Amount of nutrients to give plants during early stages.

[fasttanoy]

Evening chaps, I'm about to begin my first grow and have a few questions about nutrients. My plan at the moment it to propagate seedlings in a sealed chamber planted in a 50/50 coco/perlite mix whilst feeding them with vega start, rhizotonic and trichoderma powder. Then as vegetative growth begins I'll start the coco specific nutrients.

My question stems from the fact that I've seen conflicting information about how much nutrients the plants need. Some suggest only feeding with 1/3 or 1/2 the recommended amount whilst other advise strict adherence to the company's feed chart.

I'd be appreciative if anyone with any experience with this can offer their thoughts.

Cheers

 

[farnorth]

What's up fasttanoy..
It is somewhat of a vague question with similarly vague answers.
It depends a lot on several factors.
How strong is your lighting? Co2? Strain?
Some strains prefer more nutrients some less. Stronger lighting with co2 will make your plant work harder and in return will ask for more food.
Certain nutrients are also stronger than others and depending on the combination of nutrients certain additives can pile up quickly making lower dosage a must. This is not the only way just one that tends to work for me as a rule of thumb until the strain is figured out.

More is not always better and remember to add little by little. Can always add more but once plants get burnt it creates a whole new slew of problems.
Don't be afraid to start with 1/4 strength. And even work your way up with the additives. Going ftpl strength too fast can become a nightmare. Go slow and just watch your plants.
If they start to burn a little. Back off of the strength a bit. Don't rush to flushing if it's just a small burn.

 

[jamthe3]

Evening chaps, I'm about to begin my first grow and have a few questions about nutrients. My plan at the moment it to propagate seedlings in a sealed chamber planted in a 50/50 coco/perlite mix whilst feeding them with vega start, rhizotonic and trichoderma powder. Then as vegetative growth begins I'll start the coco specific nutrients.

My question stems from the fact that I've seen conflicting information about how much nutrients the plants need. Some suggest only feeding with 1/3 or 1/2 the recommended amount whilst other advise strict adherence to the company's feed chart.

I'd be appreciative if anyone with any experience with this can offer their thoughts.

Cheers

The reason it varies is because there's so many other factors equating to the product. What kind of water are you using, RO, tap, distilled. Tap already has many disolved solids in it and varies from place to place as to how many. RO can be similar as there are many water stands that actually simply run tap or have inferior filtration systems.

What nutes are you using...for example, Miracle grow full strength is slightly under 1400 ppms. Dyna Grow is significantly lower at full strength. How do you water? Always feeding or feed, water, feed, etc.

Easiest way to figure it out is to get a TDS meter or if that is unavailable, put out what you do have available (ie, nutes, water being used, etc) and probably someone whose had similar circumstances can chime in and advise.

 

[Fuzzy Duck]

I wouldn't really worry about feeding a sprout in till its formed or forming its first true set of leafs.

Once first set of true leafs are beginning to show i would be inclined to feed 1/4 strength nutrients for the first 2 or 3 weeks then progress to 1/2 strength for another 2 weeks before going full rate application.



Well the thing is nobody in the right mind would give a freshly germinated seed sprout full rate of nutrients... as the EC/PPPM would be extremely high undoubtedly causing nutrient burn !

This is why people refer to using 1/4, 1/3 or 1/2 rate application of nutrients mainly whilst in the veg stage of growth working up towards full strength.

Just need to think like this small plants don't need a lot of nutrients but as they grow the demand increase's...