New Grower how to boil feeding schedules down to their useful roots.........

[turtle360]

I've got 4 grows under my belt. Inexplicably the first produced the greenest looking plant at harvest time. Every one since has ended not green, different levels of deficiency or worse. I've been very careful with this one and it looked to be on its way to growing Nirvana. But now seems to be perhaps undernourished. My focus now is on the feeding schedules various manufacturers put out. They range widely in terms of ppm suggested. Fox Farm week 8 soil calls for 2100-2310 ppm. General Hydroponics Flora series 500-700 ppm. Now what's a farmer to do with this info? Am I to assume that Fox Farm is always too high for autos and a perfect candidate for the "start at 1/4 and work up to a half"? at a 1/4 is equivalent to a full GH dose. Is this to say when I play it cautious with my GH nutes I'm actually underfeeding? I have been cautious about overfeeding. Has GH lowered it's recipe to a more usable dose, a dose you can use right off the chart? Can anybody provide some clarity? I want to get it spot on next time.

 

[CaptKG]

Let us know your setup be much easier to help you out. I've used the GH Flora 3 part before with mixed results and now use the Flora Duo 2 part in a soilless mix following the expert drain to waste instructions last grow was much better. I found the three part worked better when I was growing Photo's.
2100-2310 ppm seems very high to me I find for my grow I start to get burn around the 1600-1800 ppm mark but I've never used Nutrients so I can't knock them.

 

[turtle360]

Let us know your setup be much easier to help you out. I've used the GH Flora 3 part before with mixed results and now use the Flora Duo 2 part in a soilless mix following the expert drain to waste instructions last grow was much better. I found the three part worked better when I was growing Photo's.
2100-2310 ppm seems very high to me I find for my grow I start to get burn around the 1600-1800 ppm mark but I've never used Nutrients so I can't knock them.

This is pretty theoretical, whether the 1/4-1/2 dose is aimed towards a feed chart like 's but not GH's, so we might discuss it as such. But if you think it helps I'm growing smaller plants in 3 gallon Smart Pots in Roots Organic, a soil with 3-4 weeks of charge. All feedings to date are as follows:

Day 26--300ppm nutes
Day 33--380ppm nutes
Day 41--415ppm nutes
Day 49--500ppm nutes

We're at Day 54. I plan to hit it with 600ppm soon. Alternate waterings are dose with calmag to 250ppm. The ph is always ~6.4. Soil ph is also ~ 6.4

So, the question is: is this enough nutes? These amounts every 8 days? Maybe the fact that you burn around 1600-1800ppm is the answer. How often do you feed and at what approx. doses? By GH standards aren't your numbers high?

 

[CaptKG]

This is pretty theoretical, whether the 1/4-1/2 dose is aimed towards a feed chart like 's but not GH's, so we might discuss it as such. But if you think it helps I'm growing smaller plants in 3 gallon Smart Pots in Roots Organic, a soil with 3-4 weeks of charge. All feedings to date are as follows:

Day 26--300ppm nutes
Day 33--380ppm nutes
Day 41--415ppm nutes
Day 49--500ppm nutes

We're at Day 54. I plan to hit it with 600ppm soon. Alternate waterings are dose with calmag to 250ppm. The ph is always ~6.4. Soil ph is also ~ 6.4

So, the question is: is this enough nutes? These amounts every 8 days? Maybe the fact that you burn around 1600-1800ppm is the answer. How often do you feed and at what approx. doses? By GH standards aren't your numbers high?

I use the blue lab Truncheon stick and it has various readings on it to take my PPM. I was just looking at the GH feed schedule for drain to waist and it says you should be using 10-20ml of product per gallon of water. Do you have the other additives like floralicious Plus? If your using just the three part and not adding the other nutrients you can play with the other three parts to bring up the total amount of ml/gal of nutes your using. That's what I did when I used GH Flora 3 part so later in bloom use the extra for the bloom and ease off on the veg and hit the Micro love that stuff.
My PH is about the same as your but does vary slightly from time to time, I have just started using cal/mag for the first time at full strength based on the feed schedule. I normally have one plant that shows signs of cal/mag very weird but if you knew me it's par for the course.
I've found that each strain is different in what it likes and how well it takes your nutes, some plants you can throw tons at them they want more others maybe like it on the lighter side. I try and take mine gradually higher during week 5-6 and then push it until I start to see tip burn on any of the plants as I grow different strains for the most part have to find the happy medium for all. I'm just at this point right now in my grow and have experienced tip burn so have hit the upper limit at was at around 1300ppm on the EC x 700 side of the stick, so your reading above would likely be on my stick the EC x 500 side equal to about 900ppm on your scale. Thats pretty much full strength on the Expert Drain to waist with monster bloom additive included and almost the full line up of GH NOVA.
I can say from my last two Auto grows up to week 4-5 I feed at 1/4-1/2 strength and not starting until 14 days after germ, I use a soilless mix sometimes with minimal (18oz coffee cup 10-20l pot) hot soil additive like ocean. I alternate water feed equally and sometimes back to back either way depending on what my plants are telling me and also when pushing the upper limits. I'm not a big fan of using hot soils for Auto grows and like the better control in the soilless mix IMO.

One other thing to remember is that nutrient schedules are based on Photo plants and Auto's are a totally different grow and I've found using the recommended Veg amount is not a good idea with Auto's when mid to late bloom I found it to produce to much leaf in the buds on some strains really bad. I'm not talking little sugar leafs but 50% the size of sun leafs that's alot of wasted bud production and something I've learned to keep an eye open for. I'm starting to lean more towards cutting out the Veg 100% during mid to late bloom in Auto's. My last grow I stopped the Veg one week after stretch stop and used the extra in other supplements, was a great increase in bud production.
Sorry for the Novel in your thread.

 

[turtle360]

Wow. That's a mouthful. Thanks a lot for that. Not to wear you out but please clarify, basis your feed ppms such as 1300ppm being the upper limit, is this every feeding or alternate feedings? I know there will be variation, but usually. I want to establish at least one grower's baseline.

Thanks and Happy Thanksgiving if you're Stateside.

 

[CaptKG]

@turtle360 I will water one feeding then next will use nutrients then watch how plants are handling feeds, I'll do two nutrient feeds in a row if the plants still dont look quite right then next feed water and monitor some more.