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CalMag: Essential Supplement or Overhyped Additive? · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp.
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  I am the owner of Utrema, the company that invented gold leaf,
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  as it's known in the US, or liquid gold in the UK.
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  And I'm always coming up with harebrained ideas for new products in various
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  different sectors of growing.
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  And I mentioned on a previous episode that we just launched a CalMag,
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  and I thought I'd do an episode just on CalMAGs because they're the most commonly
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  used supplement in hydroponics.
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  So I'll talk about why they're used, what they are, and why I bothered to create
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  a CalMAG when there are loads already on the market.
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  So today we're diving into a misunderstood but frequently recommended product, the CalMAG.
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  Lots of memes about CalMAG in the hydroponics community, you know,
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  industrial weapons grade CalMAG solves all issues and things like this.
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  So you'll often hear you need a cal mag supplement i'd say
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  about a third of all the growers of legal
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  cannabis on reddit are say what's wrong with my plant and normally it's calcium
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  or magnesium deficiency and they've often got yellowing or black blackening
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  of the center of the leaf that's a sure calcium deficiency often it's calcium
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  deficiency where there's like.
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  Blackened tissue in and so blossom end rot
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  in tomatoes the blackened tissue on legal cannabis
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  heart rot in celery and lettuce and
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  all sorts of different things where new new growth is where it affects and cell
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  damage because calcium is needed to make calcium pectate which is the stuff
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  that sticks cell walls together and makes them strong so why why a calmag and
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  not calcium on its own well they need to be absorbed the plant can't differentiate between the two.
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  Ions and so they're absorbed in the ratio
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  they are around in the fertigation solution so if
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  you just provide calcium like if you
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  did if you just put normal lime on
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  your garden that you get from the builder's merchant the
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  hardware store then you would get magnesium deficiency
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  straight away that's why you put on dolomitic limestone because
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  dolomitic limestone doesn't mean it's from the dolomites in italy.
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  Although it might be it's pinky pinky
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  white material that comes from anywhere that where the the limestone
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  is high in magnesium so still
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  calcium dominated by far so any but that's
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  what dolomitic lime is and then calmag very similar ratio
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  but in a soluble form because lime isn't soluble they're
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  two primary nutrients calcium and magnesium but we
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  don't think of if calm ag has been a base nutrient because it's already
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  in either the a or the b fertilizer or in
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  liquid gold or gold leaf it is in
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  it's in it already but some people like to apply
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  extra because in certain situations you can have deficiency
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  one of those situations is soft water where you've
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  got very very clean water you're in the enviable position
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  of having soft water or if you're using reverse osmosis
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  water you will remove all the calcium and magnesium or if
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  you're growing a crop where they need lots
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  of calcium and magnesium extra calcium and magnesium then you can add that
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  there or if you're applying a fertilizer very high
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  in potassium you will get calcium deficiencies magnesium deficiencies
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  or heaven forbid a fertilizer that contains sodium and there are some out there
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  and the problem with hydroponics is that a lot of the additives contain potassium
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  there's pk boosts there's all sorts of potassium products out there explosive
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  products that contain calcium,
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  explosive as in the explode yield. What else contains potassium?
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  Basically everything every every additive there's one company
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  that's talk about always being innovative and
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  my god do they just release potassium phosphate based
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  products or or their range of about
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  50 products and about 30 to 40
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  of them are just different varieties of potassium phosphate it's ridiculous
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  they have potassium they have pk boosts for early flowering mid flowering late
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  flowering and then flowering pks plus sugars and all this nonsense so if all
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  that potassium is going in then you're going to get calcium deficiencies and
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  so you have to add a CalMag.
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  Now many CalMag products there are based on calcium nitrate,
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  magnesium nitrates which is a good source for plant uptake.
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  However the nitrate can defeat the object because you want to get nice strong
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  cell walls and nitrates produce leggy vegetative growth as we talked about on
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  the previous episode about forms of nitrogen.
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  So you want to choose a CalMag with low nitrogen.
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  There are ones out there the likes of emerald harvest produce a good product
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  that's low in nitrogen but still has some nitrogen and then there are products
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  out there that contain chloride like athena's product and as i've talked about
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  previously chlorides are not a good form of,
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  calcium magnesium or potassium they are very cheap and they are very soluble
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  but chlorides in anything other than background trace amounts can have issues
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  and toxicity issues so avoid Anything containing chlorides, they're cheap and nasty in my opinion.
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  We've talked about some miracle-grown phosphatrogen, they contain chlorides
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  because they're cheap and they're going for the mass market.
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  Calmax can often contain iron and boron.
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  I tend to avoid that because they're already in our other products like gold
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  leaf or liquid gold as it's called in the UK.
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  So we said it's central for cell wall, root tips, anywhere where there's active
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  growing, really important for transpiration and water loss and movement of other nutrients.
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  And magnesium is the central atom in chlorophyll.
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  So without magnesium, your plants are not green. So I said any light green with dark conditions.
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  CalMag is important, and you'll get interveinal chlorosis
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  and poor fruit and flower development most of
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  the crops in hydroponics you want that unless you're growing leafy veg so
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  a cocoa combined combined calcium as well so if
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  you're using a cheap cheap cocoa that contains a
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  lot of sodium then you might need to add extra
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  calmag for that reason so if you've bought a cheap
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  block form of cocoa then that
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  might be one of the reasons you're getting calcium deficiency didn't
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  talk about that that's very important always use a good source of cocoa dosing
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  normally most formulations it's half a
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  mil per litre if you're looking to prevent deficiencies and
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  one mil per litre if you're looking to actively correct
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  an issue you've got when you're growing always easier to prevent
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  than it is to correct as it is with human diseases
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  and problems so there and you
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  you can overdo a calmag it's hard but
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  you can you could lock out potassium and magnesium
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  but as i say there's low normally lots of potassium
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  in there really it's going to be about increasing the ec value it will get too
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  high and so that's that i would say always use a dedicated calmag you can formulate
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  your own from like calcium nitrate and epsom salts which is magnesium sulfate
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  and that would give you a low fairly low dose.
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  And, you know, people say on the time, I put adverts on hydroponic things and
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  people say, oh, yeah, you can make your own from this, this, and this.
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  And I'm saying to my colleague Matthew today, I wonder if you want to go on
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  their profile and see what they're selling and all their produce and go,
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  oh, well, you could just grow your own rather than buying from you.
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  You know, of course you could. You could make your own calmer.
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  You could make your own base fertilizer.
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  But could you do it to the quality? And could you do it consistently and know
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  exactly what you're doing correctly?
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  You know you know and and no
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  you're not going to produce a product anywhere near as good as liquid gold or gold
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  leaf as is known in the u.s but you
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  know you could make an a and b i know it's not beyond your abilities
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  but you'd have to have all those hazardous chemicals stored a single environment
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  so you could make a calm mag you know but yeah if you're the sort of person
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  who comments on companies instagram posts or facebook posts saying oh you can
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  do this by just using this homemade remedy just remember your your post will
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  survive about 10 seconds before it gets hidden
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  you'll think it's not hidden but the owners of that company
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  will just hide it and you'll think you'll be in a keyboard warrior but
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  you're not anyway um cal mag
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  so what did we do that was different with
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  our cal mag so as i say we didn't want to release one until we
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  hadn't it was a lot better and we wanted one that could be used in
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  different uses so sports turf lawns commercial
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  horticulture obviously nitrogen free we wanted
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  to prevent weak vegetative growth and we just wanted to eliminate all nitrogen
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  so we could make that claim we added organic acids to chelate the calcium so
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  preventing lockout so as soon as the calcium hits the soil or the growing media
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  it doesn't just lock out with phosphorus so we included organic acids for that
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  obviously chloride free no cheap and nasty products i don't think i use chloride for.
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  Any of my ingredients we have one product that
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  contains chloride and it doesn't go in anywhere near a plant it's ph
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  buffered and this is the real thing that really excited me and
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  when we're in development it's built with the same intelligent buffering
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  system that we use in liquid gold or gold leaf
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  as it's called in the u.s and so by adding the calmag you'll further not only
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  does it get to the sweet spot of 5.5 to 6.5 just like liquid gold it holds it
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  there so by adding the calmag you further strengthen that ability for your first
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  vacation solution to stay at 5.5 to 6.5.
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  And it's uk invented and
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  uk manufactured but for some people it is a benefit if
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  you're massively hate the uk then obviously
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  that's not a massive benefit so that's been
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  calmag you dreamers calmag even in the uk you
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  can buy that if you're outside the uk more than
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  happy to discuss you distributing in it and getting it in to
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  your systems so yeah use a
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  calmac if you're worried about any of those issues it's
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  not a magic cure-all but it's pretty damn close especially if
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  you've got ro water or really cheap and nasty cocoa
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  prevention is better than cure and choose
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  a good quality one i'm dr russell sharp and this has
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  been hydroponics daily if you've got a question about nutrient balancing or
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  you want help choosing any additive then let me know i'll give
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  you my opinion it might not be independent but it will be informed until
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  next time i'm going to be talking about microalgae next time because i thought
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  that'd be a good subject an interesting subject and bioreactors not quite hydroponics
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  but you might consider it hydroponics it's growing micro micro plants microscopic
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  plants should be a good episode until tomorrow that's been hydroponics daily
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  thank you very much for listening.