Looking good
@WildBill ! Question for you. At what point do you stop top feeds and switch to just water? I've got a Cosmic Apprentice on day 70 now that was last fed about 10 days ago, just coconut and water down the res since. It's looking like it may go last 80, I just don't want it to be starved if it could be bulking up. Thoughts?
I can't really answer your question in reference to EarthBoxes, since I don't feed nutes in the rez water. I strive to keep nutes
out of the rez with my method. I only put ferments along with a small dose of humic acid, humic added to ALL water at the rate of 1/4teaspoon per 5 gal.
The use of
liquid flower nutes to the 'nute bank' on top of the media the other day, was not planned for the two girls. Mangos N Chem showed a slight lightening in her color. When I looked at the feeder root intrusion into the nute bank, it was well into everything and just below the surface at the deepest part of the nute bank, the mounded up compost and amendments. I added dry nutes on top and added my liquid nutes to the compost to make a slurry and then applied that to the top. The dry nutes need to be made available to the plant by bioactivity, and that takes time. The liquid nutes are readily available to the plant and the additional aminos will assist that uptake. It's a good carrier of sorts.
By keeping nutes out of the rez, the plant can take up water, without the need to take up the nutes in that water. In a 'normal' pot, you can run into problems with running on the higher end of the VPD scale, since you are forcing the plant to take up the water AND the nute in that water. With what is essentially two root systems, the plant will pick what
it needs from the nute bank......not you picking what
you think she needs, and taking all the water she needs thru transpiration and other plant processes. . With nutes in the rez, it's possible that it could easily and pretty quickly flip on your girl and kill it quite quickly.
If your girls are doing good, just keep doing what you’re doing. When I was using MC in my first grow, I kept feeding until the end.
This way is pretty easy. With the EBs, I only planned two topdressings, the initial setup before the seed is planted and a mainly flower directed topdressing at the beginning of flower. Mangos N Chem turned out to be a heavy N feeder, When I run her again, her nute bank set up will be larger. Mixing up my water is
simple. Right now, the most time consuming task is heating the water to the proper temps before going in the rez. With 8 EBs running, that's a lot of water to mix up. If I'm running nutes in the rez, I have to choose what, how much and who gets it. Not all girls are gonna have dry rez at the time, so that means at least two mixing of nutes, if you're lucky.
You see what the results have been so far. It's easier. The girl gets what she needs and you can concentrate on other parts of the grow. They normally have a very pretty
natural end of life fade.
If you want to run EBs with this method, Look at my set up at the beginning of this thread. If you want help or questions, you can tag me in that thread and I'll come and help. I'd rather to do it in your thread, so more people will see it and learn or input that could improve it.
That's a huge reason to be here......to learn and share! Don't hesitate to ask anything. If I can help, I will of attempt to find out.
J too.
