Nutrient question

[misfit808]

can i feed my plants nutrients every week of flower ?...every watering?...so far i have 2... 5 gallon
pots in week 2 of flower its a autoflower 9 week seed .. the 2 pots are taking up the whole tent
so far for the first week of flower its been 1/4 fox farms nutes using the first week of there schedule
so far ive feed them this water 1/4 nutes wait 3 days ...reg ph water ... 1/4 nutes water....wait 3 days
and i gave them 1/4 nutes yesterday ... so far i havent seen any burn or over feed issues ....

my question is can i up the nutes to like half dosage of the fox farms schedule until like week4 and flush the rest of the last 2 weeks ?

plants are on day 33

ohh and im using a electric sky 180 with FFOF in 5 gallon pots

my light is as high as the rachet straps will go if they stretch more ill have to find a way to rig the es180 higher

 

[Silverfox125]

In my experience yes you can but it’s always a good idea to mix it up with regular ph’d water sometimes.

just a pice is advice is to not water every “x” amount of days. Get in the habit of trying to determine if she needs water by putting your finger in the soil a couple inches to feel if there is water or by picking them up a little to try and “weigh” them to determine if you feel it needs it

good luck!

do you have a journal going I could follow?

silver

 

[Nicholas Flamel]

Good advice from siverfox. They look a bit yellow, personally I would go ahead and give half strength. If your on day 33 then stretch should be about over. Your doing good.

 

[Emilya Green]

can i feed my plants nutrients every week of flower ?...every watering?...so far i have 2... 5 gallon
pots in week 2 of flower its a autoflower 9 week seed .. the 2 pots are taking up the whole tent
so far for the first week of flower its been 1/4 fox farms nutes using the first week of there schedule
so far ive feed them this water 1/4 nutes wait 3 days ...reg ph water ... 1/4 nutes water....wait 3 days
and i gave them 1/4 nutes yesterday ... so far i havent seen any burn or over feed issues ....

my question is can i up the nutes to like half dosage of the fox farms schedule until like week4 and flush the rest of the last 2 weeks ?

plants are on day 33

ohh and im using a electric sky 180 with FFOF in 5 gallon pots

my light is as high as the rachet straps will go if they stretch more ill have to find a way to rig the es180 higher

Welcome to the forum @misfit808! I am glad you stopped by with your excellent questions.
There is so much timidity in the cannabis growing world when it comes to feeding our plants. The online gurus, getting tired of answering the same questions over and over, have defaulted us into a path of doing the least harm... feed nutes so lightly that the plants will survive without any major challenges, they proclaim, and never ever ever push a plant so hard that it burns. We are so infatuated with the bad but seemingly sage advice coming from these online gurus that we have forgotten the original purpose of plant fertilizers... to supercharge plants and make them grow bigger and produce more fruit than they would have naturally.

So first off, lets try to dispel a bit of bad information that you have gotten...
When you are using nutrients, it should be your goal to push the plants right up to the edge and by using these fertilizers, force your plants to grow better. The plants will tell you when you reach the edge of what they can tolerate and the tips of your leaves will burn. Is this a crisis? Not in the least... it is the sign you are looking for, to show you that you are not wasting your money by not correctly using your expensive nutes. My plants regularly have burned tips and if they don't... I am not trying hard enough.

Those in the Auto world have been fed several lies in order to market these inferior plants. Autos don't automatically need less nutes than any other plant! The amount of nutes a plant needs or can handle has to do with its size and vigor and how hard you wish to push it... it has nothing to do with it being an Auto. To think that an extremely fast grower such as an Auto needs less nutes or could not thrive with more nutes, is not only ridiculous, but it defies logic. If you have weak lights, improper growing conditions, bad air... then sure, maybe your plants will never be able to get big enough to handle big girl nutes like her photoperiod cousins... but in most cases you are better advised to follow the directions that come with your nutrients instead of following someone's advice from YouTube.

When you are in soil, the age old tried and true method of using nutes is to give full strength nutes on one pass and then every other time give pH adjusted water. FoxFarm clearly recommends that you use this method, and they conveniently tell you the level of nutes that you should use depending on the week of the grow you are in. They have no incentive to lie to you and tell you something that is 4x stronger than you really want to use it at. Why would they want your grow to fail?
When you use the water/nutes/water/nutes method, not all of the full strength nutes are able to be used on the first pass, but everything that the plant CAN use is taken up into the plant. When you water the next time with pH adjusted water, you reactivate the nutes that were left behind, giving them a second chance to uptake into the plant. Not only are you able to give the plant the maximum amount of nutes that it can use with this method, but you also keep the soil clean of excess nutes. By watering at 1/4 strength, even if you do it every time, you may not be building up excess nutes in the soil, but you are NEVER giving the plants the shot of max nutes that allows them to become as big as they can get. If you wish to baby your plants, you will get baby plants.

Then we get to my pet peeve... calling giving water at the end a flush... essentially starving your plants to death during the last 2 weeks. What a silly practice this is, and a sure way to decrease your yield! A flush as it used to be called, refers to pushing 3x the container size of water through the soil in one setting, flushing the salts that are left over from nutes being processed and any excess nutes, out of the soil. If you read the FoxFarm recommendations, they call for a proper flush several times during the grow.
This idea that we somehow can starve our plants at the end and still get a good crop is ridiculous. The idea that we can somehow clean our plants of all nutrients so we don't have to smoke them, has been debunked. Starving your plants at the end only serves to inform the plants that you are killing them, so they finish a little faster and harder. Did it make them bigger and more potent than they would have been without starvation? Not very likely when you think about it.

The correct way to do this is to do a proper 3x flush at that point where you are 2 weeks from the end. Clean out that soil so the roots can have full uptake there at the end, because it is in that last 2 weeks when the buds can almost double in size and weight, packing on those trichomes. Feed your plants hard, right up to the end after this 3x flush, and let your plants finish out strong.

 

[Silverfox125]

@Emilya everything you say is gold

great advice. As usual just soaking up your knowledge and good vibes

 

[misfit808]

In my experience yes you can but it’s always a good idea to mix it up with regular ph’d water sometimes.

just a pice is advice is to not water every “x” amount of days. Get in the habit of trying to determine if she needs water by putting your finger in the soil a couple inches to feel if there is water or by picking them up a little to try and “weigh” them to determine if you feel it needs it

good luck!

do you have a journal going I could follow?

silver

Yes I have been lifting my pots and water by weight I also have one of those cheap Amazon moisture meters it gets it close enough ... I dont have a journal going on this site .. I've just been writing stuff down on a notepad

 

[misfit808]

Welcome to the forum @misfit808! I am glad you stopped by with your excellent questions.
There is so much timidity in the cannabis growing world when it comes to feeding our plants. The online gurus, getting tired of answering the same questions over and over, have defaulted us into a path of doing the least harm... feed nutes so lightly that the plants will survive without any major challenges, they proclaim, and never ever ever push a plant so hard that it burns. We are so infatuated with the bad but seemingly sage advice coming from these online gurus that we have forgotten the original purpose of plant fertilizers... to supercharge plants and make them grow bigger and produce more fruit than they would have naturally.

So first off, lets try to dispel a bit of bad information that you have gotten...
When you are using nutrients, it should be your goal to push the plants right up to the edge and by using these fertilizers, force your plants to grow better. The plants will tell you when you reach the edge of what they can tolerate and the tips of your leaves will burn. Is this a crisis? Not in the least... it is the sign you are looking for, to show you that you are not wasting your money by not correctly using your expensive nutes. My plants regularly have burned tips and if they don't... I am not trying hard enough.

Those in the Auto world have been fed several lies in order to market these inferior plants. Autos don't automatically need less nutes than any other plant! The amount of nutes a plant needs or can handle has to do with its size and vigor and how hard you wish to push it... it has nothing to do with it being an Auto. To think that an extremely fast grower such as an Auto needs less nutes or could not thrive with more nutes, is not only ridiculous, but it defies logic. If you have weak lights, improper growing conditions, bad air... then sure, maybe your plants will never be able to get big enough to handle big girl nutes like her photoperiod cousins... but in most cases you are better advised to follow the directions that come with your nutrients instead of following someone's advice from YouTube.

When you are in soil, the age old tried and true method of using nutes is to give full strength nutes on one pass and then every other time give pH adjusted water. FoxFarm clearly recommends that you use this method, and they conveniently tell you the level of nutes that you should use depending on the week of the grow you are in. They have no incentive to lie to you and tell you something that is 4x stronger than you really want to use it at. Why would they want your grow to fail?
When you use the water/nutes/water/nutes method, not all of the full strength nutes are able to be used on the first pass, but everything that the plant CAN use is taken up into the plant. When you water the next time with pH adjusted water, you reactivate the nutes that were left behind, giving them a second chance to uptake into the plant. Not only are you able to give the plant the maximum amount of nutes that it can use with this method, but you also keep the soil clean of excess nutes. By watering at 1/4 strength, even if you do it every time, you may not be building up excess nutes in the soil, but you are NEVER giving the plants the shot of max nutes that allows them to become as big as they can get. If you wish to baby your plants, you will get baby plants.

Then we get to my pet peeve... calling giving water at the end a flush... essentially starving your plants to death during the last 2 weeks. What a silly practice this is, and a sure way to decrease your yield! A flush as it used to be called, refers to pushing 3x the container size of water through the soil in one setting, flushing the salts that are left over from nutes being processed and any excess nutes, out of the soil. If you read the FoxFarm recommendations, they call for a proper flush several times during the grow.
This idea that we somehow can starve our plants at the end and still get a good crop is ridiculous. The idea that we can somehow clean our plants of all nutrients so we don't have to smoke them, has been debunked. Starving your plants at the end only serves to inform the plants that you are killing them, so they finish a little faster and harder. Did it make them bigger and more potent than they would have been without starvation? Not very likely when you think about it.

The correct way to do this is to do a proper 3x flush at that point where you are 2 weeks from the end. Clean out that soil so the roots can have full uptake there at the end, because it is in that last 2 weeks when the buds can almost double in size and weight, packing on those trichomes. Feed your plants hard, right up to the end after this 3x flush, and let your plants finish out strong.

Wow you answered my question and more ... so what your telling me is I should over feed my plant on the first feeding to figure out how much nutes she can take and adjust from there ...that makes alot of sense watering in between feedings I didnt think there would be left over nutes ... so if that's the case there could there be a uneven build up of nutes in the soil is that why u water in between feedings?

And flushing basically feed her up until the last feeding but not as much maybe some bembe and some cha ching like how the fox farms schedule says ?

So I should wait till the trichomes turn milky then flush and wait for the amber to come in ?... and when you 3x water ... does that mean more than the usual amount I feed her ? Because I usually water until I get a run off which is usually 3/4 of a gallon
Edit:I read that wrong so I should flush my soild 2 weeks before harvest 3x so I can start the soil fresh then feed nutes and flush again when the trichomes are ready

Also I've been researching live soil or compost I found this on amazon
Super Soil Organic Concentrate

Is this safe for a autoflower? I'm hella lazy and just want to feed her ph water lol would this work better than giving her fox farms nutes?

 

[misfit808]

Good advice from siverfox. They look a bit yellow, personally I would go ahead and give half strength. If your on day 33 then stretch should be about over. Your doing good.

The one on the right does look yellow now that u mention it ... the one on the right is way bigger than the other one ... maybe I should be giving one plant more nutes than the other ?

 

[Emilya Green]

Wow you answered my question and more ... so what your telling me is I should over feed my plant on the first feeding to figure out how much nutes she can take and adjust from there ...that makes alot of sense watering in between feedings I didnt think there would be left over nutes ... so if that's the case there could there be a uneven build up of nutes in the soil is that why u water in between feedings?

And flushing basically feed her up until the last feeding but not as much maybe some bembe and some cha ching like how the fox farms schedule says ?

So I should wait till the trichomes turn milky then flush and wait for the amber to come in ?... and when you 3x water ... does that mean more than the usual amount I feed her ? Because I usually water until I get a run off which is usually 3/4 of a gallon
Edit:I read that wrong so I should flush my soild 2 weeks before harvest 3x so I can start the soil fresh then feed nutes and flush again when the trichomes are ready

Also I've been researching live soil or compost I found this on amazon
Super Soil Organic Concentrate

Is this safe for a autoflower? I'm hella lazy and just want to feed her ph water lol would this work better than giving her fox farms nutes?

Not exactly... I didn't say overfeed... I said follow the directions and see how the plant handles it. For now try to give the plants the same nutes... not all plants are going to grow to the same size and oftentimes this is genetic and nothing that you did to cause it.
At the end, again don't default to the beliefs of bro science that somehow they need less nutes at the end... this is the time of the most rapid growth... why in the world would they need less at the end? Keep feeding full strength, even adding the cha-ching... right to the end.
The trichomes turn milky on some strains at week 6, some even earlier, some later... it is not a good way to gauge when to do the final flush. You should have a good idea from the breeder what the normal flowering time is. If you start counting when flowering actually starts, 7-10 days after the flip to 12/12, you should be able to accurately determine when you are near the last two week point and flush accordingly.
When you normally give water, there is a certain amount that the soil will hold and then anything extra will flow out as runoff. This is the amount you would normally give. Flushing is much more water than that, 3x the volume of the container. If you are in a 3 gallon container, a proper flush is 9 gallons of water. Keep in mind that only about 1 gallon of that water will actually stay in the soil when you are done.

Edit:I read that wrong so I should flush my soild 2 weeks before harvest 3x so I can start the soil fresh then feed nutes and flush again when the trichomes are ready

no... the last flush at the very end is not needed... it does absolutely nothing except waste your time and water. If you clear the soil 2 weeks prior to harvest, you have cleaned the soil and that is all that is needed. Flushing at the end to somehow try to clean the nutrients out of the plant has been debunked... we do not have the ability to clean the plants, outside of starving them to death, and this is not desired. Feed strongly, especially finishing nutes, alternating with ph adjusted water every other time, right up to the final day when you harvest.
And then your question as to whether supersoil is ok for an Auto. Again, an auto is just another plant. It has no special needs or desires than a regular photo plant has, except that it grows a little faster and will never be able to achieve the size that a photoperiod plant could. There are no special unique needs as far as soil or nutrition goes when it comes to an Auto... a plant is a plant is a plant. Is organic supersoil easier than a synthetic grow using FF nutes? Probably not for a beginner since the soil isn't the only magic that is happening in a grow such as that. When you go organic you give up feeding the plants, it is all in the soil. The only way to do this however is to make sure that the soil maintains a living web of microbes that do all the work for you. If you use chlorinated water, you can kill them. If you water incorrectly, you can kill them. If you add anything not organic, you can kill them. And lastly, if you don't repopulate them occasionally, they will die off and your plants will starve. Growing organically in supersoil is another very steep learning curve... and it takes a different kind of commitment to the grow. Until you are ready and have done some studying about organic grows, Fox Farm nutrients are going to be a lot easier for you to get right.

 

[Silverfox125]

I use living soil and love it. It does take extra work but honestly mixing the soil may be my favorite part lol

 

[Elvin]

1/4 nutes? You shared you are following Fox Farm's feeding schedule; why are you not feeding at their recommended levels? As shared before, the idea is to use as much nutrients as your plant can withstand, per the nutrient line's instructions, not as little as it can limp along with.

 

[misfit808]

Not exactly... I didn't say overfeed... I said follow the directions and see how the plant handles it. For now try to give the plants the same nutes... not all plants are going to grow to the same size and oftentimes this is genetic and nothing that you did to cause it.
At the end, again don't default to the beliefs of bro science that somehow they need less nutes at the end... this is the time of the most rapid growth... why in the world would they need less at the end? Keep feeding full strength, even adding the cha-ching... right to the end.
The trichomes turn milky on some strains at week 6, some even earlier, some later... it is not a good way to gauge when to do the final flush. You should have a good idea from the breeder what the normal flowering time is. If you start counting when flowering actually starts, 7-10 days after the flip to 12/12, you should be able to accurately determine when you are near the last two week point and flush accordingly.
When you normally give water, there is a certain amount that the soil will hold and then anything extra will flow out as runoff. This is the amount you would normally give. Flushing is much more water than that, 3x the volume of the container. If you are in a 3 gallon container, a proper flush is 9 gallons of water. Keep in mind that only about 1 gallon of that water will actually stay in the soil when you are done.

no... the last flush at the very end is not needed... it does absolutely nothing except waste your time and water. If you clear the soil 2 weeks prior to harvest, you have cleaned the soil and that is all that is needed. Flushing at the end to somehow try to clean the nutrients out of the plant has been debunked... we do not have the ability to clean the plants, outside of starving them to death, and this is not desired. Feed strongly, especially finishing nutes, alternating with ph adjusted water every other time, right up to the final day when you harvest.
And then your question as to whether supersoil is ok for an Auto. Again, an auto is just another plant. It has no special needs or desires than a regular photo plant has, except that it grows a little faster and will never be able to achieve the size that a photoperiod plant could. There are no special unique needs as far as soil or nutrition goes when it comes to an Auto... a plant is a plant is a plant. Is organic supersoil easier than a synthetic grow using FF nutes? Probably not for a beginner since the soil isn't the only magic that is happening in a grow such as that. When you go organic you give up feeding the plants, it is all in the soil. The only way to do this however is to make sure that the soil maintains a living web of microbes that do all the work for you. If you use chlorinated water, you can kill them. If you water incorrectly, you can kill them. If you add anything not organic, you can kill them. And lastly, if you don't repopulate them occasionally, they will die off and your plants will starve. Growing organically in supersoil is another very steep learning curve... and it takes a different kind of commitment to the grow. Until you are ready and have done some studying about organic grows, Fox Farm nutrients are going to be a lot easier for you to get right.

sorry i didnt mean over feed wrong choice of words but full dose and adjust from there... and ohh ok i mis understood flushing you mean run water through the soil and have it drain out the bottom ( i thought flushing was just giving ph water )and yea maybe ill stick with fox farms and just experiment with super soil on the side

 

[Calvados]

Yes I have been lifting my pots and water by weight I also have one of those cheap Amazon moisture meters it gets it close enough ... I dont have a journal going on this site .. I've just been writing stuff down on a notepad

Good for you. Writing stuff down is the main thing. If you don’t, you will forget something. Double up on feeding, miscalculate how long the flowering is, etc, etc. Basic stuff is: When you started. When flowering started. What nutes, how much, and when. When you watered if different from nutes.

 

[Emilya Green]

Good for you. Writing stuff down is the main thing. If you don’t, you will forget something. Double up on feeding, miscalculate how long the flowering is, etc, etc. Basic stuff is: When you started. When flowering started. What nutes, how much, and when. When you watered if different from nutes.

I keep a daily calendar in the grow room where I can write notes about what happened that day... watering, trimming, observations... it all goes on that calendar so I can go back later and see what I did and when.

 

[Elvin]

I keep a daily calendar in the grow room where I can write notes about what happened that day... watering, trimming, observations... it all goes on that calendar so I can go back later and see what I did and when.

I wrote down the day I popped my seeds on a Word doc and I can't seem to remember which laptop (I refurbish them as a hobby so I've got 4 or 6(?) throughout the house) that it's on and that's my diary. I'm pretty sure my lackadaisical style of growing would drive you up the wall But, I envy you for your devotion to your craft.

 

[Silverfox125]

I keep a daily calendar in the grow room where I can write notes about what happened that day... watering, trimming, observations... it all goes on that calendar so I can go back later and see what I did and when.

I basically do this too! I have a log attached to each grow tent with the activities completed logged on it

 

[BooMtoLate]

I use the note pad on my phone to track what I do and when.

 

[Silverfox125]

There is a plant tracker app you might like. I use it for big picture stuff

 

[misfit808]

Doing great so far watering at full dose plants look much greener now and the trichomes are stacking even on the fan leaves no burn yet thinking about feeding more

 

[Silverfox125]

Looking good!