The experiment continues!!
It's crazy how different soils make so much of a difference in appearance and ease of care. Despite being acidic, the FF soil still outperforms the Espoma soil in every way. I've been watering with water pH 6.5-6.8. That's just the range i get from my under the sink filtration. So i try not to mess with it too much. The plants in the FF soil are averaging 5.9 for the really dark girl and around 3.9-4.0 for the really big bushy one. Which was GREAT during veg but now that it's switching to bloom, I'm noticing the red stems all over. I need to raise the pH before the deficiencies really set in. The dark one i just keep watering with the same water since it's looking okay.
Now the ones in the Espoma soil. After watering with 6.5 water, i get runoff at 7.33 pH. That's way too high and it shows in the plants. They're an ugly yellow color. They gained no length during the pre bloom stretch. The only up side is that the flowers petals are huge, but you can see the red stems this time because the soil pH is too high. So i started watering these with water pH'd to about 5.9-6.0. I'm hoping that will give me some improvement.
It's evident that the Espoma soil isn't great for weed growing unless you have an acidic water source then it might be great. I also noticed it has gnats. The FF soil is clean while the fly catchers in the Espoma soil are covered with gnats. For me the results have not been great but that's in part my fault. I should have checked the run off sooner. At the same time, the smallest ugliest plant grew into the biggest and bushiest plant. Seems like they like acidic veg state. Bloom still needs to be within that sweet spot range.
These experiments really helped me learn a lot about my water, about the soils and the super soils and compost that i use for all the nutrition. It was also a test grow to see if there's any spider mites..... After i lost my whole grow to a huge infestation, i wanted to make sure the room was sterile again and ready to start over. I'm getting all green lights on all ends.
For the next serious grow, i decided to go with the FF soil again. I know how it acts and reacts to amendments. I've used it successfully in the past. I'm going to stick with it for the serious grow. I have everything but the seeds, which should be here next week.... Maybe later because Christmas and shipping delays and stuff.
I'm going to take the FF Happy Frog and add perlite, some dolomite lime and compost soil. The middle I'll just do FFHF and perlite for the seedling and better drainage in the center.
