Came across this forum while trying to come up with a nutrient solution. I’ve really been enjoying reading through all the high level discussions here. Specifically the AGT-50 thread, The Let’s talk Silica thread, and the Athena reverse engineering thread. Looks like the activity may have died down a bit since the Vid ended? Regardless, thanks to all the contributors of those threads.
I’m an original OverGrow guy who used to run what is now considered a small 36 light medical grow circa 2012. (To make an extraction reference for the sake of the F4200, anybody remember HashMaster-Kut from OverGrow? Learned how to do my first BHO run from him in a homemade glass tube that held 7 grams, must have been about 2005?) I’m getting back into growing for fun now and I’m obsessed again.
To make another reference to an old OverGrower, Heath Robinson was my inspiration, growing DWC trees, however I very quickly got away from buying water, and started using Jacks 3-2, which wasn’t very common at the time, high P still reigned supreme for bloom. The Jacks vegged great and yield was good but buds were very lacking in flavour. Assuming it was N too high and P too low I started working in Maxi-Bloom as I progressed through flower and eventually being all Maxi near the end. This worked well, though maybe not why I thought it did. but I got good yield and flavour. The profile would look something like this midway through flower:
Now that I’m rediscovering growing I tried to go back to old fatihful but the Maxi-Bloom is a discontinued product, hence my stumbling across this forum while searching for alternatives. I have a 10 year old bag of Jacks 5-12-26 and Yara CalNit, was worried it would be a solid block after being stored for that long but it’s like the day I bought it. I’ve now also purchased some Jacks 0-12-26 and a few other salts to do the nitrogen fade that I was crudely attempting before. I put together one feed schedule at a more typical “full strength” EC for relatability, and then another for DWC, which is the same ratios, just lower EC.
Let me know what you folks think of what I’ve devised here as a nutrient schedule. So far so good, I’m currently growing in a greenhouse supplemented by a couple Gavitas I dug out of storage.
…And thanks again for all the awesome content here. I don’t think I’ve ever been riveted by 1850 post thread like it’s a book I can’t put down.
I think you are approaching this in the correct manner. I hesitate to give you specific suggestions because I think there are many ways to get good results. Your numbers are in the ballpark. I have two things for you though, both found right here on future4200.
Read every single post made by @emdub27. I’m so grateful for his posts and I wish he would bless us with more of them!
AGT-50 makes weed taste better imo. Subtle but worthwhile.
I will definitely go through all of the posts by @emdub27. His contributions in the threads I mentioned were great. I was sad to see he’s been inactive for a while. Also much appreciated are the contributions by @danielfp@AgTonik and many others. I was using RAW Full Up fulvic power previously, but received a gallon of Mr.Fulvic just in time for flavour production.
Give me a few hours and I’ll write out what you’ll need to run jacks and be successful, feed schedule the whole 9 for entire life cycle.
Also big ups to @AgTonik not many know but they got some new products in the works that’ll replace the silica from protekt and allow for ease of mixing again, instead of having coagulation happen.
I used to use CannaMax silica, same thing as protekt but 4x more concentrated. That’s another discontinued product though, so I found Diablo Monster Silica as a reasonably priced replacement with the same concentration. For some reason I can’t just get AgSil16H in Canada, so this is the next best thing. Don’t recall having an issue with coagulation though, I always add it first, PH down, then nutes. The new products like powerSi sound interesting, maybe as a foliar at least. Still reading on that.
Speaking of mixing order, now with these new salts I’ve got, does the order matter between them? I’m assuming like this: silica, ph down, 5-12-26/0-12-26, Epsom, SOP/MKP, Gypsum, CalNit, Kelp, Fulvic.
Guess I should also mention that I’m starting from 0EC using filtered rainwater run through a UV before going into the res barrel.
I have some mosquito dunks from ages ago but I think I need some new ones, they’re not keeping the fungus gnats down. I just added some nematodes so hopefully that works. Need to get a fresh Bti product in there too.
Does the UV not kill off larvae? I trickle it through that thing taking an hour and a half to fill a 55 gallon barrel for maximum exposure time.
It probably has an effect, but I wouldnt depend on it. I live in a climate with lots of bugs. The dunks always worked for me. I put them in a sock or mesh bag in the reservoir and swap them every two weeks or so.
After you’ve established roots during week 1 you’ll opt to feed bloom feed which is 5.68g per gal for up to 14 days, this way your flower sites are fully established & then you can switch back to flower cycle feed which is above. Only difference is you jump to 3.8g (week 6 photo) ratio after week 4. Your sonic bloom which replaced maxi bloom will start at 100g per batch 100gal so 1g per gal at week one, and jump ten every week till at 1.25g per gal. Finishing that off in week 7 and then jumping to finish feed at 5.95g per gal. And once ready to flush cut that ratio in half for 3-5 days then go full flush with ro for one day.
I prefer to run agtonik which I do at home for my personal grow as I do not run silica at home and my plants get much better growth imo without it.
If you need further help or instructions just dm or comment @ me
Sonic looks like it’s just MKP with a B vitamin? Are you running some specific type of CalMag with acetate for extra Calcium? Why not just use more CalNit and epsom?
I just mixed my first barrel of week 2-4 and did a changeout 3 days ago. Starting to see what I think is potassium deficiency. Don’t remember seeing this before but it’s been a while, I have however never run this much calcium so maybe it’s interfering with the potassium as the buds are really starting to soak it up?
I guess I should have just recreated my old tried and true formula, and changed slowely, but who knows, maybe that’d work out completely different in the greenhouse where I don’t have full VPD control on hot days, should be getting easier now though as it cools. This is more fun anyway and I’m learning.
Seeing this on some of my older lower leaves, expressing as the spots starting on the edges with the Mexican bagseed (that finally started to flower, two weeks behind everything else). And as the edge yellowing on the Cherry Lemonade and Gorilla G lemon. What do you folks think, should I pull back on calcium or rev up the potassium? Or am I completely off base here? At first I was looking for spider mites when I saw those spots but they all have a pattern from the outside in and there’s no pest evidence to be found other than some rare thrip damage.
Maybe I’ll try a potassium silicate foliar to start. Haven’t done one before, I think I remember reading Dr. Daniel Fernandez saying that it was best to use sulfuric acid for potassium silicate foliar specifically, as opposed to phosphoric, which can interfere somehow.
The smaller leaf definitely looks like potassium, the larger one with the spots is a bit different, but then again that whole plant is pretty different. Dunno what I’m working with here from the Mexican bagseed but seems equatorial the way it took so long to go into flower. Could it be some actual landrace? I don’t know much about genetics, I just buy seeds and keep the ones I like. It’s sure got some oomph though, first seed to germ, and first to pop roots when I cloned. Took 3 clones of each plant I have going just in case I have some keepers, all three on the Mexican bagseed were rooted before any of the others.
I was running a 1:0.6 Ca:Mg previously, with the high Ca train I hopped on though, I’m down to 1:0.5. I think I’m gonna bring it back up to 1:0.6, learning my lesson from this K deficiency I surely created by upping the Ca without consideration for the K and Mg. I got caught up by the K ppm number looking high enough but forgetting the “1:2:4” starting point for Mg:Ca:K.
I would have never been this adventurous previously, not when you have a good thing figured and you don’t wanna screw it up, made any changes very slowly. Freeing now to be able to fuck around like this. I’m sure I affected the yield with this bonehead move but I’ll still have way more than I need for myself so I’m not really caring too much. I bumped up the K (and P) with 0.4g/gal of MPK and 0.1g/gal of SOP. Back to roughly 1:2:4 Mg:Ca:K now. Bumped up my P a little more too, closer to what I used to run. I’m also in a greenhouse now too, and I see that LED growers seem to need more Mg, not sure how sunlight changes things.
Did some foliar spray to hopefully help, 65ppm K / 77ppm Si foliar with 2.5ml/gal AGT-50 and insecticidal soap. Got me wondering, is the potassium/fatty acid mix that makes up the insecticidal soap providing available K to the plants via foliar? Maybe I wasn’t seeing the deficiency cause I was doing a soap spray weekly before budset and then stopped, but then again, budset probably started demanding more K.
In other news, I got one of my old bluelab guardians running again. I dunno if I got a few from a bad batch or what but I have 4 old meters with burnt out displays. You can shift the digits to the left with a couple jumper wires, I did that for a while like you can see with the temperature, it hasn’t burnt out since shifting yet, (can see the old two digits on the right with burnt out LED segmets trying to say “19”). Eventually the shifted digits for EC and PH burnt out too so I had to buy some new displays. Digikey only had red and the green ones were only available with much higher shipping from elsewhere so I went with red. Got me thinking, I wanna start some Arduino crop steering, so rather than buying more hardware to inferface EC and PH probes to the Arduino I can just decode the input to the LED displays on the guardians and record the info.
Watch the bag seed plant closely to make sure it doesn’t pop male flowers that you dont see. Bag seeds are often pollinated by other plants that hermie, and thus they have a tendency to herrm. I once grew from bag seed a long time ago and got about 2/3rds hermies that I had to cull, but the other plants were great.
Yeah I’ll be keeping an eye on it. Behaving so far. I had to cull my only Black Gorilla that popped, 1 of 3. Was from a feminized seed but it was dropping pre-flower balls in veg, never seen that before. Any new plant I’m watching for that like a hawk, as I’ve just seen it can even happen in veg from “trusted” designer seeds.
Mexican Bagseed is front left, took so long to bud it stretched way more than everything else. Just barely kept it under control.
For foliar the most I was ever putting in was about 1.75 ml per gallon. If you’re doing completely lights off you may be able to get away with 2-2.5 but even then I still only ever pushed it to 1.75 as my plants didn’t need more than that. I could be mistaken though and yours may be able to handle that high ratio but hey, don’t let me tell you, let the plants. They’ll show how they feel about it and if burn so happens inspect the extent of it whether it’s just tips on leaves and or you end up with spotting across the leaves. Either or you will know if you’re pushing too far or not and where to dial it back too.
Wow, such kind words about AGT-50. You do have to dial it in. I start with 0.5ml in the res and watch the fan leaf tips. They should lighten, not burn and work your way up. If you do see burning, it won’t affect the flowers. It will chelate positively charged nutrients like calcium, magnesium, iron, ammonium, potassium etc.
As far as foliar, do a jar test. The only thing we recommend against is hypochlorous acid. Low amounts of h2o2 breaks down the small amount of humic into more fulvic acid and isn’t a problem as long as the dose doesn’t create biofilm. I use 1ml twice a week for IPM, but outdoors and sealed rooms with CO2 can go up to 5ml.
@SeymourGreen Here’s my new mix for week 2-4, except I’m running lower EC for DWC, just easier for me to compare to others looking at full strength. Dropped calcium a bit so I didn’t have to jack up magnesium and potassium so much to get the ratios right. Passed transition now anyway which looks to be the highest use of calcium. After comparing to the Maxibloom I used to use, I bumped up the epsom a bit more than shown here to get to 1:0.65 Ca:Mg. Was surprised to see I’m basically zeroing in on what I used to run with Maxibloom, except for the double P in the Maxi. Wonder what kind of difference that makes.
Is high P still out of style? Was all the rage in the olden days, then P got cut down to size and more N became the thing, “green till cut” and all that. Looks like it’s possibly going back now… at least on the dropping N to get a nice fade. I tried running Jacks 3:2 to the end once, but it was fluffy buds and no flavour. I’ve always been a fader, here’s an old 3lb tree grow from circa 2012, OG Kush ghost cut from S1 seeds.
Hello @GrowStuff. Thanks for posting your mix. I have also ran jacks in the past but was tweaking everything so much I just decided to start mixing my own. Regarding the P, recent studies have shown no benefit from anything over 15 elemental ppm of Phosphorus. I usually run 35 P in veg and bump it to 60 for weeks 4 and 5 of flower. I also believe in dropping N during flower. I believe I get a better finished product dropping N. I usually run 135 N in veg and drop it to 75 after 2 week of transition. The only shitty thing is all my Ca is tied to my nitrates so I usually have to bump up my calcium with calcium acetate. My mix goes cloudy within two days of adding the acetate. Even if I add something like potassium sorbate to try and combat this.
