Indoor tent grow question on Nutes

[Boomer80]

This is my 2nd grow and I’m 2 weeks post sprout and just moving to Veg. My first grow I. Just winged it and relied on my super soil to supposedly get me right to harvest. This time I’m going to be monitoring things better but I’m not entirely sure I understand feeding completely.
This time I’m growing in. Stonington soil which is supposed to be good for all nutes for about the first 30. I bought the ILGM fertil which has 4 separate fertilizers for Seedlings, veg, plant boost and flower. Per their schedule I started the veg fertilizer today and I saw dramatic improvement within 12 hours. My question is, that this is good for the veg stage, but I don’t know how often I should use this. Do I use it every time I water or after several days, once a week? I just don’t want to over or under do it. Hopefully I can also start to also understand measuring ppm, runoff etc but that still seems above my capabilities at this point.

 

[Bruce Campbell]

Your best and safest bet is probably to forget about the ILGM fertilizer and follow the soil vendor's feed recommendations. If I'm looking at the right product, Coast of Maine's Stonington's blend is an organic blend, and they provide a recommended amendment / feed schedule on their website (here).

Organic soil blends are designed to provide nutrients to plants through microbes in the soil which break down organic (i.e., carbon containing) matter in the soil to slowly make nutrients available to the plants over time. Synthetic fertilizers like the ILGM set and others consist of salt-based water soluble chemicals that provide nutrients that are immediately available for the plants to absorb.

The issues are:

• It's tough to predict exactly how organic blends will behave over time - i.e., how quickly, how long, and how much nutrients will be available when. Therefore, it's best to assume the vendor has a better idea of this and follow their recommendations for feed & amendments.
• Nutrients in synthetic fertilizers that aren't immediately used by the plants can build up in the soil over time. This can create toxicity and lock-out issues later in the grow, especially when the soil microbes are adding plant-available nutrients over time.

It is possible to combine both approaches - but it becomes a guessing game and a bit risky. For example, if you saw a good response to the first round of the ILGM feed, it may be because there was some margin in what nitrogen was available from the soil microbes. However, the ILGM veg formula looks to also have a good bit of K. There's a large range between deficiency and toxicity for K, but high levels can reduce a plants ability to absorb Ca and Mg, which may not be apparent until later after it accumulates over time in the soil. If you do combine the two, it's usually recommended to start very slowly (e.g., ~25% strength) and only feed every other watering or two.

Here's ManoGreen's primer on nutrients, which is pretty much a required read:

Tutorial - A word on Nutrients

The proper use of “salt” based fertilizer to grow Auto Flowering Cannabis. Salts: Natural and man made any chemical compound formed from the reaction of an acid with a base, with all or part of the hydrogen of the acid replaced by a metal or other cation. Learning how to use salt based...

www.autoflower.org

 

[TerpTaster]

I’m with Kdawg…had an issue where I relied too heavily on OF/HP mix carrying them and didn’t realize I had deficiencies creeping. Next run is going to be with a more neutral medium so I can control the nutes and know exactly what they are getting and when.

 

[budwise]

If you want a good organic nutrient that you can add to your medium then just add water afterward. Fuck all those expensive super soils. go look up biotabs and thank me later.