What are these spots on my Spinach plants

[GpsFrontier]

"Impossible to rely upon with the varying concentrations of calcium and magnesium present in municipal and city tap water."

That's very true, but also includes any mineral elements that could be in the water supply. For instance, in my area there would be a lot of extra iron that I know for sure. That's also a water quality issue, not a nutrient balance problem. That's one reason why it's important to use good quality water. Nutrient manufactures can't guess what may be in your water supply in order to be able to adjust for it, and they don't even try. They base their formulas and recommendations for its use on a good quality filtered water like RO water. Or even a pure distilled water, but manufactures don't expect you to buy a bunch of distilled water, so they generally base their nutrients on RO water. It's not their fault if you use something else. Their are company's that will manufacture nutrients based on your specific water supply though.

I don't doubt that there may be times when a manufactures batch of nutrients may not be up to their standards, yet somehow still make it to market. But that's really about their quality control process, and I'm sure would be quite rare. Even so, there are no EC/TDS/PPM meters that will be able to tell you what the individual levels of each mineral element actually is. They can only tell you the total amount of all the mineral elements combined. The only way to know individual mineral levels is to make the nutrients yourself so you know at what ratios you made them, or have them lab tested to find out. And unless you know what the levels of the mineral elements are to begin with, it's just trial and error to try to change them. And again, unless you make your own, you can only raise the levels by adding to them, because you cant take them out of a manufactured nutrient.

[biloyp]

hanks for the info about the water etc. I should have started with rain water or bought some purified water to begin with (leson learned). I put a barrel out and collected lots of rain water and will be using that when I need to add water. My letuce seems to be doing really well but my spinach sems to want to flower or something (not sure if spinach does flower), I see some bud like formations and am kinda puzzled. I posted a couple pics since it is so much easier to see what I am talking about.

[hydrophotobio]

Originally Posted by biloyp

hanks for the info about the water etc. I should have started with rain water or bought some purified water to begin with (leson learned). I put a barrel out and collected lots of rain water and will be using that when I need to add water. My letuce seems to be doing really well but my spinach sems to want to flower or something (not sure if spinach does flower), I see some bud like formations and am kinda puzzled. I posted a couple pics since it is so much easier to see what I am talking about.

It appears you have either let it get too warm, or given it too much light. Both things tend to make spinach bolt, where it turns leggy and sets flower.

[biloyp]

Originally Posted by hydrophotobio

It appears you have either let it get too warm, or given it too much light. Both things tend to make spinach bolt, where it turns leggy and sets flower.

So should I pull the spinach and start again or just let it keep growing? I mean is it going to be be edible and worth growing?

[hydrophotobio]

Edible, yes. Worth growing? It's not very likely to produce any more usable material, it's already bolting. I would suggest starting over, keeping your light to about 13-14 hours daily and keep your temps around 63F.

[biloyp]

Alright sounds good, I will grow some more lettuce in the same tote and try spinach in a different setup. My lettuce is really growinnng nicely.

[hydrophotobio]

Be careful as lettuce will do the same thing and bolt if you let it get too warm and give it too long of a photoperiod.