So one of my customers always said that the hydro store is just dolled up overpriced water. When I managed ~150 lights lights, I switched them to a commercial salt mix. Add the price of insecticidal soap and you have an entire feed and IPM program. We ended up paying about $0.08/gallon feed and foliar even with AGT-50 fulvic as a biostimulant.
Here’s our salt mix start to finish:
(5 gallons concentrate A+B, 10ml A+B/L, 1.4 EC, 500 total gallons)
A - Chelated Micros Micros 76 g
A - Calcium Nitrate (Tetrahydrate) Ca(NO3)2.4H2O 1682 g
A - Ammonium Nitrate NH4NO3 478 g
A - AGT-50 500 ml (1ml/final gallon)
B - Magnesium Sulfate (Heptahydrate) MgSO4.7H2O 959 g
B - Potassium Sulfate K2SO4 366 g
B - Potassium Monobasic Phosphate KH2PO4 415 g
Save money compared to the hydroponics store and mix your own fertilizer!
Sheet
I use technaflora nutrients for about 8yrs now. Its literally a 6 bottle setup on feed days. Then I use 4 bottles (other stuff, not technaflora) for amendment days.
I may give this a try.
What’s the ppm of your recipe? I’m at 1480ppm currently. Zero burn. If I feed less, at week 5 I have bad issues.
Even if you don’t try this, you would like either jacks powder. This is a nice easy mix though, if I my grows were of a meaningful size, I’d try this out.
Powders much easier and cheaper than bottles imo.
I use mega crop, but more people here would vouch for jacks.
@Demontrich In Promix, I keep it 1.4 EC (700 ppm on most meters). In coco, I have to go up to 11-1200 ppm by the end of flower. This room was CO2 and new bulbs. The 4-1-5 NPK ratio prevents it from burning, unlike with silly hydro store bloom boosters.
@Jmvernonia Peter’s STEM works, but I prefer chelated micros from Custom Hydro Nutrients
@Curious_Roberto We mix 5 gallons of liquid at a time from raw salts. This is a couple cents cheaper a gallon than Jacks. When you get going through a bunch of gallons those cents add up against product margin quickly.
Jacks, Yara or Haifa 25-50lb bags of calcium nitrate are about as cheap as you can get
Then epsom or magnesium sulfate can be bought in 25-50lb bags as well…
I can get jacks locally for 50 bucks per 25lb bag I usually buy 10 at a time and 4 or 5 50lb bags of calcinit and 50lbs of magnesium sulfate.
I tried 2 different formulas of Greenleaf one part but it never worked as good as jacks and it’s dirty as hell so it gums up dosatrons and I’ve heard blumats as well. I tried it for a few crops and switched back to Jack’s after.having not so great of a time with it.
@square_root_pharms Greenleaf Megacrop uses a cheap Chinese humic that falls out and doesn’t offer much benefit. For soil it’s fine. For hydro and production, it’s not fantastic.
I run HGV nutrients that has a Base then Growth/Flower depending on your needs. I run the concentrate in 55 gallon drums and dose thru hammer pumps 1:500.
What is your take on the Athena ag liquid salts. No mixing to dilute, all the other benefits of running salts, but more easily measurable and works with a dosotron (sp) vs having to hand mix.
I just buy raw bulk compost and brew my own teas and amend my soil as needed . Personally I like to top dress every 2-3 weeks, weekly insect frass foliar until flower for silica boost , and weekly compost tea(s) . I will use epsom salt as a magnesium and sulphur boost occasionally as well . Bio alive from down to earth is a great product and love all their amendments . All my teas are fish , kelp ,insect frass , and occasionally other goodies . Roots organic has terp tea grow and bloom that’s basically an all in one that has trace minerals , microbes, and NPK that can top dressed or brewed in teas that’s pretty awesome. If i use bottled nutes i go with the small company called elevation organics that has a grow , bloom, humic acid , and yucca its been my favorite so far .
