Rurumo's Mars Hydro FC6500 grow journal

Rurumo

Rurumo

Well-Known Member
I've decided to add a little fertilizer experiment to my next grow. Once upon a time, I used Pure Blend Pro in a coco medium, feeding twice per day, and I got really nice results. I've been looking for a soluble organic fertilizer to use side by side in coco with my usual Maxibloom just because I think there is a niche right now for a complete/soluble/organic/powdered fertilizer meant to be used as a nutrient solution. I've decided to try something called "Corn Steep Liquor" which is a natural byproduct of our Ethanol industry and it's typically right around 7-6-4 or so in NPK (each brand varies a little). https://www.growerssecret.com/corn-steep-liquor-and-powder-fertilizers This stuff is totally water soluble, it has around 1% MG, and 30% of the N is in the form of amino acids. It really checks a lot of boxes as a good potential cannabis fertilizer. I'd love to dial it in so I can fertigate with it twice per day. I'm thinking of adding some solution grade gypsum with each feed as well, since it lacks calcium, and I'm also thinking I'll need to add epsom salts during the flowering period. I've only seen a couple of people here mention corn steep as a fertilizer, and there is no one openly working with it in any other cannabis forums either. Honestly, I think this substance has HUGE potential as a base organic fertilizer, and would only need calcium and a micronutrient pack to be a complete formula, although I would also add some additional N through Spirulina. I'm not sure that it needs any additional potassium-as we've seen from those recent studies on Potassium inake in Cannabis, we are grossly overfeeding K right now throughout the industry and home growers to no benefit.

I think I'll buy a 4 lb bag from amazon to start testing it, then if I like it, I will buy a 50 LB bag from Impello Biosciences-they are the guys who make Tribus. Corn Steep is another product they offer, and theirs has a better NPK ratio-they also charge the least shipping for a 50 LB bag. This stuff is loaded with vitamins and natural biostimulants from it's production process and it will be an incredible food source for soil organisms. I think a liquid organic grow, drain to waste/fertigation with runoff, in a coco media with a highly active rhizosphere, could work well. I also think a promix grow using this as a liquid nutrient, no runoff, with a watering between feedings could also work very well. Maintaining a stable PH is my biggest concern with this as I have a gut feeling all that bacterial action will really drop the PH-hopefully, two feedings to runoff per day will be enough to keep it in range in coco without any kind of buffer.

This will be fun, I haven't done an organic/mineral salt side by side in a while! It will take a while to figure it out, but I'm thinking of starting at 3 grams per gallon corn steep, 1 gram calcium sulfate per gallon (I already have 40 ppm calcium in my tap), .5 mag sulfate, and Bioag TM-7 fed at 12/12 flip and once more two weeks later.

Oops, one last thing. I contacted Impello to ask for their most recent test data for Tribus, and there is definitely more living microbes in each bottle when they leave the factory than are listed. They've conducted tests to see how much die-off occurs over time, so basically, each bottle will contain the stated CFU of living bacteria up until the expiration date. They are one of the only microbial inoculant companies to show me any test data. The tests done by Oregon on microbial inoculants showed that most of them had far less living microbes than states, and some-like Tarantula by Advanced, had ZERO living microbes. My main concern is getting an active/living product, and so far Tribus looks good so lets see how it does in a Maxibloom/liquid organic side by side!

Sorry guys for the long post, just thinking things out for the next cycle which is coming soon! Just gathering some supplies and considering which strains to pop VERY HARD. Tough choices ahead...
 
Rurumo

Rurumo

Well-Known Member
So far I've found two relevent studies on Corn Steep Liquor (CSL): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340335673_Establishment_of_Organic_Fertigation_System_Using_CSL_Corn_Steep_Liquor_Effect_of_CSL_Applicaton_on_Tomato_Lycopersicon_esculentum_Mill_Growth_Yield_Quality_and_Soil_Chemical_Property
That study was with tomatoes and wasnt very in depth, but CSL worked well as a primary fertilizer for tomatoes.
journals.ashs.org

Liquid Corn and Fish Fertilizers Are Good Options for Fertigation in Blackberry Cultivars Grown in an Organic Production System

The impact of organic fertilizer source on the growth, fruit quality, and yield of blackberry (Rubus L. subgenus Rubus Watson) cultivars (Marion and Black Diamond) grown in a machine-harvested, organic production system for the processed market was evaluated from 2011 to 2013. The planting was...
journals.ashs.org journals.ashs.org
This one looks at fish hydrolysate compared to Corn Steep Liquor as fertilizers for blackberries, and CSL turned out to be an excellent fertilizer that met all the macro/micro nutrient needs of the plant except CA and B.
 
R

RottyRzr

Well-Known Member
Are you using this thread for the CSL/salts comparison? i'd hate to miss it.
Nevermind, I clicked the follow button for your posts.
 
Brawndo G

Brawndo G

Active Member
Rurumo said:
I've decided to add a little fertilizer experiment to my next grow. Once upon a time, I used Pure Blend Pro in a coco medium, feeding twice per day, and I got really nice results. I've been looking for a soluble organic fertilizer to use side by side in coco with my usual Maxibloom just because I think there is a niche right now for a complete/soluble/organic/powdered fertilizer meant to be used as a nutrient solution. I've decided to try something called "Corn Steep Liquor" which is a natural byproduct of our Ethanol industry and it's typically right around 7-6-4 or so in NPK (each brand varies a little). https://www.growerssecret.com/corn-steep-liquor-and-powder-fertilizers This stuff is totally water soluble, it has around 1% MG, and 30% of the N is in the form of amino acids. It really checks a lot of boxes as a good potential cannabis fertilizer. I'd love to dial it in so I can fertigate with it twice per day. I'm thinking of adding some solution grade gypsum with each feed as well, since it lacks calcium, and I'm also thinking I'll need to add epsom salts during the flowering period. I've only seen a couple of people here mention corn steep as a fertilizer, and there is no one openly working with it in any other cannabis forums either. Honestly, I think this substance has HUGE potential as a base organic fertilizer, and would only need calcium and a micronutrient pack to be a complete formula, although I would also add some additional N through Spirulina. I'm not sure that it needs any additional potassium-as we've seen from those recent studies on Potassium inake in Cannabis, we are grossly overfeeding K right now throughout the industry and home growers to no benefit.

I think I'll buy a 4 lb bag from amazon to start testing it, then if I like it, I will buy a 50 LB bag from Impello Biosciences-they are the guys who make Tribus. Corn Steep is another product they offer, and theirs has a better NPK ratio-they also charge the least shipping for a 50 LB bag. This stuff is loaded with vitamins and natural biostimulants from it's production process and it will be an incredible food source for soil organisms. I think a liquid organic grow, drain to waste/fertigation with runoff, in a coco media with a highly active rhizosphere, could work well. I also think a promix grow using this as a liquid nutrient, no runoff, with a watering between feedings could also work very well. Maintaining a stable PH is my biggest concern with this as I have a gut feeling all that bacterial action will really drop the PH-hopefully, two feedings to runoff per day will be enough to keep it in range in coco without any kind of buffer.

This will be fun, I haven't done an organic/mineral salt side by side in a while! It will take a while to figure it out, but I'm thinking of starting at 3 grams per gallon corn steep, 1 gram calcium sulfate per gallon (I already have 40 ppm calcium in my tap), .5 mag sulfate, and Bioag TM-7 fed at 12/12 flip and once more two weeks later.

Oops, one last thing. I contacted Impello to ask for their most recent test data for Tribus, and there is definitely more living microbes in each bottle when they leave the factory than are listed. They've conducted tests to see how much die-off occurs over time, so basically, each bottle will contain the stated CFU of living bacteria up until the expiration date. They are one of the only microbial inoculant companies to show me any test data. The tests done by Oregon on microbial inoculants showed that most of them had far less living microbes than states, and some-like Tarantula by Advanced, had ZERO living microbes. My main concern is getting an active/living product, and so far Tribus looks good so lets see how it does in a Maxibloom/liquid organic side by side!

Sorry guys for the long post, just thinking things out for the next cycle which is coming soon! Just gathering some supplies and considering which strains to pop VERY HARD. Tough choices ahead...
Click to expand...
Sounds like a fun experiment. I'd like to mention a few things you didn't.

First, OMRI certification means that a product is approved for organic crop production but not necessarily that the OMRI certified product is made from organically produced/sourced products. I assume the vast majority of corn steep liquor is made from corn sprayed with roundup. Supposedly, glyphosate inhibits P uptake. Regardless, I personally don't want it near my food or weed. If you care too, you might want to make sure your source of corn steep liquor is organic.

Second, gypsum is an excellent source of available calcium, but it may drive your medium pH lower than you want as it can leach k, mg, and na...especially if you add it to every feed. Btw, the calcium in your water is most likely calcium carbonate which is not a form that is readily available to plants.

Third, the plants accumulate micronutrient metals(fe, mn, zn, co, b, mo) over their entire lifecycle, so I recommend using tm-7 twice a week from start to finish. Also, to get maximum calcium assimilation, boron needs to be present. Since calcium is part of the structure of every cell wall in the plant, it's important to have the boron so the cell walls fill with ca rather than water.

Lastly, I agree that most people feed too much K. The agronomist I take advice from says the P number needs to be 2x the K number on the fertilizer for maximum P uptake. The npk of the corn steep liquor (7-6-4) looks to be well balanced. I personally believe people feed too much N in flower as well. I can't say how much is too much, but I know that people see positive results feeding mg in flower because it reduces the nitrogen in the plant. Mg is less ideal than Ca to have in the tissue of the flowers because it holds more water and makes the smoke more harsh.

Thanks for reading, lol. I did my best to keep it as short as possible. I just feel like there are important topics that are rarely talked about, and you seem to be interested in similar things.
 
Rurumo

Rurumo

Well-Known Member
Brawndo G said:
Sounds like a fun experiment. I'd like to mention a few things you didn't.

First, OMRI certification means that a product is approved for organic crop production but not necessarily that the OMRI certified product is made from organically produced/sourced products. I assume the vast majority of corn steep liquor is made from corn sprayed with roundup. Supposedly, glyphosate inhibits P uptake. Regardless, I personally don't want it near my food or weed. If you care too, you might want to make sure your source of corn steep liquor is organic.

Second, gypsum is an excellent source of available calcium, but it may drive your medium pH lower than you want as it can leach k, mg, and na...especially if you add it to every feed. Btw, the calcium in your water is most likely calcium carbonate which is not a form that is readily available to plants.

Third, the plants accumulate micronutrient metals(fe, mn, zn, co, b, mo) over their entire lifecycle, so I recommend using tm-7 twice a week from start to finish. Also, to get maximum calcium assimilation, boron needs to be present. Since calcium is part of the structure of every cell wall in the plant, it's important to have the boron so the cell walls fill with ca rather than water.

Lastly, I agree that most people feed too much K. The agronomist I take advice from says the P number needs to be 2x the K number on the fertilizer for maximum P uptake. The npk of the corn steep liquor (7-6-4) looks to be well balanced. I personally believe people feed too much N in flower as well. I can't say how much is too much, but I know that people see positive results feeding mg in flower because it reduces the nitrogen in the plant. Mg is less ideal than Ca to have in the tissue of the flowers because it holds more water and makes the smoke more harsh.

Thanks for reading, lol. I did my best to keep it as short as possible. I just feel like there are important topics that are rarely talked about, and you seem to be interested in similar things.
Click to expand...
Thanks very much for the time and thought you put into your response. I hadn't even considered that gypsum could lower PH. I've had very positive past experiences with it, but typically as part of a soil mix, never used as a soluble source of calcium in a nutrient solution. I'll definitely look into that angle further, since I'm already concerned about low PH.

Your point about micronutrients is well taken. I'm trying to get a better picture of the micronutrients in CSL, but with the known lack of boron, I could certainly increase the TM-7 treatments. I'll lay off the epsom unless I need it, usually during stretch is the time I need it most under strong LED lighting.

I'll check with Impello about the source of the corn that is used in their product. All I know about the Grower's Secret brand on Amazon is that they do not use GMO corn, so I'm reasonably satisfied in the safety of that product. I also looked it up in the California heavy metal database and it's clean from that standpoint.

I'm convinced the calcium choride in our tap water is more available than people think-i know this is controversial and I've been on both sides of the issue at various times. I've played around with calcium ppms, and I'm pretty well convinced my plants use the CA in my tap water, of course, I liberally use amino acids, citric acid, and fulvic acid, as well as try to keep an active rhizosphere, so I can see a situation where maybe these things add up to better chelation/absorption vs their absence. One cool thing that I've noticed, is that when I mix up my Maxibloom and stir it up a few times, there is always a bit of powder swirling at the bottom but once I add my citric acid to lower the PH to 6 and stir it up a few more times, the residue disappears.
 
Rurumo

Rurumo

Well-Known Member
Jeffislovinlife said:
Makes sense to me and the best thing to me that you so freely share it with all of us :hump: :peace:
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I love sharing these cool new developments. Corn Steep liquor is probably well known to a lot of people, but I haven't seen it catch on yet like I think it deserves, so I figured, why not do my part and talk about it a bit and experiment. I like the grows on RIU that use huge beds with recycled living soil, but I also miss using pure blend pro, or Age Old Bloom, in a drain to waste coco setup too. Being able to have a successful organic grow while not using much media appeals to me right now since I can't carry inside 30+ buckets of soil to fill a bed, lol. There are just so many fun and legit ways to grow.
 
Rurumo

Rurumo

Well-Known Member
Oh, I almost forgot! One of my top 3 picks for my next grow is the Cinderella 99 f4 from Fleur Du Mal seeds. FDM always comes up as a top choice for a real Cinderella 99 representation along with a few other places. I was curious about these F4 seeds because for some reason, I thought I had f2s, so I contacted them and got the lowdown on this current f4 generation and here is their direct quote:

"Citrus terp profiles have always dominated our C99. This generation was selected toward the sought-after pineapple phenos, you can expect about a 50-50 split between the pineapple and tangerine phenos."

So pineapple and tangerine phenos are a win win situation for me, this is a much increased rate of the citrus pheno appearing over the original stock or the Cindy 99 Bx seeds I've grown in the past.
 
Rurumo

Rurumo

Well-Known Member
Brawndo G said:
Second, gypsum is an excellent source of available calcium, but it may drive your medium pH lower than you want as it can leach k, mg, and na...especially if you add it to every feed. Btw, the calcium in your water is most likely calcium carbonate which is not a form that is readily available to plants.
Click to expand...
What do you think of either Calcium EDTA chelate 9.7% or Biomin calcium (amino acid chelate) 5% over calcium sulfate? Also, what PPM calcium do you think I should be targeting. 1 gram of the EDTA chelate provides 25 ppm calcium, so I'd like to start by including the 40 ppm calcium in my tap water to start, and if I get deficiencies later, I can always increase the CaSO4/chelate. I'm used to feeding Calnit every feed as it is, so I'm going to start that way with the corn steep as well-I think it's good to have enough calcium at all times in a coco medium, but I do share your concerns about locking out other nutrients, which are in a much lower concentration in corn steep vs Maxigro/bloom or that type of fertilizer.

Gypsum adds 61 ppm CA per gram to 1 gal water, so my original plan was for 90 ppm Calcium. That's about as high as I want to start, and that has worked well for me in the past with Calnit/mineral salt fertilizers.
 
Rurumo

Rurumo

Well-Known Member
I like the look of this "organic" cal mag. Anyone try the TPS brand? https://tpsnutrients.com/products/calmag-oac?variant=41994579050745

4.5% Ca, 1.1% Mg, nitrogen free. "Chelated" by organic acids, probably citric acid, it does a great job of keeping Ca in solution. It also contains all of the micro nutrients:
Boron: 0.005%
Copper: 0.007%
Iron: 0.01%
Manganese: 0.01%
Sulfur: 0.05%
Zinc: 0.01%

45ppm Ca per ml per gallon.

With this, I could eliminate the TM-7 or at least reduce it's use frequency, just to be sure I'm getting enough boron. I think I'm going to go this route starting with 1 to 1.5 ml per gallon. Also, I've learned that Corn Steep is about 1.2 EC at 4 g/gallon, so I think I'm good to get started with this stuff. I will stop boring everyone with my plans now! I just wanted to have all those #s down in one place for reference.
 
R

RottyRzr

Well-Known Member
Rurumo said:
Yes! Welcome Rotty, as you can see there are some really nice folks here, like Jeff.
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Thanks Rurumo. Also want to say thanks for the yucca info above (somewhere). I also grow hot peppers and have some in fabric grow bags. I've been having trouble giving them water because the potting mix becomes hydrophobic when it dries and the water/nute solution just beads up and runs off of the mix. I bought some yucca to add and the problem went away. The stuff is amazing! My water/nute solution gets absorbed right away. I also added some to my weed grow res since I read about media developing channels. Hope it helps there also.
 
Rurumo

Rurumo

Well-Known Member
RottyRzr said:
Thanks Rurumo. Also want to say thanks for the yucca info above (somewhere). I also grow hot peppers and have some in fabric grow bags. I've been having trouble giving them water because the potting mix becomes hydrophobic when it dries and the water/nute solution just beads up and runs off of the mix. I bought some yucca to add and the problem went away. The stuff is amazing! My water/nute solution gets absorbed right away. I also added some to my weed grow res since I read about media developing channels. Hope it helps there also.
Click to expand...
That's great to hear! I'm crazy about yucca, it just has so many uses and when I run out, I notice the difference immediately in my watering. Also, with the GS plant foods yucca powder, I use 1/4 teaspoon per quart of water with 5 ml neem oil-that's the perfect amount to use for a basic neem spray, just shake it like crazy and it should end up looking milky. Not sure how much liquid extract to use, but use as much as you need to totally emulsify the neem oil.
 
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