Alternatives to expensive cannabis targeted nutrients

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OldManRiver

OldManRiver

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Yeah it's not to adjust the ph of the soil. Just the nutrients. And I agree with you those are great options.

Reason being say if you add silica to nutrients it will precipitate some out like iron and calcium because silica will shoot the ph up close to 9. So you add the silica first and ph it down to like 6.5 or close to where you are feeding at. Then add the nutrients and that way they don't get precipitated out.

Hydro different story
You're dealing with a more managed approach. I grow in raised beds outdoors. They are four years old now, and have been built up with steer and mushroom compost every year, which I augment with a general garden fertilizer (Happy Frog) for the veggies, Botanicare for the weed. With both, I use less than the mfr recommends. I have winecap mushrooms introduced to the beds, which eats and degrades the compost in situ, giving even better soil, and tasty shrooms. It is now some pretty good dirt, if I do say so myself. :-) I have to generally manage the pH down slightly, as the steer compost I use seems to be a bit akaline, and my water is alkaline. I just keep an eye on it, and lightly adjust if needed in the spring. Call me organic lite.

I had to adjust two of them pH up in their first year, for which I used Lilly soil sweet, and one down, aluminum sulphate did the work. I checked with the afore mentioned Home depot guage, applied about 3/5 of what the directions recommended, watered in, and checked again after a day. Add a bit more if needed, check again. etc. The volume of dirt involved makes a liquid treatment impractical for me. If you are in containers, I defer to your experience.

Just read your post again: I never worry about the pH of the nutes. I pay Botanicare to take care of that, and their product works for me.
 
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Aqua Man

Aqua Man

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Whoops, shoulda said iron or aluminum sulphate.
I thought you did..
You're dealing with a more managed approach. I grow in raised beds outdoors. They are four years old now, and have been built up with steer and mushroom compost every year, which I augment with a general garden fertilizer (Happy Frog) for the veggies, Botanicare for the weed. With both, I use less than the mfr recommends. I have winecap mushrooms introduced to the beds, which eats and degrades the compost in situ, giving even better soil, and tasty shrooms. It is now some pretty good dirt, if I do say so myself. :-) I have to generally manage the pH down slightly, as the steer compost I use seems to be a bit akaline, and my water is alkaline. I just keep an eye on it, and lightly adjust if needed in the spring. Call me organic lite.

I had to adjust two of them pH up in their first year, for which I used Lilly soil sweet, and one down, aluminum sulphate did the work. I checked with the afore mentioned Home depot guage, applied about 3/5 of what the directions recommended, watered in, and checked again after a day. Add a bit more if needed, check again. etc. The volume of dirt involved makes a liquid treatment impractical for me. If you are in containers, I defer to your experience.
Building a soil over years is an art and beyond my knowledge. I have nothing but respect for those who do so and IMO makes for the best soil you can find.

For us salt monkies having to deal with how to get our ferts into the soil we can face different challenges like how to make sure our nutrients don't precipitate out.. we also do tend to overcomplicate things, sometimes necassary and sometimes not.
 
OldManRiver

OldManRiver

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I thought you did..
Building a soil over years is an art and beyond my knowledge. I have nothing but respect for those who do so and IMO makes for the best soil you can find.

For us salt monkies having to deal with how to get our ferts into the soil we can face different challenges like how to make sure our nutrients don't precipitate out.. we also do tend to overcomplicate things, sometimes necassary and sometimes not.
Ah shit, your local county extension office is all you need. Container planting for weed is harder then sustained beds. You have smaller volume, you're often, and in my opinion mistakenly, trying to pump nutes to a plant to pump yield. It's a harder problem. Larger beds avoid a lot of problems. Drainage is better, the roots have more room. Building soil is straightforward. You need to build tilth, primarily. Organic-ish amendments, like steer manure compost, and sand, are useful where I'm at. My land is flood plain, so the soil is mostly silt. I have added organics, which will degrade to humus, and a bit of sand, for aeration. Gentle additions, over time, and I have soil that would make any gardener request a private moment. Adding the mushrooms, to break down the woody components, ok, I'll strut a bit there. It was luck and serendipity that led me to that, but I will heartily recommend it to anyone. It's just beyond cool to have tasty mushrooms flushing at the base of your ladies, and they both build your soil, and are an indicator of a healthy solil ecology.
 
BillFarthing

BillFarthing

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I have a farmer friend who grows in straight composted cow manure. It's the dankest organic I've ever had. I've done cheap potting soil with neem seed meal or insect frass as a base and gypsum as a calcium supplement and had some monster yields.

My buddy works at a commercial grow here and is doing this:

Jack’s Hydro Feed- 25 lb bag
$70- 2000 gallons
$0.035/gallon

AgTonik AGT-50 fulvic acid- 20L (The home and garden version is Mr. Fulvic)
$420- 20,000 gallons
$0.02/gallon

Advanced pH down- 4L
$82- 6600 gallons
$0.01/gallon

DES-X Insecticidal Soap- 2.5 g
$85- 300 gallons (@1%)
$0.28.3/gal.
 
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tomatoesarecooltoo

tomatoesarecooltoo

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I just remembered this video I saw a while back. Summary: big box retails tend to clear out all of their garden supplies in the fall.

 
thehighguy

thehighguy

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hi, iv create this thread to discuss alternative nutrients to the ones targeted at the cannabis cultivation community. I personally believe that to a degree people have been brainwashed to convince them they need to buy 200$ nutrient line-ups to get good yields, and potency. Thats not the case! This year i used Gaia green organics all purpose fertilizer (4-4-4) as my base nutrient. i mixed it right into the soil (garden soil as this plant was grown outdoors). Its important to note that this product does contain some gypsum which will lighten up your soil (until it is used up in about 4 months) and it will release calcium so go easy on the cal mag. Another thing to note is that the garden already has an established microbiome (beneficial bacterial population) so if your going to try this method indoors in pasteurized soil (any soil you buy at a store has been pasteurized) then i would recommend investing in soil which has bacterial spore like pro-mix HP mycorrhizae, or i would personally invest in spores and apply them to the root mass in the form of a paste during the transplanting process. A couple cups of worm castings mixed into the soil is another good way to get beneficial bacteria. Now we have the soil ready for vegetative growth and its time to transplant. The 4-4-4 will support most strains right up until the final week of veg. now that i got the basics out of the way i think its important to discuss the varying nutrient requirements of each strain, although the 4-4-4 will support any plant on a 3-5 week veg cycle some strains require more nutrients, like sour diesel. with a strain like sour diesel i would mix the Gaia green at approx 125% (1.25 x what ever the regular recommended dose is) and even consider applying the all purpose fertilizer as a top dressing if signs of deficiency appear, in the later weeks. if you plan on remaining in the vegetative stage for longer then 6 weeks i would consider applying a top dressing at week 5 regardless of the strain. Now its time to start flowering, approx one week before you flip the lights (or around day 28 of vegetative growth for a auto flowering plant) apply golf green tomato fertilizer (6-12-12) or something with similar nutrient ratios/levels. Its important to apply this before you flip the lights because a top dressing fertilizer needs to be watered down before it can be used, so it get into the root mass about 1-2 weeks after applying it, depending on the frequency of watering. continue to apply the fertilizer every 2-3 weeks and stop applying it 1-2 weeks before you flush. Try to have 2-3 weeks where you dont have any applied fertilizer before you harvest to allow the nutrients to fully wash down and out. 2KG of Gaia green all purpose is 30$ CND and the golf green tomato fertilizer another 20$ CND, combine that with 30$ in soil (enough for 4 plants roughly) and 40$ in bacteria and your grow costs not including lights and ventilation is approx 120$ so 30$ a plant. Keep in mind that you probably wont even use all the nutrients! their will definitely be left over golf green.

honorable mentions for boosting yield/potency if you have the extra cash:

Cal-Mag supplement- i didn't use a cal-mag supplement for this grow but with that being said it wouldn't hurt to apply it at half strength every second watering careful not to overdo it or you could block the uptake of other nutrients by having an excess of cal-mag

terpanator- this product is highly recommended for increasing yield. It boosts resin production, and the resin is where all the goodies are (thc and flavor carrying compounds). apply every 4th watering during veg and every watering during flowering.

super thrive- this amazing kelp based product is good for reducing shock and increasing the rate of root growth. i personally apply this product before switching the lights, when transplanting or if my plant is stressed out. 1.2ml/gallon so you dont need much, buy small bottles so it doesn't expire.

remo's natures candy- natures candy is just a flavor enhancer and sweetener, i use this product exclusively on my indoor plants but you can notice the sent increase within 2 weeks of the first application. apply occasionally during veg like once every 4th watering, and then use it every watering during flowering)


The plant in the picture is an auto flowering jack herer at the beginning of the 4th week of flower. It got super thrive when i transplanted it and other then that iv watered it twice, rain, the 4-4-4 and 6-12-12 have done all the work. The plant is almost 8 weeks old so dont mind its somewhat small stature. This plant is thriving! honestly it might even be better then my indoor jack herer which is half a week behind (the bain of auto flowering is each plant decides itself when it wants to flower which leads to some plants being a week ahead sometimes)/ my indoor plant is on advanced nutrients big bud line up (bud igniter, big bud, overdrive) with PGP bloom as its flowering base nutrient... i also feed it terpanator and bud candy.

i hope you enjoyed this article, if you have any experience using organics, or non traditional fertilizers post about your experience and include some photos. thanks for visiting


Plant Update: jack herer is the smaller one, the larger one is train wreak both autos. train wreak is a 2 weeks younger, same nutrient application.
 
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Kanzeon

Kanzeon

1,899
263
Silica is the easiest supplement to find for free. Essentially every dessicant packet in anything is silicon dioxide- I use one bead per 5g of water every other watering.

Also, banana peels are a good source of K, and broken up bones from any meat you eat are good sources of P. Molasses has most of the micronutrients. Pee is high in N and P if you're really broke.
 
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