PBP users post your formula

I'd say GE is pot friendly

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Yes it's a great mag. In the latest ish they mention the H.M.A. are starting a public campaign to try and let people know that not all hydroponic growers are "underground" growers...haha. Yes, law abiding middle americans also grow hydro

I think those are the main culprits in chemmy tasting bud.. high N tastes very green and like hay, high P tastes metalic, and at really high levels, the medicine itself sends of sparks like a sparkler

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Agreed, and from personal experience, even when N or P are not overferted, tapwater can give a chlorine taste which I guess some people also mean by chemmy tasting.

I do think it is possible that handwatered pots can build up too much nutes, depending how they are watered...

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I use that to my advantage in early flower, rather than flushing the medium thoroughly after veg., switch to flowering fert right away and let residual N take care of the plants' N needs for the first week or so, then flush. Flushing is IMO very important in a soilless medium because even when fed properly, salt tends to accumulate on top, and occasionally in little pockets deeper in the container. It seems the top mostly acts as a filter for undissolved/accumulated salts, especially calcium/lime if using tapwater. But I have gone whole cycles without flushing, and only tapering off the last week, giving weaker nutes with no serious ill effect.

The cleanest tasting herb for me was outdoor Mexi...maybe it was the sun cure. The worst was when I tried MG "rose food", and didn't even know what hydro nutes were.

I have a couple things that caught my eye in this thread and most of them relate to the use calmag by Botanicare and the use of coco as a substrate which should be a whole forum on it's own IMHO.

When you use coco it binds calcium and magnesium in it's substrate web, initially it is loaded with potassium which is some growers get twisting leaves early on in their grows until the cal and mag bump the K from the web or the plant is big enough to uptake sufficient K.
This is why coco ferts are higher in Ca+2, Mg+2 and K+, because they get bound up.
If you overdo the calcium and ESPECIALLY magnesium (all you epsom salt users read this) you might interpret it as a N burn, plants get very green but it's not the N it a Mg overload.
You absolutely need to use higher calcium levels in coco than in plain soil, magnesium also but much more calcium.
For a coco mix you should add calmag @ 5ml/gal with every drop of water, I use plain bubbled tap water.
I feed my girls in a 50/50 mix of hydroton and coco half stregth PBPro veg then plain water, then ferts, then water....I bump it up when in flowering.
Ratios and recipies are useless IMHO, water quality, plants size, temps, humidity, strain qualities all mean different needs from one grow to the next but they do provide a base.
I Flush all my plants despite what fertilizer i Use, if the plant was well fed before than it won't miss anything it needs, it'll just feed on the fan leaves for 10 days.

Good thread
Jinx

contrarian post ahead, no offense intended

contrarian post ahead, no offense intended

> Indoor organic soil bud is the finest experience in the world

I would like to learn more
can you specify what nutrients and dosages you consider representative of "organic".

> What EC METER are you using?

I use a Hanna HI 98129, its their black combo meter, it reads EC, as well as TDS. I use a .7 conversion for TDS readings.

I think you will find that if people use the same water, and the same amount of nutes, they will get the same EC readings.. TDS readings would also be consistent, so long as the conversion factor is the same..

> I've read numerous different books that state that flushing with plain water IS NOT AS EFFECTIVE as flushing with MILD nutrient solution

Im not familiar with that opinion. It seems counter intuitive.

> I've heard numerous different people say that RO water doesn't buffer pH as well as tap water.

Ive never heard that before, but would be open to reading reference links

> any non-organic fertilizer has a higher concentration of HEAVY (i.e. radioactive) metals in it then an organic fertilizer

respectfully disagree
Rock Phosphate, a common "organic" fertilizer, contains Radioactive isotopes of Lead, called Polonium 210. There is also radioactive Radon in Rock Phosphate. I believe it is this radioactivity that causes cancer. GH nutes are refined so that the Rock Phosphate is purified, removing the radioactive lead and Radon.

to me that means that organic nutes can contain more radioactivity than refined ones... there is more about this in the article on GH's site on organics:
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache...dro_US/quicktips/OrganicHydroponicArticle.pdf

The reason cannabis is so good at removing heavy metals from soil is because it produces so much biomass in such a short time period. Any plant that produces biomass, uptakes heavy metals, but it takes an apple tree much longer than a cannabis plant, to produce the same total weight of plant material to bind elements removed from the soil.

iow, fast growing plants are faster at binding elements from the soil, and also from the air, which is why cannabis is superior to Fir trees at reducing greenhouse gasses, CO2, from the atmosphere..

Im not wanting to be argumentative, and my comments are just my opinions... I do try to give reference links to source materials for my opinions, so others may look at the info and draw their own conclusions..

and again, Im open to reading and learning more

> Flushing is IMO very important in a soilless medium because even when fed properly, salt tends to accumulate on top

I agree tap water causes calcium to build up on top of the medium, especially when pots are allowed to sit in a puddle.

otoh, if the water is not too "hard" (too high in calcium), and if irrigation is done from the top of the pot, and allowed to drain away, there will be little if any accumulation of minerals on top of the medium..

I dont intend to offend anyone by having different opinions, and I am open to reading links anyone provides to help me learn more

> When you use coco it binds calcium and magnesium in it's substrate web, initially it is loaded with potassium which is some growers get twisting leaves early on in their grows until the cal and mag bump the K from the web or the plant is big enough to uptake sufficient K.
This is why coco ferts are higher in Ca+2, Mg+2 and K+, because they get bound up.

Im reading a contradiction.. "it is loaded with potassium (K)"
contradicts, coco ferts are higher in K

If you look at the K level of Canna Aqua, you will find it is 3 times higher than Canna Coco

Canna Aqua Flores 3ml/litre of A plus B (mfg rec)
K 324


Canna Coco from 14ml/gal of A plus B (strongest mfg rec)
K 106

(they supplement canna coco with PK 13 to make up for this low K level, but only after the first 30 days of bloom..) the PK boost raises K levels, temporarily, to
K 317

Both Canna Coco and Canna Aqua are also low in Mg (~40ppm).

imho 60-70ppm of Mg is a good target, which is why I recommend adding 25ppm of Mg, in the form of 1/4 tsp of Epsom per gallon. Over 120ppm of Mg is a problem. (1 teaspoon of epsom provides 100ppm of Mg, more than the plants want, considering the 40ppm already in Canna..

> Ratios and recipies are useless IMHO

If you dont measure your nutes, you are depriving yourself, and those who might learn from your experience, of valuable information. I dont recommend a teaspoon of epsom per gallon, it will hurt your plants, whereas 1/4tsp will help them. But you have to measure to know.

Lucas

dif. EC meters give the same values for the same solution, if they are functioning properly and have been precisly calibrated

Tap water contains calcium, which reacts with CO2 from the air to calciumcarbonates, creating a pH buffer, around 8ish. When people say that tap water buffers pH better than RO, its usually aquarists speaking, they need a pH around 7-8, so tap has the right pH buffer for them.

from http://www.fishdoc.co.uk/water/hardness.htm

So, as a rule of thumb, hard water is usually well buffered while soft water is usually less well buffered.

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Hydro growers need a pH around 5-6, for them tap water buffers the wrong pH, iow, hard water is not optimal.

Good discussion

mace

Don't sweat the contradictions, I was hoping for some as I am always posting to learn and not to teach.

Im reading a contradiction.. "it is loaded with potassium (K)"
contradicts, coco ferts are higher in K
If you look at the K level of Canna Aqua, you will find it is 3 times higher than Canna Coco

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Yes it does seem contradictory but there is a good explanation, as least as good as it gets from what I know.
Initially the web is loaded with K, not calcium and magnesium, but as these elements contact the web the bump the K out of the web because of their extra valence electron (mg+2, ca+2 verusu K+).
If you read the Canna site they suggest that you initially flood the medium with a cal/mag additive to release this extra K as young plants can get burnt from it's initial release from the material.
Once the initial K is bumped by the cal/mag then it makes less and less of the web as the plant's progress and the media acidifies, that's why they need to be in increasingly higher amounts as the grow progresses.
The Botanicare Calmag is formulated to balance PBPro's extra needs in coco for both cal and mag, you'll notice PBPro is a little higher than other nutes in K so it can be used in coco without a 2 part formula like canna.

All the deficienty problems I have seen in coco are related to low calcium def's, which to a soil or hydro grower looks like a mag def as it is more common, but in coco it's Ca.

I do use a ppm meter for sure, it is essential for pro results and balance, I just think it is hard to relate these numbers to another grow situation accurately, like anything grow related a certain feel for it is requied.
I could relate a ppm regiment but I hardly grow the same strain the saem way twice, with the same feeding schedule, with the same grow style.
I've done hydro, coco, soil, and mixes all in a short periode so I don't rely on a formulas but I do note them for reference along with ph, I'm sorry if my post made it seem like recording these variables is unimportant, that's not what I meant.

Hey mace good post there, I have hard water with a starting ppm of 150 (Hanna combo meter), I have a hard time to keep my ph in the low 5's for any length of time which is why I moved to coco, but I work around it.

Jinxie, Mace, Lucas, Aeric: You guys are making me glad overgrow got shut down. The level of this discussion is higher than 90% of the threads I've seen on OG. You guys all know your shit.

Lucas you made an excellent point about putting links within posts. In the future, whenever possible, I will do my best to back up any statements I make but the loss of all of my links on OG hurts my reference capabilities enormously. I access these kinds of sites strictly from public computers so I don't have my links saved anywhere else! (I actually don't even keep a computer at my house because I know I'll be too tempted to go and research illicit topics.)
Question 1 (lucas): So is heavy metal accumulation directly related to growth rate? do all fast growing annuals "suck" heavy metals out of soil as fast as mj? This seems contrary to what I've read but frankly I haven't read all that much on this topic. I have heard of using some 'horticultural' grade charcoal to lock up radioactive elements but I don't know enough chemistry to know whether that is sound practice.

Question/point #2: As far as why organics are 'better' (obviously just my opinion): Some research has been done on why the somewhat subjective qualities of taste/aroma tend to be better using organically fed nutrients. Advanced Nutrients claims that organic nutrients stimulate flavonoids/terpanoids synthesis within the plant in a fundamentally different way than chemical fertilizers. This is why they reccommend using a small amount of organic nutrient in any chemical hydroponic system, and also why products like "DR. Hornby's Big Bud" (0-10-50 if I recall correctly) have about 30 amino acids listed in the product label.
On a more subjective note, many of my friends have been growing "Cotton Candy", a Federation seeds strain that comes highly reccommended, from the same mother for well over a year now. All of my friends grow in hydro systems of various types, drip, ebb and flow, or aero. I grow exclusively (at least right now) in organic soil. There cotton candy ALWAYS surpasses mine in appearance (i.e. has more visible trichomes) but mine ALWAYs surpasses theirs in flavor and smoke. This has been confirmed by literally everyone who has smoked them side by side. (Even the growers themselves). I am certainly not trying to boast, as I doubt I am as good a grower as anyone else currently in this conversation--I've only been growing for 3 or 4 years and only 2 indoors. I'm simply trying to relate my personal experience so that I might show why I feel so strongly about organic herb. BTW, all of my hydro friends are much older and more experienced, and while their technical expertise (i.e. plant physiology, nutrient chemistry. . . ) leaves much to be desired, they are all very good growers. One of my friends pulled down 9 and 1/2 lbs. off of three 1000W HPS bulbs. He grows in a rockwool drip system, uses parabolic hoods (he keeps his lights fairly far away from his plants), and three products: 1)GH 3-part, 2)Hygrozyme @ 15ml/gallon, and 3)Doc's liquid carbon bloom. Ironically, his herb is the least potent of all of my friends who grow hydro, which to me speaks to a somewhat inverse relationship between yield and potency, at least at the end of the spectrum, since my other friends are lucky to get 1.5lbs/1000W and none of them get 1g/1w (however their herb smokes better). Anyways, I'll shut up now. Please keep the conversation going.

I'm going to try and post pictures of my current grow right now so please take a look and don't hesitate to give me any constructive criticism/advice on how to improve things. This is the first time I've posted pics so hopefully it will work out.

Peace all.

great discussion! thanks for the give and take

great discussion! thanks for the give and take

> So is heavy metal accumulation directly related to growth rate?

that is my uneducated opinion, yes, that the benefit of cannabis over other crops is how fast it produces a given weght of biomass

> This seems contrary to what I've read

I love to learn better, more accurate information, if you find a link to improve my understanding, I will welcome the education

> organic nutrients stimulate flavonoids/terpanoids synthesis

Im all for vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fulvics, humics, etc

and I am in total agreement that plant food needs to have much more than just NPK to approach what nature provides organically

> There cotton candy ALWAYS surpasses mine in appearance (i.e. has more visible trichomes) but mine ALWAYs surpasses theirs in flavor and smoke.

it would be interesting to work up a comparison between what nutrients you are using, and theirs. whether you and they use CO2, and light intensity comparisons (distance from, I assume, the same size lamp)

I agree that 1.5 lbs of potent bud is realistic, and to get 3 pounds, there could well be a potency hit.. though in a coliseum, or a super high density SOG, that may not be true..

> Ironically, his herb is the least potent

yes, running the lights farther away allows for a bigger mass of canopy, but the plants will be leafier, hence less resin per puff

3lbs from a 1k is not unheard of, but it usually comes with plant numbers over 100 per 1k

your pictures look fabulous! the only suggestion for improvement would be to use CO2 enhancement, and plenty of wind, to increase trichome field density.. iow, besides light intensity, co2 intensity.. and making sure the canopy is ventilated to keep delivering fresh co2..

I would be curious to know how high your N level might be.. and your Mg, as there is the slightest overgreen and down curl in some of the leaf structure at the ends of the bud in the first picture.. but that could just be a trait of the strain.. the indica part..

your plants look very happy, and your colas nice and fat

I was surprised you mention your product is superior in medical potency, despite having fewer trichomes than some of your co learners.. might your trichome level be due to lower light level (light farther away, or larger plants with deeper canopies, or a difference in CO2 levels?

otoh, if your product has more volatile terpenes, those could account for the extra potency. that would require that your product have more complex aroma, and more concentrated aroma.. as you imply in your taste comment

there is a theory posited by Sam the Skunkman, that the odor molecules are actually extremely significant to the type and direction of the high, with THC level being just the power behind the direction set by terpenes..

now, I distinguish terpenes, smells coming off the trichome resins, from flavinoids.. which I think, and I ask to be corrected if Im mistaken.. I think flavinoids relate to flavors, implying those are water soluble substances.

I dont think water soluble substances are the ones we want, its the oils.. which again, is why I am suprised your bud wins the smoke test, with less visible trichomes.. but I dont doubt you for a moment

thanks to everyone posting, for sharing your thoughts and experiences

Lucas

Cal-Mag Users

I would appreciate if any of you willing to take a reading of 5ml CalMag in R/O and report back here. I suspect my bottle is much stronger than the label says but I want to see what you guys are reading:

5ml Cal Mag Plus to 1gallon = 475 u/s = 332ppm @.7

Luca I checked out your link to your mentor Ph's site, some very good info, I especially like his detailing of average yield calculations, spent 2 hours there yesterday reading.
I wish I had all my reference, I had over 50 full legth pages with tons of links, it was a thread dedicated to organics and coco @ OG, all lost .

Coco Nuts said:

Cal-Mag Users

I would appreciate if any of you willing to take a reading of 5ml CalMag in R/O and report back here. I suspect my bottle is much stronger than the label says but I want to see what you guys are reading:

5ml Cal Mag Plus to 1gallon = 475 u/s = 332ppm @.7

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I get about the same and my buddys get about the same as well. All from 0ppm RO and using .7.

I brought this up earlier in the thread.. See post 37 and 38. The 5ml per gal dose seems pretty strong to me. Especially when in the early stages when the total ppms are around 400-500. 300ppm of cal mag and 100-200 ppm of main nuts...

jinxie said:

I wish I had all my reference, I had over 50 full legth pages with tons of links, it was a thread dedicated to organics and coco @ OG, all lost .

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Any chance you will start a coco based thread here? I'm planning on using a coco and hydroton mix for the first time next run and would love to hear what you coco experts have to say...

I put in a vote for a coco forum. I'd settle for Soilless forum as well.

Fwiw, when I reported my PPM reading to Botainicare they said that sounded high too. How should we be dosing our seedlings? That's why I've grown fond of Lucas GH Forumla as of late. Just mix and dilute to the necessary EC.

I might get on that coco thread but I'll have to find all my old links, just posting things without a reference brings the troll out of the woodwork, I've already posted asking for a coco forum.
The thing with coco is as far as organics are concerned it's relatively new ground, mostly liquid fert based grows, no ammended grows.
Good things coming.
So is there a Luca's formula thread here or not?

jinxie said:

just posting things without a reference brings the troll out of the woodwork, I've already posted asking for a coco forum.

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You've spent too much time on OG! There's nothing wrong with dicussing a topic without having to back up your thoughts or experience with reference links. Just adding some opinions, past experiences, and kicking ideas around should not attract trolls IMO. That's been my experience here anyway.

so

we just switched over to floranova for ease of use


is there a "lucas formula" ratio for this stuff?

ive been following the bottle for veg and been having great results so far...

i remember reading like 5 mL/gallon of the bloom or something?

American Agritech / Botanicare

American Agritech / Botanicare



Advance Recipe Formulation Sheet

My doctoral thesis.

My doctoral thesis.

Happy Hipster: If you read earlier in this thread Lucas himself addresses that issue; I believe that Floranova bloom actually IS the Lucas formula because it got back to GH that so many people were using that formula with success.

Lucas: As always your responses are appreciated. A complement from such an accomplished grower means a lot to me. On the whole cotton candy issue, I forgot to mention the most crucial difference between my cotton candy and my other friends. While theirs all smell great--very punguent, spicy, and unique, mine always has a overwhelming fruity/spicy thing going that is just incomparable to my friends candy--though I haven't done blind tests my stoner friends noticed the difference as soon as I walked into the room (literally!). My cotton candy, actually, could be perfectly described as smelling more 'complex' than theirs to use your own words! After going to tons of hippy shows and festivals when I was in high school I developed the skill of deciding how high weed was going to get me strictly by looking and smelling nugget to level of an art form. I found smell ALWAYS to be the most telling factor--even some beasters look good after all!

As far as the terpinoid/flavinoid thing goes, I should first admit that I really don't know the chemical difference between the two--I was just spitting out a condensed version of what the advanced site says. I don't have time at the moment, but I will post some links soon. (I did enjoy that GH link on chemical/organics you posted though-thanks. My only problem is GH also has a vested interest in promoting the positives of chemical fertilization.)
I amazed that you could tell from the pictures that more CO2 would be helpful--I currently have a C02 generator running in there attached to a C02 monitor/controller but I have a big room and its not sealed to the CO2 only gets up to about 700-800ppm by the end of the day. It seems the generally accepted optimal value is around 1200-2000ppm and I'm not getting quite in that range with this grow.
I have found the trichome thing to be quite weird myself; I read an interview with the owners of DNA genetics in Weed World that supported my experiences though. Heres my best attempt at paraphrasing what they said: [For photographs, we use strictly hydro weed. For some reason our hydro always comes out superior in appearance to our soil weed. All the weed that we smoke we grow in soil; something about soil just makes weed taste so sweet!] It was in either the most recent or the last issue of weed world in case you want to check it out. The only lacking information in the article was whether they used different fertilizers in soil and in hydroponics and whether their soil was real "SOIL" or a soiless medium like sunshine mix. Kind of makes their opinions less helpful.
When I say that the visible trichome density is greater with the hydro herb--I don't mean that mine is lacking. (Even my friend who keeps his lights REALLY far away from his plants-the 3lb/1kw dude--gets VERY white weed--it still just doesn't get you THAT high (if you're a conneiseour). IOW, in my experience trichome density is not the biggest determining factor for an herb's potency.) My weed comes out very white, but not QUITE as white as the hydro.
I use different nutrients then all of them. They all use GH(with only hygrozyme and Doc's LC as additives) or Pure Blend. The PB fellas comes out much closer to my weed.

Here is my nutrient profile in brief:

My soil mix:

Pro-mix (sunshine mix, b-cuzz hydromix, etc.)
worm castings
perlite (lots cause those worm castings are fucking heavy)
soybean meal
alfalfa meal
soft rock phosphate
bat guanos (some high N and some high P)
raw humates (50% humic acid by weight)
pulverized dolomite
kelp meal
volcanite (paramagnatizes the soil)

I transplant into this composted mix and then don't feed until a few weeks into bloom. In bloom I've been using a combination of these products:

1. AN Iguana Juice 4-3-6 (This shit rocks, talked to some people on AN's forums who switched from chemical nutrients to Iguana Juice in ebb and flow tables and said once they fine tuned everything their yields went UP!)
AN carboload (has 4 kinds of sugar to help beneficial bacteria, straight molasses works as well but only has 2 kinds of sugar.)
AN Sensi-cal (discussed above)
Hygrozyme (100% omri-certified organic enzyme product--this shit is worth its weight in gold. Which is good because it costs about as much as gold too. Hydro shop gave me a free bottle and I haven't stopped using it since. )
I use some pure blend (not pro) near the end because I like what it does to the taste.
Potassium Silicate (not organic but the most scientifically documented additive on the market.)

TO EVERYONE: If you are using CAL-MAG by botanicare for supplemental MG and CA, I would STRONGLY reccommend trying AN nutrients "Sensi-Cal". Sensi-Cal has more diverse sources of calcium and magnesium and proportional amounts of CHELATED micronutrients--like, all of them. (zinc, manganese, iron, copper, boron, etc. ) I have found it to be superior to Cal-mag and it doesn't cost significantly more. They claim that their own research showed that adding supplemental calcium and magnesium without trace elements actually caused imbalances within the plant and interfered with the plants uptake of other nutrients. I make no scientific claims but I have found it to be so good that it is the ONLY chemically derived fertilizer that I use in my garden. Usage is ~1 tsp/gallon or 1.25ml/liter for soil/soiless.

Goddamn I just wrote a lot. I hope someone finds it useful.

Peace.

I'm glad I read it to the end, I'll have to try that AN stuff and see how it runs.
Yeah a trip to the hydro store lol.