Understood. Does using dry top dressing nutrients affect this at all?
I don't know what you mean by dry top dressing nutrients. If you mean like, peat moss, manure, worm castings, blood meal....it's hard to add those to soil after transplanting, you can slowly add little bits and let them work their way down over time, but you have limited space on top to do this, you don't want to bury the stems deeper and deeper.....but when you're first building your soil, a certain amount of all of these things mixed in......plus perlite, vermiculite, coco coir......compost if you have it....will build a very nice, rich soil that won't require feeding for quite some time.
If you mean solid or liquid nutrients, I wouldn't mix that in with your soil, it could be too much when plants are young, it could burn them.
After the plants are bigger and they use a lot of the nutrients from the soil itself, you can start slowly feeding........better to underdo it at first. You can always add more, you can't add less....
In veg, that usually means pale, yellowing leaves starting at the bottom. Feed higher nitrogen. In flowering you want to reduce the nitrogen and increase Phosphorus and Calcium, as well as secondary nutrients, Magnesium, etc.
Too much food can be toxic, and throw the Ph off. Let the plants guide you.
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