Gold Header Ad
reserve your ad hereGreetings and welcome everyone. I’m The Rev, and I have 50 years of cannabis growing experience to share with you all. Today I’m going to dive into a potential potassium deficiency, and the fact that it’s likely not a potassium deficiency. Not if you are using halfway decent soil. Oh yeah, we will be dealing with soil growers, and specifically organic/all-natural growers using living soil. No synthetics or most bottles of things period—yup.
If you are interested in the ultimate all-natural cannabis growing, make sure to grab a copy of my latest book on Amazon, here: True Living Organics – the Druid’s Guide. Also you can get some good growing advice on my YouTubes 😊 channel here: Rev’s YouTube Channel. Alright then, let’s get into it…
A Real Potassium Deficiency is Pretty Easy to Fix
Given the state of modern commercial soil mixes, and the awareness that cannabis uses a lot of potassium (K). It’s actually unlikely in my experience speaking personally and from helping others, that you would have a K deficiency. Most halfway decent bagged soils are fairly fat with potassium rich ingredients. If you use natural amendments, potassium is a fairly widespread constituent. Even Blood Meal has some potassium.
If… and trust me this is a BIG FAT if, you ACTUALLY have a potassium deficiency, it is easy as pie to fix. A simple top dressing of kelp meal will fix this in about a week or 10 days max. Say a 3-gallon container with a plant 2 to 3 feet in height about 1.5 teaspoons will work … And that’s truly how easy that is.
As another little tip here regarding the looks of a potassium deficiency, is that your pH drifting a bit too high can also trigger this look. Strictly an in my experience kind of thing, but you should consider this in your troubleshooting as a less likely offender than excess calcium. That’s my .02 😉 and the pH climbing goes hand and hand with a calcium OD.
Calcium OD “The Usual Suspect”
You can see on the cover photo for this article a classic look expressing a potassium deficiency. And while technically in most cases you really need to call it a potassium lockout, in effect it’s a potassium deficiency. Ya follow? Read it again if ya don’t. It’s an important subtle point to grasp.
An overdose of calcium locks out potassium first, in my experience. It also locks out iron, and iron deficiency signs can show up as it progresses along with slower growth rates overall. The borders of your leaves may curl upwards a bit. Sound familiar at all? Now, most peeps diagnose what they think is a potassium deficiency and, in some way, add potassium into the plant’s soil—yeahhhhh—that’s almost always a death sentence. A potassium OD is horrible. Best case scenario there is a low-quality small harvest.
It’s easy to just look at all your additions to your growing dynamic and isolate all your calcium rich additions, boom! Trust me you will figure it out easy. Even now those of you that see this and recognize the symptoms already know where your calcium overdose has come from. Yeah?
Correcting a Calcium Overdose
Correcting a calcium overdose is pretty straight forward. Lessen the input of your calcium heavy ingredients into your dynamic (I mean, duh, right) But … as a more immediate solution if it is in fact your soil mix, via your calcium additions to it, you can start right away by simply cutting your current soil in half with a decent soil mix, like say, Ocean Forest by Fox Farm.
If you use teas, or something like The Churn (from my book) with something calcium heavy. Cut that obviously way down and that will fix things pretty fast—say, about a week or 10 days. Always look at the newest growth for signs of recovery.
The fastest way to fix this is also fairly dangerous. You can take the pH of your water down by about 0.5 of a point. You can use apple cider vinegar, all natural crystals, that are basically citric acid, or even lemon juice works great. Be careful and have an accurate pH meter
Afterword
Well, my friends, I hope this article helped you out. I know from experience that as you learn things about growing, you can think you have solved a situation, but then you just make it worse, LoL! Wanna read another article by yours truly? Then check this out: Does Dolomite Lime have Too Much Magnesium? By the Rev.
Oh, and hey… There’s a big sale going on over at KOS right now. A half price sale! So, buzz on over there and have a look: Kingdom Organic Seeds Big Sale!
I have plants to tend to here, so I’m off, but my best JuJu to all of you. Learn how to grow the most elegant and potent plants you can imagine by utilizing my latest True Living Organics book. Good stuffs Maynard.
L8r G8rs…
- REv 😊
