TL;DR Used a sample of foliage pro. Plants look good. It is concentrated, has everything needed, and is now my goto veg fert. The verdict is still out for solely it in flowering.
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Based HB and UB's posts, along with some heavy reading of some horticultural journals (lots of ASHS, for non-free ones try to search the publication/paper title from the citation and you should something), I went and requested samples of both Grow and Foliage Pro.
If you read around, you'll see crops are routinely kept to progressions of target nitrogen levels (N ppms). That isn't to say P and K don't also have a progression, but N is crucial and so is the N ppms are vital. If you read up on NPK ratios, 3:1:2 will come up in a couple of places. Not saying those studies are 100% conclusive, but they do indicate 3:1:2 to be a damn good starting point.
I grow in mix/progression of beer cups, 5x5 square pots, and anywhere from 1 gallon to 3 gallon pot runs depending on how much smoke I want from whatever is being ran [note: unless hand-watering don't mix pot sizes in flower]. My media is 99% botanicare cocogro and 1% perlite that has been getting mixed in from using it as a mulch (btw, pumice works better as a mulch, if you want one). I did 2 grows with just maxibloom in coco and found it to be too lacking in N to be used as the sole fertilizer throughout flowering. I then used GH micro/bloom, which works and is customizable, but two parts will never be as simple as one and so, in the spirit of changing up fertigation, I tried Dyna-Gro's fertilizers since I already have Pro-tekt (love it -- you can feel the difference when snapping/cutting/bending branches).
I did not use the Grow in flowering as HB has already done the leg work on that. Instead, I used Foliage Pro for flowering. The plants still have 5 days to a week left but man they look great. I'm slightly worried that it is too N packed and am hoping it doesn't impact the smoke but whoever said high-N fertilizers negatively impact bud growth (or bud:leaf ratios) must have been using an unbalance fertilizer because I'm not seeing that issue here. I have kept the EC low (1.0-1.2 max, tap at 0.22EC) throughout the grow and just let the plants do their thing.
My observations on plant growth (both in veg and flower) when using FP as the main/sole fertilizer:
1. Foliage pro has everything you and your plants need in one bottle.
2. The plants love it. In my testing, they like it more than the Grow formulation (which I'm currently using on my veg plants since I ran outta FP)
3. You CAN get through flowering with just Foliage Pro. You won't lose leaves early or get yellowing during weeks 3/4 as you might with low N fertilizers (bloom nutes).
4. It did not, at least in my one run with it, seem to negatively impact bud/trichome development. I thought the aroma was lacking for a bit but then realized it was just the Vortex plants I'm running because the Bodhi Headtrips smell lovely and they get FP too.
5. It works well in coco. I keep calmag on hand just in case but really needed it.
Questions still left to be answered experimentally:
1. Foliage pro gets plants to the finish line in good/great shape, but does it get them there too nitrogen packed? Specifically, will it negatively impact the flavor/smoke?
My thinking is 40% maybe and 60% maybe not -- rational being that drying and curing is almost, if not certainly, harder than growing as impacts the end product's result greatly. Think about it... 8 weeks for a flowering period to have it all go to shit within days from too much or too quick a dry. Maybe even with a great cure it'll still taste funny. Who knows, but I'll find out in 4-5 weeks when I get to smoke this batch. Judging from what everyone else said, it should be fine, great, and a "clean" smoke.
2. Does it get plants to the finish line in the best possible shape for a given environment?
I'm thinking it doesn't. A plant's needs change throughout its life-cycle. Remember those horticultural journals with their published feeds? They didn't follow a linear progression of NPK increases, they actually changed the ratios while increasing the amounts. So while N ppms might have been kept at 100ppm and increased to 150ppm for budding/flowering, P and K could have gone from 50 ppm to 100 ppm and 100 ppm to 200 ppm, respectively. The point is a plant is an organism and that while it needs the same basic things throughout its life-cycle, it (likely) needs them in different ratios/amounts, more so than can be manipulated by simply increasing/decreasing the ml/gal. Experimentation and more importantly experience is required to confirm/debunk this one.
So.... with all that said, I just ordered 5 L Hesi Bloom (the Hesi Coco contains organic nitrogen/urea which EC meters can't read so I went with Bloom), 1 L Hesi PK13/14, and 1 gal of Foliage Pro. FP is from now on my one and only veg fertilizer. For flowering, I want to see if it can be improved (by mixing with pk 13/14 maybe) and how it compares in both growth and end results to "high quality", $$$ (given their diluted nature/usage rates), cannabis-marketed nutrients. On hand I have: GH Maxibloom, half gals of GH Micro/Bloom remaining, Epsoma Tomato-tone (granular organic fert), and a quart of Dyna-gro Grow. This season should be fun!
Fighting with this issue since 2+ years... dont know... does chlorine affect mg uptake?! my water smell chlorine
