Ph for promix

i have tried multiple feeding schedules.

i have fed every watering with ppm starting at 400 going up to 1800 and slowly back down to flush. got great results.

the way i feed now:
heavy feed 1000+ ppm
light feed 500~ ppm
plain water 0 ppm
heavy feed 1000+ ppm
so on and so on...

if i notice any lockout(salt build up) i pick up on it quick and flush with plain water and super thrive for a few waters.

i use super natural nutes with atami bloombastic during flower to swell the buds. and gravity last week before flush to harden the swollen colas.

My feeding schedule:

Rooting cuts -> 1.0
Small veg -> EC 1.2-1.4 (depending on size)
Large veg -> EC 1.6-1.8
Early flower -> EC 1.8
Mid Flower -> EC 1.8-2.0... sometimes as high as 2.2 depending on strain
Late Flower ->EC 1.8

Those are just the final EC I water with each feeding, I use a bunch of products over the course of the plants life... Base nute is usually pure blend pro, along with calmag and liquid karma. Bloom boosters are big bud and overdrive. This is the basic feeding schedule that I was first given by the guy who taught me to grow, and it's never done me wrong... It does a good job of giving them enough food and not teetering over the edge of overfeeding...

I don't trust measuring out the nutrients by ml and whatnot, it works for some of my friends but not for me. I don't like relying on the schedule that nutrient companies give you, 9 times out of 10 they are way to strong. Not to mention with cheaper nutrients the measurements can vary and end up being too weak or strong. Finally, not measuring ppm means that you aren't using your bloom boosters right. If you are supposed to feed .4 of your bloom booster, that .4 is supposed to come out of what would've been comprised by the base nutrient. Kinda hard to do this accurately without an EC meter. EC/ppm meters are the way to go all the way if ys don't already use em... Using em you know exactly how much food is in the water you're giving the plants. This is by far the best one I've used:http://www.growthtechnology.com/nmtr-bl-truncheon.asp

In promix I like to make sure that they get fed approximately once a week, but the way I water it usually ends up being every 5 days or so. Every 2 feedings give them some plain water (feed-feed-water-feed-feed-water-etc.)

I used to think that 2lbs per light was impossible, but over the last 6-8 months or so a light went *ding* in my head and I began to understand how people do it. I've been playing around with 600's for some time now and am about to switch back to bangers, can't wait to see what I can do (1.5 per is a goal for now). My record under a 600 was just under 19 ozs with east coast sour diesel. Using better yielders and bigger lights I'm sure I can do worlds better...

Products I use:
-Pure Bland Pro (for soil) Veg/Bloom
-Calmag with tapwater I use 3-5ml per gallon, depending on the strain and size of plant)
-Liquid Karma
-Silica Blast (gives ya nice and strong stems)
-Hydrozyme (this stuff gives you AWESOME roots and huge stems, very much worth the money)
-Some form of mycorrhizae (again, huge fatty hairy roots)
-Roots Accelerator (product by house and garden... best root booster I've ever used by a longshot)
-Powdered Big Bud (by advanced nutrients...the best bloom booster on the market. I used this and my yields went straight up, so worth the $$$ it's not even funny)
-Overdrive (the 2nd product I use by AN, does a great job of hardening up buds towards the end)
-Carboload (the final AN product I use, awesome for giving plants carbohydrates for that little boost in flower, and unlike other sugar products it doesn't add a shit ton of ppm and magnesium)

Good luck man I hope you do well. My bad if there is too much basic stuff here, I'm not sure how much ya know so I figured I'd be thorough...

Peace!

joe fresh said:

well....i think i have figured it out......


i was watering with a high K fert...at 6.5 ph...K and Ca, Mg gets locked out with ph over 6.0 in soiless medium....promix is soiless.

before when i used to add compost to my promix it was turning my "soiless" promix into soil and watered at 6.5 ph and everything was ok...but if i use just promix it would be soiless right?and soiless is best watered at 5.8-6.0 right?


so by watering with sensical and a high K fert @ 6.5 ph the plant was not able to absorb the K , Ca, and Mg...leading to a salt/fert build up, locking out my plants ability to absorb any ferts and dropping the ph dramatically....


so now that i have flushed everything i checked one of my plants today and the water going in was 6.2 ph 0 ppm, and runoff was 5.8 ph and 640ppm....i think these would be good numbers to say the least right? now if i water with plain water next watering and then resume feeding at proper 5.8-6.0ph then everything should be fine right?


just looking for some feedback to see if im correct about my theory here....thx

Click to expand...

My man I think you've got your problem figured out.

Another tip that might save ya some money: get the promix bx and a big bag of perlite, not the promix HP. HP stands for "high porosity" and basically means that it's promix with perlite already added.... Meaning that you are paying the same price for less product. Might be helpful if ya gotta get 20 bales of the stuff

the promix by gardenscape is bagged hotter then premier pro-mix. same black bales. i always flush new soil and ck ppm.

bigghead said:

the promix by gardenscape is bagged hotter then premier pro-mix. same black bales. i always flush new soil and ck ppm.

Click to expand...

hhmmm..... interesting.....


ive always used promix bx, or bx w/myco....but this time i baught "atami b'cuzz hydromix hp" thinking it was the same and because the guy at the hydroshop said it was the same....looks the same and all....

but what you say intrigues me....

http://www.atami.ca/america/hydromixx/index.html that is what i got this time....

milehighmedical said:

Hell yeah, I don't know if I've ever really heard of people pulling that kind of weight per plant in soil, indoors and with horizontal lighting. I've always wanted to run 1 per. But the most I've been able to down size is from 16 to 9 to 4 per. But I've had enough trouble yielding with 4 per that I haven't tried running 1 per yet.

Click to expand...

Good Luck. Very possible, most people with plant count issues don't realize they are not using big enough pots and that it's worth vegging the extra week. Also, keep your lights up to induce stretching then provide support of some sort to ensure the branches don't break.

EVERYONE USING PROMIX/SUNSHINE MIX/ATAMI HYDROMIX.....OR ANY OTHER GROW MIX THAT IS SIMILAR....PLEASE READ




i just took some of my atami hydromix hp out the bag and decided to see the runoff.....

RO water going in--6.7ph---12ppm

runoff comming out--5.6 ph--1100ppm

this is straight out the bag.....nothing added


so my question is ....is your mix like this?

what is the ph and ppm of your mix right out the bag?

please post your result so i can compare...im wondering if i got a bad batch, or if they are all like this....

Forget measuring the pH of the runoff that comes out of your plants after watering with nutrients.

I know we're not talking orchids, but it doesn't matter. Please read these files:

http://www.staugorchidsociety.org/culturewater.htm

pH Management and Plant Nutrition, Bill Argo

Part 1 Intro
Part 2 Water Quality
Part 3 Fertilizers
Part 4 Substrates
Part 5 Choosing the Best Fertilizers

Part 5 talks about fertilizers and the amount of nitrogen in the ammoniacal form within them. Accept for the company Dyna-Gro, I can't find any other "hydro-nute" that isn't low in that form of Nitrogen. That's because the fertilizers are made to be used with good quality water, be it RO filtered or not. RO water has little to zero alkalinity (as well as 0 or almost zero EC).

excerpt from part 2:



*****

Nursery discovers value of "pour-through" testing


Using The PourThru Procedure For Checking EC and pH For Nursery Crops

double post

well, my ferts have 94+% nitrate nitrogen....so they are very low in ammoniacal nitrogen.


and i was looking for other ppl who use promix or something like it to test their mix right out the bag......

i just took some of my atami hydromix hp out the bag and decided to see the runoff.....

RO water going in--6.7ph---12ppm

runoff comming out--5.6 ph--1100ppm

this is straight out the bag.....nothing added

Click to expand...

so i didnt add any nutes, this was right out the bag....now im wondering if theis is normal, or if its "hot" ouit the bag?

Your assumptions are 100% correct Joe. Pro-mix Bx (not sure about HP) has a decent amount of starter nutrients. I was having problems with salt build-up recently, and for the life of me couldn't figure out what was going wrong. I'm the type of grower who sticks with "too little is better then too much" motto when it comes to feeding, so I know I was not over feeding.

I was always under the assumption pro-mix was a inert medium (no nutes), but after a long conversation with the Premier technical support I learned pro-mix uses (among other things) Salt based nutrients, as a "starter". Organic growers that use pro-mix should take note!

To make a long story short, the salt based nutes that come in pro-mix screwed up my grow. Guess I shouldn't ass-ume. If anyone gets a chance try this little experiment, next time you open a bag of Pro-mix put a small amount into a container. drench the container and take note of the run-offs water color. It will be a deep deep Yellow color, that's their "starter" nutes...... that seem to last the whole damn grow!!

mine was a brownish-beige, poured thru plain RO water and what i collected was brownish-beige, with a EC of 2.2....and this is straight out the bag no nutes added....although i dont use "promix" atami hydromix lookes the same, has promix just recently changed and added nutes? i also was under the assumption that it was a "virgin" soiless mixture, like coco....but guess im wrong...

I also thought Pro-mix was "virgin" substrate, but after speaking to a Premier representative, I learned that Pro-mix Bx (as well as the -green- one?) comes with "starter nutrients" straight out of the bag! Yikes. I'm not sure when they started doing this.

I'm pretty sure the feeding practices you are using are not to blame for the salt build-up. You (as did I) assume peat-based mediums are inert. When in fact most premixed, ready to go mediums are not. Although there's no compost, there are nutes in it.

And yes, coco is -still- inert........ let's hope if they do decide to put nutes in it, we are told ahead of time, LOL.

This explains why my initial runoff was at 4000+PPM's. Thank you guys for your excellent research!!!!

this makes me want to switch to coco.....


back to my original question....about ph....would this classify promix as a soil(6.5ph) considering there is nutes is it?

or is it still a soiless mix(5.8-6.2ph)?

or would it have to have organic amendments to make it a soil(6.5 ph)?

It's still considered soil-less because the nutrients in it are salt-based synthetics. Yeah, organic amendments are needed for a medium to be considered soil.

Makes you wonder if the organic only growers that use Promix are aware Premier uses synthetic nutes pre-mixed? Maybe someone should warn them? Ya, know? Although there's probably different peat based mixes out there that are still inert.

I just learned about this a couple weeks ago!! LOL. I'm surprised people aren't shouting this from the roof tops!!

i believe it has to be mineral based to be classified as soil even if it is supplemented

ive heard that depending on which COCO you buy and from which company, they can be loaded with salts because of the way they sterilize the coco, which i believe they use salt water, and residual salt gets left behind if they dont properly rinse, do they do this with peat?

That's a good question. I'm curious about that myself.

.