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SOIL Calcium Deficiency?

ponzi314

New member
So this i my first indoor grow, Im growing in Live Soil and have been just adding water. Up until now the plants have looked great and no issues. Now that im coming to the end im noticing brown spots on the top leaves. I looked at "Plant Problems" section and think its due to a calcium deficiency.

Can i get away with doing nothing or am i at the risk of killing the plant? It doesnt seem to be too bad. Its only on the front plant too.
 

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Calcium is one of the most important minerals for the plant to build with. If you don't add some it will only get worse. But you need something that is immediate or quick acting. Limestone works but is too slow reacting. It's good for adding to the initial soil. There is a 'dissolved' limestone that you can get, mixes easily with water but still is limestone, Nutrilime DG. Calcium Acetate or Calcium Chloride will both work immediately as foliar sprays or added to the soil at 1300 ppm.
 
Whatever you decide to do, if you're growing in living soil/organic, you need to be super careful about what you put in the soil. When growing organic, you're not really so much tending the plant so much as you're tending the soil and the microbiome that it supports. Many synthetic nutrients/supplements (including Cal/Mag) will kill all the wonderful bacteria and fungi that you've nurtured. That's bad because in a living soil setup, the fungi and bacteria are what get the nutrients to the plant. If you kill them off with synthetic additions, you'll likely be sad. When growing weed, nothing good ever happens quickly. That's even more true when growing organic.

Do a quick Google search for 'sources or organic calcium for plants' and you'll find lots of options from dolomite lime and other items mentioned in other replies to simple things you have in your kitchen like egg shells. Although this will take a little bit of time to break down and become available for the plant, you'll be preserving your soil biome. And from the looks of your plants, you still have several weeks before harvest.

For future living soil grows, it is important to know that the 'water only' technique is only partly true. You still need to add organic teas and do top dressing so that you're keeping enough nutrients in the soil. If you re-run genetics, you'll hopefully take notes so you'll know that this particular strain needed more calcium or nitrogen or whatnot so you can make sure that it's in the soil (organically) and ready to go for your plants. For example, my Blue Dream needs LOTS of nitrogen in veg stage. I didn't know that the first time, so I ran into a deficiency. But the next time I ran those genetics, I was able to be proactive and make sure that I supplemented with N before it was needed since, as I said things take time, especially in organic soil grows.

Be patient, fix what you can, and you'll be prepared for the next grow!
 
Thank you for this detailed response. Im going to return the calmag as i dont want to mess up my live soil, Im going to purchase some Gypsum. Seems its good for calcium and i wont need to wait for egg shells to break down and its not too expensive.
 
After doing some more reading, apparently Dolomite lime, like you mentioned, is actually better to use on indoor grows. So instead of Gypsum, i just ordered some Dolomite lime and will add around 6/7 tbl spoons to top of soil.

Should i expect those leaves to recover when doing this or will it just stop the progression
 
Most of the time, if a leaf has lost its color due to a deficiency or problem, the color will not come back and that is true in the case of calcium deficiency. You'll see the chlorosis stop progressing, but the leaves will not regain a green color. This is because a yellowed leaf means that there's damage/death in the cells and once they're dead, they're dead. The sign that a problem is fixed is that it doesn't progress any further so the key will be to keep an eye on progression - does the yellowing stop, does the plant start growing vigorously again, etc?
 
dang, she was looking so pretty too. Atleast my other one doesnt seem to have this issue, Once i get the lime ill be able to catch it early one. do you recommend adding to top soil or adding to water and then watering.
 
Try a little of Column A and a little bit of Column B. As a rule of thumb, things dissolved in the water are more readily available to the plant and things that are topdressed into the soil are more 'slow-release'. Be careful not to overdo it though...don't want to create a nutrient lockout. That's generally harder to do in organic grows since the fungi and bacteria help give the plant what it needs but not impossible. There are likely instructions on the bag - use those as a guideline (or half that much if you want to be careful) and go from there.
 
I got a grow in ProMix BX that I've added limestone to and been using 50/50 well water, I figure that is about 800 mg per gallon of Ca.

At ~30 days the Ca deficiency started to show up in the new growth. Growing like crazy with high CO2. Yesterday I foliar fed it a 1300 ppm solution of CaCl and overnight most of the yellowing went away. Today I hit it again and also went to full well water at about 1600 mg a gallon Ca. They are getting about a quart at time for watering.

The yellow is only at the new growth at the top. In the past when this happened if I let it go then they brown out.
 
Yea i kindof left this alone and alot of the leaves went crispy. I have lime stone ready for next grow now, second i see the same thing ill add it. The above plant has been harvested. Its pretty good but then again my scale is, 0 - gets me high lol. Im very excited for my next grow, the above seeds were freebies but my next grow i have some mephisto sour stompers! I heard good thinks about Mephisto so im very excited. Also going to try to top them.
 
Right now they are growling so fast they cannot uptake the Ca from the soil fast enough. I have been foliar feeding them and adding the CaCl directly to the soil now for a week. The new grow comes out yellow and molted. If I leave them alone this all turns brown and crispy. if I spray them with some CaCl at 1300 ppm then they turn out normal but the next set of leaves does the same thing. Went through this last year at this time as my CO2 is running 2000k-3000k ppm naturally during the winter.
 
Never had any light burn from droplets on the leaves. And I avoid doing it when the lights are off because it really raises the humidity. Only running about 120w now. I would imagine if you had a couple 1000 watts then light burn may be an issue due to the magnification of the water drop.
 
You have very possibly already considered this, but could your lights be too close/too intense? If new growth is starting out and staying yellow/brown/crispy that could be why. The foliar feeding could be combating that by providing the extra boost that they need to 'keep up' with all the food (light) that they're getting.

Could be worth a little experiment to see if backing the light off a little prevents the trouble with new growth and the need for the foliar sprays.

But then again, you may have already considered this, so feel free to ignore the above :-p
 
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