Emmie's Vegan Fertilizer, Pineapple Chunk 2020 Celebration: Experimental Soil Grow

Finally caught up! Just in time to see the end! Amazing job @Emilya and thank you for the amazing journaling and wealth of information you are so willing to share. It is truly appreciated by the new growers like me!
 
Full Bloom, Day 37
Being an even numbered calendar day, it is watering day! This morning after careful consideration and noting that the plants are not showing any of the earlier signs of lockouts, I raised the level of BE and SC. MC stayed the same at 5g, but I am seriously considering lowering it to 4.5g as some of the coloring is still too dark. BE and SC were both given at twice the rate of last time, or 1g/gal.
Everything looks stupendous and all the buds continue to build. Today would have been the perfect day to do to some backbuilding cuts, but I have decided to let our pineapple chunk do its thing all by itself, naturally.
Here is a Garden Cam shot of the excitement that is known as my bloom tent!
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Full Bloom, Day 37
Being an even numbered calendar day, it is watering day! This morning after careful consideration and noting that the plants are not showing any of the earlier signs of lockouts, I raised the level of BE and SC. MC stayed the same at 5g, but I am seriously considering lowering it to 4.5g as some of the coloring is still too dark. BE and SC were both given at twice the rate of last time, or 1g/gal.
Everything looks stupendous and all the buds continue to build. Today would have been the perfect day to do to some backbuilding cuts, but I have decided to let our pineapple chunk do its thing all by itself, naturally.
Here is a Garden Cam shot of the excitement that is known as my bloom tent!
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Lovely
 
Observations...
I am pleased to see that the advice I heard when I started MegaCrop, to add more any time you see a problem, has been put to bed by several of those who were advising differently when I first started using this stuff. I can see by the sudden change of the conversation that many people are reading this thread, and thank you all for carefully considering my theory.

All of a sudden I am seeing warnings not to go above 6g/g without good cause, and the beginnings of a belief in the mechanism that is causing the lockouts we are seeing. We as a group are starting to understand that we are not seeing deficiencies in many of these cases, but that instead we are seeing lockouts caused by the calcium overload that comes from using more MC than the plant can handle at the time.

We are advised strongly by GLN to adjust to the green. This advice seems to be important to them, and I have seen that there is a fundamental reason take this advice seriously. The dark green goes to the new growth first... If your leaves in the buds look too dark, they probably are and that is your indication that you are overfeeding your plants. I can see now on my plants that are being slowly weaned from an overload at 6g/g that the bottom of the plant is lighter in color than the top of the plant where it is still too green.

I will be dropping down to 4.5g/g on the next watering. Next time I grow with MC I will be reluctantly raising the MC level as I go into bloom, carefully watching the color at the top growth and waiting for the plant to tell me it wants more. Not every plant is going to need 6g. I doubt that I see a repeat of the problems we have identified on this grow.

Please resist the urge to generously use more at whatever level you are at now. Ramp up maybe a half or quarter gram at a time. Understand that 6g/g being the top end on the online feeding calculator is probably intentional. Since the recent revamping of the website we can see that they really are optimizing this mix for cannabis. Push the edge if you wish, but use your eyes as your indicator. Realize that you need to be watching the top of the plant for the indicator as to where your MC level is.
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Full Bloom, Day 36
I got up early today to spend some extra time with the girls so as to be able to fully analyze where we are at. With 3 watering cycles of reduced rates of MC we are seeing tremendous improvement in these plants. 6 grams per gallon was definitely too much, and actually 5 is still a bit strong, going strictly by the color of the leaves. When we get to final bloom in about a week, I am probably going to reduce even more to 4.5g/g, while I increase the BE and SC.
Massive kudos to @bluter for trying to pull together a Megacrop informational thread, but after the recent name calling and refusal to even entertain my thoughts as to the information being posted on that thread, I am no longer going to attempt to weigh in with a crowd who just likes to argue.
First, salt. Yes, many of our raw nutrients come in the form of salt... so most of our nutrient programs, even Megacrop are partially salt based in that regard. This though, my dear argumentalists, is not what I have been talking about all these years when talking about salt based nutes. I was of course talking about the common way of binding them into an inert form that can be mixed with other minerals into a stable delivery system, using chelation. The old style of chelation used a common salt, EDTA to bind these chemicals. The new way of doing this is using one of several amino acids to bind the elements together, and get them into the plant inside of that package. EDTA binding is a salt based nutrient, and amino chelation is not. One builds up debris in the soil, and one does not. One breaks apart in the soil leaving excess nutes and salt debris, one does not. You guys arguing over what you think that I said are not making yourselves look any smarter. It is almost like some of you who should be the most knowledgeable do not understand what chelation means, and it certainly looks like you don't understand the difference in uptake between the two systems.
Second, pH. I misspoke when I knew I was talking to argumentalists, by making the statement that amino chelates don't care about pH. They do. Although I still have yet to find again the original paper that stated bioavailability of amino chelated nutrients from 8.0-5.0, there are several papers out there that make it clear that between 7.5-5.0 pH, most of the nutrients are bioavailable to the plant. If one is willing to do their research, you can find bioavailability charts for every nutrient that we track using the 4 main types of chelation, showing that there is good solid response across a wide swath of pH levels in amino chelates, and only above 9 and below 5, the bioavailability of some of the nutes begins to dramatically drop off. Megacrop is still new enough that there are only 2 or 3 good studies out there documenting it's use and you don't need me to bring those studies here to "prove the science." Look it up yourselves, I will wait. Try searching for "bioavailability of amino chelated nutrients compared to pH" and you will be able to find several references of pH ranges between 7.5-5 being perfectly ok, and ZERO warnings to keep within a certain range, as we do with EDTA bindings.
GLN recommends being well within the well known hydro and soil pH ranges that we have followed for years, for best absorption, and indeed, for BEST absorption, the closer you are to the internal pH of the plant, 6.1pH, the better. But... and this is a big but...
As long as you are between 8-5, absorption is pretty darn good with aminochelated nutrients. PH within normal boundaries, DOES NOT MATTER, much.

MegaCrop has been fun to learn but it is not rocket science and it doesn't take graphs and calculators to figure out how to use it. All you have to do is watch your plants, know their needs and not get carried away with the nutrient line. These are powerful tools that will easily allow you to exceed the capability of our weeds to absorb what we are putting in there. Calcium and Nitrogen are the biggies that GLN has loaded into this stuff, and as long as you use the nitrogen response (the green leaves) to gauge the correct level of MC, the mix will have loaded the needed amounts of calcium in there too. If you go over with one, you have gone over with the other. Going over with Ca can cause lots of problems, mostly lockouts, and these are being misdiagnosed over and over again on these threads. People are simply using too much MC and ramping up to those levels too fast.

I blame most of the confusion on home grower exuberance and the GLN feeding calculator that seems to indicate that every grow and every plant is going to need 6g/g of MC before the end, and due to peer pressure, the sooner the better. This is a mistake, and one that I am glad that I have caught and documented here.

Less is more... especially with the powerful MC products. Hopefully they have stabilized their product at this ver 2.5 level, but we can't count that yet. The key to using this stuff is to know your plants and to react correctly to the problems that are presented to you. What looks like a magnesium deficiency, probably isn't one when using MC. Same goes for Potassium and Iron deficiencies... they can all be caused by too much MC.

So here we go. My plants are beautiful! They are well exceeding any hopes I had for Megacrop. Part of this outrageous success is the @Vulx mixed in the soil. Part of it is my skill as a gardener of weeds. A good part of it is MegaCrop. Even at 5g/g in mid flower, my plants are doing exceedingly well. Trichome production is off the chart. Bud development is outstanding and each of the buds are rock solid, very sticky and fragrant, already! The plants are using 1/2 gallon of water every day, in 5 gallon containers, and they are still trying to use even more. There is no fading or die off going on with these plants, nor do I expect one, right up to the end. Even after a couple of momentary hiccups that were immediately solved, this is turning out to be an outstanding grow! The proof of this follows. I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.

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Awesome job as always @Emilya - I'm still a big fan.

I started using MC in conjunction with my Advanced Nutrients Coco Grow this week - so far so good.

I haven't been over to the Mega Crop thread for a while - but it sounds like it should be a fun read for me today. ;)
 
Full Bloom, Day 38
After increasing the BE and SC yesterday, I spent some extra time today looking for any problems.

I did not find any. None. Zero. Nada. Zilch. The plants are handling the 1g/g of each, just fine. The fact is that as expected, these additional nutes have jump started the bud growth even more and the trichomes are piling onto the buds at this point.
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The overall leaf coloring continues to adjust with each watering, showing just how cumulative this stuff can be. The lower growth still is a lighter color than that at the canopy level, and looking at the top I can see that we are almost where we should have stayed before mindlessly ramping up to the maximum recommended rate. Probably being 2 weeks from the end, we could get by with keeping at this 5g level, but for the sake of the experiment, I am going to reduce another half gram of MC tomorrow when I water.

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I will keep the SC and BE at the same level unless and until I see any adverse effect, although I don't expect to see any. I will back off on those a bit in the last week too, but I plan on giving them at least at the 1/2 gram level right up to the end.

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It is my belief that I have now dialed in MC 2.5 and the use of the supplements. Please look at the things I have done in this grow, the good and the bad, for examples as to how to run your own MC grow.

I am in the midst of house hunting right now and have been prequalified, but I am going to save the start of my next grow until I close on a house, hopefully soon. When I can get started again I will get going with a new challenge for MC... a long running Sativa... and we will see how well MC can be managed simply going by the look of the green in the top growth and being very very reluctant to give too much MC as we move through the 14 week bloom.
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Wow! A plant food that turns your leaves dark as a warning sign. That's a real plus -- if you're not color-blind! :Rasta:
I saw it happen to one of my plants and, thanks to your journal, knew how to address it.

Great work, @Emilya .
 
sort of a spicy smell right now, especially if you touch a bud... but I wouln't call it pineapple just yet
Hopefully it comes in at the end.Have heard of some chunks that if you rub the fans it’s intense pineapple smell.
Never tried the strain myself but that’s going to change this year
 
Hopefully it comes in at the end.Have heard of some chunks that if you rub the fans it’s intense pineapple smell.
Never tried the strain myself but that’s going to change this year
I will try that on my next trip to the tent and let you know. I never noticed that on the last similar strain that I grew, I think it was Pineapple Crunch, and I surmised that the name came from the shape of the buds, until I did taste the fruity flavor later on after the cure. It is supposed to be strong couch lock smoke... this is going to be fun!
 
Full Bloom, Day 39

All is well. The plants are handling the BE and SC just fine. Today was watering day, and the plants got 1g each of SC and BE and 4.5g of MC.

I expect to see that 4.5g is all that my plants should have been asked to handle. Not every plant is going to be able to take 6g even at its peak in growth, and certainly not for the full amount of time it takes to complete the flowering process. To suggest that every grow should eventually hit the 6g mark, is a fallacy, and a disservice to our readers.

I have heard two other statements over the last day or two that really have gotten under my skin and I need to try to add some truth to them in my thread. Hopefully my thoughts will continue to leak out into the other threads.

First I will address the statement that I have heard more than once in answer to whether you need to use the supplements other than the calmag and the answer given that they are in there, so no you do not.
First, lets address the illogic of that statement. If it was "in there" there, like the added calcium and magnesium that came in with v2, there would be nothing you could do to benefit the grow by adding more of it... and the quick answer makes it sound like the supplements SK, SC and BE are completely unnecessary and possibly harmful. Now the truth: what you add extra as a supplement was by definition NOT "in there" and if you do this correctly you can actually add to the grow by using the extra P and K in BE and the extra amino acids, vitamins and even more extra K that is in the SC. Yes, there is P and K that is in the BE and all the sweet things in the sweet candy already in the base MC, but not at the levels you can manage to safely give with supplements, without adding to the base N, Ca and Mg that is "in there.".
I am effectively proving with this grow that you can give these supplements at the correct times with no adverse effects, and as far as I can tell without a side by side test, I am proving that they can help promote very sticky buds. Is it in there? Yes, some of it is. Like the GLN website says, if you want to see if you can get better product by using these supplements, there is a point of diminishing returns... but returns do actually occur from using these products. You can use MC perfectly well without supplements, but I would bet my grow room that a side by side would show superior growth to a plant that was being supplemented. Saying that the supplements flat out should not be used is an insult to GLN and a disservice to our readers on this forum. Used correctly, as I am showing here, the SK, SC and BE appear to be of great benefit.

Second, the discussion of using LOS or TLO soil causing problems in a MC grow is being terribly misunderstood by those who are not organic farmers. MC is an artificial fertilizer. It is called Vegan because it uses natural compounds instead of synthetic ones to chelate the nutrients, but does this make it compatable with an organic grow that is using the feeding cycle between the roots and the microbes in the rhizosphere to feed the plants? Absolutely not!

Maybe going back to the basics about what MC is will help. It must be understood that with the exception of one form of N and 1 form of the calcium used in MC, everything in there is all amino chelated. This means that the bulk of the nutrients go up into the plant still encased in their protective amino coverings, with the water, directly into the plant. We actually fill up our plant with nutrients with each watering and the amino chelation breaks apart within the plant so that all the nutrients the plant needs end up right there, already inside of the plant. A plant fed in this way has no needs, and without needs it does not send the exudates down through the roots to tell the microbes what to bring to it next, nor is it providing rewards to the microlife at all. The microlife don't just eat raw nutrients, they are also getting part of their nutritional needs from these exudates that are provided by a hungry plant. When MC by its very nature shuts down this part of the feeding cycle, the microbes begin to die out and the "organic" part of the grow stops with them. MC takes over the feeding cycle, completely.

MC does not work alongside of an organic grow and its microbes, it instead becomes the entire feeding cycle. The plants no longer get any benefit from the unprocessed minerals in the enriched soil and whether it is supersoil, LOS or TLO, all of that microbial activity stops in a MC grow. The fact that this soil is what is holding the plants up and allowing them to get to the water and the MC is no different than any other soil grow. To bring into a troubleshooting discussion that people are having problems because they are working with LOS or TLO soil simply show a lack of knowledge as to how an organic grow or a MC grow actually operates. If I stopped giving MC right now, my very enriched super soil mix, now with zero active microbes, would not be able to support life in my containers unless and until I was able to reactivate the microlife and give them something to do. The minerals there in abundance are doing nothing to affect the MC grow.

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Not every plant is going to be able to take 6g even at its peak in growth, and certainly not for the full amount of time it takes to complete the flowering process.

Many claimed that any problems with our plants could simply be solved by increasing the strength of our nutrient solutions. I remember back when you said 'feed, feed, feed' regarding Mega Crop. I was doing the same. I kept bumping up the strength until I reached 6.5gm/US gal. I think you were the first to walk back that mantra.

You can use my current grow as an example of what happens when a plant is fed with too strong a concentration of Mega Crop for an extended period of time. My lower leaves turned a shiny dark green, typical of a nitrogen excess. The tops of my plants took a while to catch up, but they started showing the effects of excessive phosphorous and potassium. The end result was a harvest that barely reached 1/2 of what I should have had. The buds were all light and larfy.

I have one plant left in my grow. I dropped the strength from 6.5gm/US gal to 5gm/US gal. The plant is slowly recovering. I don't expect it to reach its full potential.

I went back this week and re-read the instructions on Greenleaf Nutrient's website. I should have done this much sooner. It echos what Emilya is saying, or is it that Emily is echoing the website? Anyway, the strength given there are suggestions to use as a start. They then say:
Step 1 – Dialing In Nitrogen levels through MEGA CROP dosage by monitor your plants coloring:
  • Pay close attention to the green coloring of your plants leaves. Nitrogen levels in MEGA CROP are strongly related to how green your plants leaves will appear
  • If your plant leaves are light green or yellow, then increase your dosage of MEGA CROP to boost Nitrogen levels and increase green color
  • If your plant leaves are too dark green and/or have burned tips, then scale back your MEGA CROP dosage to reduce the nitrogen.
  • Your goal is to have the plants coloring to be a strong healthy green without burning, and you control this by increasing or decreasing the MEGA CROP dosage. If you are a new grower and not sure what color your plants should be at, browse the internet for pictures of healthy plants of your same type. You should make dosage changes for the first time in small amounts, for example changes of 10-20% increase or decrease only, and then waiting 2-3 weeks to monitor plant response after each change. Since the plant has to take time to uptake nutrients and process them, it may take 2-3 weeks to notice the results of the changes you made.

My next grow will get Mega Crop as directed. I'm not ready for SK or BE, and will probably add them in later grows once I get the basic Mega Crop dialed in.

Isn't reading the plants, and responding to their needs what we have done with any grow? What in the world made me think Mega Crop was any different in that respect? Lesson learned!
 
Thank you @Old Salt! It is good to see that many more important voices are getting it. I am not trying to cause trouble here, but I come at this as a plant diagnostician, encountering this new product for the first time. It is all of you out there providing your pictures of problems that were going on... a myriad of problems at that, juxtaposed against this advice to keep giving more MC to solve those problems, that made my head hurt. How in the world could I explain what I was seeing?
It took a little bit to see my grow through the various stages, but this is not rocket science, and as you said, GLN laid it all out in front of us to understand if we could and they tried to make the instructions simple to understand so you didn't have to be a scientist to be able to use it. I did some further research to try to understand the fundamental changes in the soil/plant relationship because of amino chelation, and understand what GLN was saying, including their strong warnings not to use extra calmag, and once I understood the overloading inside the plant, this all made perfect sense. I would like to think that I am not only echoing the website, but that I am trying my darndest to amplify it, at least to a little bit above the level of misinformation and conjecture that is out there right now regarding this product. I would like @MrSauga to rephrase his latest question to GLN as follows: If someone has been overdosing the plant with MC, are the lockouts that result caused by the excess of Ca and Mg that has been given in proportional amounts with the excess Nitrogen? This stubborn insistence that it must be soil pH or water quality causing problems instead of the most logical solution, really has me torqued. This nonsense and bickering is hurting a lot of grows right now, but I am glad that I am no longer contributing the confusion but instead trying to help via my own threads. If people want to listen to me and look at my pretty pictures that prove what I am saying, they are free to do so. Please note carefully the lack of destroyed leaves in my grow, and that even partially damaged leaves are green and happy now. I am tired of arguing and being called names on other threads. Proof, is always in the pudding.
 
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