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HELP! Too much worm castings tea?

S

Spanky

New member
Northern Lights, Ecoscraps mixed with wood ash and lots of vermiculite, Mars 48 reflector LED, along with six 23 watt 6500 CFLs

I gave her a good amount of worm castings tea that had been brewing for a few days. A few days later, this happened.
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Oops, something went wrong. I've used worm castings directly added to my outdoor grow supersoils, but never made tea. Maybe too much of a good thing here? Could the wood ash have made the soil too alkaline, and it is just showing now? As our great website has mentioned, yellowing can have different causes. Good luck on getting this issue resolved! 🌿
 
From the size of the leafs I have to say that thay have been stressed out,eather by topping and supercroping to close together.or some other culprit .As for the burn u already know Y.LOL
 
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Thanks all for your comments. Most of the large yellow leaves have fallen off and the newer growth is still green. But the green is not as dark as in the nitrogen toxicitiy tutorial shows.

I didn't know topping or super cropping would cause large leaves! I topped her once weeks ago and have just been tying the stems down since then.

Nebula said she tries to avoid flushing as it really stresses the plant. As you can see, mine has already had significant stress!

My question now is...should I flush or continue watering when the soil is really dry and hope she recovers? I would hate to kill her. This is my first time out and I have given up on a shorter veg period, but I would like to at least get her to flower and harvest so I can experience the whole cycle.
 
I just wanted to check back with you, how has your plant been doing? Better or worse? Is it possible to post a picture of the plant in the setup under the lights? Sometimes that can help us spot something amiss :)
 
Oh thanks Ms. Haze! I didn't think anyone was particularly interested. I decided to go ahead and flush. Most of the large yellow leaves have fallen off but she seems to be perking up and expanding outward. I did as your tutorial suggested and reduced the light levels, gradually increasing them over a few days. She has always had a fan on her. After about a week, when she felt dry, I added fresh well done compost to the top of the soil with a layer of DE on top and then I watered. I was concerned about repopulating the microbes, etc.

I won't be able to post some of the pictures I have been taking until late next week. I only have my tablet right now and my laptop returns on Thursday...don't ask!

I have been reading about the controversial intentional defoliating method. Mine wasn't intentional, but it will be interesting to see what kind of a harvest I get after all this angst.

In the meantime, I will try to put up some old pictures of my set up. Please stay tuned as I can certainly use help! Thanks.
 
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This was taken before I had added a couple more CFLs. The photo was from 3/11/17. I no longer have to use the pan of water for humidity or the heater as the basement isn't getting as cold as it did in winter.
 

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Hello Budmarsh,
wish I had an air pump...I just stirred it a bunch every day until it was frothy. Thing is, I didn't use it right away and it may have been too old. For sure it was too strong. It was dark, dark. At the very least I should have diluted it. Do you mean the size container of the tea water or the size container of my plant?

Love the blue pup. What breed is she?

There was really no reason to add the tea since my potting mix probably had everything she needed for the whole grow. Newbie mistake of too much love and I am ashamed, but not deterred yet!
 
If I`ve missed this said earlier or it comes across lecturing-ish it isn`t meant to....firstly, did you have strong enough air pumps?....I think adding mushroom or ordinary compost to the castings with molasses and kelp liquid can help as: `the castings are rich in water-soluble plant nutrients, and contain more than 50% more humus than what is normally found in topsoil. Worm Castings are packed with minerals that are essential for plant growth, such as concentrated nitrates,phosphorus, magnesium, potassium and calcium`......by producing more microbes it is very difficult to have too much tea....however, without getting those microbes up in the mega large numbers and with just castings there is a possibility that could produce those effects.....personally, I wouldn`t just use castings alone myself...................really very interesting situation....erm, that sounded wrong, sorry :)
 
To make tea you need a pretty strong air pump to keep it aerated to build up the microbes that are used to break things down. What you did is more like top dressing with worm casting. How much wood ash did you use?

She is a Hangin' Tree Cowdog.
 
I wish I had just top dressed with the castings! I used a couple of shovels of wood ash to a ten gallon bucket of Ecoscraps. I need to look up the symptoms of too alkaline.

This may have contributed, but the reaction to the old, strong tea was quick and severe. Do you think the flushing reduced any problems from the wood ash?

Maybe be someone who sees this can recommend another natural soil for next time. I make my own compost for outdoor gardening, but I am afraid to bring that inside and if I bake it, aren't I killing all the good bacteria? I have also read of people having problems with the Fox Farms brand.

Not a breed I have heard of. Do you know the origins? She is a beauty. I have blue Merle Shelties.
 
Thanks for my first like! How do I find out who did it?

If if anyone is still watching, I would like to get some advice on how to proceed.

The main stems are now out to the sides of my crate. The secondary stems off these are getting longer but not enough to tie down yet. Is the plant ready for me to add my SCROG? Am I supposed to do that once I switch to flowered?

Is she ready to shift to flower? Is she still too stressed?

Thank you!
 
If you want to add a screen, you want to do it while the plant is still in the vegetative stage so you can train it to grow along the screen before the flip to the flowering stage.

Your leaves look a lot better! However, I think your plant needs some more time before initiating 12/12. In general, you want to switch to flowering when the plant is about half the final desired height, because it will about double in size on average after you change the timer to 12/12. So if you've got 2 feet of height for your plants under the light, you'd switch to 12/12 when they're about a foot tall.
 
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