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.
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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.
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).
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by IAmKowalski
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by macnasty
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by JaySin
I know that everything you have read on the forums seems contrary to that, it is a very fundemental misunderstanding.
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) :DQuote:
Originally Posted by c0mrade
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?Quote:
Originally Posted by herbie the love bud
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by JaySin
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.