Three Harvest Killing Mistakes

Welcome one and all. I’m the Rev—no religious affiliation—the author of True Living Organics, and the Cultivation Expert here at SKUNK. I’ve been growing for 50 years, and the last 20 years I have been all natural style True Living Organics growing, 99% indoors using grow tents. So, I may know some stuff ????

Today we look at three harvest killing situations. The proper application of catch trays. A phosphorus overdose, and running PPM too high. Yup, let’s get into it…

Harvest Killing Mistake #1 – Catch Tray Misunderstanding

Okay then. This one is very simple and one I see fairly often. Here’s the rules man… If you are growing plants in containers, and you are using ANY synthetic, or most organic liquid nutrients, you do not want to use a catch tray. You see, all synthetic nutrients, and most organic liquid nutrients, use what’s called chelation. Basically, this means force feeding. This is also what I call the ‘synthetic mindset’ in my latest book True Living Organics the Druid’s Guide.

The dynamic of these bottled fertilizers is to add a shitload (Texas measurement) of nutrients per feeding. I’m not kidding at all. More nutrients per feeding than your plants would actually need for months. A small amount of these nutrients is force fed into your plants. But the rest… well, that sits in your container medium. Be it soil or soilless. Not only does this suck because of way too much food in an environment—ever overfeed a fishtank? Yeah, like that—but you also have the massive salts from synthetic nutrients, and the acidic effects of the organic nutrients. You need to let your water flow through these containers to help keep things clear.

Using all natural like TLO style, your container is your living power-plant. You want to preserve the power by using a catch tray. Washing through/watering living soil without a catch tray is just dumb. You’re just robbing your plant of the food it will need to grow happy and healthy. Okay, good talk ????

Harvest Killing Mistake #2 – Phosphorus (P) Overdose

Want to really be screwed for yields? Yeah? Okay then, just overdose on phosphorus and you’re there. Pretty easy to recognize a P overdose. New growth slows leaves become thin and usually dark. Older leaves take on a tallow/white tint and the purple veins become very purple. As a secondary result of a P overdose, you will also get Magnesium deficiency.

An Mg deficiency is easy to spot. It looks like a nitrogen (N) deficiency, but is begins on the middle leaves rather than the lowest leaves, as you can see on the photo above.

There’s only one other overdose that looks like a P overdose. A Potassium (K) overdose. It also has the secondary Mg side to it. As a rule of thumb: The difference is you can sort of survive a P thing with lesser yields and not great tasting buds as a result. A K overdose will not be survivable. It will acidify the soil dropping pH to deadly levels for your plant.

Here’s the thing… Using quality living soil, there’s already all the P you will need in that soil. The whole “add nitrogen nutrients in veg and add phosphorus nutrients during flowering” is completely wrong in living soil. When I transplant my plants into their flowering containers, I sprinkle a little bit of bone meal on the floor for a little P and N bump. Basically, that’s it, just add water.

Rev’s Personal Garden Bump Move

Now, personally, I flower plants in smaller containers than I really should. I’m old, lugging that much more soil and container weight isn’t appealing to me, heh heh. So, I just bump up my water with a little basic nutrition across a broad spectrum. Just a little bit. And it’s the same for veg or flowering. I never goose my plants with P heavy additions during flowering and you shouldn’t either. You savvy that?

See Also

Does Dolomite Lime Have Too Much Magnesium?

Harvest Killing Mistake #3 – Running PPM Too High

Cumulative is the word here that you need to know about. Because running your plant water PPM a little too high, which works out great … at first … later on down the line causes you big problems. Right about the time your plant would be hitting the last half of flowering. Perfect timing, ugh.

This happens basically because if your PPM runs too high, then that translates into you are adding too much food/nutrients. Over time this builds up excesses in the rhizosphere, like calcium salts, and this in turn locks up some nutrients, making them unavailable to the plant. Because it’s a cumulative effect that builds up over time, it is particularly devious. So, if your plants are running in living soil and doing awesome until the last half of flowering. This could well be your culprit. Try lowering your water’s PPM and see what you see.

Afterword

See ya all back here next time. Fly by Kingdom Organic Seeds and grab yourself some awesome cannabis genetics. The Dark Dragon f2s were just released over there, and what a gold mine for hunters and connoisseurs alike. And if you want to read something else by yours truly, check this puppy out: Letters to Rev, Organic Growing Styles.

Time for me to bounce for now, L8r G8rs.

• REv