So I've looked around and cant seem to find answers to my questions.
I have the ff trio and 3 week old plants in e&f
I understand I use big bloom and grow big at the same time for veg? then us grow big and tiger bloom for flower?
Do I add my nutes then test ph or adjust ph first?
I cant seem to find a thread that explains how to test the strength of nutes with my ppm tester and what ranger am I looking for at this point?
I've read all over to only us about half the strength at first as the chart on the bottle says?
At this point do I following the chart for seedlings 1tb per gallon for big bloom and 1/2 tsp per gallon for grow big?
Thanks in advance.
Are you in soil?
I have some mothers in FoxFarm soil, now about 16 weeks old. I have upcanned them three times.
I stated them from 18 day old clones in 4" pots of Foxfarm soil. I didn't give them anything for a month, except Cal-Mag and Vitamin B in RO water.
At 1 month, I put them into 7" pots. Since I upcanned them with fresh soil, they didn't need anything for a few weeks. At that point, I called it "week one" by the FoxFarm chart.
If you mix according to the chart, you get way overstrength. The chart contradicts itself severely. It says to start with 30ml (6tsp) of Big Bloom per gallon. If you do that, you get about 2.6 EC which is crazy high for "week one!"
Before I go further let me say that it's unfortunate that they call their veg part 1 nute "big bloom". It's not a flowering nute. That confuses a lot of people.
Anyway, what I do is I mix it according to the chart, and then dilute down to 1.1 EC to start off, getting to 1.6 during the week when you start adding "grow big." I don't add any of the micro or probio stuff in the chart, but I would do something equivalent if I saw problems, which I haven't.
I do use the "sledgehammer flush" every two weeks. I'm in my third, and considering my space, last upcanning at this point, 2 weeks ago, and so this morning I fed them for the first time. I'm treating it like "week one", but going a little stronger as an experiment.
My point here is that if you don't have an EC/ppm meter, be aware that the strength that you get following the chart is
much higher than the PPM at the top of the chart, maybe by half!
So let's say you're going into week 3 on the FoxFarm chart. You mix 30 ml (6tsp) of BigBloom and 10ml (2tsp) of GrowBig per gallon according to the left side of the chart. The top of the chart says "1.6-1.8 EC or 1120-1260 PPM". The thing that bothers me about the chart is that what you mixed with teaspoons is WAY higher than that EC on the same chart! The other thing that bothers me is that it says "2 times a week" and "feed with every other watering". I understand what they are trying to say there, but I cannot imagine a total newbie getting it right, since it's kind of impossible to follow the instructions.
It also bothers me that we're not looking at the same chart.
http://foxfarmfertilizer.com/feedingfox.html
For seedlings/clones it's 2:1 BigBloom:GrowBig in hydro for 1.0-1.2 EC. I'd say from my humble experience that even that EC is a bit high (depending on your water), but won't kill anything. In soil, it's just 6 tsp BigBloom per gallon and dilute to the EC you need.
