From what I was seeing a couple days ago you can do foliar on the borax/boron. here is a link
I like this lady she seems to know her stuff
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Nice that’s a good idea.
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I thought you’re talking about Boron. I thought there was a difference. Boron is a bug killer. Interesting I did look it up. Crazy.
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Lots of uses. I am using it for arthritis.1/4 teaspoon disolved in hot water spead throughout the day then four or five days a week. Areas with high boron in the soil have very little arthritis.
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Great read thanks
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Here’s some (actual) tomato recipes I’ve been using, following numbers from here:
They are using it for hydroponics. I am using it in coco, but I’d imagine it works great in other soilless media as well. Calcium and potassium are what a tomato likes, especially during ripening to prevent blossom end rot. They don’t seem to appreciate too much N in early phases of growth, but it can be ramped up as the plant progresses.
Each recipe makes 10 gallons. As always, you can call it good and push the grow clean into MKP if you don’t want to deal with having them separately. The numbers change a bit, but not substantially enough to really matter.
Like cannabis, tomatoes tolerate a good amount of chloride. You can use up to 100ppm Cl without difficulty. Since tomatoes absolutely crush Ca, you can make a slightly better formula using something like purecal or calprime. Then you could unload a little Cl and reduce your EC a bit. Not necessary, but that’s probably where I’d start if I wanted to tweak this.
You’ll notice that I often keep using the same salts in many different recipes. These tomato recipes run the gamut on what you need. But the list in the formulas below is extremely versatile and is a good set of salts that can get you just about any recipe you need to make. The main exception is plant prod, which is generally good for most plants, but could be tweaked for any specific plant if you really want to go deep into it. Grow clean is not necessary, but I like having the polyphosphate in my drippers and system to keep things working nicely and get the slight added benefits to my grow.
Stage 1 (young plants up to 2 trusses) ~1.5 EC
Stage 2 (2-5 trusses) EC ~2.1-2.2
Stage 3 (5+ to ripening) ~2.3-2.4 EC
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Ooh interesting! Your EC targets match what I’ve been seeing in my table for the last 6 months or so ^^
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How to switch from Jacks
So you want to switch from Jacks and start mixing your own? Here’s how:
To use Jack’s, you would normally need 3 ingredients - Jacks, calcium nitrate and epsom. You will keep the calcium nitrate and epsom, as those are your main supply of calcium and magnesium.
Jacks is made up of epsom and 3 additional ingredients, plus micros. Those 3 ingredients are:
- Potassium nitrate
- Potassium sulfate
- Potassium phosphate (MKP)
For the micronutrients, I recommend the plant prod chelated micros.
If you want to keep it simple, use:
- 1g potassium nitrate
- 1g potassium phosphate (MKP)
- 0.3g potassium sulfate
- 0.2g plant prod
= 2.5g per gallon
To this, include:
2.5g calcium nitrate
2.5g epsom
I call this the 2.5-2.5-2.5:
Here are the ppm numbers:
Very similar to Jacks, and roughly 1.8EC. If you want to make it in bulk, just follow the 1:1:0.3:0.2 ratio. Mix it together and apply as 2.5-2.5-2.5
However, the power in leaving it unmixed is that you can now tweak the recipe as you like, without having to buy boosters or other amendments. All you need to do is change amounts between those 3 ingredients. Want less nitrogen? Try swapping the amounts of potassium nitrate and potassium sulfate. Want more phosphorus? Take out the potassium sulfate and add it to the potassium phosphate.
As long as you keep the amounts roughly the same, you can just switch between the different anions as you like. And since sulfur has a low requirement and a very high toxicity limit, you don’t need to worry about how much or how little you are providing.
Since P is an essential nutrient, and only provided by MKP, you can use as little as half the amount shown above (0.5g=30ppm). Keep it above that amount, and the rest is your oyster. You don’t need a calculator to do this. Make the 3 ingredients add up to 2.3g, and keep the MKP above 0.5g. Use your intuition to decide the rest. More N in veg, less in late bloom. More P in early flower. Have fun with it.
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Hey! Longtime no see! So what mix have you’ve been running lately? I’m Still mixing salts but, doing a amended soil run this time to see if it improves terps.
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Hey Lefty first off thank you for this thread. Amazing stuff. It’s been a great morning read with some coffee. Bumping this to see if you ever found out more about Boron.
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I took it up to 2ppm, and my plants seemed happy. 
I didn’t go up to 8ppm, but I’m not sure I noticed much difference. I’d continue to experiment with it. There could be something to it.
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I’ve been meaning to pic up a 15 lb bag of that it’s working well for you? Been trying to use up my giant pail of general hydro micro been adding it to plant prod mj veg and bloom .
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Hey @SeymourGreen! I’ve been mixing a lot of tomato nutrients. I have a pretty mature stage 3 recipe that I’ve been running at 2.5-3ec
Part A
35g Epsom
8g MKP
8g Grow clean
18.5g potassium sulfate
2.5-3g plant prod micros
Part B
16g potassium nitrate
5g calcium chloride
52g calcium nitrate
Tons of potassium and calcium for those tomatoes does them good 
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Plant prod is probably the best mix for cannabis I’ve seen. It’s the only one I would even recommend. Don’t go for anything with sulfates, especially if you’re running a reservoir. I think PP could be improved, but for off the shelf products, it’s the one I’d choose. I think micros are better to use from powder form as well.
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I’ve been running that line a couple years now with no complaints. Terps through the roof .
Really decent price and goes a long way another plus to them . No thousand dollar bill for liquid crap that’s gone in a couple grows.
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Do you recommend the Plant Prod micro mix over the customhydronutes mix?
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I think they only sell plant prod and Peter’s stem, unless it’s somewhere else on their site.
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I saw somewhere that boron does not travel up the stem and you need to folier feed it once in growth and again at beginning of bud. According to a soil scientist on you tube.on you tube query soil scientist and boron, should locate it. A nice lady from canada
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I found a nice site that has sells small quantities of fertilizer.
It’s geared toward aquariums, but it looks like standard stuff. Their EDTA+DPTA micronutrient mix is plant prod repackaged.
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