Plant Nutrition

[ROCK15]

I have a few questions. I have been to the stores and bought fertilizer products. The particular brand that is easiest for me to access was the Holland Secret products. The personal growth box has i think 12 types of product with similiar NPand K values. I tried to attach a photo of the products but it won't let me! I don't think plants can tell the difference if it comes from any one source or the other as if a nutrient is present in suffiecient amounts it will use them. I am a farmer and i buy tonnes of fertilizer and i fertilize lots of my crops once and i get great yields so why is cannibis different?

In this box there is a 1)micro, 2)Bud and a 3)bloom fertilizer you are suppose to add to the water as the plants change in growth stage. All go in to water at the same time all the way through from the label. I have no idea if you need to add all the others? So when do you add these when the plants are so big and healthy. I don't see any signs of nutrient defieciency of any type. The company when you call and ask how to use the products have some young man on the phone that doesn't tell you much and poor customer support because when you say the word Cannibis he gets all wierd. I suspect most of the other companies are the same but i don't want to buy every product to find out. Has anyone else had the same experience with these products and others? I think for the most part if these plants grew as fast as they do, the hype to buy and use nutrients is all for nothing. Does adding all these it help with the levels of THC and CBD? Unless someone actually has a scientific answer for me i don't want to hear about it.

There is a micro, Bud and a bloom fertilizer you are suppose to add to the water as the plants change in growth stage. i have no idea if you need to add all the others?


What strikes me first of all is this stuff is all expensive and the plants seem to be growing fine with out alot of addition of nutrients. This bagged soil has compost, peat, perilite and probably organic fertilizer and is rich already. The plants i have grow big thick dark green leaves which means they are healty.

So, in the end, why is Cannibis any different than a nutrient hungry crop like Canola, corn or potatoes ? If the plant is growing well and has healthy green leaves and growing good why is any addition of nutritents nessecary? When I repotted the plant there were roots and it was healthy and no fertilizer was used until that point.

So much to know and no "agrologist" from the fertilizer company helps... So i turn here..

Hope to learn from all this
Rock

 

[Bonsaiweed]

@Doc Bud

 

[ROCK15]

Well Bonsaiweed... what distracted you?

Rock

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

Some of that stuff is just decades of hearsay & mush leading to confusion when most people who want to grow weed really have no clue what so ever about plants and easy get suckered into all the bull / hype what ever etc.

So ye i'm gardener by trade, growing weed makes me laugh some days... just this running lolz about PH correcting water/nutrients for soil growing ah !

I remember so guy getting right worked up about this PH correcting stuff when i said - do you think farmers around the world PH correct water for when irrigating their fields (if you live in dry area) how do they make there fertilizers work when the very rain water PH is not adjusted ?

WTF is that all about


If your growing medium is amended with some nutrients pre mixed etc it will more likely last the veg stage of growing.

I'm a light feeder basically only using micro nutrients for this stage but may apply a grow n/p/k feed to later veg before flowering commence's, most of the time people use watered down solution of nutrients whilst in veg if you want to feed. In theory if ya skilled you shouldn't run into any problems in vegging.

In flowering you will more likely be feeding once a week if growing in soil whilst nutrients general increase during the flowering stage with the most common defs being P - phosphorus & k - potassium in the early to mid stages of flowering this being from an indoor grow with liquid nutrients.


From a gardener to a farmer & in my own experience we've both grown a lot of plants in our life with this being a simple watch, observe, learn scenario adjust & adapt - try to avoid the bollocks

 

[Bonsaiweed]

Well Bonsaiweed... what distracted you?

Rock

I'm not an expert on plant nutrition. I just linked in someone who I think is much more educated about the question.

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

I'm not an expert on plant nutrition. I just linked in someone who I think is much more educated about the question.

aka Doc Bud - High Brix grower soil amendments

 

[Bonsaiweed]

aka Doc Bud - High Brix grower soil amendments

Yeah, and heavily college educated on the scientific aspects of plant growth.

 

[Old Salt]

Welcome to the forum Rock.

In the field you may not need to add nutrients. Containers, well that's a whole different ball of wax. In the field, the roots will grow and seek out the nutrients the plant needs. Container grown crops with their cramped root systems often deplete the nutrients in their medium. This is especially true for heavy feeders such as cannabis. I grow using General Hydroponics nutrients in a 3.8 US gal container with a coco coir / perlite medium. I need to add nutrients every time I water.

Micro, Grow, and Bloom are the basics, and the ratio changes with the growth stage of the plant targeting its needs. Calnesium is mainly used for hydroponics, and inert mediums to supply the calcium and magnesium needed. It is also used in soil grows if the plants show deficiencies in those nutrients. The other supplements, while not absolutely necessary, are generally used to increase the yield and quality of your harvest. These are not slow release nutrients, they are available to the plants as soon as they hit the roots.

The outdoor growers I know add amendments to the soil before transplanting. None of them have mentioned adding more fertilizer part way through a grow, unless the plants show signs of nutrient deficiencies.

To better answer your questions we need more information. Are you growing in soil, hydroponically, or in another medium? Are you growing indoors, or out?

@Amy Gardner can probably bring more to the thread.

 

[Amy Gardner]

Phew - steady Old Salt! I’m just finishing what’s really my first run. Well I grew 2 plants over a couple of outdoor seasons a few years ago - but with those I stuck em inthe ground and watered, with seasol occasionally (an organic seaweed derived general soil feed). So I’m no experienced grower. I did some stuff this time around after lots of research and it’s worked out pretty well. But yeah - I’m still in veg, as a grower!

That said - synthetic nutrients have been manufactured to be immediately plant available. I don’t know much more about them than that except you have to be super careful about how you mix them and that they can build up in the soil, and imbalance is easy to get - unless you really know what you’re doing or have a good mixing and feeding guide to follow. Plenty of folks do it that way with great success

It would be tricky to combine an organic soil mix with synthetic nutes.

With organic soil, the plants rely on the microbial soil community to provide nutrients in the soil in plant available forms. So when we feed, we are feeding the soil, and the soil grows the plant. I don’t think that soil community will play happily with synthetic nutes. Likely there’d be no good for them and they’d die off... leaving fairly dead soil. I can’t go into much more detail about that as I don’t know enough about it to regurgitate it easily.

It’s true that if you stick a plant in the ground it has a good chance of growing to finish. But that’s a long way from getting out of the plant what it has the potential to give.

So there are lots of ways to grow and all of them aim to get the most out of the plant. Heaps of synthetic nutes are heavily marketed and a lot of the claims and recommendations are going to be questionable, and some of them won’t be. If you’re interested in synthetic nutes, the folks to ask - or just read over their journals - would be @Pennywise @TheMadDabber @InTheShed and some others I can’t think of right now.

If it’s soil you’re interested in there’s a few different approaches there. The Living Organic Soil (LOS) growers have a few different methods with a base approach and there’s a whole thread dedicated to soil recipes. @bobrown14 is the leading dude when it comes to LOS in this site. Look up Clackamss Coots and ‘True Living Organics’ by The Rev. for more info. I know bobrown varies his methods over time but he’s tried it all in the LOS department so is an invaluable resource.

Then there’s High Brix methods which can be done in different ways too. The easiest for Cannabis is Doc Buds High Brix Blend - developed by longtime member here @Doc Bud. He spent a long time researching and testing and experimenting and testing to develop that kit and it grows the rockingest Cannabis I’ve ever seen - and anyone who consumes it says so too. Wine grape farmers have been using high Brix methods for a long time and it’s been Doc’s driving motivation (or one of them at least) to approach Cannabis in the same way, as a connoisseur crop. This makes perfect sense to me.

I’ve been aiming for some kind of hybrid of the LOS and High Brix methods - they’re both a living organic soil and my success rate is ok so far. Although like Old Salt mentioned, keeping it going in a pot is harder - especially if it’s outside where rain can deplete it very quickly! (I’m currently dealing with this!).

My first recommendation if anyone is interested in organic soil growing or high Brix would be to check out The Revs book and read some of the info on DocBud’s website about Brix growing and take it from there.

If I were doing a soil grow using worm castings (about the best soil food you can get!) I wouldn’t use any synthetic nutes at all. Compost teas, plant based fertilisers etc. would be the way to go.

So as to why add anything - sure, potentially everything plants need is in soil. But to get it the soil community (microbes, fungus etc.) needs to be thriving and this is not always the case. And even then, this community needs to be fed to stay charged and keep the plant going. So that’s where teas and drenches come in. There are ‘water only’ soil mixes too - but I haven’t done that yet. The best teas I’ve used have been compost tea, stinging nettle and kelp.

So I’ve been studying this stuff for only about 6-7 months. There are plenty folks way more knowledgeable than I with years of experience. But heaps ofwhat I’ve learnt has been from reading their old journals (Doc Bud, Conradino23 mostly) and the LOS books and info around the net and chasing up things arising from that. I decided that Brix was the way to go - so emphasis on mineralisation and microherd, not as much organic matter as LOS but still a living and organic soil. Someone else might look at all the same material and come to different conclusions.

I’ll drop back with some links to the things I’ve mentioned... can’t manage that on the fly when I’m using the phone!



vvvv

Link to the DBHBB kit website - the section on how it all works. What is Brix?

A review of True Living Organics
Book Review: True Living Organics by The Rev - Review by Doc Bud

And for the best take on the soil food web - the woman who studied and documented it and brought it to the forefront of organic gardening and farming (and landcare) is Dr Elaine Ingram. There are some great vids of her talking about it too.

 

[Old Salt]

Thanks Amy.

Pointing someone in the right direction is very valuable. I've grown outdoors for over fifty years. but it has been flowers and vegetables, not cannabis. Fertilizer for me came from the barn

 

[Amy Gardner]

... and here’s a link to the Organic Soil / LOS Thread here on 420 Building a Better Soil - Demonstrations & Discussions of Organic Soil Recipes

It’s long causeit’s been running a while but there’s great info in there and it’s also fine to jump to the front and just ask your questions. Folks will be happy to discuss...

 

[buzz62]

What strikes me first of all is this stuff is all expensive and the plants seem to be growing fine with out alot of addition of nutrients. This bagged soil has compost, peat, perilite and probably organic fertilizer and is rich already. The plants i have grow big thick dark green leaves which means they are healty.

HI Rock, my 25 cents: The fertilizer you are describing sounds like it is made for a hydroponics system, or a peat perlite mix (Sunshine #4) or a coco noir setup. If your mix has real soil in it, those additional micro nutreints and bud boosters are probably not necessary but they probably wouldn't hurt either! From what you describe it sounds like yours are doing great and they may only need a kick at flower time, which is when you could start using the bloom fertilizer. But if they don't look broke, don't fix them!
I grow in Sunshine #4 which has no soil or compost in it so I have to supply everything with a hydro style nutes system. I like this because indoors I have absolutely zero bug problems, which I used to have growing in dirt indoors years ago. This is my first time with hydro nutes so I am just going to run the basics as a control, and see what happens. So far, my plants are like nothing I have ever grown before! Check my links if your interested. Advanced Nutreints markets to cannabis growers only, and they are a great resource online regarding hydroponics and apparently they are not afraid to talk pot!

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

The thing is i don't grow out doors due to crappy climate plus an insane alkaline PH value which would more likely cause more problems than i care to list at present...

But whilst i do enjoy the herb i have found the indoor grow climate is more favourable for growing & this may be where one becomes the control freak on conditions, ultimately growing from seedling/clone to harvest a lot quicker thus a forced environment than the out door counter part.

Hence one may see an overwhelming list of nutrients & whether you need them all is very questionable but this may varie on type/style of grow aka hydroponic, coco coir, soil/loam etc then all of this changes to what the plant needs nutrient wise !

It might just be what is lacking from your chosen growing medium these brands cater for such a wide range products to use & i would more likely avoid brands which offer way to much single products for this & that.

One of the most simple brands i used was Hesi a bottle off grow 'n' bloom with micro nutrients all in and some supervit with amino acids what ever worked a treat (synthetic nutrients) with soil biobizz allmix (organic) had some pretty good plants with that.... ye i know synthetic nutrients in organic soil what a clash but it grew weed which smoked well

But one doe's admit of organic fondness for growing weed for finer taste 'n' aroma once cured well.


At the end of the day it is how you choose to grow your meds to meet your own satisfaction, that is all what matters

 

[TorturedSoul]

I tried to attach a photo of the products but it won't let me!

Maybe this will help:
Photo Gallery Guide - How to Resize, Upload & Post Photos

Holland Secret products.

In this box there is a 1)micro, 2)Bud and a 3)bloom fertilizer you are suppose to add to the water as the plants change in growth stage. All go in to water at the same time all the way through from the label. I have no idea if you need to add all the others? So when do you add these when the plants are so big and healthy.

There are feeding charts on the manufacturer's website:

https://www.futureharvest.com/our-products/plantlife-liquids/holland-secret/

I don't think plants can tell the difference if it comes from any one source or the other as if a nutrient is present in suffiecient amounts it will use them.

Well... Yes and no.

I am a farmer

Ah, then you should understand my above answer, then . Consider the various forms that nitrogen comes in. When you're amending your soil initially, you want nitrogen in two forms - a little bit of one that is available more or less immediately, plus more of one that is available over time. Whereas, if you're looking at a field full of plants and notice that they are nitrogen-deficient, you want something that can correct the issue RIGHT NOW, that is to say, is available to the plants(' roots) ASAP. Something that comes in a form that has to be pre-digested by the microbial life in the soil in order to turn into a product that your ailing plants can use is... not all that useful NOW, lol.

and i buy tonnes of fertilizer and i fertilize lots of my crops once and i get great yields so why is cannibis different?

In truth, they are all plants. But if you are literally purchasing "tonnes of fertilizer" each year - and I have no reason to doubt you on this, especially since I have worked at a place that sold 5-10-10, triple-10, ammonium nitrate (34-0-0, lol), super-triple-phosphate, and about a dozen other ones that I'd have to think to remember in quantities as small as a ¼-pound and as large as "how many 50# bags do you want?" - and we occasionally had to send people to another place when they looked at us kind of funny and replied, "I need a LOT more than that - I brought my trailer." - then you undoubtedly grow acres of fruits, vegetables, or some combination of the two.

Are you growing acres of cannabis, lol?

If so, go ahead and follow your usual industrial-size crop fields strategy. You won't harvest the most that it is possible to get per plant - but you'll make up for that with huge plant numbers.

The average cannabis grower grows a fraction... of a fraction of those plant numbers at a time. Compare the way you grow, say... tomato plants. Now think of the crazy (just kidding!) lady across town who is trying to grow a tomato large enough to break the record (3.51 kilograms / 7 pounds 12 ounces). She is probably obsessing over her plant. I'd guess that she's out there all day (and night?) standing guard over it, watching for critters of all sizes. I would be completely unsurprised to learn that she measures out her plant's nutrients as obsessively as some of us cannabis growers do.

Consider also: Out of all the fruits and vegetables you grow, lol, how many of them routinely sell for $100 or more per quarter-ounce? Or would cost that much if you did not grow enough and had to purchase some to tide you over until your next harvest?

Yes, it is "just a plant." However...

I don't see any signs of nutrient defieciency of any type.

Being able to read one's plants - or at least compare them to one of the nutrient deficiency picture-charts that have been posted online 420,000 times - is a very valuable skill. Especially when:

The company when you call and ask how to use the products have some young man on the phone that doesn't tell you much

And:

when you say the word Cannibis he gets all wierd.

Perhaps it is illegal to grow cannabis (for at least some portion of the population) where he is located, lol? Or he fears that it might be so where you are? (People have gone to jail for "facilitating" a thing that was completely legal for them to do, because it was not legal for the customer.)

I suspect most of the other companies are the same

It varies. Advanced Nutrients sure isn't shy (and, just this once, I mean that as a compliment). There was a small nutrient manufacturer who was a sponsor here that had cannabis plants - and frogs, with red eyes - on the labels of his products. IDK if that is still the case (he got raided due to... well, never mind). But he would happily discuss cannabis-specific feeding recommendations - at least here, on the forum.

Many nutrient companies "sponsor" (pay to advertise and participate in discussions) various cannabis-related Internet forums, and prefer to do their discussing/recommending through those. Even Sensi Seeds generally refuses to discuss specifics (IOW, answer growers' questions) on their blog. They always tell people to ask such things on their forum.

In a way, this is probably a GOOD thing for the grower. If you call someone and they "privately" give you bad information, you tend to learn that it was bad... the hard way . But in an open forum, there's a reasonable chance that if such a thing happens, people will correct them on it (or at least have a good argument).

but i don't want to buy every product to find out.

Completely understandable. Many nutrient companies will send out a sample or two, now and then. It helps to ask them politely, mention a competitor's product line that you have been using, state that you've heard/read good things about their product line but {have just bought your year's supply of products / cannot justify spending $2,000 at a time on products that you have no personal experience with / be creative }. And, as you have discovered, some companies just don't allow their employees to discuss cannabis. In other words, your experience with more mainstream crops can serve you well if/when asking for product samples.

Unless someone actually has a scientific answer for me i don't want to hear about it.

Apologies. I did not get the cannabis that I grew as a teenager before I started paying attention to their needs tested. Neither have I sent any samples of bud that I grew in the last 20 or so years off to a lab. But I can tell you which set I liked better, LMAO.

What strikes me first of all is this stuff is all expensive

You betcha. (Although, to be fair, some products are pretty cheap.) To be honest, even the expensive stuff, combined with the associated costs of growing (electricity, water, the cost of one's equipment amortized over several years, et cetera), still equates to a harvest that ends up being far cheaper than it would cost to just go and buy the stuff. And most nutrient companies know - and take advantage - of this reality. But, again, there are cheaper alternatives. See:
Osmocote Plus Plant Food - Discuss Its Use With Cannabis Here!

People also still spend $15 or so for a 2.2-pound sack of General Hydroponics MaxiBloom dry nutrient, add a little Epsom salt, and use that. Others recall that people have been publishing books on how to mix up one's own (hydroponic) nutrients from the 22 or so elements since at least[/] 1972, go to their local library to check out such a book, and then mix their own nutrients up for pennies. Some spend $1,200+ in order to purchase every single nutrient/supplement that a company offers to sell them. <SHRUGS>

Most every one of them ends up with a harvest, lol. I've seen some from the former category do better than some from the latter.

and the plants seem to be growing fine with out alot of addition of nutrients.

The plants i have grow big thick dark green leaves which means they are healty.

It means that they have enough nitrogen (possibly even too much ), at least. If you're a rabbit, healthy leaves are surely enough.

So, in the end, why is Cannibis any different than a nutrient hungry crop like Canola, corn or potatoes ?

You get $3,000+ for a pound of potatoes? If you did, you'd probably be trying all sorts of things to increase your production.

There are really only a few reasons for having so many nutrient products (and for many companies to have so many each - and to come out with more every time you turn around ) :
They like to vacation in nice places
Many "stoners" are like little kids, lol. They are trusting.
See the above two reasons.
Ditto.

But there is one more: I've read that there are over 2,000 different strains of cannabis extant in the commercial marketplace today (and that might have been a low estimate). There can be very different nutritional requirements between one strain and another. Try giving an African landrace sativa (that evolved in a location with poor soil and little nutrients in that soil) the same nutrient ratio - and at the same rate - that your G13 x Hash Plant is happy on, and the best thing that could happen to you would be for that sativa to immediately fall over dead - instead of giving you false hope that it would survive such torture until harvest. I suppose that's an extreme example of different strains' nutrient requirements, but it does illustrate how having the ability to tailor your nutrient mix can be very handy.

But you can get this with more inexpensive nutrient brands as well. Jack's Classic springs to mind. Not the cheapest in the world, but still pretty cheap. And there are LOTS of different nutrient ratios available with that brand.

Basically, you have stumbled upon the worst-kept secret in the history of the world, lol: It's just a plant. You don't really need 26 different bottles of liquid nutrients and 15 different tubs of dry ones. Some ability to tailor one's (plant) feed is helpful (see above). But "buying into" the "1,001 products" thing can be counterproductive, especially if one hasn't grown a lot of cannabis in the past. And there's a point of diminishing returns, regardless. And, as you have observed, if you have healthy plants, why add more "stuff," lol? Yes, some things can turn a healthy plant into a magnificant one, but there is a point of diminishing returns - which can quickly turn into a nutrient toxicity situation.

You won't learn that secret in High Times, lol. I suspect that disclosing it would p!ss their advertisers off (and that the owners of that rag also like to take nice vacations).