FFOF ( Fox Farms Ocean Forest ) made Simple - Autoflower

Budzbuddha said:

recipe 420 ferts ran about $15 each at local nursery.

As far as Dr. Earth - Premium Gold or Homegrown ... Flower girl for bloom.

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Thats a great price considering everything it has in it. The only store I have nearby is called HTG supply they don't carry it. I guess I'll do Dr earth. I also have a few bags of superthrive granular 4-4-4. Stuff smells like success.

ok boys and girls .... I started the New Mix layer V2 ( experiment ) using Recipe 420 Recharge Grow dry fertilizer.

As a fan of their Original 420 soil , I wanted to compare it to say Megacrop or other “ all in one “ type fertilizer.
EB Stone is a well known gardening company and have had good results with that medium. They are also offering some new interesting “ soil “ mixes that I might try and play with ..... HI-PRO and Bhang mix.

I decided to just feet first with 4 plants in 1 gallon grow bags ( you can use any size ) , as I am doing SOG Style grows currently.
I have to admit I don’t really like doing SCROG grows anymore , just like that I can pull plants at different times to look them over and pruning. You can use this method for AUTOS or PHOTOS ( with continuous top dress of dry fert ) as needed to complete run.
There is a dry ( Ultra Bloom 2-8-8 ) that will be used after flip and stretch stages and will highlight use then.

I begin with simple amendments....
EWC ( 10%/15% of container volume )
PUMICE ( crushed ) or Plain Perlite ( suggest rinse ) - Rice Hulls can be substituted
FFOF ( Fox Farm Ocean Forest ) - will be base of container
RECIPE 420 POTTING ( available at most nurseries ) / mild highly aerated mix
( You try your own mild bagged mix Kellogg’s , Pro Mix , Sunshine , etc. ) just make sure to add MORE perlite for drainage and aeration.

As far as containers , I begin with the FFOF ( adding perlite / pumice or what have you ) . Filling approximately 1/3 of container.
I don’t really “ measure “ just eyeball “ it...... Dampen slightly. I use a spray bottle filled with filtered water ( bottled ) to give the flora a better start than straight from tap . Later in grow water will be tap at 6.5 .




Next up ..... I add a small amount of MYCO dusted on top .....



Next I layer EWC and RECIPE 420 soil ( mixed throughly ) adding a good 3 or 4 inch layer.

Then I sprinkle in Dry fert ( 1 - 11/2 tablespoon ) mixed into remaining RECIPE 420 mild mix ( spread evenly ) throughout.
You can add more perlite if desired. Then I sprinkle last little bit over the top soil area and cover with layer of soil.
Water plant as needed.



Now I haven’t seen yet whether ( 1 1/2 tablespoon ) may be too much or otherwise as I am experimenting.
I am looking to see how long this charged mix will carry these regular photo strains ( KKP King Kong Poison ) on just water.

This will be a water only run .... NO KELP or other SIDE amendments. I am looking to see how much punch that fertilizer will give.
Then I can judge the ULTRA BLOOM when that is used later in grow. I will use standard TAP ( municipal ) water , NO RO , NO Distilled or other water. I will just adjust it to 6.5 -6.7 and let them rip. Interested to see if I get any CALMAG issues like Megacrop had.



Let me know if you have some suggestions or your own spin.
But if you look at ingredient list of each Recharge Grow and Ultra Bloom , I think you will see it looks very promising.

PEACE.

@Budzbuddha Love the new updates and new formula. You should start a site with your various mixes and have a comprehensive "mix based" approach to a few popular brands. It'd get a lot of attention.

I'm still finishing out the original formula. FFOF and Dr Earth amendments as needed. Check out my updates here https://growdiaries.com/diaries/88767-quarter-pounder-autoflowering-critical-kush-auto-amnesia-autoflowering-grow-journal-by-arcadios

The one thing that I struggle with is "over reacting". The first time I fed around week 4 and I did 1 tbs Dr earth b/c I saw a bit of yellowing. 2 days later and it hadnt improved so I added a tiny bit more, and got burned. Now I waited about 2 weeks and did 1 tbs for 3 gallon pot and it seems to be doing well. It takes some time to get used to "listening to the plants" vs a strict schedule.

Arcadios said:

@Budzbuddha Love the new updates and new formula. You should start a site with your various mixes and have a comprehensive "mix based" approach to a few popular brands. It'd get a lot of attention.

I'm still finishing out the original formula. FFOF and Dr Earth amendments as needed. Check out my updates here https://growdiaries.com/diaries/88767-quarter-pounder-autoflowering-critical-kush-auto-amnesia-autoflowering-grow-journal-by-arcadios

The one thing that I struggle with is "over reacting". The first time I fed around week 4 and I did 1 tbs Dr earth b/c I saw a bit of yellowing. 2 days later and it hadnt improved so I added a tiny bit more, and got burned. Now I waited about 2 weeks and did 1 tbs for 3 gallon pot and it seems to be doing well. It takes some time to get used to "listening to the plants" vs a strict schedule.

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Great seed option everything looks nice. TBH the way you watered made me cringe a little. And I don't have experience but I would try and keep my leaves out of the soil if possible.

Arcadios said:

@Budzbuddha Love the new updates and new formula. You should start a site with your various mixes and have a comprehensive "mix based" approach to a few popular brands. It'd get a lot of attention.

I'm still finishing out the original formula. FFOF and Dr Earth amendments as needed. Check out my updates here https://growdiaries.com/diaries/88767-quarter-pounder-autoflowering-critical-kush-auto-amnesia-autoflowering-grow-journal-by-arcadios

The one thing that I struggle with is "over reacting". The first time I fed around week 4 and I did 1 tbs Dr earth b/c I saw a bit of yellowing. 2 days later and it hadnt improved so I added a tiny bit more, and got burned. Now I waited about 2 weeks and did 1 tbs for 3 gallon pot and it seems to be doing well. It takes some time to get used to "listening to the plants" vs a strict schedule.

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Every grow is different , environment, temps , etc.
My method can and should be tweaked for your own grows .... adjust accordingly. Right now got one plant just wanting to yellow to early in flower , tried bumping nitro but is a very heavy feeder , taking 1600ppm and wanting more.

Marq1340 said:

Great seed option everything looks nice. TBH the way you watered made me cringe a little. And I don't have experience but I would try and keep my leaves out of the soil if possible.

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hah! Thanks for checking it out. This pump pushes water out really fast so its nice for getting the job done but feels sloppy at best. I think I made the mistake of adding too much soil after the initial planting so I don't have very much ground clearance. I could get some but I hate to trim out the bottom leaves. Would I be better off that way?

Part of the reason i started thread was because of often I would see growers complain about FFOF and its use.
It’s laughably simple and CAN run plants by itself .... by merely topping off tank so to speak. As plant begins to exhaust host medium , you simply “ recharge “ it.

HOWEVER , your own grow conditions ( environment) will factor in . The simple nature of it will allow you to focus on the grow area that it is in .... good temps , adequate lighting , etc. to help keep it happy. By letting plant condition itself ( acclimate ) to it will make things easier. I Always Suggest running this method without adding any outside lines of Nutes first , THEN you can see if you need to bump something slightly later. This way you don’t just dump every bottle you own into it then when something goes sideways you don’t know which bottle you added screwed it up.

If you decide to run Boosters for bloom , I suggest seeing running a comparison, pick two girls , run with your booster , one without.
I use KELP in watering during original mix , but with this new one I am just gonna water it . I am more interested in the FINAL flower based on that fertilizer ALONE , nothing to skew results.

And if bloom is good without .... then that’s a win . If it needs a bump , then so be it , and I am only slightly bumping it with a PK boost. That’s why I say your results will differ.

Arcadios said:

hah! Thanks for checking it out. This pump pushes water out really fast so its nice for getting the job done but feels sloppy at best. I think I made the mistake of adding too much soil after the initial planting so I don't have very much ground clearance. I could get some but I hate to trim out the bottom leaves. Would I be better off that way?

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No problem. Love watching journals. I don't have a grow under my belt, so I don't know if it affects anything with the leaves. Just personally I wouldn't let the leaves touch the soil. Also I wouldn't go digging up soil either. I'll be too scared to I'll take out some of the roots.

@Budzbuddha thank you for this thread it is a great primer for the novice like me!
Began my first grow following your KISS advice. Started my first seed in FFOF & Perlite (70/30) and only planning on top dressing with Dr. Earth.

Had bought some Tiger Bloom before I read this thread - but I'm planning on keeping it on the shelf.
Thank you again!

It’s been about 10 days since last update. Plants were getting 4-5 nodes.

Now decided to do a mainline / quad line type of grow so I jumped in feet first. I used to do pseudo “ bonzai “ style plants and figured with this extended covid lay around time , I would do things similar to Nugbuckets and Nebula .

Plants are a beautiful green and are growing well and am pleased with mix so far.



Here is my quads .... I did 2 of the 4 plants this way , the other 2 are original way.

Following this method, my buds are looking super dense and starting to get right smelly. I'm starting to get a bit of yellowing in the leaves, detailed here https://rollitup.org/t/yellow-dry-spots-ffof-grow-w-dr-earth-ammend.1043205/, but based on the confidence I've gotten in this thread I'm sure it'll come out all right in the end.

Arcadios said:

Following this method, my buds are looking super dense and starting to get right smelly. I'm starting to get a bit of yellowing in the leaves, detailed here https://rollitup.org/t/yellow-dry-spots-ffof-grow-w-dr-earth-ammend.1043205/, but based on the confidence I've gotten in this thread I'm sure it'll come out all right in the end.

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Glad to see growers making this simple medium such a great jumping off point. I’m always learning and experimenting.
Here is the reason I even bothered trying a layered approach.... I use cook soil .. moonshine mix , coons , sub cool , but was hard for me to take the time to fine tune the ratios of multiple amendments and end up spending weeks hoping this time around I’m not torching my plants.

Fucking with compost and just the overall cook time just wasn’t for Me. So I just look for the most ammended LOCAL bag mix I could find ( ingredients list ) , FFOF has it , many too much for some strains up front. And be an TWEAKING it , both good and bad.
But surprisingly it will recharge itself with simple top dress pretty easily and the biggest plus : plants are ALREADY acclimated to it , ammirite ?

Anyways dont take it for gospel , experiment .

Seems like they took today’s mainlining pretty well I would say ......

Budzbuddha said:

Seems like they took today’s mainlining pretty well I would say ......

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You made it more complicated. But really close to what I do.

Juust add water and a top dress. Easy.

Keep experimenting.

Peace.

That’s my problem .... lol
I can’t stop tweaking grow , but soil is the main topic .

Budzbuddha said:

That’s my problem .... lol
I can’t stop tweaking grow , but soil is the main topic .

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As I was discussing. No FF here. Was my issue. But organic soil, lobster kelp fert and 2 part dry tea amendments now. Water till week 5 top dress continue watering while bouncing ph between 6.4- 6.8. And I need de chlorinated water for my amendments. But tap only for sure.

Amen to that @MICHI-CAN
Its the simplicity of blends like the yours. .

I am using tap under most circumstances but it swings. “ Normally “ my tap runs 7.2 ish / 255 ppm.
Not the greatest but doable.

Now for shits and giggles started testing Zero Watrr
Pitcher . It really does knock the ppm to basically 0 as advertised but maybe too good .

Pros :
Filters it down with 5 part stage
About $25 retail
Spigot handle
Lowers municipal water ppm sources down 0
No waste water

Cons :
Slow filter process
1gallon at a time
Raises ph up to 8.3 from 7.2 ( more alkaline )

Other than that , works well.
To compensate , I just “ blend “ a small amount of straight tap to stabilize without ADDING Ph up or Ph down.
Hang ph meter of side of container , monitor ph as I mix in tap. Ppm is about 130 ppm overall and 6.5. and I do add a bit
of calmag just in case I stripped some.

@Budzbuddha
Do you think I should add anything to my new transplant soil ? Its FFOF/FFHF 50/50 mix. Some of the things I have: Dr earth, EWC, perlite, buildasoil big 6, azomit and superthrive 4-1-1. Should I add some layers or just leave it plain soil ? Plant is about a month old.

I'm on week 5 of flower. I think I went a bit too light on both Dr Earth Life and the FFOF top amend. The Dr Earth Life bag calls for 2 Tbs per gallon and I've top fed twice with about 1-2tbs each, even though my pots were 3 gallons. I got scared early on when I thought I burned my plants, but I think I just wasn't watering them enough and giving them new FFOF.

So at the start of week 5, my Amnesia is looking pretty weak and the QP and Critical Kush both had some really light leaves. I went ahead and put about 3 gallons of clearexd water through each of them and they perked back up. On the next watering, I top amended with just FFOF and Later in the week, I went ahead and put 5tbs of Dr Earth life in each and they're looking good now.

I made some updates to the grow diary with a video https://growdiaries.com/diaries/88767-quarter-pounder-autoflowering-critical-kush-auto-amnesia-autoflowering-grow-journal-by-arcadios if you are interested

Each strain will feed on its own terms , but glad you were able to course correct. ...... you are getting lots of tops !