I understand the difference but many popular nutrient brands are vague on feeding a soilless garden. Should I follow the hydro or the soil directions? I am currently hand watering with r/o treated water and I just switched to botanicare pro, as well as all their supplements. Any suggestions or thoughts are appreciated.
I only have experience with coco, but generally soil-less is lumped together with hydro when it comes to feeding. ~5.8 ph, can be feed multiple times per day, works well with most hydro setups etc etc. What medium are you using? Not sure on your specific situation. More info would help us help you Peace
I am using promix with mycorrhizae. Promix is peat, coco, and perlite with beneficials. I have been following the schedule of water water feed. Which means they are being fed about once per week. I am in a 4x4x7 tent running a 1000w hps. I run strictly 12/12 as i am lucky enough to live in a medical state where clones and veg plants are readily available. I am doing 2 different strains; orange blossom (ind dom hybrid) and jack herer (sat dom hybrid). They are both getting about 800 ppm on feeding days. I am not having any problems but i am always looking for tips and advice to improve. Are you thinking I should be feeding more often? I'm gonna try to attach some pics, I'm very new to these forums.
Botanicare recommends water-water-feed? So you water/feed your plants 3 times a week? You must be using small pots, like 2 gal each. I use Promix w/ House & Garden and refer to the soil schedule. Promix is essentially hand watered hydro so I suppose you could use either schedule. Soil sched works best for me though.
I feed every third time that the plants are thirsty. Example: Monday morning plants are thirsty so I feed them r/o treated water and about 800ppm botanicare bloom; Wednesday they are thirsty again so they get plain water; Saturday plain water again; then by Monday or Tuesday of the next week they are thirsty again so they will get a feeding... Water, water, feed. Depending on what week of bloom they are in, is what food they will get. Just about every week in bloom, botanicare has a diff concoction on their feeding chart. So, if they are in week 4 of bloom, they get the week 4 feeding, no matter what day of the week that the feeding hapens to land on based on the w, w, feed "theory".
Sounds like you are giving your plants too much water. How do you determine that they are "thirsty"? Just because they have dry top soil does not mean they need watering. You should go by the weight of the pot. Letting plants soak up all of the available moisture and dry out just a bit is beneficial. It encourages the roots to grow more as they try and find more water. GL