Nutes

[c0mrade]

Hello, Im just working on a Hydro setup, Im going to be using a blue rubbermaid container and going to do probly 2-4 plants. I was wondering what kind of nutes I have to buy. I was looking at the Flora brand. I was wondering if I should go for something else. Im in canada so somewhere in canada or that has cheap shipping :P I also don't know how to use the nutes. How often to put them in the water. When to put them in the water. If someone could help me with these things I would very much apperciate it.

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Would 16oz be enough for the grow period?

[herbie the love bud]

Ok, all good questions. So you can't go wrong with good old GH. It's not the absolute best, but it is a good starter while you dial everything in.

Each nute manufacturer has either a mixing/ratio recipe or a calculator on their website. There are also directions on the bottle, but those vary a bit.

Now here is something that a lot of people don't understand about nutes: The amount you make should be based upon one feeding per week! Let me explain: If your plants drink 5 - 8 gallons a week, let's say 1 gallon per day, then you would mix 1 gallon of the nutes/water, and then just continue to feed water for the rest of the week. That's it, all the rest is waste.

You'll do great. BTW, post a follow up thread when you plant your seeds or cuttings because the recipe for that is different.

[Help_Needed]

Now here is something that a lot of people don't understand about nutes: The amount you make should be based upon one feeding per week! Let me explain: If your plants drink 5 - 8 gallons a week, let's say 1 gallon per day, then you would mix 1 gallon of the nutes/water, and then just continue to feed water for the rest of the week. That's it, all the rest is waste.

Intersting. I've spent a lot of time on a lot of different growing forums and I've NEVER heard anyone else mention this. I'd love to hear a little more regarding the rational for this, because quite frankly, I'm not sure it passes the logic test.

To OP, GH nutes (both the basic Flora brand, and the FloraNova brand) work well for hydro. As Herbie stated, they're not the absolute best, but they'll do the job well and give you a grow you can be proud of. If you're going to use GH, I'd recommend you take a look at the Lucas Formula. It's a basic beginner's nute program designed specifically for MJ. Once you've mastered that, then you can start playing around with more advanced nutes and suppliments.

[the image reaper]

I've used the Flora, it's a nice, clean solution ... but, my absolute best results have come from using the Fox Farm ferts, some don't agree with me, but my results don't lie ... I just used the ratios and schedule described in the Fox Farms schedule (at their website and brochure) ... easy, foolproof, and great results ... highly recommended :thumbsup:

[macnasty]

Now here is something that a lot of people don't understand about nutes: The amount you make should be based upon one feeding per week! Let me explain: If your plants drink 5 - 8 gallons a week, let's say 1 gallon per day, then you would mix 1 gallon of the nutes/water, and then just continue to feed water for the rest of the week. That's it, all the rest is waste.


according to your rationale, 99.999% of growers have been wasting massive quantities of ferts and contributing significantly to the destruction of this planet's resources. a claim such as that needs a more elaborate justification.

ok, sorry to sound like a j-ass, but i would truly appreciate it if you shined some more light on my shadowy face. are fert companies so deceptive that they would publicly encourage the waste of ferts just to make a profit?

i think i just misunderstand. let's take your example: plant drinks 1 gallon a day. so mix enough nutes for ONE gallon, and then add water for a week? then do it all over again, thus saving enough nutes to fill 6 gallons of water every week?

...i'm going to bang my head against a wall till i hear back from you, thanks herbie.

[herbie the love bud]

Yes, contact your nute manufacturer and ask exactly how to use the nutes. They are not deceiving anybody, there is just a common misunderstanding.

If for instance your chart says 1500 ppm, that is what the plant needs over the course of one week (that is why we change the reservoir weekly), not what it needs per day!

Other than just calling your nute manufacturer to confirm, let me give you a few exercises to prove it:

Lets say you have a ten gallon rez for your plants and you filled it at 1500 per gallon and you started feeding your plants. Without topping off any water, what is your PPM tomorrow? Is it higher or lower? It's higher because the plant drank more water than nutrients (forget about the nutrients that fell out mechanically for now). Now obviously there is way too much nutrient in the water for the plant to uptake. So now let's water it down to half the strength/ppm and try again tomorrow. Same result? Keep going until the ppm neither reduces nor rises. What is the PPM and what ratio is that to your weekly total of 1500? About a 7th by any chance?

I can give a few more experiments for anyone to try if anyone wants. But what ever method you choose, let us know and I can help you make a mixture strategy, because its different based upon drain to waste and recirculating, soilless, etc..

[tinytoon]

Hmmm time for a name change? Herbie the Chemist!! :smokin:

[c0mrade]

Should I buy Foxfarm nutes?

+ FoxFarm Grow Big 1L (Soil OR Hydro) $22
+ FoxFarm Big Bloom 1L $22
+ FoxFarm Tiger Bloom 1L $22

[macnasty]

If for instance your chart says 1500 ppm, that is what the plant needs over the course of one week (that is why we change the reservoir weekly), not what it needs per day!



sorry herbie but i'm still confused. 1500 ppm is NOT a measure of volume, it's a ratio, right? do you mean to say that the schedule implies that the plant only needs 1 gallon at 1500 ppm per week? or am i still way off? thanks in advance.

[IAmKowalski]

sorry herbie but i'm still confused. 1500 ppm is NOT a measure of volume, it's a ratio, right? do you mean to say that the schedule implies that the plant only needs 1 gallon at 1500 ppm per week? or am i still way off? thanks in advance.

You are correct, PPM is parts per million. This has nothing to do with any one-week interval, it is the level of concentration for a given stage of life, and a plant in full bloom sucks down nutrients a lot faster than one in early veg.

[guano68]

Herbie,

By your logic then most people here are grossly overfertilziing our plants! By a factor of 7! If you put 7X too much fertilizer in any plant - it will die - almost immediately. I know from experience.

[herbie the love bud]

No, you are not putting 7X the fertilizer _concentration_ you are putting in the same ratio, so the plant will not die, instead it just won't use it. Simply will not uptake the extra nutes and only drink the water. The plant decides.

Alternatively, if you put for instance one gallon of water and _doubled_ the nute concentrate per gallon, you would burn the plant possibly (depending on the strain).

[herbie the love bud]

You are correct, PPM is parts per million. This has nothing to do with any one-week interval, it is the level of concentration for a given stage of life, and a plant in full bloom sucks down nutrients a lot faster than one in early veg.
Yes, and no. Let me try and explain in a different way, and ultimately I encourage you to call your nute manufacturer's tech support line to confirm. This is not MY theory, this is simply THEIR instructions.

Ok, let's say that a plant in week 4 of flowering needs 1500 PPM of nutes and drinks on average 2 gallons in a day. Fill 2 gallons of water and add your nutes to achieve 1500 PPM per manufacturer recipe.

Now tomorrow read the PPM and it's at 0 PPM. Your plant drank 1500 ppm. If it was at 1000, your plant drank 500 PPM. If you lowered your nute concentration to 500 it would have been enough for the plant because that's all it uptook, the rest you are wasting.

Finally, whatever the manufacturer's recipe calls for is for ONE feeding per week. This is a concept that is a little harder to understand in hydro because you fill a rez and the plant constantly feeds. So let's say that you filled your rez every day with only as much water as the plant drinks in that one day and added the 1500 ppm as per recipe.

The total amount of nutes (as measured by ppm) that the plant would drink over the course of the week would be plus or minus the 1500 of ONE feeding, not 1500 of 7 feedings.

I know it takes a while to grasp. Contact your nute manufacturer and get some help with it, I'm not asking anyone to believe me.

[macnasty]

excellent answer Herbie. Thanks for taking the time to answer the question so thoroughly; I have a much better understanding of what you mean now. Could I bother you for one more question, maybe 2?

1) if my water is 250 ppm, does this mean I should only change the res once ppm reads 250 again, or somewhere very near? is this a good way for your plants to let you know that it's a good time to change their diapers?

2) if the feeding schedule is designed according to a weekly basis, does this mean, that if a plant in week 4 of flower requiring 1500 ppm drinks, let's say, 2 gallons in a day and the reading the following day is 1(from 1500 the previous day), that it would be okay to feed her just water for the remaining week?

thank you very much, this has been one of the most useful threads i've come across...and judging by the other responses in this thread it looks like welcome information for many others. imo there should really be a sticky explaining this, because the label on the back of nute products is pretty misleading and vague. i think purposefully, so the majority of customers overfeed and therefore over-purchase, but that's a whole other matter...

[herbie the love bud]

excellent answer Herbie. Thanks for taking the time to answer the question so thoroughly; I have a much better understanding of what you mean now. Could I bother you for one more question, maybe 2?

1) if my water is 250 ppm, does this mean I should only change the res once ppm reads 250 again, or somewhere very near? is this a good way for your plants to let you know that it's a good time to change their diapers?

2) if the feeding schedule is designed according to a weekly basis, does this mean, that if a plant in week 4 of flower requiring 1500 ppm drinks, let's say, 2 gallons in a day and the reading the following day is 1(from 1500 the previous day), that it would be okay to feed her just water for the remaining week?

thank you very much, this has been one of the most useful threads i've come across...and judging by the other responses in this thread it looks like welcome information for many others. imo there should really be a sticky explaining this, because the label on the back of nute products is pretty misleading and vague. i think purposefully, so the majority of customers overfeed and therefore over-purchase, but that's a whole other matter...
Answer #1: Good thinking but unfortunately not. Here's why: Every strain and every plant for that matter is unique in its uptake of nutrients. The mix that you are making every week is based on a best floating average or whatever the manufaturer thinks is best for the plants. But in the real world our mileage varies, so that is why it is recommended to replace every 7 to 10 days.

Answer 2: Yes, although based on answer one you can't measure it that way. So do either of these:

1) Feed your plants what they drink in one day with appropriate nute formulation. Tomorrow your rez will be empty or very close too it, and for the rest of the week only keep adding water.

2) Get a large enough reservoir to feed your plants for 7 days, fill with water and add a one day supply of nutes. (Mix and read the PPMs as let's say 1500/7=(whatever that equals) PPM.

Yeah I agree, I don't know if the manufaturers are INTENDING to be vague, but they DEFINATELY are profitting from it. And again, I am not trying to convince anyone to believe me, please call your nute manufacturers.

[JaySin]

Ok, here is what I am getting from this and how to figure out what I should do for nutes.

Fill my reservior to a certain point. Put a mark, then the next day come back and see how much water has been taken up by the plants. Now that I know the plant uptake, I mix a solution with only that amount of water. Then I add it to my reservior that is already filled with the water it needs to make the whole system work. So if I mixed it correctly I should have a res that is almost completely depleted of it's PPMs by the end of the week.

Everything else I have read on this forum has lead me to beleive I want to have the entire systems water at the target feeding ppm.

[herbie the love bud]

Ok, here is what I am getting from this and how to figure out what I should do for nutes.

Fill my reservior to a certain point. Put a mark, then the next day come back and see how much water has been taken up by the plants. Now that I know the plant uptake, I mix a solution with only that amount of water. Then I add it to my reservior that is already filled with the water it needs to make the whole system work. So if I mixed it correctly I should have a res that is almost completely depleted of it's PPMs by the end of the week.

Everything else I have read on this forum has lead me to beleive I want to have the entire systems water at the target feeding ppm.
Yes you just said it completely correct. And, if you did it correctly you should be out of water too. If you are not out of water (or very close) than you diluted your nutrient strength.

I know that everything you have read on the forums seems contrary to that, it is a very fundemental misunderstanding.

[the image reaper]

Should I buy Foxfarm nutes?

+ FoxFarm Grow Big 1L (Soil OR Hydro) $22
+ FoxFarm Big Bloom 1L $22
+ FoxFarm Tiger Bloom 1L $22

yes, that's what I advise ... use the ratios on the Fox Farm schedule, then, pH the final solution ... change every 7-10 days ... that gives me excellent results, with no problems (so far) :D

[JaySin]

Yes you just said it completely correct. And, if you did it correctly you should be out of water too. If you are not out of water (or very close) than you diluted your nutrient strength.

I know that everything you have read on the forums seems contrary to that, it is a very fundemental misunderstanding.

The only problem with that is that if I am almost out of water I will run the risk of frying my pump. Even at the lowest possible water leve,l I have four five gallon buckets that need to be full along with probably 2 to 4 gallons of water that need to be covering the pump. Is this what you mean by being almost out of water? What if I just keep filling it with plain water so the water level stays up but the ppm continues to drop?

[herbie the love bud]

The only problem with that is that if I am almost out of water I will run the risk of frying my pump. Even at the lowest possible water leve,l I have four five gallon buckets that need to be full along with probably 2 to 4 gallons of water that need to be covering the pump. Is this what you mean by being almost out of water? What if I just keep filling it with plain water so the water level stays up but the ppm continues to drop?
I'm pretty medicated right now, but I wanted to answer ASAP, so bear with me. If you want to add a base minimum of water that you never want to run out of, then simply ADD a fraction of the recipe to compensate for the extra water, so the PPM remain the same and your loss ratio of nutes emptied to the garbage at the end of the week will only be that small factor.

Got it? So lets say your girls drink 14 gallons in a week and you run an 17 gallon res, you would put enough nutes for 17 gallons / 7 and at the end of the week throw away 3 gallons of water and 3/7 gallon value of nutes, no big deal.

[herbie the love bud]

yes, that's what I advise ... use the ratios on the Fox Farm schedule, then, pH the final solution ... change every 7-10 days ... that gives me excellent results, with no problems (so far) :D
TIR is a big fan of FoxFarm, I think I remember him raving about it from when he started with it I think. And remember, if you are following the recipe, and if you feed based on the schedule that I am talking about in this thread OR if you feed the same PPM with every feeding/24h cycle, you will get the same results. It's just that the plant won't uptake the rest and it will return to the drain ultimately.

This is NOT to be confused with overdosing or overconcentrating. (Like when your recipe calls for 1500 PPMs and instead you put in 3000 PPMs.