How much of the improvement would you attribute to your improved irrigation strategy? What do you think would happen if you used the same irrigation strategy with different salt ratios?
Nutritionally athena isn’t much different than HGV. They are both high potassium formulas that will pull good yield. My qualm with either in a commercial setting is that the K:Ca ratio is high. This antagonizes Ca absorption and limits our ability to add a meaningful amount (20ish ppm) of Si without antagonizing Ca further. Ca and Si are very important for pest and disease resistance and one of the ways we maintain in a strong plant that doesn’t need oil or soap sprays every 3 days even in the presence of high mite or pm pressure.
I have a functioning mix that hits the nutritionals exactly, but there is sedimentation upon mixing mainly due to SOP and it should not ever go above 6.0 pH to avoid precipitation. I have not figured out exactly what they are using to avoid precipitation at higher pH, that aspect is fairly important in large operations. I regularly measure high pH at the farthest emitter and find cal phosphate as well as iron sulfide in drip lines, so that tells me the average operator can’t correctly maintain pH.