I've not yet shelled out for a MMJ card, so never got into a dispensary to ask more questions, but I always had the belief that Med bud was all organically grown? Next time I visit the local hydro shop, I'll ask him what our local Med grow uses as he supplies them their products. For me, a hydro grower, I got it down to where I will never have to lift anything heavy, ever, well except for my bud wash water, and I'm working the problem out as well. I don't know how the soil quality is down there in the southeast bob, but up here in in the northeast in coal country, local soils are awful which means I would then need to purchase (and carry) everything. My first grow was in soil, and I kept it in veg to experiment as much as possible with the various training techniques, but when I sent it to bloom, he grew nuts, lol. Also at that time, another grower reached out with wisdom and some basic gear that I wasn't able to afford, and since his teachings aligned to those being taught by a YouTube grower I was also watching at the time, I went that route. From then till now, I spent about 5 years trying to dial in GH 3 part with the whole line and dumped hundreds to a thousand on that brand of water and was never able to do better than pretty good. I mean I've taken many +# plants, but the leaves were always gnarly and burnt to shit. I now have a much different and extremely cheaper approach.
Because I mix everything from salts, I have FULL control. From chatting with other growers on RIU where the real hydro knowledge is (no offense 420), I've come to learn how to calculate each element right down to each individual micro. What's more important is that I don't push the feed at all to the point of excess which not only leads to toxicity, but more importantly lockouts of other things. I also learned that PPM on the meter is not PPM at all, but rather TDS expressed as PPM. On paper they're the same, but it's about the difference between a blueprint vs actually framing a house. When building my own nutrient, I know how much PPM of each component is added and have found ideal targets on the lower side of the spectrum. If GH at 70% strength represents the higher side of that spectrum, I learned cannabis can tolerate a pretty wide spectrum. When I grow, my plants no longer have to live in a tolerable environment. I give them just what they need and nothing more with the exception of phosphorus which I like to throttle just a little bit during bloom weeks 4-6/7 to fatten my buds.
For shit-n-gigglez, here are some charts of some olden times feed schedules, GH full strength, GH at 30% reduction, both of Jack's 321 mixes. And also my targets which I've since refined substantially. You can see how much GH burns in every aspect. Jack's 3.6-2.4-1.1 is what Jack's recommends, and that too is hot as shit. The version many canna grower uses which is 3 grams Jacks, 2 grams Calcium Nitrate and 1 gram Epson salt is much closer to ideal, but it too isn't all that great. My schedules are about as spot on as I've been able to find on the internet and believe me, I'm searching about as hard as one can search on this topic.
Later today, I will be mixing up a custom blend of micros, and I'll be mixing all of the various macros and secondaries around that and discontinue using Peter's Pro (same as Jack's Pro) as a part A. My micro mix will be exactly at the above targets with no error.
