nutrient strength?

Ok here is my question, I know everyone says half strength for first two weeks and all that but do you want to feed the plants as much as they can take without burning them? I ask because me and a partner disagree where I am always light on the nutes and he likes to give as much as we can. The plants do fine if but a little slow starting after put in hydroton leaves all good color. I hope I'm understood correctly thanks.

Generally I follow the schedule on the bottle until I get to know a strain. I check the PPM's daily and keep records. If production is your goal then I would have to say giving the plants as much as the want is the way to go, but that amount will be different with every strain and situation.

bdt1981 said:

Ok here is my question, I know everyone says half strength for first two weeks and all that but do you want to feed the plants as much as they can take without burning them? I ask because me and a partner disagree where I am always light on the nutes and he likes to give as much as we can. The plants do fine if but a little slow starting after put in hydroton leaves all good color. I hope I'm understood correctly thanks.

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Yes you want to give them as much as they can take with out giving them a nute burn. But since the roots are in the water the whole time, a lower amount will do the same job and you wont have to worry about a nute burn.

When clones first go into the system, roots should be your main concern. You want to run them very low PPM (1/4 strength) until they drop roots. This usually takes 4 - 7 days. It is very important to let them drop roots first, because if they haven't, some will take off immediately and some will take off 5 or 6 days later. Down the road, you have plants that are wildly different sized.

When you see roots, they can handle the nutes.

When they have dropped roots, bring them up to about 500 ppm. After about three days, step up the nutes over a few days until they are at about 700 ppm then keep it there until they go into flowering.

If you are running seedlings, run them at half strength until they start branching out, then go to full nutes over a few day period.

Hell ya that's what I'm talking about all very helpful. Now I got to admit I was wronpg to my partner. Lol.

I think you have it right with the "less-is-more" philosophy on nutrients.

Just think about the law of limiting factors. The factors of growth for your plant are nutes, temps, light, CO2. I'm sure I'm forgetting something else. But there are four right there to consider.

Chances are, you're not at the point of light saturation (where chlorophyll receives max usable light).
Probably not maxing out CO2.
You didn't mention your temps, so I can't comment on that.

Anyways, the point is that there's a range of acceptability with all of these. By adding nutes to the point of burning your plants, you're actually hurting them, and slowing growth. Feeding in excess isnt going to help, because without extra CO2, the plants not going to metabolism can't go fast enough to take advantage of it.

You'll get better growth feeding less. If you see burning, it's too much.

your best bet is to get a ppm/EC meter. That will give you a much better handle on how heavily you're feeding versus dosages on the bottle.

When rooting clones i just use ph'd water then two weeks later i bump it up to 200ppm so it has a little nutrient to grow. after about two weeks i bump it up to 500ppm then at a month at 700ppm. i have flowered at 800ppm and at 1100ppm and with the latter i was bordering on nute burn which actually slowed growth. you really dont need that much to grow them. trust me less is more. maybe try half your plants at your lower ppm and half at his higher ppm?. good luck

bdt1981 said:

Ok here is my question, I know everyone says half strength for first two weeks and all that but do you want to feed the plants as much as they can take without burning them? I ask because me and a partner disagree where I am always light on the nutes and he likes to give as much as we can. The plants do fine if but a little slow starting after put in hydroton leaves all good color. I hope I'm understood correctly thanks.

Click to expand...

I will try to best explain the reasoning for going "lite" on the nutes. So, as an example, when you are reading the directions on the back of the bottle, or the feeding schedule, it might suggest for you to give your plant "15ml" per gallon for lets say "week number 2 in veg". Well, 15ml of this nutrient could possibly be concentrated to reach 600ppm, when at that stage of the plants life you would only want to be providing it nutrients at the rate of 300-400ppm. That's why you hear so many people suggest starting them at 1/4 - 1/3 or even 1/2 strength.

It is good to understand how powerful or concentrated your nutrients are - so that's why it's safer & smarter to begin providing nutrients at lower doses from the start. You will find that some strains must remain on a low dose of nutrients and some can't get enough of them, you will eventually get a feel for it once you re-grow that strain over and over and dial in.

Higher PPM will not increase growth. The plant will only use what it needs, unless there are toxic amounts of fertilizer in the solution, in which case they will overdose, burn and leaf curl. You don't want to use too little either. It's all about the roots. Roots can handle nutes.

Once a plant is branching, it can handle full nutes regardless of how big it is. "Full" strength being less than 800 PPM in vegetative and 1/2 - 2/3 of recommended strength in flowering. Anymore than that just gets thrown out when you change out your solution. You don't want to go much lower than 700 PPM in flowering.

When I flower I bring the strength up to 1000 - 1100 PPM and top off with water only until they are at about 700 PPM, then bring the fertilizer back up again. Is best to err on the side of caution in hydroponics.

my yields increased in aero when i went from 1600-1800ppm(with no burn) to 800-1000. in dwc they dont need as much so i never go above 600.

ya try to keep co2 at 1500 ppm temp day 83 dark at73 they seem to be fine most of the time noticed a little burn on the smallest sprout.

1800 watts over 4x8 with 2 t5 4ft and 4 2ft t5 for side lighting. so seems to be people who agree with both ways. i like the idea of running 2 diff tables.. thanks