Making Your Own Nutrient Concentrates

[Weaselcracker]

I also read that a 4-2-1 ratio of K-Ca-Mg was about ideal, which makes my Ca numbers stick out like a sore thumb.

I amended my table to show how the botanicare veg mix compares to the botanicare bloom mix, and a couple other mixes - at the peak strength I would have used them. I never had N issues on that botanicare routine oddly enough. I did have similar K-like deficiencies especially in bloom

Feeding mixes

• Weaselcracker
• Feb 5, 2021

Here is how 6g/gallon Mega Crop looks with and without calmag added. I tried it both ways.

Feeding mixes

• Weaselcracker
• Feb 5, 2021

 

[farside05]

Wow, never really bothered to run numbers on Remo. That's a metric shit ton of K. I have 2 of their Supercharged Kits here that I've won that are collecting dust. I'm not a 7 bottle kinda guy, so I doubt I'll ever use them. Got an unopened gal of Terpinator too.

 

[Skybound]

Wow, never really bothered to run numbers on Remo. That's a metric shit ton of K. I have 2 of their Supercharged Kits here that I've won that are collecting dust. I'm not a 7 bottle kinda guy, so I doubt I'll ever use them. Got an unopened gal of Terpinator too.

I'm not gonna lie, back when I had Terpenator, I very much wanted to take a swig it smelled so damn fruity.

 

[farside05]

I put a dab on my tongue, actually tastes like shit. LoL

 

[Weaselcracker]

I never ran the Remo prize box either. Too many bottles. That’s the only routine on that list I actually haven’t used- I just ran their recommended bloom mix through HB.
I have used various single bottles in my mixes and I’ve analyzed them all in HB just to see what it is about

 

[Skybound]

I never ran the Remo prize box either. Too many bottles. That’s the only routine on that list I actually haven’t used- I just ran their recommended bloom mix through HB.
I have used various single bottles in my mixes and I’ve analyzed them all in HB just to see what it is about

It's educational looking under everybody's hood, isn't it?

 

[Weaselcracker]

Yeah it is. I wish we weren’t just reinventing the wheel but whatever- just don’t think about it too much I guess. I might go analyze more nutrient popular nutrient lines though I get a feeling you already did that, before you even started this thread

 

[farside05]

I only went part way down the rabbit hole. I look at the composition of existing products then try one of them (or combinations thereof) based on information I've gleaned. I haven't gone all the way of building my own.

 

[Weaselcracker]

I just want to get out of the rabbit hole! But my plants don’t look as nice as yours. If they did I’d probably barely be on the forum, except maybe to show off my nice plants

 

[farside05]

I just want to get out of the rabbit hole! But my plants don’t look as nice as yours. If they did I’d probably barely be on the forum, except maybe to show off my nice plants

Thanks. First couple years I chased my tail a lot. Once I figured out a system that worked for me, it seemed so simple I couldn't quite understand why it was so tough in the he first place. Now I feel like I'm an absentee landlord in my grow room. I have considered naming my next journal (if I make a new one rather than continuing my current) "Why do we make things so complicated, the over-simplified way to grow weed".

 

[Weaselcracker]

it’s weird how what works for one person might not work for another. Oh well, going to flog this horse a little bit longer just out of curiosity and on the side I’m working on switching to organics
if I can’t figure out something good soon.

 

[farside05]

it’s weird how what works for one person might not work for another. Oh well, going to flog this horse a little bit longer just out of curiosity and on the side I’m working on switching to organics
if I can’t figure out something good soon.

What's the ppm of your base water? Here is a link to some reference material that suggests percentages of Amonical Nitrogen to Nitrate Nitrogen based on your waters alkalinity. See the diagram at the top of page 2. Just spitballing and throwing out anything I think can help. Frankly I've gotten away with feeding mostly Nitrate Nitrogen with my 170ppm tap (which isn't recommend per that table), but I know IntheShed eventually ran into issues with a longer grow. He had to switch to a feed with much higher Amonical Nitrogen for several waterings to get the pH of the substrate back in balance. With higher alkalinity water, and primarily Nitrate Nitrogen, the pH of the substrate will rise too high over time. Conversely, mainly Amonical Nitrogen and low alkalinity water causes big drops in substrate pH. I'd say that a good 90% of the people on this board misunderstand pH and think it's about pHing your nute solution. It's more important to match your Nitrogen sources to your water's alkalinity.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Thanks. I read some that stuff at the time as well and remember him doing that. I use rainwater which is zero ppm and 5.7 ph. I’ve been checking the pH of the medium and it’s exactly where it supposedly should be at 5.5-ish, so that rules that out. And all my nutes are acidic.

If anything it might mean your plants are getting little bit higher pH than mine which maybe is a good thing who knows.

5.5 seems really on the low side. Not to argue with the promix experts, but maybe they didn’t have weed in mind.

My fauxmix batch seems to be sitting at 6.1 so I’m gonna put some of that aside to try growing in it just as an experiment Maybe it will work better.

The rest I’m going to lower to about 5.8. I Just went and dug another tote full of peat for the purpose.

 

[Skybound]

Thanks. I read some that stuff at the time as well and remember him doing that. I use rainwater which is zero ppm and 5.7 ph. I’ve been checking the pH of the medium and it’s exactly where it supposedly should be at 5.5-ish, so that rules that out. And all my nutes are acidic.

If anything it might mean your plants are getting little bit higher pH than mine which maybe is a good thing who knows.

5.5 seems really on the low side. Not to argue with the promix experts, but maybe they didn’t have weed in mind.

My fauxmix batch seems to be sitting at 6.1 so I’m gonna put some of that aside to try growing in it just as an experiment Maybe it will work better.

The rest I’m going to lower to about 5.8. I Just went and dug another tote full of peat for the purpose.

Have you used any of the silica yet? IDK if he still uses it, but Farside did 50ppm for a long while. I went as high as 40 and also had good results. IMO, you should try it, just target your Si and K as noraml and let HB figure out the recipe. Another thing to consider is when he was doing MC for 6, CM-5 and ProTekt-5, that had his K all the way up near 275 and he still had awesome looking plants. My only reason for not trying it is because most of my living genes are low vigor and I fear the higher EC might scare them to death, lol. That old PC can take a beating, but the Incredible Bulk is not as open minded and my Cheese is a down right sissy. I hope the Garlic Sherbert seedlings I have will be more forgiving, but I have to keep my ferts catered to Triple Cheese's hissy fits or she gives me bad harvests and week 5 N deficiencies etc.

 

[farside05]

Have you used any of the silica yet? IDK if he still uses it, but Farside did 50ppm for a long while. I went as high as 40 and also had good results. IMO, you should try it, just target your Si and K as noraml and let HB figure out the recipe. Another thing to consider is when he was doing MC for 6, CM-5 and ProTekt-5, that had his K all the way up near 275 and he still had awesome looking plants. My only reason for not trying it is because most of my living genes are low vigor and I fear the higher EC might scare them to death, lol. That old PC can take a beating, but the Incredible Bulk is not as open minded and my Cheese is a down right sissy. I hope the Garlic Sherbert seedlings I have will be more forgiving, but I have to keep my ferts catered to Triple Cheese's hissy fits or she gives me bad harvests and week 5 N deficiencies etc.

Lately I have just been feeding straight Mega Crop with no added Cal-Mag or Silica out of laziness. I got through veg on my bigger tent, then quit the additions in bloom. My smaller tent has been straight MC from birth. Stems may be a bit sturdier on the ones I did Silica, but that could also be the difference in strains.

My bigger tent also has Barney's Farm Triple Cheese in it. It and the Purple Urkle seem to like lower nute levels. That's one of the reasons I dropped the Cal-Mag and Silica additions. Most of the autos I've been able to push higher nute levels at without an issue. So that blows the "Autos require less nutes than photos" theory out of the water. Frankly I've found it to be the opposite. My photos have more sensitive stomachs.

 

[Skybound]

I've never grown an auto, but the most notable characteristic I see about them is they all grow from seed. When I grow my photos from seed, it's always the first 1-2 generations that grow with vigor, but as the clone of a clone of a clone of a clone chain gets longer and longer, that vigor lessens and I get the feeling that they just want to die off already. That's the vibe I get from my 3 cheese anyways.

 

[Weaselcracker]

On the results page of HB where it lists the grams of each substance used in the mix and says ‘edit to fine tune’.

Is there actually a way to edit the weights from that screen?

I mean- I can go change those numbers, but that doesn’t actually change the substance weights used the calculations, if you know what I mean.

 

[Skybound]

I think Edit-to-Fine-Tune is a suggestion to jot down all of the weights abd manually input them -or- maybe for working with liquid nutes. I looked in the Welcome/Results page and there was no mention of it, plus it's not a clickable button so there's no function assigned to it. Perhaps you can ask DH about it in his recent blog entry about HB? It's just easier to fine tune the targets than the weights IMO.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Thanks. just checking. I can click on and change those values but can’t find a way to edit from that page and make it stick- though it would be nice.

 

[farside05]

Was playing around at work on a slow night. Found an interesting combo of existing products. If you look at the Total PPM Per Element Column, that's 4g of Orchidgain (Michigan State University Orchid Food) plus 2g of Greenleaf's Bud Explosion. I put another column out to the right showing what 6g or Mega Crop is (my normal feed rate for blooming plants) for comparison. The combo has a bit less Calcium, a bit more P, and about a 1/3 more K, and slightly less than 50% more S.

Comparison.jpg

• farside05
• Feb 10, 2021

Should I feel froggy, I have my current grow that I just flipped. The 2 in front are Gelato and the back 2 are Zkittlez. Both the Gelatos and both Zkittles are near carbon copies to each other.

IMG_20210210_072430.jpg

• farside05
• Feb 10, 2021

I could do a side by side to compare 6g of Mega Crop to the proposed blend. Would need to source the Bud Explosion since I already have the MC and Orchidgain.