Hello all, for years I’ve been growing in rockwool with house and garden nutrients along with botanicare and advanced nutrients additives.
Recently the dispensary I work for was sold to some new owners that are pressuring me to make a change to a cheaper program. I’m not completely opposed as I’ve been throwing around the idea of switching things up but I am somewhat reluctant as we have pretty great results with our current line.
Hopefully someone else can weigh in with their experience with different nutrient lines over rockwool. We run drain to waste and have 2 6" hugo cubes on top of 8" expert slabs.
I’ve attached a cheat sheet of how we feed 50 gallons for some context, first things I would change is to cut the roots excel and replace the voodoo with mammoth p. I never used the superthrive either when I replicated this recipe at home… I wouldn’t mind trying to dial in a veg bloom/aptus/mammoth p recipe but it might be even more expensive than our current program… Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!
I can get you from the 18 products you currently run down to three which will not only save you money, it will save a ton of time. Please contact me for details. ron@hgvnutes.com
Howdy James. Moving away from traditional liquid retail fertilizers is going to be important as the market gets competitive. I’ve helped match nutrients to different needs of commercial cultivators using rockwool, whether they’re using an Argus system with automated feeding, Dosatron injectors, or simply mixing large reservoirs.
I’d definitely look for a nutrient line that has fewer parts. It’s a popular misconception that fewer parts means your plants are getting fewer micro nutrients. This is not the case for most well made powdered nutrient lines. Liquid nutrient companies gain more revenue per customer when they split their formulation into many bottles vs few. Many bottles is more acceptable as a hobbyist who’s growing for leisure, rather than in the competitive landscape of business.
I’m trying out a one part powdered base right now that’s working well. We’re helping to develop it along side a Canadian nutrient manufacturer and three large commercial cannabis farms in the US. Drop me a private message if you’d like to discuss more.
It’s tough to let go of something that works, especially when it has been working so well for you. I would stress the importance of being completely flexible with new owners/mgmt. and remember there are lots of ways to achieve a similar result.
Your feed regimen looks a bit complicated, there are a lot of parts, which = time and money and an increased risk of error. I used a similar recipe way way back that was taught to me by an old head, and over that last few years it has evolved (or devolved according to some) into bags of mineral salts at a fraction of the cost.
If you’re looking for bottled feed, Rx Green has a great product, which I’ve used. Two part veg/bloom with two supplements, “bulk” for pk boost, and “energy,” which has humics, kelp, yucca, more calcium, etc. They have a root inoculant as well that I used at transplant and right before flower. It’s pricey but simple and stays clean injecting into drip.
If you want to get away from bottles, you could start with Front Row Ag. I haven’t tried it yet, but I will be getting some in soon to try in my R&D room.
If you’re going your own way
In Veg, I target
N- 200
K- 175
P- 40
Mg- 50
Ca- 200
S- 45
In Flower I target
N (NO3)- 140
K- 370
P- 175
Mg- 35
Ca- 65
S- 65
N- (NH4) 50
Keep it Simple. That is way to many parts and the main reason many have swayed away from Advanced Nutrients and similar products that need that many parts to operate. If you use Veg Bloom or similar you will cut down on your time and money significantly. @dakine420 on this forum has reached out to me and he has great looking line I have yet to try that only has a few parts. Powdered nutrients will save you money.
I would look at converting your numbers to parts per million vs milliliter per 50 gallons. This way you have a good way of comparing product x to product y.
Most calculation are easier if can say I want 400 ppm of nitrogen. I want to maintain x count of beneficial nematodes in my affluent. Or 5 ppm of nematodes in my affluent.
You will be able to say 400 ppm of nitrogen from source y costs x per pound.
