Reverse Engineering everyone's nutrients

I would skip MKP if you already have a bloom booster - they are the same thing usually.

Mono potassium phosphate - MKP - is another good dry powder to have on hand. This is all that's in every "bloom booster" out there. I use MKP sometimes but only at a rate of 0.25g/liter. Loads of more P can start to cause insolubility issues - Ca, SO4 and Fe get bound up.

Phosphorus is the most expensive nutrient, so a base-fertilizer costs a little more if its high in P. A Base fertilizer like Plant Prod 15-30-15 has heaps of extra P for enhancing blooming, and costs $10 more for a 15 kg bag. I switch to 15-30-15 as blooming starts.

When in blooming, using a base fert' like 15-30-15, or when finishing the last 2 -3 weeks of blooming with a base fert' like 8-20-30, you're ok to skip the MKP. These base fertilizers are high in all cheated micronutrients, especially iron, so switching them from veg' to bloom changes nothing but N,P,K ratios.

Potassium is rarely lacking in a typical cannabis nutrient solution; we use pH Up made from KOH and often add potassium silicate to raise pH as well. These two sources are a big boost in K, and it is important to keep the potassium high - it's the "quality nutrient"!

Most bottled fertilizer additives (the non-N,P,K ones) must contain a 5% fertilizer salt in them to be sold as a "fertilizer" and the one commonly used is potassium sulfate. So with or without all those additives, we are constantly adding more K to our reservoirs.

Also, MKP at 0.20 g / L makes a great clone-starter fertilizer, BUT remember to raise the pH - MKP solutions will be acidic!
 

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
I would skip MKP if you already have a bloom booster - they are the same thing usually.

Mono potassium phosphate - MKP - is another good dry powder to have on hand. This is all that's in every "bloom booster" out there. I use MKP sometimes but only at a rate of 0.25g/liter. Loads of more P can start to cause insolubility issues - Ca, SO4 and Fe get bound up.

Phosphorus is the most expensive nutrient, so a base-fertilizer costs a little more if its high in P. A Base fertilizer like Plant Prod 15-30-15 has heaps of extra P for enhancing blooming, and costs $10 more for a 15 kg bag. I switch to 15-30-15 as blooming starts.

When in blooming, using a base fert' like 15-30-15, or when finishing the last 2 -3 weeks of blooming with a base fert' like 8-20-30, you're ok to skip the MKP. These base fertilizers are high in all cheated micronutrients, especially iron, so switching them from veg' to bloom changes nothing but N,P,K ratios.

Potassium is rarely lacking in a typical cannabis nutrient solution; we use pH Up made from KOH and often add potassium silicate to raise pH as well. These two sources are a big boost in K, and it is important to keep the potassium high - it's the "quality nutrient"!

Most bottled fertilizer additives (the non-N,P,K ones) must contain a 5% fertilizer salt in them to be sold as a "fertilizer" and the one commonly used is potassium sulfate. So with or without all those additives, we are constantly adding more K to our reservoirs.

Also, MKP at 0.20 g / L makes a great clone-starter fertilizer, BUT remember to raise the pH - MKP solutions will be acidic!
I don't even add that much, but I keep running the base nutes. .25g/gal here.

MKP is 0-52-32, VERY strong, so I only use a small amount.
 

im4satori

Well-Known Member
Geez. Wtf people !?! Its a weed let the dam things grow already ! Yes there are a few products out there that help a bit but for the most part, but 99% of the stuff you need to grow a verry healthy yeilding plant can be found in your back yard. KISS is the method. Im old school so there wasnt much if any "nutrient companys" designed to grow weed. Let alone bottled nutrients,, wtf is that !? Excuse my french but really ? Starting to sound more and more like big pharma. You "need this you need that". Its a plant its a weed let ot grow.
I understand the hydro thing and yes you need bottled liquid nutrients but if you are growing in pots/soil, cut the bs and stop spending your time and $$ negating what comp does this and that and go organic/compost and have a happy stress free grow.

From all the time spent reading and reaserching what is what and who is what. If you spent that time doing organics you would be waaaay ahead of the game.
Its a plant, its a weed, let the dam thing grow. Stop making it work harder than it has to.

Be natural, be prosperous, be giving, be human.

Happy new year all.

Grow organic, the plants will thank you.

:peace:
do tell
how do you amend your soil
what methods do you use to build your compost
how do you respond to your plants needs if you spot imbalanced issues
 

shaggyballs

Well-Known Member
What happened to the OP, i just read through about all the pages i am a fucking speed reader. He disappeared around page 26, and his website link doesn't work......corporations put a hit on him or something?
I have seen a lot of little mom and pop shops being taken out lately. Big mike and the others have some power and know the right people.
Big companies blow the whistle in order to weed out the little guys cutting into their profit.
This trend will so be seen with cannabis sales around the world, actually it is already happening in places like CO.
 

since1991

Well-Known Member
Outdoor....organic compost beds all the way. Indoor with artificial....everything. Its nutrient salt minerals for me. And premade bottled hydro store shelf gear at that. Mixing organic soil. teas and amendments for indoor...been there done that years ago. Alot of work. Nah...id rather watch grass grow than fuk with organics indoor. Iam selective though. I know which products are what and the ones that work for me and my varieties a d room conditions. And really..besides playing with natural plant hormones like auxins and cytokinins...all them bottled bases do the same exact thing. Gimme a pH and EC meter and i can get all the brands to do what they were designed to do. Ive tried them all. Even switching up different brands in mid grow without as much as a hiccup.
 
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Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
there's only two things wrong with bottled nutes, really. preservatives, and paying for water. there's about 3 bucks worth of mineral salts in most 3 to 5 bottle "systems" that you pay 50 to 250 dollars for.
spend 100 bucks or less for a whole years worth of heavy growing with jacks, some calcium nitrate, and a bag of epsom salts.
i've been playing with kinens, auxins, tria, brassinolide, and even B.A.P. . they can all be useful, if used in moderation. the key to each seems to be knowing which work well together, and when to use them. use at the wrong time can be very detrimental. you hit a plant with kinens when its young and it takes weeks to get it to stop leaf stacking and show normal growth again
 

Castel

Member
I'm running Jack's but wanted to fine tune the nutrient profile for various stages of growth so tried to add Jacks Hydro 5-12-26 as a substance in Hydrobuddy. I'm getting a large discrepancy on the P value however.

Profile provided by JR Peters:
Dissolve 1.3 oz. (2 tbsp.) of 5-12-26 in 10 gal. of final feed solution. You will obtain the following elemental PPM concentrations:
N 50
P 52
K 215
Mg 63
SO4 246
Fe 3
Mn 0.50
Zn 0.15
Cu 0.15
B 0.50
Mo 0.10

Hydrobuddy provides these PPMs for Jack's when I enter all the percentages:
N (NO3-) 48.679
K 253.133
P 116.831
Mg 61.531
Ca 0
S 79.932
Fe 2.921
Zn 0.146
B 0.487
Cu 0.146
Mo 0.097
Na 0
Si 0
Cl 0
Mn 0.487
N (NH4+) 0

For some reason hydrobuddy calculates a far higher P value, while the rest seems fine. For P I entered 12% as claimed by Jacks. Anyone know why this might be?
 

esh dov ets

Well-Known Member
great thread. i read 3 pages so far. does anybody try to keep it organic when creating your own mix? i don't mean compost and poop but rather , organic chemicals like potassium potassium gluconate or pure elements and organic chemicals purely extracted from organic sources. so natural chemical fert. there are tons of chemicals that exist in nature. could a total natural chemical fert that ould be considered organic be crafted?
 

Castel

Member
Ok, so in response to my own post in case anyone else runs into this issue - I figured out that you need to enter K as K2O and P as P2O5.

"The reasons why K2O and P2O5 were used to represent potassium and phosphorous instead of referring to the simple quantities of these elements are that, first of all, the traditional analysis methods used to determine K and P give the values of the oxides in a more straightforward manner and second, the actual percentages of K and P when expressed as the oxides give “good ratios for the plants in soil” when the values are close to the value of N (making comparisons easier)."

So my new PPMs from Hydrobuddy for Jacks 5-12-26 at 1.3 ounces per 10 gallons is:
N (NO3-) 48.679
K 210.126
P 50.985
Mg 61.531
Ca 0
S 79.932
Fe 2.921
Zn 0.146
B 0.487
Cu 0.146
Mo 0.097
Na 0
Si 0
Cl 0
Mn 0.487
N (NH4+) 0

This looks much closer to what JR Peters provides as their PPMs at this concentration.
 

cobshopgrow

Well-Known Member
very impressive read.
This motivates me to try some local powder nutrients with 15-14-15+2Mg for veg and 6-20-30 +2Mg for bloom , or use a mix of them.
Have plenty of sulfur and a good amount calcium in the tap water as also a RO to reduce their amounts if needed.
Calcium sulfate and magnesium sulfate powder i have too for the mix.
 

cobshopgrow

Well-Known Member
@ Castel, thanks for the hint :oops:
Seems almost all values given on ferts use this K2O and P as P2O5.
my numbers look now very similar to yours, as i treid to reproduce it to learn a bit more.
Just sulfur looks different, your number is higher, i have just 64 you have 79 and Jacks themself say 246.
I found 6.3%for jacks hydro given for the magnesium and used that.
 

Crysmatic

Well-Known Member
Yea, but if you calculate, as i did before NPK ratio doesn't correlate to PPM ratio. I'll have to find my calculation spreedsheet of some nutrient brand it was.. example 1:1:1 and ih had something like 60-80-100 or something (i really cant remember now) ppm per element. Because NPK is written in lets say P205 equivalent and P2O5 has this:
P - atomic mass: 30.97
O - atomic mass: 8.00
So P2O5 has molar mass 2xP and 5xO -> 61.94(P) and 40(O) so from that there is only 60.7% P in that

Potassium is usually written in K2O equivalent
same story:
K - atomic mass: 39.1
O - atomic mass: 8.0
So K2O has molar mass: 86.2, and there is about 90.7% K in that

So to conclude: 1:1 P:K ratio they write down in equivalent form (P205 or K20) has a actual 0.607 : 0.907 ratio
Oh for two...

P2O5 has 43.7% P
K2O has 83.0% K

Say a 10-10-10 NPK in a solution gives 100-100-100 ppm N, P2O5, and K2O, respectively. We get 100-43.7-83 ppm N, P, and K.

AN's full line gives something like 1-1-2 throughout the entire grow (if their labels are to be believed). Lucas formula (florabloom) is 1-2-2. Jack's 321 works out to 1.28-1-2. Key is the 2:1 K:N ratio.

Like others have said, these are just baselines. See how your plants react and modify the program to suit.
 

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
great thread. i read 3 pages so far. does anybody try to keep it organic when creating your own mix? i don't mean compost and poop but rather , organic chemicals like potassium potassium gluconate or pure elements and organic chemicals purely extracted from organic sources. so natural chemical fert. there are tons of chemicals that exist in nature. could a total natural chemical fert that ould be considered organic be crafted?
AN is making 'organically derived' nutes now certified by the grand state of California. The Iguana Juice for base nutes with Big Bud and some others. Can't really call any mineral salts 'organic' as they don't contain carbon and I can't see them being any more 'organic' than any other mineral salts but 'organically derived' seems to be the buzz phrase of the day.

How one rock is any more organic than any other rock is beyond me but my diploma is in chemistry and not biology. :D
 

ChiefRunningPhist

Well-Known Member
Oh for two...

P2O5 has 43.7% P
K2O has 83.0% K

Say a 10-10-10 NPK in a solution gives 100-100-100 ppm N, P2O5, and K2O, respectively. We get 100-43.7-83 ppm N, P, and K.

AN's full line gives something like 1-1-2 throughout the entire grow (if their labels are to be believed). Lucas formula (florabloom) is 1-2-2. Jack's 321 works out to 1.28-1-2. Key is the 2:1 K:N ratio.

Like others have said, these are just baselines. See how your plants react and modify the program to suit.
I see you realized oxygen has neutrons too.. :lol:
periodic table (1).png

1mg/l = 1ppm

Are you saying that the printed NPK ratio is a mass ratio? Between the total mass of single N atoms to the total mass of P2O5 to the total mass of K2O? So that if you had 1 liters of fertilizer labeled 10-10-10 that you'd have 100mg N to 100mg P2O5 to 100mg K2O, not that these are the specific compounds used to satisfy the NPK, but that the amount of elemental nutrient is equal to the amount found in the comparative compound at the labeled mass ratio?

Meaning:
- out of 100mg of "N" there's actually 100mg of N

- out of 100mg of "P" there's actually 43.7mg P

- out of 100mg "K" there's actually 83mg of K

^^^ Is this what you are saying?
 

ChiefRunningPhist

Well-Known Member
AN is making 'organically derived' nutes now certified by the grand state of California. The Iguana Juice for base nutes with Big Bud and some others. Can't really call any mineral salts 'organic' as they don't contain carbon and I can't see them being any more 'organic' than any other mineral salts but 'organically derived' seems to be the buzz phrase of the day.

How one rock is any more organic than any other rock is beyond me but my diploma is in chemistry and not biology. :D
They could be using gluconate to bind the metals and urea for N but idk how they're doing the P?
 
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