Why foliar to begin with? Because you can quickly target deficiencies. Or, you can top-off nutrients when it’s not time to water or if you need to bypass the root zone due to other issues.
Magnesium foliars are common. 1 tablespoon of magnesium sulfate per gallon of water plus a pinch of yucca powder to help coat the leaves will green those plants up.
I like making small batch potassium foliars. 1/8 teaspoon of potassium sulfate per 16 oz of water (approx 1 teaspoon per gallon) plus a pinch of yucca. Add 1/16 teaspoon of either micronized calcium carbonate or diatomaceous earth(silica) to really help them pray.
I’ve never had issues with foliars burning under lights or sun. I don’t PH them either but maybe I should.
What other cool recipes are out there and what do you foliar?
I’ll do an Epson foliar for mag deficiency issues but that’s usually all i need. The soil and fertilizer combos I use are pretty good for my style of growing so i don’t see NPK deficiencies very often.
Athena IPM, Silica and Build a Soil coconut powder - alternating between the 3 every 2-3 nights. Feeding Jacks 321 to the roots. May add sulfer into the mix, but haven’t made that adjustment yet.
Love my foliar sprays. I notice some really quick greening of the leafs with the rooted leaf products used as foliar sprays. I mainly use the solar rain (mg) and the calmag fuel, but also the silica skin, peak bloom, and lush green going into flower, and resin bloom. All their products have high available carbon which from niks explanations on growcast podcast give the plants more than Co2 in the air ever could, and also amino acid nitrogen in the lush green. I use blumats with plain water and do a little top dress of dry nutes at the start of flower, then water in food and foliar spray each about 2x a week till week 3ish of flower, then just hand water some food when foliar time is done
Also one I find very interesting is there’s a lot of scientific papers on the use of foliar chitosan for many different things including increased terpenes and cannabinoids in cannabis, increased terpenes in fruit crops, decreased water usage while increasing yield from a study on peppers, increased drought and heat resistance for tomatoes, peppers, and other crops, etc.
I tested hyshield from the makers of Hygrozyme last year in a bad drought year with lots of above average temp days on my veggie garden last year, mostly tomatoes and peppers, and the ones that got sprayed in the morning or night before a serious hot day were noticeably less wilty during the heat of the day
The Rooted Leaf stuff seems really interesting. I like listening to Nik nerd out on podcasts about the science behind a lot of it even if I don’t fully understand.
The chitosan stuff sounds interesting too. It’s hot and dry out here so maybe that would help with the outside veggie garden.
When I was doing a lot more hands on gardening i liked using PureCrop1 in my foliars as a base for wetting/spreading/sticking. Worked way better than ThermX ever did for me. A simple mix with BioAg’s Multimino makes for a pretty killer foliar in veg/early flower. I never tried it but I would guess it would go very well with anything from organics alive as well.
The most important ingredient in a foliar spray though is the water. Poorly pH’d water, or water loaded with carbonates is pretty much a waste of time with a foliar IMO.
Here’s something I found wile watching the old youtubes last night. Holy moly, I never realized foliar sprays were so efficient! Magnesium foliars will gives you up to a 75x multiplier. Wowsers!
I’ve always believed foliars were to supplement and can’t replace root zone feeding. But if it’s that efficient… Could it?
Completely replacing soil nutrition with foliar would be very difficult I think, just because of how much you’d have to spray (frequency), the concentrations you’d have to use (combined EC of all the macros and micros), and the inability to spray during flower would force you to use the roots eventually. Might be worth seeing if one of the hydro mad scientists have tried something like this for curiosity’s sake, but it doesn’t seem like an efficient way to grow, even if the numbers in that chart are accurate.
A&B salts anything from 2 to 4ml per ltr strength wise dependent upon size of plant and how bad deficiencies are. No need for rest then imho. I always add a few drops of washing up liquid per ltr as an emulsifier when i do it in veg early in morning and just before lights out if needs be. Very good stuff for a quick fix of most deficiencies this one is
The washing up liquid dish soap also helps repel bugs too obviously dont use it in bloom you dont wanna be blowing bubbles when you smoke.
I do a fermented fish hydrolysate. Not a fish emulsion- which boils the nutrients to death. It’s the pretty much the same as one might buy via Neptune’s harvest or a similar outfit. But better because it’s closer to being free. Tons of nutrients. And filthy fun.
We hit 100 degrees a few days in a row a week or so ago.
My entire outside garden was folding over and wilting in the sun. So I gave them a foliar of approx 1 teaspoon per gallon potassium sulfate, half teaspoon per gallon calcium carbonate, and 1/4 teaspoon of yucca powder PH’d to around 6.2 to 6.5.
I sprayed my plants in full sun during the hottest and most extreme time of day during 100+ degree temps and the plants FREAKING LOVED IT!!!
They instantly responded and perked up back. Seriously, they were all so limp they were going to melt but then they had an instant recovery.
Foliars during extreme heat and sun are awesome!! My theory is the foliar spray must have cooled down the leaf temperature to a reasonable level so that they can start photosynthesizing again.
Imagine you were outside sitting at a restaurant patio during full sun in the summer with intense heat. It’s not every enjoyable, right? Now imagine the restaurant turned on the patio misters. Suddenly, it’s not so bad sitting out there. I think it must be like that.
Not to argue, but my understanding is that water droplets magnify the sun and will burn the leaves. Generally one tries not to water plants in the middle of the day under a strong sun for that reason.
They may have been starving for water hence the perking up, but repeated hits in full sun will do damage.
That’s what they say and that’s exactly what I wanted to test. I have never, ever, burned plants with a foliar under extreme light and sun.
I’m now convinced water droplets mangifying the sun is completely false. If a foliar does burn it’s probably a chemical burn depending on what’s in it and the strength.
Ive never used chemicals. I also try to never water when the sun is high. So I can’t prove it to be true. But I guess you’ll find out if you do it repeatedly. I think it’s more a cumulative thing as far as damaging the leaves.
Also- what I’ve always read regarding foliar feeding is that the underside of the leaves take in more nutrients than the topsides. Also a surfactant helps. Harder to spray under there but preferable.
Beside Epson Salt I use Peter’s Professional Foliar Feeding.
