is what I'm using ok?

[cbuts05]

Day 23 or something from seed..started with plain water at first then went to hydroponic store.

He suggested some agrogreen.. Which is a fertilizer right not a nutrient ? He said I could use this the whole grow cycle.
.
He also gave me some 20-20-20 which I just used for the first time when o transplanted at day 18.

Can anyone give me some input on if what I'm doing is ok or if I should change anything.

I also bought some part a and part b stuff that's usednfor flowering..just.not home for the name ATM.


Thanks

 

[az2000]

Think of your fertilizers as ratios. Your 20-20-20 is an NPK ratio of 1:1:1. (It doesn't matter if it's 5-5-5 or 16-16-16. They're all 1:1:1. Having a common language like this will help eliminate confusion.).

1-1-1 is fine for veg. Some people say they use it through flower. I think it's more common to do higher N and K in veg (say 1.5-1-2) and higher P in flower (1-1.5-2).

If you have a so-called bloom fertilizer that's 4-20-20 that (1-5-5) would be too high (IMO) for flower. But you could mix it with your veg fertilizer to get something like 1-1.5-1.5. (From there, you could buy some langbeinite to boost K a little more than P. Or, buy blood meal or fish emulsion to boost N higher than PK in veg.

I made a spreadsheet which makes it easy to find an NPK ratio mixing multiple products. For now, all you need to do is use your 1-1-1 ratio in veg. Maybe pickup blood meal or fish emulsion to add some N if you want to. You have to decide whether you'll use tap water or reverse osmosis (pure) water. If your tap is high "tds" (expressed as ppm, google for it if you don't understand), you'll want to use pure water. Then you have to use a calmag product to add minerals back to the water which were filtered out. Or, you can add tap water to pure water to get about 150ppm and that should reduce the need for a calmag product. (The reason I mention this is that calmag usually adds N. That's where the spreadsheet comes in handy, to see your actual NPK ratio after adding things like calmag or supplements like Liquid Karma that have small NPK contributions.).

You don't need a lot of bottles to grow MJ. Just feed your 1-1-1 at half the labeled directions (unless you can find someone who uses it and who can attest to a different quantity). It's common to overfeed. Sometimes this will immediately appear as burnt leaf tips. But, not always. Overfeeding can also appear as salt buildup in the soil causing acidification and nute lockout. So, less is more. Don't be afraid to go light on food. Let the container dry until it's light to lift, but before the leaves droop from lack of water. Water for 20-50% runoff which will reduce the effect of overfeeding (if you're not sure you are overfeeding. You can reduce the runoff on another grow to see if you get salt buildup.).

The only reason to have a lot of bottles is to fine tune your NPK ratios. That's something you can do yourself with inexpensive components. You don't need an expensive "lineup" to do it for you. Those expensive products have worked out the NPK ratios and hide it from you. Just do your 1-1-1 for now and familiarize yourself with the spreadsheet so you can have insight into what "lineups" are doing and how to recreate those ratios using generic components.

 

[RockinDaGanja]

Nicely put. This will help a lot of new growers. I wasted so much money on bull shit. If i knew what i know now back then i would have saved a lot of time And money....not to mention stress.
One thing I'd like to ask you when you get a chance nitrogen is measured by strictly weight while the p and K are measured by the oxides in the fertilizer...or vice versa? And also i run higher then normal n through the first couple weeks of flower is that pointless? my plants love it.

 

[az2000]

One thing I'd like to ask you when you get a chance nitrogen is measured by strictly weight while the p and K are measured by the oxides in the fertilizer...or vice versa?

That's a good question and I still don't understand this topic. To summarize: a product's guaranteed analysis (in the US, perhaps other countries) lists NPK by weight. A 1 pound bag of 10-10-10 contains 1.6 oz of N, P and K. (10% of 16 oz.). However, the bag usually says "P as P2O5" and "K as K2O." Those compounds have 0.436 and 0.83 of P and K respectively.

So, does the bag contain 1.6 oz P2O5 (resulting in 0.7 oz of P)? Or, 1.6 oz P (produced from 3.7oz P2O5)?

@churchhaze tried to explain this to me when I was creating the spreadsheet, but I didn't understand. And, it seemed like it didn't matter because the labeled percentages are a common language. People just refer to "4-12-16" and may reduce that to its common denominator (ratio) as 1-3-4. The only time people seem to differentiate between P and P2O5 is in hydro when they refer to ppms. Then they might convert between P and P2O5.

I look forward to church responding.

One thing I've noticed about the spreadsheet is that actual PPMs always come out 20-30% higher than what the spreadsheet calculates. Now that I'm thinking about this topic and it leads to the conclusion that a product's Guaranteed Analysis refers to actual P (and K), but there's really 2.294 that amount of P2O5 (and 1.205 that amount of K2O). This would almost perfectly correlate to the difference between the spreadsheet's calculated PPM and the actual measured PPM.

Like I said, I didn't give it much thought because the common language is NPK ratios published on bags. When someone says "6-3-8 works great" they're just saying that ratio (2-1-2.7) works great. Nobody gets down into the details about how much P or P2O5 is involved.

And also i run higher then normal n through the first couple weeks of flower is that pointless? my plants love it.

As long as you're not getting N toxicity symptoms (dark green leaves with tips that point down like a claw), keep doing it.

My problem keeps being N def. I cut back N too soon and get yellow leaves in early flower. I think part of my problem is that I was overfeeding and got N toxicity which led me to believe the ratio I was using was too much N. I've been cutting back N based upon that experience when it was probably just too much N as a result of overfeeding, not the ratio of N to PK.

 

[cbuts05]

Omg y'all are confusing!!! Haha..

The stuff I bought for flower is different then the 20-20-20.. So I should use agrogreen and 20-20-20 til I switch to flower then use the agrogreen and whatever the other stuff I have is ? Why is it part a and part b ? Why not all in one bottle lol

 

[RockinDaGanja]

Sorry cbuts....i didnt mean to bomb your thread and throw it off topic. AZ brought up a lot of useful info.. A lot of people including myself get confused about NPK ratios and how they are applied to each stage of growth. The reason you have two a and b bottles is because one is for veg and one for bloom. They do have one part solutions. That claim can take your plants through there whole cycle with one bottle im a little skeptical about these working for our plants because of the amounts of nitrogen in it.

 

[az2000]

The reason you have two a and b bottles is because one is for veg and one for bloom. They do have one part solutions.

I think A+B bottles are to keep the micros (like Ca) separate so they won't interact with the other stuff. @churchhaze could say more about this.

When I said a lot of products aren't needed, I meant those feeding schedules like AN, Fox Farm, Gen Hydro. IMO, those are like "painting by the numbers." They probably work well. But, you can do your own thing with less expensive products. Get some higher N and higher P fertilizer. Some langebeinite for K. Dissolve some eggshell in vinegar for Ca. Epsom salt for mg. Use a spreadsheeet to fiddle with the amounts. (After using a spreadsheet to reverse engineer what the "paint by numbers" schedule produces, so you know what you're trying to recreate.).

The nice thing about this is: it leads to "reading your plants." Instead of just painting by numbers, you might mix things up a little because you find your plants do better with more N.

To the OP, sorry if this was more info than you were looking for. Just run your 1-1-1 ratio. In flower you may want to consider mixing some higher PK fertilizer with it. But, you don't have to. Just be careful of switching entirely to a "flower" food. Sometimes flower foods are too high in PK. That's when you'd better off mixing a flower food with your 1-1-1 to get a better (less drastic) ratio. This may be too "out there" for you now. But, keep it in mind. You're gonna grow into this eventually.

 

[cbuts05]

The stuff I have is jungle juice.

Part a 4-0-3
Part b 1-5-6
And I have 20-20-20 and agrogreen

Can u tell me how I should use these please ? I'm day like 24 or something from seed..about to give 2nd water from transplant

 

[az2000]

The stuff I have is jungle juice.

Part a 4-0-3
Part b 1-5-6
And I have 20-20-20 and agrogreen

Can u tell me how I should use these please ? I'm day like 24 or something from seed..about to give 2nd water from transplant

I thought JJ was 3 part. I'm not sure if your reference to parts a and b mean you have two of JJ's 3 parts, or it's something else. I'm not familiar with Agrogreen, what it's NPK is.

If I were you, I would use the 20-20-20 at half the label's recommended strength. If it says 1 tsp per gallon of water, use 1/2 tsp. That's a common starting point when using something others haven't tried yet. (Have you mentioned the brand of the 20-20-20?).

You don't need a lot of stuff. You don't need to increase PK in flower. If you do need to, your plants will tell you (purple leaves, for example.).

There is no step-by-step recipe for growing. If you try to follow one, you're still going to run into deficiencies from overfeeding, underfeeding or imbalanced NPK. Whatever you do won't be perfect and you'll still have to learn how interpret the condition of your plant. So, you might as well keep it simple with the 20-20-20 (assuming it's a decent product, we don't know the name of it yet), and spend time at growweedeasy studying the photos of deficiencies (you'll want to focus on N, P, K, mg and ca).

After you get through one grow you'll have more confidence in preemptive strategies (like, knowing that you need to add epsom salt in early flower to fight mg def. Or, blending in some higher PK fertilizer in late flower. But, by comparison to growing 20-20-20 all the way through (and having a stable baseline to assess your plant's response), the difference in growth will be minimal. If you get all science-guy about it, mixing a lot of stuff, the risk is that you won't know what caused it to go wrong. Chances are it will go wrong. Might as well keep it simple so you won't have as many variables to adjust.

I know it sounds complicated. But, after 2-3 grows you'll feel like an expert. So, just accept that the first 1-2 grows will be like shooting in the dark. Keep it simple. Your goal should be to learn as much as you can from the grow, not have a perfect grow.

 

[cbuts05]

I thought JJ was 3 part. I'm not sure if your reference to parts a and b mean you have two of JJ's 3 parts, or it's something else. I'm not familiar with Agrogreen, what it's NPK is.

If I were you, I would use the 20-20-20 at half the label's recommended strength. If it says 1 tsp per gallon of water, use 1/2 tsp. That's a common starting point when using something others haven't tried yet. (Have you mentioned the brand of the 20-20-20?).

You don't need a lot of stuff. You don't need to increase PK in flower. If you do need to, your plants will tell you (purple leaves, for example.).

There is no step-by-step recipe for growing. If you try to follow one, you're still going to run into deficiencies from overfeeding, underfeeding or imbalanced NPK. Whatever you do won't be perfect and you'll still have to learn how interpret the condition of your plant. So, you might as well keep it simple with the 20-20-20 (assuming it's a decent product, we don't know the name of it yet), and spend time at growweedeasy studying the photos of deficiencies (you'll want to focus on N, P, K, mg and ca).

After you get through one grow you'll have more confidence in preemptive strategies (like, knowing that you need to add epsom salt in early flower to fight mg def. Or, blending in some higher PK fertilizer in late flower. But, by comparison to growing 20-20-20 all the way through (and having a stable baseline to assess your plant's response), the difference in growth will be minimal. If you get all science-guy about it, mixing a lot of stuff, the risk is that you won't know what caused it to go wrong. Chances are it will go wrong. Might as well keep it simple so you won't have as many variables to adjust.

I know it sounds complicated. But, after 2-3 grows you'll feel like an expert. So, just accept that the first 1-2 grows will be like shooting in the dark. Keep it simple. Your goal should be to learn as much as you can from the grow, not have a perfect grow.

Thx for the post..that's funny I actually have been doing 1/2 tsp ..I use a 72 litre tub to mix in and recommended is 1/4 tsp per lite.. I used nowhere near that..cause that's like 70 1/2 tsps lol..here's some pics to help

 

[az2000]

I'd use 1/8 tsp per liter. You don't want to go too low or you'll have generalized deficiencies. If you go too high, you'll have burnt leaf tips.

Be careful about watering too frequently. Let the soil dry. The ph rises as it dries. Keeping it too wet will hold the ph lower. If it doesn't dry in 2-4 days, you're either in too large of a container or the soil doesn't have enough perlite.

As far as the nutrients you have, I don't know what to tell you. The 20-20-20 looks like something the hydro store packed themselves. It might be ok, but if it were me I'd go to the hardware store and by some MiracleGrow all-purpose (something with 1-1-1 ratio. I think it's 16-16-16, but I forget.). MG doesn't get a lot of love. But, it might be better than that repacked stuff. There are people who grow with MG, so it should be ok for your first grow.

I would keep it as simple as possible. MG all purpose seems simpler than the unknown product you have. At least you'd know what you have. (If you had the luxury of time, I'd recommend Grow More Sea Grow or Jack's Classic. They're both in the same price range as MG but have better reputations, more widely used. Still simple, one-part dry products. I use Sea Grow. Many use Jack's.).

EDIT: Also, consider watering for about 20-40% runoff. That will help reset the nutrients in the soil. If your plant needs more N, leaves more PK behind in the soil, runoff will push that out and replace it with 1-1-1 nutrients. Also reduces the risk of salt buildup which could hit you in early flower. So, water only when dry -- but water a lot when you water. If you had your NPK ratios dialed in you might not need much runoff. The plant would eat everything you give it. But, for now, a lot of runoff will help avoid problems.

 

[cbuts05]

I'd use 1/8 tsp per liter. You don't want to go too low or you'll have generalized deficiencies. If you go too high, you'll have burnt leaf tips.

Be careful about watering too frequently. Let the soil dry. The ph rises as it dries. Keeping it too wet will hold the ph lower. If it doesn't dry in 2-4 days, you're either in too large of a container or the soil doesn't have enough perlite.

As far as the nutrients you have, I don't know what to tell you. The 20-20-20 looks like something the hydro store packed themselves. It might be ok, but if it were me I'd go to the hardware store and by some MiracleGrow all-purpose (something with 1-1-1 ratio. I think it's 16-16-16, but I forget.). MG doesn't get a lot of love. But, it might be better than that repacked stuff. There are people who grow with MG, so it should be ok for your first grow.

I would keep it as simple as possible. MG all purpose seems simpler than the unknown product you have. At least you'd know what you have. (If you had the luxury of time, I'd recommend Grow More Sea Grow or Jack's Classic. They're both in the same price range as MG but have better reputations, more widely used. Still simple, one-part dry products. I use Sea Grow. Many use Jack's.).

EDIT: Also, consider watering for about 20-40% runoff. That will help reset the nutrients in the soil. If your plant needs more N, leaves more PK behind in the soil, runoff will push that out and replace it with 1-1-1 nutrients. Also reduces the risk of salt buildup which could hit you in early flower. So, water only when dry -- but water a lot when you water. If you had your NPK ratios dialed in you might not need much runoff. The plant would eat everything you give it. But, for now, a lot of runoff will help avoid problems.

Its been 3 days since transplant I used 4 l per 3 gal pot..just starting to dry out

 

[cbuts05]

Can anyone tell me if there's anything else that I could use that would help?

I watered again last night..4-5 days after first water and transplant.

I used about 10 1/2 tbs arogreen and some 20-20-20 crystal mix stuff..

Brought my pH to 6.3 and runoff was 5.5 ..should I be doing differently ? Should I be adding more of each ? I added less then half ofnwhay it asks for..it just feels like a lot idk.. But I'd. Like to get a system together for nutes please n thank you.. I am using jungle juice a n b for flower when that comes

 

[cbuts05]

Bump..should I be using AN a and b grow to go with the bloom instead of my 20-20-20?