No, I’ve been doing dry ammends & fox farm soil. Think I’m gonna switch to your method though. Keep running into problems.
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Maxibloom beats Jacks? You have my attention… Never was big into general hydroponics or miracle gro but I’ve heard a lot of old cats talk up the Lucas method with Maxibloom. What all you use just maxibloom and gypsom?
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Yeah just gypsum and maxibloom and that’s it. I do add silica in veg but literally nothing else. Always bottom feeding veg and flood and drain for flower. Im in 50/50 coco/perlite with 100% unbuffered untouched anything coco. Straight out of the bag.
Plants fed on Jacks always looks deficient imo. Least when I try and follow any recipe.
Veg mix with tap water:
5 gallon bucket
10ml silica
1 tablespoon gypsum (solution grade or food grade powder)
1 tablespoon maxibloom
With my tap this comes out to 5.8-6ph and ~1.7EC. I feed this to seedlings up until flower. No adjustments.
Flower mix with tap water:
5 gallon bucket (only fill ~4 gallons)
1 tablespoon gypsum (solution grade or food grade powder)
1 tablespoon maxibloom
~8ml pH up
Comes out to ~6ph and ~2.2 EC. I feed this in flower from start to finish.
The flower res needs eyed, some plants want higher EC than that and some want lower but I’m finding most do fine at 2.2-2.3 EC. I don’t do anything else. No what week is it crap. Same bucket, same feed every time. Lazy AF. And you guys see the results. Could it be better? I definitely think so, but I’m going for min/max, how lazy can I be to get the best flower I can.
I’ve even been feeding my vegetables and that sage plant and other house plants off that same veg feed without much if any issues at all too.
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Thanks for the recipe! I’m going to have to try that when the 10 pound bag of Jacks runs out or my curiosity gets me. And yeah the results speak for themself. I like your least amount of work with best results ratio philosophy on growing.
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Had to color adjust these pics. Tempted to swap out these samsung F-Strips for one of the RSpec boards I just took down from the flower tent 
Anyways, SSDD F2 #4 Male - Day 7 and starting to show
Looks like some fat balls already! I’m definitely liking the look of this dude…
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Get the 640 yet???
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Literally just got it like an hour ago! Looks glorious but likely gonna be a couple days before i set it up and try it out. Still gotta bleach the tent and clean the fans and reservoir and whatnot but i’m still getting over this sinus infection. Hopefully by sunday.
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Good looking light, love it folds in half, maybe all do i dont know. the spectrum is MUCH to my liking, and really works well in both veg n flower. IF you want the plants to go vertical back the light off . The spectrum is such they do not stretch too much. I found lower par and higher light in veg to get them to “move” . If i place the light on their heads at 700-800 par, go WIDE and SQUAT. Back off a touch to 650 and light a bit higher, they come up. I/you can control their height WELL when you learn the light .
Your gonna love it.
Hope you feel better soon man, i know how it is
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Ah I’m out of likes for another hour. I don’t have a par meter so will just have to eye it/go off my kill-a-watt meter, or set it off what you’re doing.
With the hlg rspec’s I figured out I could just stick the lights at the top of the tent and run it around 450w. Put the plants in at ~16" and that gives them another 20 inches or so before they start getting too close to the lights. I’ll get good flowers that way all the way down to the bottom of the plants. no larf really, fire dense popcorn buds at worse, so I don’t bother shaving the legs on any of them.
Again, I’m always trying to be as lazy as possible 
to get the best flower I can.
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IF you want, you seem the type, i can give you par numbers, REAL numbers at each power level and average heights.
I start my seedlings at 20 %. 40 % by time they are 12 inch’s or so. 60% early veg, 80 % about week 5, 100% week 6 or so. Back off when they “slow”
I run high par, lots of air moving, and the CO2 bags
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That would be beyond helpful and super awesome of you 
I’m surprised you can max out the lights. How high above? I can’t run the rspec’s in my 4x4 past that 450w at 18 inches without serious stress. OH, you use co2!? That might be it 
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Oh man I like the candid dialogue.
Gypsum, I’m adding to my list today.
How come an item that has so much clout, in your menu and part of this successful grow-style, we hear so little about it?
If its working don’t FIX it.
Simplifying and stream-lining are natural habits for humans. Did i say short-cuts. We all know they all don’t work.
This is astonishingly simple. Kudos
My last two summers were spent spoiling the soil and adopting the pre-load approach. Making dinner-time easy w/ Teas and specific nutes when needed.
Verbal diahrea, and I’m typing… phuk
Lol tincture works 
Cheers Bro
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Yeah I honestly had not heard of it. I was really hesitant to even switch over as it made no sense to me in beginning. I was brainwashed on the “always calmag” in hydro.
Since I started back up growing in 2019, at the start of this thread, I’ve been using calimagic for calmag with everything. Canna Aqua/Vega, H&G Aqua Flakes, Megacrop, Jack’s, etc. @Tappy is the one that originally turned me on to the Maxibloom. And I still dosed calmag with that. I had pretty good success too but always had some type of issue come ~mid-flower. @corgitron is the one that told me to ditch the calmag in favor of the solution-grade gypsum. Said Maxibloom has enough mag in it as-is. After looking at his grows, it was a no-brainer to try it. And damn if he wasn’t right! It made a huge difference and I don’t wanna go back to anything else It’s like ~$50 for a year or two of nutes.
I haven’t ran the numbers exactly, but just in veg i’m pretty sure I’m running around ~140ppm of calcium alone. but again this is bottom fed hydro with unbuffered coco. I’m unsure how any of this would work in soil, or top feeding even. I think you’d need to cut the EC down by a good 500ish or more for top feeding
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OK there is a good long response to this, as I’m learning every day. But the last two years, transitioning ie :bringing NPK products (powders) into play, alongside the stable of Green Planet liquids…
And I got sick of the Volume of Things needed, largely as I was working through Green Planet. A fellow grower buddy in BC introduced me to selective nutrients, npk, not so much as a staple, but for filling any nutrient gaps…
And in the same timeframe, my Soil is seeing a veg/bloom fertilizer, Azomite, Kelp Meal, Worm Castings, Bat guano through Bloom, DynoMyco.
From the soil up, I am backing the bottle nutes Out of rotation. CaliMag may be next for me as well. I’m going to check the Azomite key ingredients… re gypsum, mg
Making a Tea, also totally eases off of the high EC values as well.
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ooh! Are you sure the azomite is safe to use bro? I bought a box but then never used it as I read it contains aluminum and cadmium and other heavy metals. Hemp is known as a soil cleaner and used to clean up contaminated soil as it will easily take up any heavy metals in the soil. I’d think drug type wouldn’t be any different
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Thank You for the warning. I have not used this batch that I took the msds from… this was a Granular load.
I have used other Azomite powders in the past, with no issues. (Posted pic)
It might get left, er replaced as well.
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There’s actually a whole episode of House, S1E12 “Sports Medicine” where this couple gets cadmium poisoning and no one could figure out where from until they discovered they both smoke herb that was grown in cadmium rich soil. Just a show but, always stuck in my mind growing in dirt
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From my understanding as far as metals go, a ph of 5 and lower are reason for concern. 6.2 not so much.
But, chelating products can again be cause for concern if you have a buildup of metals in your soil (reusing over and over?)
I’m not convinced the amounts that we use are of significant concern though, unless like I said you have a toxic buildup and are utilizing chelates…
There looks to be a study that found adding vermicompost and biochar reduced cadmium uptake by 72%.
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Oh nice, there we go! I’m definitely not an expert on soil by any means. I did the super soil thing for awhile but i’m a hydro guy through and through 
Thank you for the paper!
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Huge Thanks for putting that on the radar… @HolyAngel. Heavy metals in azomite. At my end, the soil does not get re-used. Yet
@Fitzera thanks for that info on BioChar + +. Love the concept, kind of pricey at this end $$. Definitely looking at alternative options
Cheers
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