Happy to do it. I enjoy writing (maybe a little too much as you'll see from below lol), and this is my way of paying it forward by sharing the information as freely as I received it. Answering questions not only helps the person asking them, but anyone that may be lurkers or from a Google search that need the help.
Exactly spot on about Coots and the EWC. Unfortunately, people read the Coot's thread, think they can dump the amendments and minerals into some peat moss and get the results he does. But 90% of Coot's results are from his EWC. In fact, I forget if it's a podcast or an interview I read, but he mostly doesn't use amendments in the soil anymore. Instead, he puts the amendments into the worm bin, then has the worms eat it. The OSF specifically, because the grit really helps them thrive.
Compost/EWC can be a source of life, or a source of life and nutrition. Our goal should be to produce the latter. By doing this, we only need to occasionally top dress with the compost and nothing more.
Feel free to post your water report if you'd like, I'd be happy to chime in and I'm sure others will do the same. I do already have my suspicions though from it being a local spring source. Local spring/well water = hardness. This is because that water flows, and flowing water erodes rocks, eroding rocks equates to minerals in the water. This is why people use mineral/spring water as a marketing gimmick for including electrolytes (K, Ca, Mg, etc.)
Anyway, spring/well water almost always equates to hardness in some form of Calcium Carbonate.
The result is that your water source is practically liquid dolomite lime. The limestone/source of Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3) erodes into your water source. The problem is, it stays in your water. This is why your faucets, hoses, and so forth get that "scaling" on it. That scaling is all the CaCO3 residue that gets left on your faucets.
Except instead of it being your faucets, it's inside of your soil now. Keep in mind that CaCO3 is technically a "salt".
Salt build up in soil is not a hydro/synthetic exclusive problem.
So, what's happening is every time you water, you are watering with dolomite infused water (7.5-8.0 pH). Furthermore, once your water in the medium evaporates/gets absorbed by the roots, the CaCO3 is left behind in your soil. The CaCO3 does not evaporate. It can be absorbed by the plants, but I'll get into why that doesn't happen later. This causes a twofold problem. Not only are you watering with alkaline water, but creating a salt buildup of CaCO3 on top of it.
Do you use fabric pots, and if so, do any of them look like this now?
View attachment 5251867
or this?
View attachment 5251868
or this?
View attachment 5251869
Same exact scaling as you get on your faucets.
I can already tell you what happened to you after you triggered flower. Right after the flower stretch, you got loads of phantom deficiencies, mostly Ca, Mg, and K (the electrolytes again, more on that later), but also P. So, you top dressed or possibly made a tea, and that still didn't solve the problem. You made it to harvest, and the smoke was great overall, but your yields were mediocre. I've been there, and spent over a year dealing with that bullshit until I figured out my problem was my water.
This is because flower uses different nutrients than veg does, as we all know. I bring that up because we don't often see phantom deficiencies of things like K and P in veg. Once flower gets triggered though, the problems arise for three reasons.
1) Because now your plant actually needs P and K more than it did in veg. And,
2) Because the plant is larger in flower than it was in veg, resulting in larger nutrient uptake. And
3) The CaCO3 residue from all of your watering in seedling/veg stages have resulted in a "salt" build up of CaCO3, resulting in an "overlimed" and alkaline soil with a constant pH of 7.5-8.0 all throughout flower. Those "phantom deficiencies" actually being lockout from the CaCO3 buildup as discussed earlier.
How do you know 100% if your water has CaCO3 in it and is your problem?
Thankfully, there is an extremely simple test that only requires a few cups, those pH drops from General Hydroponics, and a few days of time. There are 2 parts to this test.
1) Fill a glass cup with water from your water source. Drop the pH drops into said cup until it shows the expected 7.5-8.0 pH result. Now, drop a bunch of lemon juice, vinegar, pH down, or anything acidic until the color corresponds to 3.5-4.0 pH, typically red. Wait 24-48 hours. If the color turns back to dark green for 7.5-8.0 pH, your water has CaCO3 in it.
2) Next, we'll confirm that it's having a negative impact on your soil. Grab some RO water from a water machine in front of a store, or get some distilled water. Grab some of your soil, and let it soak in the distilled/RO water for 48 hours. Strain the water, then use the pH drops, observe the color and pH. Wait another 24 hours and check the color once more. If it even changes to the dark green, your soil has a CaCO3 salt build up.
How to solve the problem?
There's the easy way, and the hard way. The hard way is getting an RO system, or filling up jugs of water from the water machines.
The easy way is like with anything else, we find a way to work
with it instead of
against it. We do this simply by omitting dolomite lime/OSF/etc from our soil, as well as cutting any other sources of Ca (Crab Meal, Gypsum, etc) from our soils. Why? Well,
the water has CaCO3 in it, so let's use it to our advantage instead of working against it! The water will not only keep the peat moss the perfect pH just like lime does, but will also be a source of Ca and other minerals for the plant to absorb!
Why doesn't this result in a salt build up? Because the plants can absorb it this way! The reason your plants can't absorb the Ca from your water is because there's already Ca in your soil from the recommended Crab Meals, OSF, Gypsum, and so forth. By omitting these sources of Ca from our soil recipes entirely, there is now no excess Ca in the soil, nor any excess CaCO3 salt buildup, keeping in mind dolomite lime is literally a "salt" by definition.
You'll also need to source some Langbeinite, for multiple reasons. Langbeinite's chemical composition is "Mg2K2(SO4)3"
SO4 = Sulfate, which is directly responsible for breaking apart salts in a soil. People recommend using Elemental Sulfur to break down salts and lower pH, but the problem with this is that we need to wait for months on specific microbes to break down the Elemental Sulfur (S) into SO4. Rather than waiting months on Elemental S to become SO4, simply use Langbeinite, which has SO4 in it already. Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate/CaSO4) can technically be used to break apart the CaCO3 salt build up via the SO4 in the Gypsum, but there is the risk of excess Ca in the soil as a result of this.
(Continued below)
microbiometer.com
