Can I make a buffering solution with Epsom Salts and Calcium Chloride?

[moj]

I've got 500g of each spare, and I'm knocking up a compost mix which includes 15% coco from cheap compressed blocks (which I've rinsed). I realise, being a mainly soil mix, that buffering such a small percentage of coco is possibly redundant, but I have the epsom and calcium laying around anyway and figure I may as well put them to use if they might help the plants a tad more, as opposed to the coco remaining inert (normally I would use perlite instead of the coco anyway, so very little change really).
 

My main issue is, I've no idea how much of either to use for knocking up a buffering solution, nor do I have any kind of PPM/EC  meter at hand.

Or would I be better off just leaving things and using them for a foliar spray should I encounter any deficiencies later on?

 

 

Edited April 25, 2020 by moj

[Nervous]

The risks outweigh the benefits massively. Don't tamper. If there's significantly more soil than coco you have no need to buffer. 

[moj]

59 minutes ago, Nervous said:

The risks outweigh the benefits massively. Don't tamper. If there's significantly more soil than coco you have no need to buffer. 

 

You're completely right, after mulling it over a bit I realise it's not worth the gamble, and any real benefit will likely be minor. I just needed someone to help me realise I was being a div, this lockdown is making think too much and over-complicate matters haha.

 

Cheers.

[Absurdist]

If you had calcium nitrate rather than calcium chloride you could make your own calmag solution using the following procedure. I have used this myself many times, I give the quantities I obtained myself at the bottom.

 

Here is quick tip how to make your own CalMag additive, which you could use for buffering your RO water, fixing various blocks and defs through whole grow cycle.

Final product contains ideal proportions of Cal and Mag, it will fully assure that these two elements will be available for your plant, no other nutes of same type are needed.

Dosage is 2ml / l for any kind of usage - soil, coco, hydro, foliar, etc.

I do recommend to use it with Amino acids for foliar - that's a nuclear coctail for your vegging plants!

 

What do we need

Calcium nitrate 130g

Magnesium sulphate (epsom salts) 50g

Distilled water 330ml

 

How to do it

We make two liquid solutions in separate dishes:

Solving Magnesium sulphate in 200ml of water

Solving Calcium nitrate in rest of the water

 

Ready solutions must be filtered before mixing, because Calcium nitrate will have some fats mixed in and these will be bad for filtering of final solution.

 

While constantly stirring, pour both solutions to one dish and keep stirring for couple of minutes. After that just leave all that for couple of hours, till most of Calcium sulphate will fall ot in bottom of dish as white powder of gyps. Now carefully pour liquid from top (you may use tubing to make it super clean), and that is what you need. Gyps now can be thrown away and solution is good to keep for a long time. If some gyps will fall in same solution while in shell, never miind, as when used with waater it will dissolve. You will need to mix it plenty with watern anyway before usage.

 

The result

Homemade CalMag ~483g

Gyps ~27g

 

Contents of final CalMag solution:

Nitrogen 4.2%

ammonia 0.24%

nitrates 3.96%

Calcium (as CaO) 4.7%

Magnesium (as MgO) 1.7%

Suphur (as SO3) 0.09%

 

 

Mine only made 309 g calmag

 

140 g gypsum filter cake

 

So 450 recovered from 510