Graytail;2498081 said:This question about dosing rotates through the thread on a regular basis as new people come onboard.
I think the confusion comes from two different ways of looking at watering. If you're growing several plants of the same age and type, you tend to think in terms of concentration in the feed water, because you're going to mix up a bunch and feed 'em all. But if you have different plants of different ages, you'll be feeding each plant separately, so you need to calculate how much each plant needs.
The instructions are written for one feed to multiple plants, so it's given as a concentration - so much per gallon of water. Everybody gets a bunch of properly mixed feed water.
To feed individual plants, you calculate how much per gallon of soil, added to as much water as the plant will take. I feed on the low side, and for my 6 gallon pots, I use ~ 2.5 ml of drench and 0.3 ml Tea. But that's just the mark on the vial that I aim for - sometimes it slops up to 4 ml.No big deal. An easy way to dose individual plants is to mix the drench and Tea in individual 16oz solo cups, pour them each into the soil and follow with 1/4 Transwater until they're soaked. When I have a complicated feeding, I mix up a dose for each of 7 plants, and then fill a big bucket with transwater. I might have two Energy feedings and one CatDrench, with two just transwater and two Transplant. Five of those will need Tea, so I put 1.5 ml into a gallon or so of water and let it steep. Then I'll mix up five individual cups of the various drenches. If everyone needs the same drench, I'll mix it in a gallon pail, and evenly distribute it.
It sounds complicated when I lay it out like that, but feeding 7 individual plants is complicated.
So, calculate how much dosage for your pot size, and that's always how much each plant gets. Add water as needed.
Benchmark dosages:
1 Gallon pot = 0.5-1.0 ml Drench, 0.05-0.1 ml Tea
7 Gallon pot = 3-7 ml Drench, 0.3-0.7 ml Tea
10 Gallon pot = 5-10 ml Drench, 0.5-1.0 ml Tea
Additional clarification about benchmark amounts. Posted on 7/13/15
Graytail;2558444 said:Over time, I've watched a lot of HB growers give increased dosages of the drenches with no ill effects, so I take the initial recommendation as conservative. It's really a rather crude guideline, the result of reducing 1000 sqft to a single pot or group of pots. You divide 1000 sqft by the 32 sqft in a 4x8 and you get roughly 30, so 1/30 of the lab recommendation. But you also have to consider soil volume vs canopy, which is far larger in an outdoor garden.
So when I wrote the benchmarks, I rounded up to 3 instead of 2.5, and 7 mls is still a safe dose if you feel some tinkering is in order.
