an imbalance occurs not only creating newly combined salts (seeking stabilization), but first creating a fluctuation in the pH...I believe (again IMO) that the majority of "nute burns" are actually a pH issue followed by a lock out.
A plant only shows a few signs of stress and they are often a combination of several. I have been told that anything beyond the very tips browning is something beyond too much nutes, though it could have been the initial stressor that started the system out of equilibrium.
Also If you look at Tiger Bloom there is a bunch of EDTA
according to Wikipedia "The solubilization of ferric ions near neutral pH is accomplished using EDTA. This property is useful in agriculture including hydroponics, especially in calcareous soils. Otherwise, at near neutral pH, iron(III) forms insoluble salts, which are less bioavailable."
This tells me that as the pH gets closer to 7, big old iron salts are formed making iron less available, messing with calcium, zinc, and often what we think is the problem...magnesium.
Soils often have limes added to stabilize pH, and growers often use a pH of around 6.4. However Hydro is recommended and incredibly lower pH like 5.5. This along with magnetic pumps tending to drop iron out of solution may be the reason for the lower pH for Hydro.
This show where a small fluctuation in pH can cause some serious issues when using chem ferts. and how even doing straight watering with unadjusted neutral pH water (RO) can cause mayhem chemically in the soil.
This may also be why my veggie garden and many organic growers get away with using non pH adjusted tap water. On that note my tap is now at 580ppm right out of the cold faucet.
I believe I have just talked myself out of chem ferts
I will still use them sometimes though
keep it up 
