So I was a little bit bored tonight, well not bored but had some time free and decided to test my brix levels of my plants. They look pretty healthy so far so I wanted to see how they were ranking in the brix area, and since I have been feeding these more traditionally with earthjuice nutrients and not paying as much focus to foliar feeding and some of my other nutrients that I use for high brix growing such as cold pressed seaweed, more compost teas than feedings, and hydrolyzed fish, I was curious on where they were charting on the refractometer.
My process is quite simple. I pull a leaf that is fully developed usually about 5-7 nodes from the top. I first do a sap reading by squeezing just the petiole (leaf stem) with a pair of pliers and drop the sap onto the refractometer. I still haven't really figured out if this is a needed measurement but I figured to take the measurements anyways for some extra data that doesn't take much extra time.
Then after the sap test, I rinse off the refactometer and pliers, ball up the leaf in my fingers and squish it over and over in the pliers to make sure to bust up the cells in the leaf. After about 5 good mashes I squeeze a few drops of leaf juice onto the refractometer and test.
Between each test the pliers and the refractometer are cleaned and dry to prevent any cross contamination or flaws in the tests. Each leaf that is pulled is tested immediately so there is no evaporation occurring which would influence the readings.
Overall I was not super excited about the readings, but since this grow I am treating more traditionally than with foliar feedings and specialized nutrient drenches I wasn't really expecting exceptionally high readings, but still was pleasantly surprised in the results.
Here are the readings..(first reading is sap, 2nd reading is leaf juice)
Plant order is from left to right, back to front with #1 being back left, and #8 being front right. Plant #7 was removed due to being a hermie.
Plant #1
Sap brix: 4.5 brix
Leaf Juice brix: 16 brix
Plant #2
Sap brix: 5 brix
Leaf Juice brix: 12.5-13 brix
Plant #3
Sap brix: 5 brix
Leaf Juice brix: 15.5 - 16 brix
Plant #4
Sap brix: 4.25 brix
Leaf Juice brix: 11 brix
Plant #5
Sap brix: 4.5 brix
Leaf Juice brix: 12.5 - 13 brix
Plant #6
Sap brix: 4.25 brix
Leaf Juice brix: 15.5 - 16 brix
Plant #8
Sap brix: 5 brix
Leaf Juice brix: 16 brix