This is my first post so let's try to make it a good one. I want to talk about foliar feeding but first I have to tell you my story with my plants as I believe it will better help anyone to answer me I had a REALLY awful time starting up, this is my first grow i got my plants from a friend, they were pre started and about 6 inches tall and not sexed, I put them in miracle grow soil and added nutes, I had an awful outcome as you can assume, I stopped feeding nutes and I just used Ph treated water, I did this for 2 months give or take "I had bad lighting at the start" I noticed a stunt in growth and I decided to go out and get better lighting and the plants started doing better. My space is 5x5 I have a 400 cfm fan going and a circulating fan as well as a 6 inch hole to allow air to draw in, the room is 100% light proof sealed with white poly sheeting and reflective waterproof tape. Room temperature is fine Now let's get to the better side of things. I have upgraded my lights again I am now using 12 4ft t5 ho lights over my 3 plants to veg them I will be getting a 1000 Watt hps light for flowering , I have transplanted into bigger pots as they were pot bound, I used promix with 30% perlite mix and I have watered really well for the last week since the transplant, and things are looking awesome. I have also confirmed 3 ladies in the grow room so there is no males I haven't fed for well over a month, I am confident I have flushed away all the nutrients and I'm ready to feed again. OK so right now I'm using the bionticare pro line I have the pro blend grow, liquid karma and cal mag, I would like to do foliar feeding as I will be vegging for quite some time still my questions are. How do I stop the water from beading on the Leafs? If I foliar feed daily should I still soil feed at full strength and on regular schedule? I wish to feed every watering which is typically every 2 days, and I wish to foliar feed daily, can someone please advise me of a safe way to do so.
1. Water tends to bead on waterproof surfaces, and is not an issue. 2. You should be foiar feeding everyday. And never do so at full strength. 3. You should not be feeding every watering. You need both fanleaves and a good root systemm mix it up and dont overdo it.
Once your plants get rooted in well...after the repot and get back to growing again and using water (which they don't do while they're establishing roots), you can stop the foliar feeding. Feed your plants through the root system once they have one. Now.....BEFORE YOU GO POURING CHEMICALS INTO YOUR PLANTS, that Promix you're using isn't much better than MG because it's loaded to the HILT with chemicals. Unless your plants are starting to fade in color from that rich blue green that they are normally to a more yellow green, they are NOT lacking for nutrients. Pouring in chemicals is not the key to growing a huge plant with fat buds....lighting does that. You'll do better by getting yourself some true grade-A quality formulated grow soil instead of messing around with the box store stuff. If you're going to use a box store soil, go to your local plant nursery and buy a good generic base potting soil and then amend it with perlite to about a 60/40 soil/perlite mix and repot into that. How fast your plant grows is totally dependent on the lighting it gets and the care it receives. I suggest you read up on the proper way to tend the plant while it's going through the stages of life so you don't mess up something because of not knowing. Most spend all their time thinking about the grow setup and don't spend much time on learning how to care for the plants. If you use a high quality soil, it greatly lessens the need for added chemicals. If you put too much in or feed to often, you're going to singe your plants. If they don't need fed, they don't need fed and they will always tell you or "show" you when they need it. Always let your plants dry out to nearly DEAD dry before watering or feeding....ALWAYS, from clone/seed to harvest. They don't like the roots sitting in moist soil all the time. If you want to keep your plants as healthy as possible, then adjust the pH of the water you give to a range of 6.3 to 6.7 before putting in your plants. This keeps the roots open and healthy so they can take in water and food. But learning all this is a process and takes time. So learn all you can to better your technique by reading here on the forum and looking through journals of more experienced growers who are growing in a setup similar to yours. But during veg if you use good soil, all you need for the most part is pH'd water and strong light. The soil will do 90% of the work for you if you will let it. But having excellent drainage is a must and allowing them to sufficiently dry out between watering is a must. When you do get your 1000 watt hps for flower and do get ready to start flowering, understand that one light, even though it might be 1000 watts, can realistically only flower out so many plants with each getting all the light it needs. We run 4, 1000 watts per flower room and about 8 plants is all I flower at a time in there. My plants have quadrupled in size since I started flowering less plants and the yield per plant has quadrupled too. So more plants is not necessarily the way to get a better yield. Give each plant what it needs and they'll not disappoint. TWW