nutrients confusing

scooby doo

scooby doo

Active Member
hi folks sorry another question

which one do i start useing at the start of growing during the middle and at the end
thanks peeps
 
mogie

mogie

Well-Known Member
Not knowing what you have I can't answer that. So read the bottles. The directions are on the back. If they are gone for some reason get online and go to their website all the info should be there.
 
babygro

babygro

Well-Known Member
scooby doo said:
which one do i start useing at the start of growing during the middle and at the end
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This really is too much of an open ended question to be able to give you any advice, you need to read through some of the newbie growing guides in the beginners section and try and understand how plants grow and what their requirements are.

There are three distinct phases in a plants life and each phase requires different needs, the first is seedling, the second vegetative growth and the third flowering. There are 4 basic building blocks for plant growth - light, co2, water and nutrients. Each of the life phases require different mixtures and quantity ratios of the 4 basic building blocks.

Supplementing soil nutrients with additional boosters of certain nutrients depends entirely on the quantity and quality of the other three building blocks, depending on where it is in it's life phase. For example, if the plant is receiving plenty of quality light, being supplemented by addition quantities of co2 in vegetative growth then it's going to use and require far more water and nutrients than a plant with less light and no co2 supplementing. There are also other variables such as soil temperature, air temperature and relative humidity to take into consideration as well.

As you can see, each situation, enviromental factors and plant is different and will require different handling depending on it's individual circumstances. There is no easy way nor any 'one size fits all' solution - there's no substitute here for gaining the knowledge and understanding of what you need to do to keep your plant healthy and growing vigorously.
 
scooby doo

scooby doo

Active Member
lol you two again thanks by the way..
but i think i might not of explained my self to well.. ive not got any fertilizers nutrients / plant food as yet, i was meant to say what should i get as this bit confuse's me the most.. do i nedd to get a 20-20-20 or 1-0-3.. sorry if im sounding a bit thick i am lol.. any help i'd be greatfull in the meantime i will try and work this out for my self.. :peace:
 
420penguin

420penguin

Well-Known Member
we still need more info from you about your grow. are you using soil? what is your experience? etc...
 
babygro

babygro

Well-Known Member
scooby doo said:
lol you two again thanks by the way..
but i think i might not of explained my self to well.. ive not got any fertilizers nutrients / plant food as yet, i was meant to say what should i get as this bit confuse's me the most.. do i nedd to get a 20-20-20 or 1-0-3.. sorry if im sounding a bit thick i am lol.. any help i'd be greatfull in the meantime i will try and work this out for my self.. :peace:
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No worries Scoobs.

If you use some good quality soil such as Biobizz Allmix or Canna Professional (despite costing somewhat more than bog standard garden centre John Innes No1, 2 or 3) you really shouldn't have to worry too much about adding nutrients in the vegetative stage because the soil usually contains all the nutrients the plant needs before you repot into a bigger pot. Simply give it some Potassium and Phosphorus boost in the flowering phase. But if you go down the cheaper John Innes route from the garden centre you may well have to supplement that with some additional nutrients.

Plants love Nitrogen in vegetative growth, but it's very easy to overdo it, so start out with a low dosage 1/4 to 1/2 of what the bottle says and slowly increase it inbetween plain water feeding of something like 6-6-6 or 6-8-6 or a simple full nutrient solution which has low quantities of everything. growthtechnology.com do something like that called formulex and they have a range called Ionics which contains a vegetative feed called Ionic Grow for soil. Ionics are mineral based rather than organic and it's not that expensive. For organic you'll have to go up a level and start looking at products from Biobizz or Canna, which are more expensive.
 
Nimbliez

Nimbliez

Well-Known Member
here is the info you need..., for vegging, more nitrogen than Phos. Phos is for flowering. You will also get a bottle of micro nutes to add at all stages. Remember to stop all feeding 1 week before harvest. Happy growing. :)
 
scooby doo

scooby doo

Active Member
babygro said:
No worries Scoobs.

If you use some good quality soil such as Biobizz Allmix or Canna Professional (despite costing somewhat more than bog standard garden centre John Innes No1, 2 or 3) you really shouldn't have to worry too much about adding nutrients in the vegetative stage because the soil usually contains all the nutrients the plant needs before you repot into a bigger pot. Simply give it some Potassium and Phosphorus boost in the flowering phase. But if you go down the cheaper John Innes route from the garden centre you may well have to supplement that with some additional nutrients.

Plants love Nitrogen in vegetative growth, but it's very easy to overdo it, so start out with a low dosage 1/4 to 1/2 of what the bottle says and slowly increase it inbetween plain water feeding of something like 6-6-6 or 6-8-6 or a simple full nutrient solution which has low quantities of everything. growthtechnology.com do something like that called formulex and they have a range called Ionics which contains a vegetative feed called Ionic Grow for soil. Ionics are mineral based rather than organic and it's not that expensive. For organic you'll have to go up a level and start looking at products from Biobizz or Canna, which are more expensive.
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nice one babygro just what i wanted to know...
 
scooby doo

scooby doo

Active Member
420penguin said:
we still need more info from you about your grow. are you using soil? what is your experience? etc...
Click to expand...

experience this is my first grow ever.. im useing soil... but the only light i have at he mo is my 600w hps which i think will be to strong for veg.. ive germanated 3 bag seeds and i have put them straight into big pots.. ive just left them to grow with out any lights and there doing so well .. all they have is the warmth from my radaitor, they look healthy and green about 2ich tall after 15days and weirdly enough there not streching for light as of yet.. hope to get hold of some floro's at some point this week as it's payday (yeahhhh)

thanks scooby
 
babygro

babygro

Well-Known Member
scooby doo said:
experience this is my first grow ever.. im useing soil... but the only light i have at he mo is my 600w hps which i think will be to strong for veg.. ive germanated 3 bag seeds and i have put them straight into big pots.. ive just left them to grow with out any lights and there doing so well .. all they have is the warmth from my radaitor, they look healthy and green about 2ich tall after 15days and weirdly enough there not streching for light as of yet.. hope to get hold of some floro's at some point this week as it's payday (yeahhhh)
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Veg them under a 125w blue Enviro - very cheap to operate (little more than a 60w incandescent lightbulb) and you should get some nice tight internode spacing. A 600w HPS is overkill for vegging specially in the early stages and will cost you almost 10x the amount to run as the Envirolite and probably won't do as good a job! Keep the Enviro about a couple of feet over the new seedlings and gradually start lowering it down as they get bigger.

HPS systems are great for flowering as they output lots of light in the right spectrum which flowering plants need but depending on which bulb you have (some are better than others) they can cause unnecessary elongating of the stems and wider internode spacing (length between branches) because they simply don't output enough light in the blue spectrum required for vegetative growth.

As I said, it does depend on which HPS bulb you use (some have enhanced blue spectrum, many don't) but generally many newbies here simply don't have a clue that a standard HPS bulb simply isn't good enough for correct vegetative growth.

I've seen it a lot on this site - people vegging with HPS systems and the plants just get tall with wide internodes, rather than smaller with tight internodes and lateral growth and tall plants can get really unmanageable in flowering because so little of the light can penetrate lower foliage and get to the buds. The further light has to travel the more rapidly its intensity dimishes and plants in flowering need lots of intense light. As an example a 600w HPS outputting 90,000 lumens at 1 foot, outputs 22,500 lumens at 2 foot, 10,000 lumens at 3 foot and only 5,625 at 4 foot! Bearing in mind you have to use a 600w HPS about 2 feet from the plant tops, it's really not hard to see that a plant much over 4 foot tall will only be getting about 2,500 of those 90,000 lumens at the bottom and much over 4 foot will get very little light at the bottom areas of the plant.
 
scooby doo

scooby doo

Active Member
babygro said:
Veg them under a 125w blue Enviro - very cheap to operate (little more than a 60w incandescent lightbulb) and you should get some nice tight internode spacing. A 600w HPS is overkill for vegging specially in the early stages and will cost you almost 10x the amount to run as the Envirolite and probably won't do as good a job! Keep the Enviro about a couple of feet over the new seedlings and gradually start lowering it down as they get bigger.

HPS systems are great for flowering as they output lots of light in the right spectrum which flowering plants need but depending on which bulb you have (some are better than others) they can cause unnecessary elongating of the stems and wider internode spacing (length between branches) because they simply don't output enough light in the blue spectrum required for vegetative growth.

As I said, it does depend on which HPS bulb you use (some have enhanced blue spectrum, many don't) but generally many newbies here simply don't have a clue that a standard HPS bulb simply isn't good enough for correct vegetative growth.

I've seen it a lot on this site - people vegging with HPS systems and the plants just get tall with wide internodes, rather than smaller with tight internodes and lateral growth and tall plants can get really unmanageable in flowering because so little of the light can penetrate lower foliage and get to the buds. The further light has to travel the more rapidly its intensity dimishes and plants in flowering need lots of intense light. As an example a 600w HPS outputting 90,000 lumens at 1 foot, outputs 22,500 lumens at 2 foot, 10,000 lumens at 3 foot and only 5,625 at 4 foot! Bearing in mind you have to use a 600w HPS about 2 feet from the plant tops, it's really not hard to see that a plant much over 4 foot tall will only be getting about 2,500 of those 90,000 lumens at the bottom and much over 4 foot will get very little light at the bottom areas of the plant.
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thanks for another reply babygro..intresting stuff this is the first time ive been on line since this morning so i didnt get to read your latest post wish i had of then i wouldn't of killed one of my babies..

well i had 3 seedling this morning i set up the light for veg at 12 noon uk time and it has now killed one of my seedling after 6 hours so i now know what you mean about 600w being to much for them, so ive now took it down because i dont want to burn the other two i have. the other two are ok funny enough,
in my home we have a pay as you go electric meter befor i turned it on this morning there was £18gbp in it, now there is only £15.20gbp left in it
these hps take some juice dont they.. £2.80 every six hours if i was gonna use them for veg it would cost me £8.40 a day thats 58.80 a week £235.20 a month.. i can see whay people get raided for not paying the elec bill... but as i said in an earlyer post gonna get some more lights this week as it's pay day yip e.. anyways again thanks babygro :peace: scoob's
 
GrapefruitGrower

GrapefruitGrower

Active Member
hey scooby as a fellow uk resident i totally get what your saying about the electric bill, it dosen't help that they put the fuckin prices up every month!!!!:twisted:
 
scooby doo

scooby doo

Active Member
GrapefruitGrower said:
hey scooby as a fellow uk resident i totally get what your saying about the electric bill, it dosen't help that they put the fuckin prices up every month!!!!:twisted:
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Enit a right piss take makes me wanna :spew: ... but i just gotta get some of though's small cheap lights and i'll be alright.. just can't be botherd to pay good money for this shit grit weed going about at the mo.. you proberly heard about it and smoke the ransid stuff... lol
 
babygro

babygro

Well-Known Member
scooby doo said:
thanks for another reply babygro..intresting stuff this is the first time ive been on line since this morning so i didnt get to read your latest post wish i had of then i wouldn't of killed one of my babies..
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No worries Scoobs, sorry to hear about one of babies dying, that sucks. That's why it's important to know and understand the right light requirements for different stages of growth.

You can work out the electric consumption of everything you use by a simple formula. A 600w HPS system will draw around about 3amps, using Ohms law you can calculate it's wattage. Ohms law is Volts x Amps = Watts. So, 240 x 3 = 720 watts (yeah it's not 600, because you have to factor in the ballast wattage as well!). Then x that by 1000 to get the kilowatts per hour (unit of electricity charge) and multiply that by the cost of electricty per kilowatt.

So, 720 watts/1000 = 0.72 Kw per hour x cost say 0.10p = 7.2p per hour = £1.29 per 18 hour day. Compare that to a 125w Enviro, which uses 77w. 77/1000= 0.077 x 0.10p = 0.77 pence per hour = 13.86 pence per 18 hour day. 9.48 times as much. Slight difference huh?
 
GrapefruitGrower

GrapefruitGrower

Active Member
scooby doo said:
Enit a right piss take makes me wanna :spew: ... but i just gotta get some of though's small cheap lights and i'll be alright.. just can't be botherd to pay good money for this shit grit weed going about at the mo.. you proberly heard about it and smoke the ransid stuff... lol
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yeah i deffo know that shit your talking about, just to way the bag down! That's why home-grown is the only way forward......:hump:
 
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