Lucas Formula + additives?

I really love florablend out of the GH line. It's cheap and very light NPK. All plant sourced with Kelp so great for micronutirents. Perfect for seedlings to combine with rapid start.

 

There's a few basic kinds of supplements that work. You want an Silica supplement (GH Armor Si). You want a Humic/fulvic acid to celate nutrients and help balance out the alkaline of the silica. You want some root microbes which is where the rapid start comes in. You want a carb/sugar based supplement like flora nectar to help make the microbes thrive.

Other then plenty of cal/mag and sulfer that's about it besides your NPK balance.

For the lucas formula you really only need to buy flora micro and bloom by the gallon or a bag of maxibloom dry. I've just started trying maxibloom dry and I love it. Good for all stages in the right amount for NPK and cheap.

 

I would be running those about 350ppm or so on the x700 scale with plenty of florablend, rapidstart, and a light mix of micro/bloom in equal amounts.

I've grown bucket DWC for years.

 

One of the best things I've done is buy a cheap lux meter. I know par is the standard but you can use lux for a ballpark light figures. Good lux meters are cheap and par meters are an arm and a leg.

I no longer guess at what light levels my plants are getting. Before I got a meter I would just watch the plants for light stress and raise the lights or dim them if possible.

I bought a Dr. Meter LX1330B from amazon for $30. You can also use apps for a good phone for lux readings from the camera but I don't know if it's as accurate as a real meter.

There is a conversion factor for qb leds that is roughly about 65,000 lux for 1000ppfd.

What I would recommend for plants that small which are seedling stage is about 8,000-10,000 lux.

After they get a second leaf group you can increase it to 15,000 lux or so.

25,000-35,000 for medium veg stage.

55,000 lux to 65,000 lux for bloom plants. Some plants can't take the full 1000 ppfd depending on genetics.

 

Maybe for early veg it won't hurt. It is plant dependent. The cool thing about the lucas formula is control of the N vs P&K ratio.

I've been listening to a lot of cannabis growing podcasts and they claim most people are growing with too high of nutrient content by almost double. I've always fed light and daily so I think I'm sort of with them.

I definitely mess with the ratio in lucas and in early veg and don't feed as much p&K and keep them slightly nitro heavy even when feeding about half recommended.

 

Too much fertilizer can stunt growth, and every supplement is fertilizer.
Lucas, maybe a bit of CalMag, and some daily clorox to prevent root rot, are all I think you need.

 

Im using maxi bloom dry thats it no additives been watching to see if i need cal-mg and i still haven't seen any signs so im assuming that maxi-bloom has enough cal-mg in it to where i dont need cal-mg as a supplement and im using RO water. That will help save a few bucks. The only other thing i use is hydrogaurd but it doesn't add any ppms and that maxi bloom cheap just keep away from water/high humidity or it will get all chuncky

 

Use cal-mg first if you use then mix up your main nutes then additives. Hydroguard is a additive

 

Use cal-mg first if you use then mix up your main nutes then additives. Hydroguard is a additive

 

oops it was lagging

 

Sort of true. Many "supplements" have a 1 or lower NPK number that is low enough to be neglected if you're not using it in large amounts. Things like root microbes have no NPK number and no real nutrition. They might change the measurements of a ppm or ec meter but that doesn't mean there's actually more nutrient content in solution.

The meters we use to get a ppm number measure the electrical conductivity of the solution and spit out a number. It doesn't necessary represent the actual ppm of nutrient content. It's just close and easy to use two probes and a battery to measure conductivity and convert that to something we can work with. Just because a substance adds to the electrical conductivity of the solution doesn't mean the nutrient content is higher could be all non-plant food ingredients.

 

Using Floranova Bloom, which is much like the Lucas Formula, I only use Armor Si and CaliMagic. Sometimes the CaliMagic isn't needed, but I use RO water so it oftenly is.

 

I'm also getting those types of patches on my leaves. The symptoms began to slow down once I began giving CaliMagic at full strength 4-5mL/gallon. But it is still persisting. I'm going to try raising my Floranova Bloom to 100% strength next to see if that stamps it out. Do you use Calmag, Snoopunit?