Mega Crop vs Dyna-Gro comparison grow
- Thread starter homebrewer
- Start date
I would check it out if i wasn't shut down.To bad the old MC thread is gone because if i remember correctly there was info on making a concentrate solution.
Gemtree
Well-Known Member
Now this is my kinda thread. I loved the dyna vs connoisseur thread and have grown a killer crop with just a 8oz sample foliage pro bottle and a sample bottle of floralicious plus just to show a friend who spends hundreds that I can lol. Just switched to jacks and got a bit over 20oz under a 600 last round but got some nute burn towards the end so was considering dyna again or possibly mega crop so definitely interested in this competition.
One of my 15 dollar sample grow plants under a 400w lol
first round kens gdp seeds
One of my 15 dollar sample grow plants under a 400w lol
first round kens gdp seeds
homebrewer
Well-Known Member
Those look great, regardless of what they were grown with!
Res change tomorrow and day 8 pictures.
Gemtree
Well-Known Member
Thanks I'm just a big proponent of not needing to spend a lot to grow great buds. I try to help people get the best for as little as possible its probably the dutch in me lol. Thanks for the response I really studied the shit outta that dyna competition thread glad you're still on here making comp threads.
Keesje
Well-Known Member
I did read that you have a 18 gallon reservoir.
How many days do you keep the same res?
Do you top up in this period?
And if so, how?
Do you totally change your res after a certain time?
homebrewer
Well-Known Member
Weekly res changes.
I top off once after 4 days.
By adding water and some plant food.
Weekly res changes.
homebrewer
Well-Known Member
The short answer is no.
I think that the reservoir and the table should match so with that being said, a 60 gallon res flooding a 2' x 3' (roughly) table with just six plants is overkill, IMO. If that were my setup, obviously that would be plenty of water to last a number of weeks but I would be curious about the mineral composition of the reservoir at the end of that time. Would it still be in balance? I know for a fact that it wouldn't. These plants aren't pulling up the elements in even amounts across the board. To some extent, they're picking and choosing what they want, when they want it. Now that isn't exactly how it works but I think you get what I'm saying. I've done tests where I changed the res every 2 weeks (while adding back water and food) vs every week. Yields were down by like 20% if I recall correctly. So a res change isn't just 'fresh' food, it's a rebalancing of the elements too. If I wanted to go 2 weeks between res changes then I'd probably need a 30 gallon res. Does that make sense? I think that's just big enough where I'm not wasting food but also 2 weeks isn't too long between res changes where the res gets so out of balance that I'm hurting yields. This is just a guesstimate.
So in short, I think a 60 gallon res would be much better suited for a 5' x 5' table with say 9 plants and a 1000s HPS over head.
homebrewer
Well-Known Member
Day 8 today
As I previously mentioned I’ll be doing weekly res changes. The pH of the res here at the end of week one was 6.22 which isn’t terrible at all. The freshly mixed up food at a feeding level of 1.1 EC landed the pH at 6.44 so for whatever reason I needed to make a pH-adjustment this week to bring the pH down. If I were using DynaGro or any other liquid plant food I’d have figured out the correct protekt-to-base ratio to give me a starting pH of around 5.7. MC already contains silica though. We'll check in next week with a freshly calibrated pH pen.
Today I mixed up 100 grams of food into about a gallon of water before dumping the solution into the reservoir. MegaCrop is not that easy to work with. This stuff wants to stick to my measuring cups which means my measuring cups need to be rinsed to get the trace amounts of food off. Between measuring and mixing and rinsing, it probably took 7 mins to set this reservoir up. With DG it takes 30 seconds.
The plants look really good though so no complaints there. Good growth, good branching, i'm pleased so far.
I'm getting a film in the bottom of my res with MegaCrop. It's not a big deal but it's not something I've encountered with any liquid food I've ever used. It's not a growth of any kind, it's particulate like a fine dust.
As I previously mentioned I’ll be doing weekly res changes. The pH of the res here at the end of week one was 6.22 which isn’t terrible at all. The freshly mixed up food at a feeding level of 1.1 EC landed the pH at 6.44 so for whatever reason I needed to make a pH-adjustment this week to bring the pH down. If I were using DynaGro or any other liquid plant food I’d have figured out the correct protekt-to-base ratio to give me a starting pH of around 5.7. MC already contains silica though. We'll check in next week with a freshly calibrated pH pen.
Today I mixed up 100 grams of food into about a gallon of water before dumping the solution into the reservoir. MegaCrop is not that easy to work with. This stuff wants to stick to my measuring cups which means my measuring cups need to be rinsed to get the trace amounts of food off. Between measuring and mixing and rinsing, it probably took 7 mins to set this reservoir up. With DG it takes 30 seconds.
The plants look really good though so no complaints there. Good growth, good branching, i'm pleased so far.
I'm getting a film in the bottom of my res with MegaCrop. It's not a big deal but it's not something I've encountered with any liquid food I've ever used. It's not a growth of any kind, it's particulate like a fine dust.
homebrewer
Well-Known Member
Day 8 With DynaGro below. As you can see the MC plants had a bit of a size advantage going into this comparison but given the footprint of my light that doesn't really affect the yield as much as you'd think.
homebrewer
Well-Known Member
So it looks like Mega Crop did not take down the cost comparison that I saw on their site. It can be found here (https://greenleafnutrients.com/product/mega-crop/?v=7516fd43adaa#!/NPK).
So what rubs me the wrong way is that they are comparing their own cost of use at 4.1g servings which equals 633 ppm (0.9EC) to 10ml/gal servings with DynaGro which equals 1150ppm (1.64 EC). That's not an apple-to-apples comparison and when calculating cost at these very different feeding levels it becomes VERY misleading.
Let's looks at the Aqua Flakes Comparison too. I've used Aqua Flakes in the past and I actually really liked it. It's a 2-part food and you use equal parts from start to finish. Super easy! So MC is claiming that this is THE most expensive plant food option on their list. They're saying that 40L of Aqua Flakes only makes 587 gallons. That means that users are feeding their plants with a total of 68.1 mls/gal! If I recall the potency of Aqua Flakes correctly, that's a feeding level of 5451ppm (7.78 EC). I'm thinking someone forgot to carry a 1 or something? If shooting for 1.1 EC, Aqua Flakes users only need about 4.5mls/gal of each part. At that feeding rate, 40L of food makes 4444 gallons of food.
So as you can see MC is not doing apples-to-apples comparisons here which I think is shady and misleading. So far it looks like MC is a good product and they shouldn't be resorting to these lies to sell their plant foods.
Coloradoclear
Well-Known Member
Definitely keep this going! I like the positive comparisons. Went from Advanced to Megacrop and haven't looked back!
homebrewer
Well-Known Member
So aside from the horrid math with the Aqua Flakes cost comparison, MC *may* be getting some of their numbers from the manufacturer's recommended dose? MC is one of the least expensive foods on the market but their worst offense is over-stating how much cheaper they are. For the average, experienced grower reading this, MC could potentially save you a few bucks per month per light if you were only using their single bag of 9-6-17 dry food which is all that I'm using in this test.
This is a nice transition into today's update as I'd like to talk a little bit about their NPK content as it pertains to hydroponic use.
homebrewer
Well-Known Member
Day 15 today...
So things are moving along as expected. In terms of the overall health of the plants, they're perfect. The structure however is my only critique and that leads me into what I wanted to talk about today: NPK content of Mega Crop. Mega Crop supplies a NPK of 9-6-17 and that is accompanied by plenty of calcium, magnesium, and every other element along with some extras. But the NPK is what I don't love. If you don't mind the hassle of a dry food then I think a 9-6-17 would be fantastic in peat/coco/dirt. As for hydro (in my experience), this NPK grows excessively leafy and branchy plants at the expense of yield. You're much better off in hydro using a food with a 1-3-2 or a 1-3-3 or a 1-3-4 NPK ratio. Nitrogen seems to be taken up in 'excess' in hydro if more is supplied than needed. All you *need* is enough to support green, healthy leaves. Anything more than that and you start getting the excessive branching that can be seen below. I've run foods like DynaGro's Grow (7-9-5) and Foliage Pro (9-3-6) from start to finish in hydro with less than stellar results. Sure, the plants were healthy and the flowers were resinous and fragrant but the leafy, branchy mess that high N foods produce makes them less than ideal for hydro. Those foods are absolutely killer in peat/coco/dirt and I would suspect that MC would perform just as well, they're just not your best choices for hydro growing.
So to get the best results here with MC in hydro, I think adding a PK booster is essential. I'm not going to in this test but if I did, I'd probably run about 600ppm of MegaCrop and add about 150ppm of a PK booster. GH's Liquid kool bloom, DG's Magpro, or a MKP dry food, would all do the trick. The thing about *needing* a PK booster is that the addition of one starts to cut into the cost saving of MC. DyanGro's bloom formula is a 3-12-6 which clearly doesn't need a PK boost. Adding more K to the DG formula would be beneficial but it's not essential.
As far as plant maintenance goes, I've been trimming, topping, and pruning, since the 1st day of flower and I'll have to continue to do so up until day 25 or so. If I don't I'll end up with hundreds of bud sites that will develop into nothing more than leafy, airy garbage.
Mega Crop plants looking healthy as can be:
A branchy mess that needs to be properly managed. Believe it or not I've been pruning and topping a couple times per week...
This is the result of a hydro formula that supplies more N than is needed. I've seen this same growth with DG's grow and foliage pro formulas.
DynaGro Plants after 14 days. Clearly less branchy and much easier to manage overall...
So things are moving along as expected. In terms of the overall health of the plants, they're perfect. The structure however is my only critique and that leads me into what I wanted to talk about today: NPK content of Mega Crop. Mega Crop supplies a NPK of 9-6-17 and that is accompanied by plenty of calcium, magnesium, and every other element along with some extras. But the NPK is what I don't love. If you don't mind the hassle of a dry food then I think a 9-6-17 would be fantastic in peat/coco/dirt. As for hydro (in my experience), this NPK grows excessively leafy and branchy plants at the expense of yield. You're much better off in hydro using a food with a 1-3-2 or a 1-3-3 or a 1-3-4 NPK ratio. Nitrogen seems to be taken up in 'excess' in hydro if more is supplied than needed. All you *need* is enough to support green, healthy leaves. Anything more than that and you start getting the excessive branching that can be seen below. I've run foods like DynaGro's Grow (7-9-5) and Foliage Pro (9-3-6) from start to finish in hydro with less than stellar results. Sure, the plants were healthy and the flowers were resinous and fragrant but the leafy, branchy mess that high N foods produce makes them less than ideal for hydro. Those foods are absolutely killer in peat/coco/dirt and I would suspect that MC would perform just as well, they're just not your best choices for hydro growing.
So to get the best results here with MC in hydro, I think adding a PK booster is essential. I'm not going to in this test but if I did, I'd probably run about 600ppm of MegaCrop and add about 150ppm of a PK booster. GH's Liquid kool bloom, DG's Magpro, or a MKP dry food, would all do the trick. The thing about *needing* a PK booster is that the addition of one starts to cut into the cost saving of MC. DyanGro's bloom formula is a 3-12-6 which clearly doesn't need a PK boost. Adding more K to the DG formula would be beneficial but it's not essential.
As far as plant maintenance goes, I've been trimming, topping, and pruning, since the 1st day of flower and I'll have to continue to do so up until day 25 or so. If I don't I'll end up with hundreds of bud sites that will develop into nothing more than leafy, airy garbage.
Mega Crop plants looking healthy as can be:
A branchy mess that needs to be properly managed. Believe it or not I've been pruning and topping a couple times per week...
This is the result of a hydro formula that supplies more N than is needed. I've seen this same growth with DG's grow and foliage pro formulas.
DynaGro Plants after 14 days. Clearly less branchy and much easier to manage overall...
Keesje
Well-Known Member
I think that every line that says that you can do both veg and bloom with the same product, is not lying, but they are not telling the truth either.
Greennutrients also had a PK Booster.
https://greenleafnutrients.com/product/bud-explosion/?v=796834e7a283
I really enjoy your posts and your explanations.
Greennutrients also had a PK Booster.
https://greenleafnutrients.com/product/bud-explosion/?v=796834e7a283
I really enjoy your posts and your explanations.