Forgive me for butting in again, I posted way back .... But I must try again; Think this through, if you stop using bottled concentrates you will save lots of money. Liquid concentrates are only sold to cannabis growers - why ? Cannabis growers are the only ones who buy liquid concentrates - why ?
There is nothing cannabis-specific to any of those liquid concentrates - there is no reason to believe in the scam perpetuated by the companies that sell liquid fertilizer concentrates. One day we will all agree on this, and we'll remember when we didn't know any better. Yes I am trying to enlighten our community, so start spreading the word ! Liquid fertilizer concentrates are for those that don't know better, but listen up - I'm telling the facts of horticulture....
You can instead use what every professional grower uses - real, super-soluble, unadulterated, scientifically developed and tested, professional grade fertilizers. They existed long before GH or AN or FoxFarms or Botanicare etc etc ever came along and started to sell to uninformed cannabis growers. You can't copy Epsom Salts, Calcium Nitrate or Plant Prod's dry, soluble fertilizers.
The companies like GH, AN, Botanicare etc etc... just add water to the dry fertilizers, and then create a sub-standard product for which there is no chance you'll be able to get a "minimum guarantee" or a guarantee of any kind. Adding water and concentrating is destabilizing to the salts, and enables chemical reactions to occur that will not happen if the water weren't added. Why add water and preservatives to a perfectly good product or nutrient salt ? And why pay so much for less?
One 15 kilo bag of Plant Prod's 20-20-20 / 15-30-15 / 8-20-30 costs $65, and that will make 15,000 liters of nutrient solution.! 25 kg MgSO4 (Epsom salts) costs $30 and that will make up to 125,000 liters of nutrient solution! A 25 kg bag CaNO3 costs $60 and it'll make > 83,000 liters of nutrient solution. Add some potassium silicate to pH up, and you're done ! For $200 you've got a year's worth of fertilizer that never goes off or precipitates, and it's complete - your plants will LOVE all 13 elements being delivered solubilized, chelated and free of methyl paraben and sodium benzoate !
It is like buying Kool Aid with water and preservatives already added - Liquid concentrates are a scam. Every trained horticulturist knows this scam. All fertilizers for plants are dry powders first, and in that dry form they are most stable, and they offer you a "guaranteed minimum analysis". That is important - especially for any "reverse engineering" to calculate ppm of each ingredient.
Every professional horticulturist knows how to calculate the grams of fertilizer needed to deliver the PPM desired in a nutrient solution, but this cannot be done with any hope of accuracy when using liquid concentrates that are unstable, and that are manufactured with wide ranges of accuracy. You're guessing at best since the contents of the bottle are not what's on the label.
The labels on any bottle will not have accurate numbers on them from which one can calculate some element's ppm being delivered. I worked for one of the companies that's mentioned over and over in this thread, I edited their entire production manual, I watched the manufacture of the products daily, and know every formula. Formulas were changed before the bottle's labels were reprinted. And they ALL have huge amounts of unlisted preservatives in them - yes it is true !
Many imperfections occur in mixing these concentrates, usually in batches of 10,000 liters of more at a time. The batches are mixed with hot water, so guess what happens when the stuff is packed and the bottles cool? On some occasions I saw the bottles of a new formulation were labelled with old, outdated labels that had incorrect data. Formulas were changed on the fly because of insolubility issues, and more preservatives were added, with no testing ever done on any plants before stuff was sold with outdated labels on them. They'd do whatever prolonged shelf life, made the manufacturing cheaper or sold more product.
There is no chance of a "minimum guarantee" for any element that's bottled up and concentrated - that's why professional growers would refuse to even try. Some liquid "grow" formulas are 1-0-0 .. that's 99% water ! But you get green dye and maybe some preservative for good measure, in case the bottle starts to grow something of its own. What really is in the bottle ?
The cannabis community once was a bunch of recluse "outsiders" who didn't get easy access to grower-supply stores or basic horticulture extension-services and we all wanted to be covertly growing, so we were a perfect target for the GH,AN,etc etc type companies to sell us the scam of liquid concentrates. We might even like the idea of being catered to by these companies, but they are taking us for suckers, perpetuating the myth that there is something "special" for cannabis in their unreliable products.
I am speaking from experience, forgive me if it sounds like ranting, but how can I convince everyone to understand the horticultural facts about mineral fertilizers ? Don't add water to the fertilizers until you are going to fertigate your crops. And in that case you'd be adding the dry fertilizer to the water - there is no concentrated state ever, and minerals stay in solution.
The science and horticultural know-how used in the real, big, wide world of agriculture and agribusiness is the foundation that cannabis growers can rely on now. Let's share the knowledge! We don't have to be "outsiders" to the truth about growing anymore, it's becoming legal now! Maybe take a course in Horticulture with the money you save when you stop buying liquid concentrates.?
