Hello Everyone, I am in the beginning phases of my first coco grow. I had some nutrient issues in the beginning but now have corrected with some education on EC and an EC and PH meter. So my question is now that I am paying attention to EC, my nutrient solution consists of: Cal/Mag - Tap Water or Distilled (depending on what stage of growth) - Jacks Orchid Special 30-10-10. Reading target EC for later stages of veg cycle is upwards of 1500. The instructions on Jacks says to add 1/4Tsp for continuous growth solution. The problem is this only adds an EC value of 50 to whatever solution I add it too. So since plants require up to 1500 in later stages of veg should I be adding nutes until I see this number? Even when I have full dose of Cal/Mag with Tap water and 1/4Tsp of Jacks I am getting around 1.1k EC. Should I be adding in more Jacks? Thanks in advance.
Everything you will need to know about jacks is in this video. I would suggest Jacks Hydro over Orchid Special but you can probably make that work too. Also coco can maintain about a 3.0 ec with no problem. When you water until runoff the EC will build just not as much. You can get the ec to build up by not having runoff or very much, which is what I do and get great results but you gotta be careful about it building too high
Be careful with distilled. I sometimes use it, but never more than 50% with tap. It does a wonderful job of dissolving salts, but it lacks any buffer for your nutes to hold on to, sort of in laymens terms. By itself it can also damage beneficial microbes. Distilled actually has no ph, so the readings (if it hasn't torn up your ph pen) are not reliable. Botanicare for instance cautions against using it alone with Calmag.
Oh very interesting... what do they recommend if tap is too hard? RO? I don't have readily available RO water. My PH pen was reading the distilled water at 6.68.
Thanks for providing this ill give this a look. Just to be clear when you say 3.0 ec does this mean 3000 uc/cm? Thats what my meter reads and it measures in the thousands range... like tap is 425 and tap plus cal/mag is 1100 Thanks
It's debatable. Some ph water down first, others last, and some none at all. It's not really the ph of the water that is critical, but ph is a close measurement. The Jacks buffer is supposed to work in any water. Pot likes acid, which means below 7.0. Most peat mix is stabalized at 6.2. In my 8.5 tap, 360 ppm of Jacks hydro and 240 ppm of calcinit will bring it to 6.4, and that is what I go with. If I cut with 25% distilled it goes to 5.9 to 6.0, and the grower likes that, probably more than the plants care.
So final question to make sure I understand, if the coco can handle 3.0 no problem and all my combined nutes are only upwards of 1.1 ec then what I should do is not water a deeply to build up ec level to desired count to let the plant have more time to suck up the nutes in the soil? Instead of watering deeply with a solution close to desired ec already
Coco can maintain a 3.0 no problem without burning your plants. Its not necessarily the EC they need but the coco will hold it until the plant can use it. I would check your runoff EC and get an idea of where your at and if its low and your plants look hungry, you can boost the EC by feeding with no runoff. Just make sure you arent going over 3.0 and if you do then you can water with diluted nutrients with runoff until the EC is reached.
Also if you have time I would recommend watching this video im going to link. Its by the Jungle Boys and they go over a bunch of valuable info. Ive watched it like 3 times now. They're easily some of the best growers in the world with some of the most experience. Its kinda long but the parts about EC and drybacks is very valuable
Thanks really appreciate the tips ill give both vids a watch. Im currently getting runoff of about 1.3 ec but not exactly sure if thisnis enough for plants just yet as they are still recovering from when I screwed up originally. Anyways thanks again
Because it was readily available from my plant store. I grew with great success with jacks my first grow as well but that was in soil and now I know these grows are completely different. The specific jacks im using "Orchid Special 30-10-10" is because all the ready i do the babies need high values of nitrogen so I opted for a minimum of a 3:1:1 ratio. There any specific reason your fertilizer would work better? Just curious as I couldn't find this on the masterblend website and didn't know if its worth the effort tracking it down.
No I just know it works good for me, here's pictures of couple of buds only 45 days old and 3 weeks to grow, but I grow in soil. It was just another option for growing. But keep using what works for you. A lot of different ways to grow good smoke. Also people do use it in a water grow or drip.
Damn those are beautiful! What are they? Thanks for the info ill keep going with the jacks for now as I already have plenty. Thanks for the advice
Both the Jacks and the Masterblend use Calcium nitrate as the primary Nitrogen and calcium component. 20-10-20 is the conventional target with extra magnesium to make it pot specific. Powergrow out of Utah sells good quality products. I use their epsom for magnesium and it is finer grind than the cvs or grocery epsom. Same stuff though. Calcium nitrate (calcinit) is very high in N and allows you to regulate both the N and also the very important calcium. I doubt Jacks Orchid has any calcium. Even if it does, the calcium included Jacks did not work well for me in the case of Jacks Tomato fed calcium included, on anything. Calcium just doesn't mix well with anything until it is diluted. If you have no rust it isn't even an issue. But pot has to have it's calcium from somewhere. Dolomite can be added to the medium, but pot uses so much that it usually won't last a whole grow. The old recipe was Jacks and calmag. But calmag is expensive, so now we just make it ourselves by adding epsom and calcinit to the Jacks.
Ok so in your opinion using the jacks 30 10 10 is good as long as I get required cal/mag? If so thats good because not only did I buffer my coco but I also put 5ml of cal mag per gallon in with my nutes. Jacks is easy for me to use so it would be great if I could continue to use it... btw I also plan in using jack Bloom booster 10 30 20 when I enter flowering cycle. Thanks in advance
Yep, a lot of pot has been grown with Jacks. I didn't know there was another than Jacks 10-30-20 for many years. (Calmag was our secret ingredient we never told anybody about. It was very high end.)