TreeFarmerCharlie
Well-Known Member
Thanks for the help. I’ll check out their Ca additives tonight. I’m running low on CalMag so I’m going to need to reorder anyway.
Beginner question about topdressing and teas
- Thread starter TreeFarmerCharlie
- Start date
getogrow
Well-Known Member
rust spots on organics are usually the start of a N def. You may want to brew up a nice rich tea.
TreeFarmerCharlie
Well-Known Member
I too dressed the other day and just fed them some tea I brewed up. I have each plant about 1.25L of tea. Is that enough for 10gal pots?
getogrow
Well-Known Member
thats about right. i use .5 to .76L to a 3 gallon pot. (not 100% organic)
TreeFarmerCharlie
Well-Known Member
Thanks for this, I've been so confused about how to properly feed teas because it seems like everyone has a different approach.
getogrow
Well-Known Member
now you have me confused ..... whats the different approaches ?
with organics , you dont want the soil to dry up all the way so your goal is to water "just enough"......that is 100% experience , zero numbers from outside your grow. ONLY you can come up with that number. Nobody has "just enough" down pat but we can sure try. I guess most folks prolly use a tiny bit of water more often to keep the pot even ? not sure. Its tough to get the pot completel;y even moisture but after you do , its kinda easy to keep it up. The first couple weeks of the girl rooting the pot is usually a bitch.
with organics , you dont want the soil to dry up all the way so your goal is to water "just enough"......that is 100% experience , zero numbers from outside your grow. ONLY you can come up with that number. Nobody has "just enough" down pat but we can sure try. I guess most folks prolly use a tiny bit of water more often to keep the pot even ? not sure. Its tough to get the pot completel;y even moisture but after you do , its kinda easy to keep it up. The first couple weeks of the girl rooting the pot is usually a bitch.
TreeFarmerCharlie
Well-Known Member
What I meant was that I've been finding that some people feed the tea at full strength, but pour less into each pot, and some seem to dilute it in with their regular watering. A local guy I know says he never uses it full strength and, instead, he mixes it 10:1 with water and uses it with every watering. My Blumat system should be arriving today so it will be interesting to see how much they drink on a daily basis through that once I get it up and running.
getogrow
Well-Known Member
ive never diluted teas but thats completely on you .....they dont have much npk value to speak of depending on how you make it. ive used teas every watering and ive done it every 3 or so waterings. I dont think you can overdo the goodies in the tea
I don't know if you have read through this site or not, but http://microbeorganics.com/ was a good source for me when I brewed my first couple teas. I haven't used one in a long time only because I don't have a space near my plants that I can do it, but followed his general approaches on how i did mine. I never diluted my teas, main reasoning for not diluting was to minimize the risk of disturbing the microbes that had populated the tea. I used the tea the same as I would when watering the plants and only noticed happier looking plants as a result.
I saw your plants in another thread though and they look awesome, so whatever you are doing is working well in my opinion. What lights are you running if you don't mind me asking?
Best of luck with everything and stay well though.
TreeFarmerCharlie
Well-Known Member
Thanks for the link, I haven't been on that site, but I will definitely check it out. I built my own Samsung FStrip lights and they've been under those lights for about 2 weeks now. I've been running them at about 460W (combined) but will bump them up to a total of 500W when I put them into flower.
Looks awesome man. I knew I had read a lot of your stuff in the led section, I just find myself reading everything lately and forget it all almost instantly hah. I have bought a lot of different led type stuff lately too and the newest being some strips. I will put it all together one of these days , but will definitely not be as clean/nice as yours.
getogrow
Well-Known Member
with farmers help , im going to switch from 4k to led. until he gets tired of me questioning him. In return , i have organic knowledge for days....i may be able to help , maybe not but im here!
TreeFarmerCharlie
Well-Known Member
If my counting is correct, there are 144 diodes per strip. There are 4 strips per light, so 576 diodes per light, for a total of 1152 diodes. Each light is powered by an XLG-240-H-AB driver that I have ramped up to provide 250W to each light.
Here's the strips I used
And the drivers
Those f strips look awesome and seem like they can crank out a ton of light. It's crazy how hard you can run those compared to my bridgelux gen3 strips I got. I think I settled on doing 8 strips per fixture, not sold on whether I will use an hlg-100 or an xlg-100 yet though. I will be a little under nominal current per strip either way, but only like 12 watts a strip this way. I plan on using two fixtures in a 2x4 tent for now growing some herbs/veggies for fun since I cant expand on my mj plants in my current setting. Figure more experience with soil and different lights will only help somewhere down the road.
TreeFarmerCharlie
Well-Known Member
Yes, it's for a 4x4. It seems like a lot of people who use the F-Series strips actually only go with 6 strips for a 4x4 tent and they say that is plenty. I went with 8 strips because I would rather have the extra power in there and I can always dim them down if I need to. It can definitely be very confusing and that is why I pretty much just followed what others were doing. When I decided on going with 8 strips I just asked for advice in the "Samsung F-Strip Build" thread and they helped me decide on the drivers. I was initally going to build a single light, with a 480W driver, but they convinced me to go with two lights and two drivers. IIRC, it actually cost me less to go with the two drivers than it would've cost me to go with a single one.