So before I sold fulvic, I did a ton of grows with just 2-part base salts. Balance the NH4 to NO3 in the recipe to dial the pH in for your water source and feed. That’s it. The flower was kind of boring at the end of the day.
I found HydroFeed and TAP from Jack’s. I don’t believe in flower boosters, but phosphoric acid gave a little P boost for yield and keeps the pH from drifting up too much.
Cue AGT-50. I don’t worry about pH. The taste and smell are awesome from the organic acids and high brix. It covers several other types of biostimulants. I have added cytokinin dominant kelp to help the structure and branching, but I can honestly take it or leave it. Sometimes, I do a soluble calcium foliar at flip, which helps lighter tops and boosts them into flower. Again, not totally necessary if a huge operation or on a budget.
This fertilizer lineup I posted is complete and has worked for acres of plants. I wouldn’t (intentionally) steer someone wrong when it comes to growing the best flower.
EDIT: and I have done organic gardening for years in my personal veggie/cannabis gardens, so I’m not just a salt apologist!
i just checked out pricing on that HGV stuff. comes in at like 200 bucks for 20lbs (12lbs growth, 8 lbs flower) so 10 bucks a pound.
Jacks can be had for 55 bucks for 25lbs base (2.20/lb) and Yara Calnit is 30bucks for 50lbs ( 0.60/lb) so for the same 20lbs of feed as HGV (3:2 ratio) 12lbs base and 8lbs canit your in for 26.40+4.80=$31.20 for jacks/calnit vs $200 for HGV. is the HGV worth 6.4x the cost of jacks?
If what you are looking for is the absolute cheapest thing you can get by with then your answer is , No. I would have to assume with this mentality your really not worried about the final product.
certainly not looking for the cheapest and i think my quality far surpasses many growers out here on the east coast. what im looking for is justifiable expense, not greentaxed overpriced crap or bro science nutrient marketing lingo to sell 10 cents worth of salts for 20 dollars. there’s only handful of mass production fertilizer plants here in the USA that produce all of the salts resellers use to repackage and ratio out there “special blends”. the salts essentially all come from very few sources and are all very similar in guaranteed analysis so my question is do you feel the “special blend” ratio of that HGV nutrient line is worth 6+ times the cost of jacks given that the salts more than likely come from the same fertlizer plants and are probably not even blended by the resellers.
Not to nasay anything here but most base nutrients sold into this industry can be reverse engineered using their feed charts, NPK, label amounts, and SDS. Not universally true (for instance a lot of calmag supplements use multiple calcium salts/chelates) but ultimately they are mostly comprised of bulk salts from the likes of Haifa, Brandt, and Yara. We started out nutrient regime by reverse engineering a couple of well-performing mixes and we got better results at 2c on the dollar. We run nearly straight inorganic and I think our total cost is about $20 per 1000gal of DWC solution at 2500 uS.
Now that’s what I’m talkin bout. Bio-Live, Feather Meal, Kelp Meal, Alfalfa Meal, Oyster Shell, and even some Azomite… all from Down To Earth. The Bio-Live, High Phosphorus Bat Guano, and Kelp Meal along with some decent compost make a killer tea.
Its not about how much the salt cost. Its about how many gallons of feed solution it will make. Look at the @AgTonik fulvic. Its super concentrate so it kills the BioAg i was using when it comes to gallons of feed solution made. Shit its so strong i think it will work great at 50% strength.
@AgTonik There is no listing of what the Aluminum content is but I have all of my flower lab tested for heavy metals (an extra $75) and I have never seen anything alarming and even though there are no state mandates here in regard to heavy metals I feel much more confident (and so do my patients) knowing I am within what would be acceptable in states that do have mandates… according to my testing lab
