Growing Without Bloom Nutes By Farside05

Yeah, the German electrification, automation, and digitalization firm. Get your mind off the balls!

Like most guys, I'm perpetually stuck in adolescence. 50 years old and farts and "that's what she said" jokes are still funny.
 
I never thought of her as uptight! :)

Not necessarily uptight but in the family we refer to her sense of humor like Dr Evil. "She's the Diet Coke of funny. Just one calorie, not funny enough."
 
I'll give you some of my numbers from a feeding yesterday with 4L of tap water.

Tap ppm: 164 EC(us/cm) 348
With .4g of Kelp Extract added: 182 ppm EC 387
With 4.2g of MC added to above: 591 ppm EC 1289

Without adjusting pH it brought it all to 6.3

In case you wanted something to compare against.

Your 4.2g of Mega Crop added 409ppm. My Mega Crop adds 760ppm per 5g, or 638ppm for 4.2g. So there's a pretty substantial difference (229ppm). You're running the old product right? That or yours has absorbed a bunch of water weight. There has to be something to explain that big of a difference.
 
Using Mega's numbers from their calculator:

A tsp would be 6g. In my world it would be 8g.
5g would be 693ppm. In my world its 760ppm.

So if I used their measurements, I'd be pumping 8g at them instead of 6, and a hotter mix than they state. Sounds like a recipe for disaster. At least if you are going strictly be weight. Either going by their ppm scale or my more conservative numbers (more dense and stronger = feeding less of the product) sounds like a plan.
 
This AM when I got home, the last seed was still not up. Being a bit on the impatient side, and seeing that tap root sticking out the side of the Jiffy pellet the other day, I decided to poke around gently with a syringe needle tip to see if I could find the top. Normally I can push just a tiny bit of soil back and there it is. I kept going and going, no little cotyledons staring back at me. Eventually I got deep enough to find her. She was twisted up like a pretzel with the top stuck underneath part of the stem. I figured there was no way she'd ever make it out of the ground in her current condition so I preformed surgery. I gently picked around the tap root till she came free with no resistance, straightened her out as much as possible and replanted her. Should know in a day or two if she's gonna make it. I think there's a good chance.
 
I sent an email to my ProMix guy about what to add for a second run but haven't heard back.
I heard back from Mr ProMix! His suggestion was (obviously) to always grow with new media. But he did give good reasons for doing so, in spite of the commercial interest he has.

He basically said that it's doable to refurbish the used ProMix with mycorrhizae, limestone, and wetting agent, but figuring out how much of each to use would be an issue, along with the fact that there are leftover nutrients and pathogens/insects. Not to mention that the pH of the medium has most likely drifted with all the nitrogen and alkalinity of the water poured through.

"When using new growing media, the product is formulated the same each time and there is less variability and you will not inherit cultural conditions from previous crops."

The question is what is the cost of the lime, wetting agent, and mycorrhizae needed to bring it back to spec, and how close can I get it to what I've been using previously. At $25 for 2.2 cf bag the stuff ain't cheap, though neither was the Dr Earth Pot of Gold I started with, which I had to add loads of perlite to :).
 
Baby pics

This GSC didn't really want to open her leaves although the were not stuck together. She finally has some now. Not really seeing true leaves in there yet while everyone else is working on some.
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The other GSC
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This is the Blue girl I did surgery on. She was real yellow and bent over. She's already straightening up and getting more green
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The biggest girl so far. The other Blue Dreamatic.
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I heard back from Mr ProMix! His suggestion was (obviously) to always grow with new media. But he did give good reasons for doing so, in spite of the commercial interest he has.

He basically said that it's doable to refurbish the used ProMix with mycorrhizae, limestone, and wetting agent, but figuring out how much of each to use would be an issue, along with the fact that there are leftover nutrients and pathogens/insects. Not to mention that the pH of the medium has most likely drifted with all the nitrogen and alkalinity of the water poured through.

"When using new growing media, the product is formulated the same each time and there is less variability and you will not inherit cultural conditions from previous crops."

The question is what is the cost of the lime, wetting agent, and mycorrhizae needed to bring it back to spec, and how close can I get it to what I've been using previously. At $25 for 2.2 cf bag the stuff ain't cheap, though neither was the Dr Earth Pot of Gold I started with, which I had to add loads of perlite to :).

My current Faux Mix has no mycos. More like the standard Pro Mix HP than the Pro Mix HP with Mycorrhizae. It also has no wetting agent. As far as lime, while browsing around trying to find how much to add, I ran into an experiment. Someone did 8 batches of soil, starting at 2 Tbsp per gallon and increasing 2Tbsp each batch until the last batch had 16 Tbsp in it. From 2-14 Tbsp, the soil wasn't out of range. It took 16 Tbsp per gallon before things became too base. So there is a big fudge factor there. I'd say 2 Tbsp, which is on the lower end and what I did. The 2 Tbsp number came up in a number of articles I found on building your own mix. 6.75 pounds of Espoma Garden Lime from Home Depot is a whopping $5. There's probably enough in a bag to do a good hundred gallons of soil.
 
Stopped on the way home and picked up refined coconut oil, jello, jars, and some containers. Got home, jarred up the edibles grade Cookies that I didn't have enough jars for. That was after I tore up an ounce and a half to make some infused coconut oil for gummies. For lower grade bud, it's wicked sticky! Should be a good batch. It's decarbing in the oven as I type this.

Poked my head in the tent. Surgery Blue Dream looks like she's pulling through. She's greened up and is only a shade lighter than her siblings. The GSC that thought it was a Tulip and didn't want to spread her petals, has opened up more. I know they've been up a couple days, but normally I would wait to transplant them till about now. I'll call this Day 1 for counting purposes.
 
Day 2

Surgery girl has made a full rebound. The one GSC still doesn't seem to be working on any true leaves. Guess I'll let it go a couple more days, and if things don't change then a new bean it will be.

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