How Do I Properly Feed My Plant

Ranger0282 · Jan 21, 2026

Hello Everyone.. I have been having the worst time with Bud Rot. After getting some useful information from Hossgrows, I took his advise and ordered an 80% Indica strain called Grandmommy Purple which should be less acceptable to mold. I'm also gonna give Gnick55 suggesting of using a 50/50 solution of isoproptyl alcohol/water and treat the spots as they show. I sprayed 50/50 peroxide once a week during flowering last year with no success. Also while seeking this info I learned too much water and improper feeding might be a factor. I am retired and home all day so I try and water when I see they need it. But feeding is rocket science to me. I don't really have the access or funds for any of the really good plant foods I have seen that are on the market. I only grow 3 plants a year outdoors. I have been using Miracle Grow Tomato Plant food which I just looked up and it's 18-18-21. I started with 1 of the small scoops in a gallon of water once a week. As the plants have been getting bigger I switched to twice a week. But I started have nitrogen and calcium deficiency issues so I upped it to 2 scopes a gallon twice a week per plant. When plants have started flowering I have had to water everyday. I tried to prolong it some but they were too thirsty to stretch it out anymore. At that point I water every morning with a gallon per plant. I am using Ocean Forrest soil in 15 or 20 gallon (don't really know which) pots with good drain. My soil is 3 years old but last year I added a small amount of cow manure and a little ground goat manure. I see they sell Organic Tomato-Tone which is 3-4-6. I might just grab a bag and see if it helps but I still have absolutely no idea what-so-ever how to properly feed my plants. Could someone please give me some advice. I would appreciate it....Thanks

orggrwr · Jan 21, 2026

Don't really have any new ideas for the WPM but it's pretty easy to make your own fertilizers at home for next to nothing. Lots of info online about plant ferments and homemade amendments. I have a bucket of nothing but water, leaf mold from the woods behind my house, and any disposable plant material from my plants. Everything goes in there leaves, stems, roots and any unusable bud. The idea being that since all nutes are coming from cannabis plants all the nutes they need are there in the exact ratio they need. Plants love it. This bucket has been cooking since September of 24 and all the original plant material has completely liquefied. Last few grows i have only used this and compost/ castings tea in my amended living soil. Haven't had to buy any nutes for over a year. Definitely my favorite style of growing. Check out the " Garden like a Viking " series on ytube, he has a ton of great recipes for homemade amendments. Hope it works out for you. I'm jealous of people who can grow outdoors this time of year.

Ninjadogma · Jan 21, 2026

Welcome.

Awesome you're taking advice and have the time to dedicate to learning. I tend to get overly verbose, so I'll try and be brief and on point for this one:

Ditch the tomato fertilizer. Wrong ratio for cannabis. If you want to stick with easily sourced store bought, try Dr Earth 4-4-4 instead. Not an ideal ratio either but it's closer.

Feeding should be a background thing the way you're growing. Dry amends tend to release slow and usually only occasionally refreshed. Focus on your watering technique instead.

Reusing soil is fine, even environmentally responsible. Just make sure you reset and recharge before reuse. We can help with how.

There's folks who grow for years before they figure out watering. You're working with a typical soil that should be allowed to "dry back" in between waterings. This makes watering tricky (I'll save the long rant). When it's time to water, work VERY SLOWLY. If you don't have a drip setup, use a 16 Oz water bottle with two holes poked in the bottom with a thumb tack and a hole poked in the cap, just fill the bottle and set it in the soil and keep filling it until about 20% of the container size of water runs out. Simple example 5 gallon pot should have a gallon of runoff.

The nutrients your plant needs will shift when it's ready to flower. So you'll want to switch to a flowering / blooming formula like Dr Earth's Flower Girl. You don't have to use that brand, I'm just trying to point you in a general direction using easily sourced stuff and if you ever want to go with liquid nutes there's stuff that works great that way too. Seriously it's just trickier with store bought stuff so as far as I'm concerned, the cannabis specific stuff you're paying a premium for convenience.

Okay so much for not making a long verbose rant

Ranger0282 · Jan 21, 2026

orggrwr said:
Don't really have any new ideas for the WPM but it's pretty easy to make your own fertilizers at home for next to nothing. Lots of info online about plant ferments and homemade amendments. I have a bucket of nothing but water, leaf mold from the woods behind my house, and any disposable plant material from my plants. Everything goes in there leaves, stems, roots and any unusable bud. The idea being that since all nutes are coming from cannabis plants all the nutes they need are there in the exact ratio they need. Plants love it. This bucket has been cooking since September of 24 and all the original plant material has completely liquefied. Last few grows i have only used this and compost/ castings tea in my amended living soil. Haven't had to buy any nutes for over a year. Definitely my favorite style of growing. Check out the " Garden like a Viking " series on ytube, he has a ton of great recipes for homemade amendments. Hope it works out for you. I'm jealous of people who can grow outdoors this time of year.

My wife does this for her many many raised beds. I have a compost that should be done by spring I could use. I don't grow this time of year. We were expecting almost 2 feet of snow this weekend. That seems to have died down some. I wasn't gonna grow this year from the bad rot I have dealt with in the past. Decided I would and have been trying to nip my bud rot problem.. in the bud.. before season starts....

carlosescobar · Jan 22, 2026

Ninjadogma said:
Welcome.

Awesome you're taking advice and have the time to dedicate to learning. I tend to get overly verbose, so I'll try and be brief and on point for this one:

Ditch the tomato fertilizer. Wrong ratio for cannabis. If you want to stick with easily sourced store bought, try Dr Earth 4-4-4 instead. Not an ideal ratio either but it's closer.

Feeding should be a background thing the way you're growing. Dry amends tend to release slow and usually only occasionally refreshed. Focus on your watering technique instead.

Reusing soil is fine, even environmentally responsible. Just make sure you reset and recharge before reuse. We can help with how.

There's folks who grow for years before they figure out watering. You're working with a typical soil that should be allowed to "dry back" in between waterings. This makes watering tricky (I'll save the long rant). When it's time to water, work VERY SLOWLY. If you don't have a drip setup, use a 16 Oz water bottle with two holes poked in the bottom with a thumb tack and a hole poked in the cap, just fill the bottle and set it in the soil and keep filling it until about 20% of the container size of water runs out. Simple example 5 gallon pot should have a gallon of runoff.

The nutrients your plant needs will shift when it's ready to flower. So you'll want to switch to a flowering / blooming formula like Dr Earth's Flower Girl. You don't have to use that brand, I'm just trying to point you in a general direction using easily sourced stuff and if you ever want to go with liquid nutes there's stuff that works great that way too. Seriously it's just trickier with store bought stuff so as far as I'm concerned, the cannabis specific stuff you're paying a premium for convenience.

Okay so much for not making a long verbose rant

whats a good ratio for cannabis? i was going to feed my next lot with tomatorite which is 4;3;8, is that better. ?

Galgrows · Jan 22, 2026

orggrwr said:
Don't really have any new ideas for the WPM but it's pretty easy to make your own fertilizers at home for next to nothing. Lots of info online about plant ferments and homemade amendments. I have a bucket of nothing but water, leaf mold from the woods behind my house, and any disposable plant material from my plants. Everything goes in there leaves, stems, roots and any unusable bud. The idea being that since all nutes are coming from cannabis plants all the nutes they need are there in the exact ratio they need. Plants love it. This bucket has been cooking since September of 24 and all the original plant material has completely liquefied. Last few grows i have only used this and compost/ castings tea in my amended living soil. Haven't had to buy any nutes for over a year. Definitely my favorite style of growing. Check out the " Garden like a Viking " series on ytube, he has a ton of great recipes for homemade amendments. Hope it works out for you. I'm jealous of people who can grow outdoors this time of year.

I used to do this way back when like you and add old cow patties cause they were available. Sheep poop also is very good. Then i would poor it thru a screen sitting on another bucket. Great stuff.

LoveGrowingIt · Jan 22, 2026

Ranger0282 said:
I have been having the worst time with Bud Rot.

Probably due to unfriendly microorganisms in the soil. A solution would be to introduce friendly microorganisms that can combat the bad guys. Recharge is a good product in this category. There are many others.

Ranger0282 · Jan 22, 2026

Ninjadogma said:
Welcome.

Awesome you're taking advice and have the time to dedicate to learning. I tend to get overly verbose, so I'll try and be brief and on point for this one:

Ditch the tomato fertilizer. Wrong ratio for cannabis. If you want to stick with easily sourced store bought, try Dr Earth 4-4-4 instead. Not an ideal ratio either but it's closer.

Feeding should be a background thing the way you're growing. Dry amends tend to release slow and usually only occasionally refreshed. Focus on your watering technique instead.

Reusing soil is fine, even environmentally responsible. Just make sure you reset and recharge before reuse. We can help with how.

There's folks who grow for years before they figure out watering. You're working with a typical soil that should be allowed to "dry back" in between waterings. This makes watering tricky (I'll save the long rant). When it's time to water, work VERY SLOWLY. If you don't have a drip setup, use a 16 Oz water bottle with two holes poked in the bottom with a thumb tack and a hole poked in the cap, just fill the bottle and set it in the soil and keep filling it until about 20% of the container size of water runs out. Simple example 5 gallon pot should have a gallon of runoff.

The nutrients your plant needs will shift when it's ready to flower. So you'll want to switch to a flowering / blooming formula like Dr Earth's Flower Girl. You don't have to use that brand, I'm just trying to point you in a general direction using easily sourced stuff and if you ever want to go with liquid nutes there's stuff that works great that way too. Seriously it's just trickier with store bought stuff so as far as I'm concerned, the cannabis specific stuff you're paying a premium for convenience.

Okay so much for not making a long verbose rant

Thanks....This is very helpful info. What really confuses me is that when the bag says 9-9-9..it doesn't give you the info for how to achieve that ratio. I get 2 different spoons. Which spoonful per gallon gives you this ratio? I read that bag cover to cover... I'm gonna get some of the Dr. Earth and give it a try. How many times a week do you feed your plants? That alone is probably my biggest question. It seems that middle to late in the vegetative season is when my plants need feeding the most. During peak flowering I water every morning. I'm careful to put a little per bucket as I go to allow it to saturate instead of just running through.

Ninjadogma · Jan 22, 2026

Ranger0282 said:
Thanks....This is very helpful info. What really confuses me is that when the bag says 9-9-9..it doesn't give you the info for how to achieve that ratio. I get 2 different spoons. Which spoonful per gallon gives you this ratio? I read that bag cover to cover... I'm gonna get some of the Dr. Earth and give it a try. How many times a week do you feed your plants? That alone is probably my biggest question. It seems that middle to late in the vegetative season is when my plants need feeding the most. During peak flowering I water every morning. I'm careful to put a little per bucket as I go to allow it to saturate instead of just running through.

Okay the ratios... This three numbers represent specific things. the first number is Nitrogen, the second is phosphorus and the third is potassium, or NPK abbreviated. If you see a 9-9-9 that means there is 9% concentration of each of those nutrients. Cannabis vegging ratio is more like 3-1-2 or 4-2-3. When you flower, the nute demand shifts and the plant only needs light nitrogen while demand for phosphorus and potassium spike. The flowering ratio is more around 1-5-4. You don't have to have a perfect ratio but it's the goal you're aiming for.

So if you have a 9-9-9 you want to add something extra that will just provide nitrogen so you would look for an 18-0-0 to add to the feed and doing a little math division you'll see that will give us a 3-1-1 ratio feed That we can use but we will need to go light And not overfertilize across the board.

Youre working with dry amends. Timing on those is typically refreshing every couple weeks, not every feeding, and as previously mentioned, you are using a soil that requires a proper dryback cycle so you should only be watering every 3-4 days, let the pot dry and get light in water weight. It's how the plant gets fed right, the wet and dry cycle. You're watering slow so you're already ahead of the game of about half the growers.

Ninjadogma · Jan 22, 2026

LoveGrowingIt said:
Probably due to unfriendly microorganisms in the soil. A solution would be to introduce friendly microorganisms that can combat the bad guys. Recharge is a good product in this category. There are many others.

Thats one thing I haven't been doing is periodic recharge. I have a dry amend that does light recharge but it's not a rich microbe drop. I feed em with molasses and kelp but there's times of some grows especially after a hard EC correction I wonder if I'm just dumping it into a barren wasteland.

Ninjadogma · Jan 22, 2026

carlosescobar said:
whats a good ratio for cannabis? i was going to feed my next lot with tomatorite which is 4;3;8, is that better. ?

In veg, around 3-1-2 and in flower around 1-5-4. This is very generic though... there are transitional ratios too as it's moving from veg to flower and so there's a time period where you're keeping the N levels up but ramping up the P and K so that you have the nitrogen as fuel it needs for the stretch, and the increased phosphorus and potassium it needs for bloom growth. The demand itself is a bell curve that peaks around week 6 of flower and then tapers back down as the plant winds down it's life cycle.

JIMKSI64 · Jan 22, 2026

If you have access to Dr Earth I would recommend following the feed chart for cannabis that Dr Earth puts out.
I did 2 runs and found out how making it up or reading the bag and using the directions for pot, indoor plant would fade my plants to ugly every time
https://drearth.com/wp-content/uploads/Feeding-Schedule.pdf
I am going to run the high nutrition schedule.
As designed. Indoor photoperiod. Dry nutrients and then 2 water add parts.

carlosescobar · Jan 22, 2026

Ninjadogma said:
In veg, around 3-1-2 and in flower around 1-5-4. This is very generic though... there are transitional ratios too as it's moving from veg to flower and so there's a time period where you're keeping the N levels up but ramping up the P and K so that you have the nitrogen as fuel it needs for the stretch, and the increased phosphorus and potassium it needs for bloom growth. The demand itself is a bell curve that peaks around week 6 of flower and then tapers back down as the plant winds down it's life cycle.

thanks for that , ive found some feeds that are 3;1;2 , i might try one of them , ive got a secondary seaweed based biostimulant and feed with all the micro nutrients like sulphur , iron , boron etc

crimsonecho · Jan 22, 2026

Ninjadogma said:
Okay the ratios... This three numbers represent specific things. the first number is Nitrogen, the second is phosphorus and the third is potassium, or NPK abbreviated. If you see a 9-9-9 that means there is 9% concentration of each of those nutrients. Cannabis vegging ratio is more like 3-1-2 or 4-2-3. When you flower, the nute demand shifts and the plant only needs light nitrogen while demand for phosphorus and potassium spike. The flowering ratio is more around 1-5-4. You don't have to have a perfect ratio but it's the goal you're aiming for.

So if you have a 9-9-9 you want to add something extra that will just provide nitrogen so you would look for an 18-0-0 to add to the feed and doing a little math division you'll see that will give us a 3-1-1 ratio feed That we can use but we will need to go light And not overfertilize across the board.

Youre working with dry amends. Timing on those is typically refreshing every couple weeks, not every feeding, and as previously mentioned, you are using a soil that requires a proper dryback cycle so you should only be watering every 3-4 days, let the pot dry and get light in water weight. It's how the plant gets fed right, the wet and dry cycle. You're watering slow so you're already ahead of the game of about half the growers.

there are no healthy plants grown with a 1-5-4 ratio. this is not correct info.

Ranger0282 · Jan 22, 2026

Ninjadogma said:
Okay the ratios... This three numbers represent specific things. the first number is Nitrogen, the second is phosphorus and the third is potassium, or NPK abbreviated. If you see a 9-9-9 that means there is 9% concentration of each of those nutrients. Cannabis vegging ratio is more like 3-1-2 or 4-2-3. When you flower, the nute demand shifts and the plant only needs light nitrogen while demand for phosphorus and potassium spike. The flowering ratio is more around 1-5-4. You don't have to have a perfect ratio but it's the goal you're aiming for.

So if you have a 9-9-9 you want to add something extra that will just provide nitrogen so you would look for an 18-0-0 to add to the feed and doing a little math division you'll see that will give us a 3-1-1 ratio feed That we can use but we will need to go light And not overfertilize across the board.

Youre working with dry amends. Timing on those is typically refreshing every couple weeks, not every feeding, and as previously mentioned, you are using a soil that requires a proper dryback cycle so you should only be watering every 3-4 days, let the pot dry and get light in water weight. It's how the plant gets fed right, the wet and dry cycle. You're watering slow so you're already ahead of the game of about half the growers.

I understand that. I must not have explained it well. ... The box does not tell me 1 scope per gallon or 12 scopes per gallon is 9-9-9. There is a big difference in the 2.. That's what I am trying to find out. I read my box over and over and tried to google it as well. It just does not say

carlosescobar · Jan 23, 2026

Ninjadogma said:
In veg, around 3-1-2 and in flower around 1-5-4. This is very generic though... there are transitional ratios too as it's moving from veg to flower and so there's a time period where you're keeping the N levels up but ramping up the P and K so that you have the nitrogen as fuel it needs for the stretch, and the increased phosphorus and potassium it needs for bloom growth. The demand itself is a bell curve that peaks around week 6 of flower and then tapers back down as the plant winds down it's life cycle.

THATS WHY my plant did so well last year !!, i found some house plant food in a bargain bin for £2 and ive just looked it up and its NPK is 3;1;2 , so i accidentally found a good combination and didnt know ! i posted that grow on here last jan with a pic of my cheap nutrients and thats exactly what i am using this year . well for veg at least

Ninjadogma · Jan 23, 2026

Ranger0282 said:
I understand that. I must not have explained it well. ... The box does not tell me 1 scope per gallon or 12 scopes per gallon is 9-9-9. There is a big difference in the 2.. That's what I am trying to find out. I read my box over and over and tried to google it as well. It just does not say

I think what throws it off is we are looking at percentage numbers laid out over a 3-way ratio. Each number itself is a percentage concentration of that nutrient in the mix. So let's say we have a mix that is 15-5-10. That isnt the true ratio. We want to take the numbers down to their lowest dividable number to find the ratio. The way a 15-5-10 feed works out as a ratio, it's actually a stronger 3-1-2.

There are online calculators you can use to put ratio feedings together, and if you happen to be that dedicated to do it right, then and only then are you going to truly appreciate the value of cannabis-specific nutrients.

Ninjadogma · Jan 23, 2026

crimsonecho said:
there are no healthy plants grown with a 1-5-4 ratio. this is not correct info.

Running that ratio from seed to harvest, absolutely. No argument there. And I should clarify. Early flower, slightly more P than K and when tops are setting, K in the lead.

Ranger0282 · Jan 23, 2026

How many times a week to you feed your plants veg to flower? I have absolutely no idea what I am doing in this category.

Ranger0282 · Jan 23, 2026

carlosescobar said:
THATS WHY my plant did so well last year !!, i found some house plant food in a bargain bin for £2 and ive just looked it up and its NPK is 3;1;2 , so i accidentally found a good combination and didnt know ! i posted that grow on here last jan with a pic of my cheap nutrients and thats exactly what i am using this year . well for veg at least

I checked Amazon and couldn't find ether of these.. Mold is my biggest problem but not knowing how to feed my plants has it's nose up mold's tail...

How Do I Properly Feed My Plant

How Do I Properly Feed My Plant

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How Do I Properly Feed My Plant

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Self-Proclaimed Don Quixote

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