The more nutrients the better?

To be honest I use the lowest EC possible and the plants seem to thrive.

Why increase the concentration when your plants are fine? You're asking for trouble doing that.

Sativan said:

To be honest I use the lowest EC possible and the plants seem to thrive.

Why increase the concentration when your plants are fine? You're asking for trouble doing that.

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Correct. Keep in mind, when you go too high with the nutrients the roots begin to die and rot, dropping pH in the root zone like a stone in the ocean. MANY hydro growers believe they have pH stability problems from their pH up or down, or the buffers in their nutrient solution are "not enough." They're actually killing the roots and creating the pH issues with over-feeding. From what I've read posted, a lot of soil growers have the same issue going unresolved until they check run-off pH.


Lowest EC you can possibly give them, and have them still respond with full growth rates. This gives you the highest margin of error when your environment changes and the nutritional needs of the plant drop drastically.

i would say try to find the lower limit before trying to find the maximum. all you're doing is throwing nutes (money) away.

In my experience, if you see tip burn they've been dealing with too high EC for at least a week, even a temporary spike in a closed system does this. This is why using a meter and testing runoff often is so important while getting to know your strain/new nute/different feeding strength...you can look at what you gave them and know. Don't fly blind without a meter unless you're organic, it won't matter with organic anyways.

People are in a rush to push harvest potential. Yield seems to equal security in a lot of peoples thoughts. It's true that to strong of ferts lower the potency. I'm thinking it also effects the scale of terps as well. Some terps get louder with a sick plant. A theory. But I'm talking about a full bouquet of terps. Something with a lot of body. Something sexy.

Douglas.Curtis said:

MANY hydro growers believe they have pH stability problems from their pH up or down, or the buffers in their nutrient solution are "not enough." They're actually killing the roots and creating the pH issues with over-feeding. From what I've read posted, a lot of soil growers have the same issue going unresolved until they check run-off pH.

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You're on to something with that. I used to be one of them lol.