TERMINATED: Tatsoi in the 6E+

[pfunnyjoy]

Planted: 10/05/2023 
This garden was started 2 days after the currently problematical kitchen Tatsoi garden. So far, so good, knock on wood! It lives in my office, which is a small upstairs room.

Nutes: GH Flora Series, 5ml each of Micro, Grow, and Bloom per gallon.

This is day 26. I have not yet done any harvesting of this garden. I opted to raise the light tonight, just to be sure they don't get tip burned, as these are taller than the kitchen garden plants. (Both were slightly leggy seedlings.)

[lynnee]

They're reaching for the lights! Looking very, very good.

[pfunnyjoy]

Nov 1, 2023 14:41:53 GMT -5 lynnee said:

They're reaching for the lights! Looking very, very good.

I'm just crossing my fingers. The other garden looked good too, until it didn't.

[pfunnyjoy]

Day 31

Signs of problems in this garden, on the outer oldest leaves of the left-hand plant. No harvesting has been done, and I haven't been handling the plants, so virus transfer seems unlikely. Unless the Tatsoi seeds carried a virus.

Water temperature this morning, after a night of the house at 64F, was 68.8F. Seems reasonable.

Yesterday, while digging around in my AG supplies, I found my old General Hydroponics PH test kit. So I tested the AG 6E+ water and came up with a PH of 8.0. 

Too high. So maybe my issues were not a virus, but PH! I don't know if I can save the plants. Rinse and refill did NOT help before, but maybe the damage was already done. I decided to try a rinse and refill anyway.

This time, I used some PH Down to take my filtered tap water for the rinse to 6.5. And I tested the nutrient solution, which also rang in at 6.5, showing me the old GH Flora nutrients are buffering the water.

Anyway, if it's PH, it would explain why a garden using GH nutrients and a garden using AG nutrients both suffered. Each time I added water, the water would have been a PH of 8.0, slowly raising the PH in the reservoirs.

Sorry for the lack of pics but vgy.me is down. It's looking like I may need to sign up for another image hosting service.

[lynnee]

pfunnyjoy, Here is a link to our Nutrients and Supplements section, which has all kinds of info and charts regarding pH. Personally, I love the bright chart
colors!

aerogardenaddicts.com/post/41298/thread

My initial reaction to your post was that an 8.0 pH isn't too bad, but I see that herbs and lettuce require a much lower pH.

You may have hit on the solution. If it's pH, then you'll probably need to do very frequent R&Rs. That's what I found with my strawberries, though they were in Farm, which always has a residue of gunk left after you drain the big bowl. It's easy to get a Bounty or Harvest emptied completely at 2-week intervals.

[pfunnyjoy]

Nov 5, 2023 19:47:19 GMT -5 lynnee said:

pfunnyjoy , Here is a link to our Nutrients and Supplements section, which has all kinds of info and charts regarding pH. Personally, I love the bright chart
colors!

aerogardenaddicts.com/post/41298/thread

My initial reaction to your post was that an 8.0 pH isn't too bad, but I see that herbs and lettuce require a much lower pH.

You may have hit on the solution. If it's pH, then you'll probably need to do very frequent R&Rs. That's what I found with my strawberries, though they were in Farm, which always has a residue of gunk left after you drain the big bowl. It's easy to get a Bounty or Harvest emptied completely at 2-week intervals.

Normally, to control PH and nutrients, I would do rinse/refill at every add nutrient cycle. So every two weeks I use a manual siphon and a 5-gallon bucket and they work GREAT! For the curious, the siphon I got is:

Fermtech Auto-Siphon Mini with 6 Feet of Tubing and Clamp, Clear

The only downside is it doesn't fit in the Harvest Elite Slim water opening. May fit in a grow basket hole, haven't checked yet. Works fine for all my other gardens though. And it's WAY better than just a tube, as that was my old method, and occasionally I'd get a mouthful of old nutrient water!  

Now I just siphon out the old nutrients, add plain water (which will now be PH checked and adjusted!), siphon again, add my nutrient mix. I figure that disturbs the plants very little.

Anyway, frequent R&Rs, other than the chore of nutrient mixing, are not a problem. I'm used to that aspect from past gardens with GH Flora nutrients.

There's a guy on YouTube (Aerogarden Experiments) who uses GH MaxiGrow dry nutrients. If anyone has had experience with them, I'd be interested, as they might be a little easier to deal with.

[lynnee]

pfunnyjoy, the guy on Aerogarden Experiments is darned good, so if he's successful with something, it should work for others.

[pfunnyjoy]

Nov 6, 2023 23:36:23 GMT -5 lynnee said:

pfunnyjoy , the guy on Aerogarden Experiments is darned good, so if he's successful with something, it should work for others.

Yes, but he may not have hard water.

I can't remember, I might have asked him on a recent video if his water was hard, I'll have to check, see if he replies. He's definitely got a green thumb!

I'm beginning to feel like I have a black one, LOL!

[lynnee]

pfunnyjoy, part of the fun of AGs is just watching how things grow and respond to your tweaks! Right now I am enrolled in a course called Plant Neglect 101, and I'm learning lots of things.

[pfunnyjoy]

I did get a response from the AG Experiments dude! He says he has NOT got hard water.

But he did think that MaxiGro would be OK with hard water. I might get some and try it, if for no better reason than it would be new, as opposed to 15 years old, and that it looks easier to use. He's certainly had a ton of success with it, and it's a General Hydroponics product, and I've liked their stuff.

Plus, light weight. I could like that. 

[pfunnyjoy]

Day 33

Not much change. The left-hand plant had some 7 or 8 affected leaves, which might have looked a bit worse than when I did the rinse and refill. I opted to remove all of them and put them in the trash. After which, I went and washed my hands, wiped down the table, wiped down my pruners, wiped down my phone, and wiped down the alcohol wipes container for good measure!




The right-hand plant looks beautiful. Water level was down maybe an 1/8" inch, so at least one plant is still drinking, which gives me hope.


The left-hand plant is a lot smaller, as some 15 or so leaves have been removed total since I noticed the garden had a problem.


And the whole garden, albeit a bit lop-sided now:



For those who've seen these images in my "help" thread in the Greens section, sorry for the duplication, but I'm just trying to keep my documentation of the garden going here as well.

[lynnee]

It's still not certain that the leaves aren't just drying out for some unknown reason. Your plants look wonderful now!

[pfunnyjoy]

Nov 7, 2023 19:14:32 GMT -5 lynnee said:

It's still not certain that the leaves aren't just drying out for some unknown reason. Your plants look wonderful now!

Except why would the plant on the left be dried out and not the plant on the right?

At present, since my Bounty lettuce sprouts are looking AWFUL, with burnt leaf tips, and I just checked the PH in that garden and it is also around 8.0, I believe that I'm going to operate on the theory that water and/or PH is the main issue. 

My Baker Creek seeds arrived, so I might start the Bounty over and ditch the mystery AG lettuces. I'll wait for the MaxiGro nutrients I just ordered today, to rule out old nutrients as an issue.

Water and/or PH may not be my only garden issues, but at present, it is what I can be sure is common to every garden thus far.

Can y'all tell that mystery is my favorite book genre? I am gonna solve this ... I hope!

[slw]

Nov 7, 2023 17:09:47 GMT -5 pfunnyjoy said:

I did get a response from the AG Experiments dude! He says he has NOT got hard water.

But he did think that MaxiGro would be OK with hard water. I might get some and try it, if for no better reason than it would be new, as opposed to 15 years old, and that it looks easier to use. He's certainly had a ton of success with it, and it's a General Hydroponics product, and I've liked their stuff.

Plus, light weight. I could like that. 

pfunnyjoy--do you use the AG liquid nutes?  I find them the absolute simplest to use.   I bought a bag of MaxiGrow after watching some of his videos, but I have yet to use it. 

[pfunnyjoy]

Nov 7, 2023 23:15:16 GMT -5 slw said:

Nov 7, 2023 17:09:47 GMT -5 pfunnyjoy said:

I did get a response from the AG Experiments dude! He says he has NOT got hard water.

But he did think that MaxiGro would be OK with hard water. I might get some and try it, if for no better reason than it would be new, as opposed to 15 years old, and that it looks easier to use. He's certainly had a ton of success with it, and it's a General Hydroponics product, and I've liked their stuff.

Plus, light weight. I could like that. 

pfunnyjoy--do you use the AG liquid nutes?  I find them the absolute simplest to use.   I bought a bag of MaxiGrow after watching some of his videos, but I have yet to use it. 

Well, I used AG liquid nutes for the new Harvest Elite Slim, because they came with it. Back in the day, AG nutrients didn't come in a bottle, they were little tablets individually wrapped in plastic and I never thought they dissolved very well after being dropped in the tank per instructions. Plus, they left a ton of residue.

Later, they were changed to liquid and in little individual plastic packets, and that was better, you just clipped a corner off and poured them in, but still annoying to have a pile of what looked like a pile of soy sauce pouches from a Chinese restaurant to store! Plus all that extra plastic waste!

I actually found some of these old AG nutes recently and they looked pretty wretched! The brown liquid had turned whitish in some packets. I promptly tossed 'em. The old GH nutrients though, looked brand new, so I figured I might as well try with them. However, now I need to rule those out as a cause of my problems.

I used the GH Flora series nutrients most of the time in 2008/2009 when growing my own seeds and they did well and could be tailored to what I was growing. But yeah, it's a bit of a pain to deal with the three separate Micro/Grow/Bloom bottles. I'm hoping MaxiGro is going to work and be easier and cheaper.

[lynnee]

Nov 7, 2023 20:26:17 GMT -5 pfunnyjoy said:

Except why would the plant on the left be dried out and not the plant on the right?

***
Can y'all tell that mystery is my favorite book genre? I am gonna solve this ... I hope!

It can happen that one plant dries out and another doesn't--especially if the dried-out plant is shielding the other from a draft or the overhead lights.


When you're trying to solve a mystery, it helps if you don't make too many changes at once! pH is certainly a good thing to look at, as well as anything else you can think of about your water. You will solve it, I know.

[pfunnyjoy]

Nov 8, 2023 19:34:24 GMT -5 lynnee said:

Nov 7, 2023 20:26:17 GMT -5 pfunnyjoy said:

Except why would the plant on the left be dried out and not the plant on the right?

***
Can y'all tell that mystery is my favorite book genre? I am gonna solve this ... I hope!

It can happen that one plant dries out and another doesn't--especially if the dried-out plant is shielding the other from a draft or the overhead lights.


When you're trying to solve a mystery, it helps if you don't make too many changes at once! pH is certainly a good thing to look at, as well as anything else you can think of about your water. You will solve it, I know.

I suppose it could have been the fan I had on them, though they were not bothered by that before.

I was using at the lowest speed, which hardly felt like anything. I'm giving them a break from the fan presently. But on the first Tatsoi garden, it was the furthest plants from the fan that were affected first ... so I don't really think it was an issue.

Gosh I hope I solve it!

I don't think the old GH nutrients are at fault, but it is hard to know. I know they buffer PH, so that's good. The plants looked healthy up until a month, also good. The rinse and refill with the old GH nutrients hasn't done anything untoward, good, knock on wood.

I don't know if the plants were damaged by the high PH (or whatever was troubling them), but they sure look green and pretty at the moment!

You can see where the little fan is in the far bottom left corner of the image, there's a bit of fan grill showing. Amongst my assorted charging cord clutter!

Day 34


I don't plan to discard the old GH nutrients as yet, because they may still be useable. One thing that could be an issue is if they changed them (even slightly) at any point during the 15 years. If they did, the current feed charts may not be accurate for the old nutes.

I seem to remember it being equal portions of Micro/Grow/Bloom to start, then cutting back on the Bloom when growth picked up. That's not the case on the current charts I downloaded, Bloom is dialed back from the start on those. But I could be remembering wrong. I'll try and hunt through the computer, see if I can find the old chart I used to use.

I'll see how I get on with the MaxiGro, which supposedly arrives TOMORROW!

[pfunnyjoy]

Day 35


I think both plants might have grown a little, but perhaps wishful thinking. No further spots. Feeling hopeful I have saved them, but it's too soon to know.

I found my old GH feed chart file, and my memory was correct. I plan to continue using the GH nutrients in this garden until it is done, but I will use the amounts from the 15-year-old feed chart instead of the current feed chart. For one thing, it makes for easier measuring and it's easier to remember, being simpler!

IF the garden grows without further issue as long as I control the PH level, then I'll know the GH nutrients are still OK to use. I hate tossing anything useful when it comes to AG growing.

I may do a bit of harvesting on the right-hand plant soon, just to even things out.

[lynnee]

The plants DO look like they've grown!

[pfunnyjoy]

I'm pretty certain today. They just look bigger. And the little left-hand plant looks wider. They will need water probably by tomorrow or next day, I don't like to let it get too low.

First, I need to check the PH in my watering jug and adjust as needed!