Nutrients and Additives (UK)

[funkymonkey]

Gnat Off is good stuff, I find two or three applications a week apart works for me. it is expensive though. I have looked for a cheaper Bti source an not found one, I agree it's strange that mosquito dunks are not sold in the UK, my best guess is because we don't have mosquitos here.

Thanks for the tip on nilnat, I might try that when I run out of Gnat Off, although I haven't seen any fungus gnats lately.

 

[STUPPA]

So how much is nilnat then shhh ? i dont think i've seen that anywhere on sale round here.
I dont know about the mites dying out mate cos they do like a bit of you knowhows your father LOL, so they do reproduce and i think they can survive on organic matter for a while after all the gnats are dead.
I added mine at the beginning of flower and i have'nt seen a gnat since then and that was nearly 2 month ago now so i'm happy with that.


Funkymonkey you have obviously never lived near a lake or river because let me asure you there are plenty of mossies in the UK ,infact a few years ago the government started stockpiling BTi incase there was an outbreak of the nile virus, which at the time had spread to france and looked like reaching the UK .

They were gonna treat all the standing water areas in the country with BTi but they also had to consider the effect it would have on the enviroment because the flies are part of the food chain and if you remove them then other animals will also die out like birds etc. , thats what i'm saying about mites being more natural ,you have to think about the consequences of flushing something like bti down your drain and what it could do to the enviroment.

 

[Bush Dr]

At last a Ripen appreciation thread ....... I started using it in soil now it's coco, but it has to be the cheapest, most effective 'final feed' ever

I use Plant Magic Flush for the final week then 2 days of water ..... the difference is stunning

 

[Scrogerman]

that's wierd , guys-what medium are you using? I've never used it in soil/compost, but have in coir and various hydro with the same results. As have some grower friends. Odd. I'm going to have a look in your galleries to see whats happening.

Never had an adverse results either. I have experimentally given one plant Ripen for 3weeks before the chop-the reason being that i was talking to a knowledgable grower a few years ago about Ripen and he said that he had been using it as his main flowering fert-from the end of the stretch to the finish-people say all sorts of wierd shit, i know, but it one of the many things that i have been meaning to try for ages and haven't got around to

as an aside-i threw 50L of waste Ripen solution on to an ornamental bush/tree that i had in the garden for years-the flowers and new shoots expanded too much and every thick wooden branch snapped under the weight-as if it was on steroids (which it quite possibly was)

great to hear other growers take on these products
cheers
eddie

Seriously dont try using Ripen as a main flowering fert from (wk1-finish of bloom), i cant say ive done it but seeing its effects i cant honestly see it working, it causes way too much stress on the plant & forces it to finish, i cant say it would work, maybe adding something else to the res to counter its effects but not on its own & i can garentee nanners bro 100%"!!!!

try it yourself at the middle to end of bloom on a highish dose & for over 2 weeks, im pretty sure you'd see a few nanners popping up, always has every time ive tried it. My medium is just Hydroton in 4"nets DWC 70ltr Tote(this time)! had it dialled for a long time bro.

Doesnt mean you cant give it a go though eddie, let me know your results, id be interested to see. cheers! & Thanks for an interesting convo on Ripen! G'Luck!

 

[funkymonkey]

Funkymonkey you have obviously never lived near a lake or river because let me asure you there are plenty of mossies in the UK ,infact a few years ago the government started stockpiling BTi incase there was an outbreak of the nile virus, which at the time had spread to france and looked like reaching the UK .

They were gonna treat all the standing water areas in the country with BTi but they also had to consider the effect it would have on the enviroment because the flies are part of the food chain and if you remove them then other animals will also die out like birds etc. , thats what i'm saying about mites being more natural ,you have to think about the consequences of flushing something like bti down your drain and what it could do to the enviroment.

Well, there are only something like 20-odd lakes within 50 miles of me and a dozen or so rivers. Never see mosquitoes here, not warm enough, although can't say I've ever paid much attention, maybe it's something you see down south. Then again, we haven't had a summer as such in 4 years so maybe when we do get some warm weather we will see mosquitoes round these parts.

 

[cannaboy]

I have to get predators on a thursday when there harvested or there shit and its bad IMHO unless your soma with 30.000 ladybugs your ruining the grow gotta be a soil bed too!! I'm sure they work but your karma is not gonna invoke nothing. If they sold mosquito tabs in the uk there on a banned substance list because it makes money selling them abroad!!


£85 for a 25ltr dilute of safe spray,, or cold pressed neem.. or pest off!!


A fresh garlic a fresh chilli with seeds aloe lemon and tobacco blend and sieve will do the job in veg ...


The best ripen for me is the (Illegal) CUBAN GUANO!! And an exceptionally healthy plant grown perfect for its whole life and left to finish die alone some of the old AN stuff is top I like carboload and zym and organic bee..

never use pk 13/14 unless your looking to harvest early..

 

[EddieShoestring]

try it yourself at the middle to end of bloom on a highish dose & for over 2 weeks, im pretty sure you'd see a few nanners popping up,

Scroggerman-i've never had Ripen cause hermi's. ATM i have some plants at 9 1/2weeks-they have been getting Ripen for about 3weeks now-not massive doses because i drastically underfed the plants in bloom but they had another ec1.5 feed last night. There are no male flowers in the room

here's a pic of some AK a couple of nights ago-you can see the crown of white pistils-thats the Ripen

and here's some ssh foxtails that i snapped last night just for the hell of it


cheers
eddieS

 

[Hazyfontazy]

never use pk 13/14 unless your looking to harvest early..

never experienced that ,reccomendation is 2 use it 3 weeks b4 harvest ,does exactly as it says on the tin

ripen does what u are suggesting

 

[cannaboy]

I understand your point hazyfontazy I think but on straight canna coco nutes and all,,say week 3 you need some pk what happens?? I don't use it anymore.. I know it adds resin like crazy!
and you can set you ph with it on NFT, but in pots compared to pk 9/18 I found it usless..

Here is 2 products for mite control as 1 product isn't always enough unless chem's are involved GardenSafe neem concentrate from Walmart or any garden center, and spinosad is usually found made by Monterey
courtesy of

BaBa Ku

 

[funkymonkey]

PK13/14 works but a 0-9-18 PK booster works better, gives more resin without losing yield. PK13/14 was developed in field scale tests for food crops whereas cannabis requires a 1:2 ratio of P to K throughout all stages of it's growth.

It's worth stating for the record the actual ratios of N, P and K that cannabis requires through it's life cycle:

Vegetative Stage
N - P - K
3 - 1 - 2

Flowering Stage
N - P - K
1 - 1 - 2

Final Flowering Stage
N - P - K
0 - 1 - 2

To translate this into a 12 week schedule for a typical Skunk type such as Cheese or Psychosis would give something along these lines:

Veg week 1: 3 - 1 - 2
Veg week 2: 3 - 1 - 2
Flo week 1 : 3 - 1 - 2
Flo week 2 : 3 - 1 - 2
Flo week 3 : 1 - 1 - 2
Flo week 4 : 1 - 1 - 2
Flo week 5 : 1 - 1 - 2
Flo week 6 : 1 - 1 - 2
Flo week 7 : 0 - 1 - 2
Flo week 8 : 0 - 1 - 2
Flo week 9 : 0 - 0 - 0
Flo week 10: 0 - 0 - 0

This schedule reduces the Nitrogen two weeks into the 12/12 period which will assist in stopping the vertical growth (stretch). It cuts out all Nitrogen after 6 weeks which will result in a less leafy, smoother burning end product with greater density to the flowers. The last two weeks of plain water is sufficient to leach out all accumulated salts and give a clean end product. Three week flush as advocated by some really isn't necessary if the Nitrogen is cut out after 6 weeks. The people using a three week flush tend to use Canna nutes which have too much N in them for late flowering and this is why they get a benefit from flushing for three weeks.

Hope that makes sense. Despite all the crap the nute companies fill our heads with about the need for all kinds of fancy bottles, you really don't need any of them. Cannabis is a simple plant, a weed in fact, and all it needs is the correct NPK at the correct time plus a full range of trace elements, that is hard fact and no amount of BS an marketing from the nute companies will ever change that fact.

 

[cannaboy]

I found that if I was needing pk early then I'd use hammerhead 9/18 but if I needed more late on I added bloombastic, but you can taste bloombastic (I don't care what anyone says) Ive spoken to the rep, he agreed..

 

[Hazyfontazy]

. PK13/14 was developed in field scale tests for food crops

as far as i'm aware none of cannas products have been designed for food crops ,,Canna develope their products for weed and always have ,,,hence the name CANNA.....all the old literature available from canna relates to cannabis .,
However ,Canna have in recent years calmed down a bit and started to use non cannabis related advertising ,enabling them to sell to us market ..

a very good alternative to pk 13-14 is vita buddy ,,its basically half the dose of pk13-14 and is to be used from week 3 onwards in flower ,,,gives a great taste and increased resin production and tight compact buds

or use pk 13-14 at half strength from week 3

 

[cannaboy]

Some good info hazyfontazy..

Verdentgreen has: "It takes a genius to make something simple" In his signature..

Its a nice touch..

 

[cheesey]

as far as i'm aware none of cannas products have been designed for food crops ,,Canna develope their products for weed and always have ,,,hence the name CANNA.....all the old literature available from canna relates to cannabis .,
However ,Canna have in recent years calmed down a bit and started to use non cannabis related advertising ,enabling them to sell to us market ..

a very good alternative to pk 13-14 is vita buddy ,,its basically half the dose of pk13-14 and is to be used from week 3 onwards in flower ,,,gives a great taste and increased resin production and tight compact buds

or use pk 13-14 at half strength from week 3

strange when i spoke to canna at the expo the other yr they said canna nutes are designed for fruit/veg thats why the nute charts are wrong for growing weed

 

[funkymonkey]

Canna didn't develop PK13/14 they just copied an old formula developed in the pro horticultural world decades ago. There's no getting away from the fact that cannabis needs a 1:2 ratio of P to K and that's why a 0-9-18 booster pisses all over a 0-13-14 one.

I know AN are a BS company but they did actually give a half decent explanation of the PK issue:

Here's the story: many years ago, before hydroponics and indoor growing became popular, plant research showed a specific combination of Phosphorous and Potassium would make plant's bloom bigger and produce heavier harvests.

This agricultural research was performed in an outdoor environment on high-volume agriculture field crops like corn and soybeans.

And because phosphorous leaches out of soil quickly... especially... when field crops are heavily irrigated... all the PK bloom boosters were created specifically for outdoor field crop growing.

The most important thing to know is they all have more phosphorous than potassium in their formulas because phosphorous is so easily depleted when growing field crops outdoors with mass irrigation. This extreme phosphorous ratio is NOT the mixture we want.

Mel Frank published the nutrient profile for cannabis in his Marijuana Grower's Insider's Guide, there is an excellent article all about nutrient profiles for cannabis here that discusses Mel's profiles, I highly recommend everyone read it:

http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty/articles/profiles.htm

Here is a very good explanation of the issue by Erik Biksa, I've highlighted the key points about the 13/14 ratio of P/K being wrong for indoor plants:

Nutrient Ratios for Modern Crops
by Erik Biksa 2009-08-01

To answer the first part of the question, as indoor growers we are applying too much phosphorous because the recommendations for applications and formulations have been based on outdoor field agriculture practices, which simply don’t apply directly to indoor gardens. In nature the soil is very deep, and roots do not occupy the entire body of soil as they do in containers, beds or systems found with indoor gardens. Phosphorous leeches from the root zone in natural soils quickly, washing away from the contact zone with plant roots, as it drains with water further into the depths of the earth. To ensure a healthy supply of phosphorous, outdoor conventional field agricultural growers do a sort of “over-application” of phosphorous, because it has been determined that much of it will be quickly leeched away from the plant roots; what remains at any given time can be taken up by the crop. From this, we can learn that excessive “P” values in our N-P-Ks are not necessary for indoor growers, where phosphorous maintains a high level of contact within the root zone of plants grown in artificial soils and in containers, beds and systems commonly found with intensive indoor growing environments.​

Three part base nutrient systems have been widely used and accepted through the indoor gardening community, and have been delivering great results for years. Based on modern research conducted on indoor grown high yielding crops, it was determined that using the three part nutrient system actually produced better results when being applied in a 1:1 ratio versus the common 3:1 ratio, especially when bloom boosters intended for indoor crops were used in conjunction with the three part nutrient system. 2:1 ratios of three part base nutrients were the least effective of all (where the “grow” component was omitted entirely through the bloom phase).

Upon analyzing the nutrient levels and ratios achieved in the nutrient solution for feeding indoor crops in the bloom phase, applying the base nutrients in a 1:1 ratio using popular three part nutrient components, the level and ratios much more closely resembled those of the internal nutrient levels and ratios of the plant being grown versus using the three part nutrient components in the common 3:1 method.​

​

 

[Dr. D]

Any off topic posts will be deleted.You wanna bicker take it to pm and leave your shit out of my thread. Thankyou

 

[funkymonkey]

Here's a useful list of values for various organic things you can feed to your plants:

Organic Nutrient Chart

Manures

Rabbit manure N= 2.4 P= 1.4 K= 0.6
comments- Most concentrated of animal manures in fresh form.

Cow manure (dairy) N= 0.6 P= 0.2 K= 0.5
comments- Often contains weed seeds, should be hot composted.

Steer manure N= 0.7 P= 0.3 K= 0.4
comments- Often contains weed seeds, should be hot composted if fresh.

Chicken manure N= 1.1 P= 0.8 K= 0.5
comments- Fast acting, breaks down quickest of all manures. Use carefully, may burn. Also, stinks like hell - composting definitely recommended.

Horse manure N= 0.7 P= 0.3 K= 0.6
comments- Medium breakdown time.

Duck manure N= 0.6 P= 1.4 K= 0.5

Sheep manure N= 0.7 P= 0.3 K= 0.9

Desert Bat Guano N= 8 P= 4 K= 1
comments- Also contains trace elements. Fast-acting, mix in soil or as tea (1 C guano to 5 gal. water).

Cave Bat Guano N= 3 P= 10 K= 1

Fossilized Seabird Guano N= 1 P= 10 K= 1

Worm Castings: N=1.1 P=0.4 K=0.4
50% organic material plus 11 trace minerals. Great for seedlings, will not burn.

************************************************** **********

Organic Meals

Blood Meal N= 11 P= 0 K= 0
comments- Highest N of all organic sources, very fast acting.

Bone Meal (steamed) N= 1 P= 11 K= 0

Cottonseed Meal N= 6 P= 2.5 K= 1.5
comments- If farming organically, check the source. May be heavily treated with pesticides.

Fish Scrap N= 5 P= 3 K= 3
comments- Use in compost or work in soil several months before using. Usually slightly alkaline.

Fish Emulsion N= 4 P= 1 K= 1
comments- Also adds 5% sulfur. Good N source for seedlings, won't burn.

Kelp Meal N= 1 P= 0.5 K= 2.5
comments- Provides 60 trace elements, plus growth-promoting hormones and enzymes.

Soybean Meal N= 7 P= 0.5 K= 2.5




**************************************************

Minerals

Greensand N= 0 P= 1.5 K= 7
comments- Mined from old ocean deposits; used as soil conditioner; it holds water and is high in iron, magnesium, and silica - 32 trace minerals in all.

Eggshells N= 1.2 P= 0.4 K= 0.1
comments- Contais calcium plus trace minerals. Dry first, then grind to powder.

Limestone (dolomitic) N= 0 P= 0 K= 0
comments- Raises pH, 51% calcium and 40% magnesium.

Limestone (calcitic) N= 0 P= 0 K= 0
comments- Raises pH, 65-80% calcium, 3-15% magnesium.

Crustacean Shells N= 4.6 P= 3.52 K= 0
comments- Contain large amounts of lime. Should be ground as finely as possible for best results.

Wood Ashes N= 0 P= 1.5 K= 7
comments- Very fast acting and highly alkaline (usually used to raise pH). Contains many micronutrients.

Crushed Granite N= 0 P= 0 K= 5
comments- Contains 67% silicas and 19 trace minerals.

Rock Phosphate N= 0 P= 3 K= 0
comments- Contains 11 trace minerals.
************************************************** **********

Organic Material


Feathers N= 15 P= 0 K= 0
comments- Chop or shred finely for best results.

Hair N= 14 P= 0 K= 0
comments- Good soil conditioner, oils break down slowly. Chop or shred finely for best results.

Comfrey liquid N= 8 P= 2.6 K= 20.5
comments- The solution needs to be diluted 15 - 20 times with water before application in the garden, giving N.P.K. = 0.5 : 0.4 : 3.8 - a high potash feed + trace minerals.

 

[cannaboy]

Shinobi feeds the males to his rabbit,, so its all organic,, I like poo/rabbit guano.. Any Idea of the best wood to burn for ash?? oak's ash, walnut, meranti's

 

[theherbalizor]

Yai my 40 lts of Guanokalong liquid extract has just been delivered... And I am £90 lighter.... I know I could make this for about a £10 but I just haven't the time.

Look out next grow as your getting hammered with the bat shit!

 

[Dr. D]

I tried GuanoKalong in the greenhouse a few years back ( as a soil amender), the plants i gave it to loved it much bigger and stronger than the ones that didnt get it including nice thick stems and branches.

I made teas with it as well that i used in flower which i wouldnt do again because it didnt flush at all well and left a pretty nasty taste in my buds..
You going to use that on coco Herb? I think i may have to do an organic run soon its been years!