Anyone testing brix levels?

[bizz]

I've been testing the brix of my fruit and vegetables I eat for a while now. High brix food is so much better than low or average brix. Taste and nutritional value dont even compare.

If you can get a plants brix above 12%, the plant develops natural immunities to pests and disease. A high brix plant will yield more and the produce will be of higher quality and will also have a much lower water-to-soluable-particles-ratio thus longer shelf life.

My friend got his medical grow up to 14% brix using a combo of organicly sourced additives and fox farm base nutes in coco.

I'm on my 2nd medical run and have tested leaves of both runs and its seems to be about 7.5%, not too good especially compared to my friend using same strain. Granted environmental factors are not same in his grow and mine, but I am using canna nutes in cana coco. Although I got high quality produce from 1st run, yield was not there and it took 10 weeks, where as my friends higher brix grow finished in 8 weeks, same genetics, headband.

Would switching nutes help my brix levels?

Is canna really all its cracked up to be?

Anyone else even measuring brix?

 

[Weed420]

I've used a refractometer but never for measuring MJ. These are for liquids. How do you measure a plant?

 

[bizz]

Cut some new leaf or stem growth and use a pliers or something similar( there are tools made for extracting plant fluid this way ) to squeeze out a drop or 2. Put plant fluid on refractometer, hold up to light...

I think it works best if done right after lights on because during the plants day it breaks down sugars so best brix reading is done early but not sure it matters so much when taken, maybe just few 0.1%...

If your plants are high brix in veg or early flower you are more likely to get good results later and if its not high at that point steps could be taken to improve brix. Later during flowering brix reading will tell you general health of plant but if brix is not already at high level late in flower it is most likely not going to get there.

By measuring brix before and after altering your food program you can see conrete evidence of whether the changes you made are helping or hurting your plants health.

Brix is a measure of sugar content but other minerals/solubles are present in equal ratios to sugars no matter if sugar at 5% or 10% so higher sugar means plant has more building blocks(minerals/solubles) available for growth.

 

[Weed420]

Interesting. A refractometer isn't very expensive unless you get one of the digital ones. I'll have to give it a try.

 

[Icemud]

Who is testing there plants brix...?? I would love to see all types of results from all types of grows... The more testing we do, the better we will understand the limitations of certain strains, environments, soils and nutrients.

I am testing my brix levels... so far

Holy grail og...between 19 and 23 brix
Silverback OG.. between 19 and 22 brix
Platinum Bubba between 16 and 21 brix
Blackberry Kush between 10 and 14 brix
Sour Bubble... between 12 and 18 brix..

So far these are the ranges of my current grow...details in my journal...

Lets see the readings that everyone is getting!!

 

[simonsays]

I use CANNA in soil and I'm yellowing the leaves,my brix meter is reading 7% I though I was over feeding them cause my friends plants are only reading 3% on my brix meter...so I can go as 12% high up and its not going to hurt the plant???

 

[Icemud]

I use CANNA in soil and I'm yellowing the leaves,my brix meter is reading 7% I though I was over feeding them cause my friends plants are only reading 3% on my brix meter...so I can go as 12% high up and its not going to hurt the plant???

The higher your brix percentage, the "heathier" and more efficient your plant is growing you definitely want to see higher brix for a better overall product in the end. Brix of 22 is what we are looking for for "superior" quality MMJ, My plants currently are ranging from 12 to 23 brix...

The goal for high brix grows is to create a living soil and a "perfect" ratio of nutrients where the plant can "fetch" what it wants from the soil by secreting sugars into the soil to feed the microbes which break down rock and organic materials and therefore feed the plant.
You can get your brix up by doing a 6-5-3 ratio of Calcium carbonate, soft rock phosphate and gypsum as a top dressing, as well as adding "minerals" to your soil with products like greensand, lava sand, azomite...once you have your soil in place, high brix is achieved through foliar feeding the correct things...things like calcium, phosphates and carbohydrates will help increase brix...

You can spray your plants with things like a mix of water/coca cola/milk/honey to help raise brix... there are other combo's out there..and this is what we currently are fine tuning..

 

[simonsays]

Thanks for the info Icemud !!!!!!!!!

 

[runningbird]

Icemud lets talk this is runningbird

 

[GigaGrew]

im liking the idea of highbrix but if its a low number, how are we suppose to know what to add?

its all very well being able to read your brix level and throw things in the soil you hope the plant needs, but is it all guess work or are there some data sheets around that tell us all the things the plant needs?

lets say you have added all these rocks to the soil, but without knowing the true needs you add say too much lavasand and not enough azomite, how do we tell?

im getting a bit stressed about it to be honest, because ive looked at pages and pages, and vid after vid and they almost exclusively say how to test and why its good, but not actually how to DO a brix grow oO

i think more than anything we need a baseline of all the composites of the plant in a 3-5-1-7-9-13-1-21-0.01-.3 kind of method so basically you know if your plant matches that string, its definatly going to be an average plant.

if we have a baseline we can then start tweaking the individual micro/macros.

pretty sure that ALL indicas will have a very similar base line and the same with ALL sativas
similar to all humans and all monkeys (maybe even all primates).

you certainly dont hear a lot of, your african so you need less iron or your chineese so you need less zinc. we are all the human race and variation in needs should be rather minor and probably based on enviromental conditions, which we as growers are in control of.

 

[Icemud]

im liking the idea of highbrix but if its a low number, how are we suppose to know what to add?

its all very well being able to read your brix level and throw things in the soil you hope the plant needs, but is it all guess work or are there some data sheets around that tell us all the things the plant needs?

lets say you have added all these rocks to the soil, but without knowing the true needs you add say too much lavasand and not enough azomite, how do we tell?

im getting a bit stressed about it to be honest, because ive looked at pages and pages, and vid after vid and they almost exclusively say how to test and why its good, but not actually how to DO a brix grow oO

i think more than anything we need a baseline of all the composites of the plant in a 3-5-1-7-9-13-1-21-0.01-.3 kind of method so basically you know if your plant matches that string, its definatly going to be an average plant.

if we have a baseline we can then start tweaking the individual micro/macros.

pretty sure that ALL indicas will have a very similar base line and the same with ALL sativas
similar to all humans and all monkeys (maybe even all primates).

you certainly dont hear a lot of, your african so you need less iron or your chineese so you need less zinc. we are all the human race and variation in needs should be rather minor and probably based on enviromental conditions, which we as growers are in control of.

I definitely agree with you that there is not a lot of info on "how to" grow high brix... especially in how it relates to cannabis... What testing brix is useful for is determining what things we add will effect the plants positively and which ones negatively.. so lets say you test your leaves and they are at a 10, then you foliar spray something on the plants... a few hours later you test the plants again and you notice that your plants are only reading an 8, this means that what you sprayed was not effective and the plant did not like it..

We are in the Pioneering stages of high brix growing, so really, the process, the materials used and all the details are in experimental mode however with each grow that us high brix growers do, more data is added to the overall concept and we can narrow down what works and what doesnt. Overall the Ideal way to do high brix growing is to start with a soil test to determine what your ratio's are.. AG Labs is the place to get this done and they also seem to be the center for high brix growing online. Once you know what is in your soil, you know what to add to the soil to get the ratio's right...

We do know some things about high brix... force feeding nutrients is not the way to achieve high brix... the purpose of high brix growing is to have the right ratio's already in the soil, and by issuing the correct foliar feedings, this causes the plant to let sugars go out of the roots, which feed the microbes, which then break down the soil, and make the right nutrients available to the plant... High brix is overall creating a perfect working natural system of plant, soil and foodweb, and then supercharging it with foliar sprays...

For high brix plants...Calcium is one of the most important elements... we have determined to get this proper ratio a 6-5-3 ratio of calcium carbonate, soft rock phosphate and gypsum must be added into the soil...(for most soil types we use), also the soil needs to be mineralized, so for this we use (greensand, azamite, glacial rock dust, lava sand, zeolite or other mineral based rock powders)

Compost teas are also used in raising high brix crops. By adding a bunch of microlife to your soil, the nutrients are available whenever your plant needs them.

So overall we are all experimenting with High brix and how to get the best readings.. with more people testing there brix levels, we can begin to see what soil mixtures, what feedings, what foliar sprays work and which ones dont. The more data we collect the better we can narrow down this process to the exact way to grow for best results.

Also, yes, different strains have different "ranges" of high brix...as I found out in my grow.... all 5 of my strains read different on the brix meter, but were all treated exactly the same (feedings, lighting, environment). So this means that you may have one strain that 15brix may be the best you can get out of that plant meaning top quality, while others may have a reading of 22brix for there top potential... the more data we collect per strain, the better chances we have of fully understanding how to read the top genetic potential of our plants..

There is a ton of information in DocBud's, Vapedogg, My journal, Curso's and a few others that go over the general ideas of high brix growing... feel free to read through them and it will give you a great idea of what our focus for pioneering this method are

 

[GigaGrew]

at this point i just want to cross reference another thread because this conversation is now spanning a couple of threads and both have great minds to learn from =)

Curso's Semi-High Brix Take One - Featuring Blueberry Gum - La Musa & Purple Urkle

 

[GigaGrew]

i just have to say one thing....i love you man!

some quick feed back as you have answered questions i put in the other thread and generated some more.

first before i forget as i think this is vital! ok these numbers are random, but bear with me. if say a northern lights fed a certain way attained a brix of 22 and a skunk fed the same way got 15....if we then bred the 2 plants (fully crossbreed till we have an exact 50/50 match stable) would its highbrix number on the same feed be an EXACT average.......if the answer to this question turns out to be a yes i theorise we may be able to use an engine like genome at home to generate brix templates for every breed known to man (the further you go back the the very first true blood strains the better this should work.

"also the soil needs to be mineralized, so for this we use (greensand, azamite, glacial rock dust, lava sand, zeolite or other mineral based rock powders)"
Is this written in stone..if you pardon the pun...are we sure that these items contain every mineral our plant needs?

"There is a ton of information in DocBud's, Vapedogg, My journal, Curso's and a few others that go over the general ideas of high brix growing... feel free to read through them and it will give you a great idea of what our focus for pioneering this method are "
On it tommorow...i shit you not brother, getting into gardening learning about high brix (Bigger, better, faster, stronger) is changing my life...im talking career change, home business luxury high brix veg...the bubble hasnt even formed yet never mind popped, there is legitimate money to be made here and a world to change...oh im in alright =D

 

[GigaGrew]

sorry another question..i didnt want to edit previous as you may already be responding and miss it.

"Overall the Ideal way to do high brix growing is to start with a soil test to determine what your ratio's are.."

What if you have no soil (buying fox farms this and green frog that, is still sort of slave to branding) to test and want to build something from scratch,include making your own soil component to perfecting high brix.

 

[Icemud]

sorry another question..i didnt want to edit previous as you may already be responding and miss it.

"Overall the Ideal way to do high brix growing is to start with a soil test to determine what your ratio's are.."

What if you have no soil (buying fox farms this and green frog that, is still sort of slave to branding) to test and want to build something from scratch,include making your own soil component to perfecting high brix.

I believe DocBud Mentioned something about the soil in, don't quote on this, but I wanna say Montana was near perfect for starting with...and it have something to do with the right ratios. I also read that soil in Nebraska is so plain that it is also a great starting soil to build because there is not much in it.

The high brix thing really isn't about being a slave to branding or not, it is about creating the right environment in the rootzone, so If happy frog, or promix or any commercial soil is near perfect, I definitely would use it. We just haven't gotten around to testing all the commercial soils to know what is in it... so right now were working with what is available, adding the proper amendments and seeing what happens... your right though, to get a soil to the best brix growing potential isn't something that happens in just one cycle, it may take a few years for an amended soil to become perfect for high brix growing... That definitely is our goal, but were still on the learning curve how to get there.

 

[GigaGrew]

just curious, how do clones taken from a highbrix plant stack up against a normal clone, ie faster rooting, bigger growth at start e.t.c any difference that someone has monitored?

 

[runningbird]

It would make sense that all phases of plant growth would be second to none

 

[Curso]

just curious, how do clones taken from a highbrix plant stack up against a normal clone, ie faster rooting, bigger growth at start e.t.c any difference that someone has monitored?

Not saying my mother's are "high" brix but they're doing pretty well (I'll order a refractormetor sometime soon). I took 4 clones and put them straight into a mostly promix hp 2 Tbls of 6-5-3, 1tsp azamite and 1/3c tea and a foilar spray they took and grew in 4 days...

 

[Icemud]

I don't have fact supporting this answer, but I would also say that taking a clone from a higher brix plant, I would assume that all aspects of growth, health and such would be better than taking a clone of non high brix...

 

[GigaGrew]

when i can afford to do highbrix i will run some tests, like no rooting hormone and things like that, see how well they fare.

on a seperate note: one thought i had. these minerals we put in the soil...are they not classed as non renewable resources? we might have to start thinking of alternatives.