Hydro-Gardens CHEM-GRO 10-8-22 Hobby Formula

uncle!mumbles

Active Member
Has anyone used? Anyone familiar with this product?

I’ve used GH’s flora bloom and flora micro for a few years now. I’ve tried some of their other products over time and decided for me, I like to use their humic acid and kelp, i.e. flourlicious plus… the only other bottle I used from them was kool bloom.

Quickly about my style; I grow in a 50/50 coco and perlite, using 2 liter bottles cut down to 6 inches tall for pots, recirculating drip, and water 6 times during lights on.

Having developed my style using GH, and kind of following their recommendation for adding nutes, I always felt like I wasn’t in control or didn’t know exactly what I was doing (or why). I discovered hydro buddy and it added some clarity and having continued to read other published grow material, I decided I wanted to try dry nutes. I've also drawn the conclusion, I think the GH line has some limitations for my style of grow.

There seems to be a lot of choices for dry, I could even go back to GH, for an incredibly expensive for a dry nute, as an option. So which one… and why.

I have a couple needs and wants in the new nute; coco and calcium, it is what it is, so need a high calcium nute. I also have only about 48 inches of headroom, low P ratio will keep them shorter. And of course, it has to be cheaper than the $70+ per grow GH costs me.

Lots of options, and very few reviews. And no nute is perfect. Researched as much as I could stand and still have not read a review for hobby formula and cannabis.

So following the basic premise of, base, plus nitrates, plus MPK, plus magnesium, I jumped in on 25 lbs. of hobby formula. I am in the middle of my third grow and still working on the right combination. Below is grams/gallon I am currently running.

upload_2016-12-25_17-31-30.png

First a small complaint, these nutes are very sensitive to humidity. It is not something to be left in the open. It needs to be put in air-tight containers as soon as possible. And I don’t know why they added urea in a hydro formula? Everything I read says urea is the least efficient nutrient for hydro.

I used slightly different ratios than above and had calcium issues through my second grow, I was out of ph down and I was a little distracted, but the yield was noticeably more at the end than the prior GH grow.

I wouldn’t say my first grow was a complete fuck up with this line up, but it was not good. It was my fault, I starved them all the way through the grow. I was a little too cautious because I didn’t know the brand or company or what the hell I was doing. Lesson learned, let them eat.

Humic acid and kelp solution was a little challenging too. Again, no reviews, not much information available. I looked around and found kelp4less and saw and heard good things. They had an option for hydro reservoirs… just add dry nutes directly to tank. FYI, that is a mistake. It clogged not just the drip heads and emitters, but it clogged the lines too. Another lesson learned. I now put about four ounces in a gallon to create a concentrate and then draw 5 ml per reservoir gallon. Looks cloudy as fuck when you first put it in the tank, and it takes a day or two longer than GH for the tank to clear up, but it will clear (it never cleared when I added directly to tank). And so far, no issues or clogging. When adding directly to the tank, I think it had a negative effect on the taste too.

OK, so all nutes, including snake oils, is now costing me about $13 per grow. I can probably reduce costs a little more if I buy more of the side dish nutes in 20-25 lbs increments. I think I can get closer to $10 if bought correctly.

I have no conclusion you haven’t already heard before. The nutes work and are significantly less expensive. I think root development is better with this nute, but that could be the high K compared to GH. I bought a gold and jewelry scale from eBay for $10, because I don’t think ‘teaspoons’ is an accurate way to measure dry nutes.

Has anyone used CHEM-GRO 10-8-22 hobby formula?

I have no idea how the kelp and humic acid are going to turn out this time (I didn’t use on the second run). Has anyone else created a concentrate for your reservoir from kelp4less?

Am I blazing unwanted trails? Are there reasons why no one uses this hobby formula and no one creates kelp4less concentrates for reservoirs?
 
Top