I’ve been running hydro with a milwaukee pH controller. I’ve just been running the recommended range of ~5.7-6.1 but sometimes the controller goes 5.6-6.2. From what I’ve read though, it’s “good” to let your pH swing in order to hit all optimal parts of the uptake. Not sure how true that is, but I really haven’t messed with changing the range too much.
But I also don’t think that’s the problem. I generally don’t have P deficiency. I’ve mostly been struggling with it in landrace strains from the Lebanon region (which I’ve been growing a lot recently).
The main reason I’m starting from scratch comes from a belief that commercial nutrient solutions really haven’t been optimized for cannabis. Instead, they use it to push overpriced supplements – and I have a LOT of complaints about that.
The main one is that agriculture isn’t done that way. You can’t arbitrarily apply huge amounts of some nutrient and not cause impacts to the rest of your formula. You can maybe get by with doing that for short periods of time or alternatively, they’re just selling snake oil that doesn’t do much of anything but also doesn’t cause nutrient interactions either.
So-called bloom boosters to me are an artifact of not supplying enough phosphorous. And maybe you don’t need them for a lot of strains, but once you hit a P hungry strain, suddenly you’re bought in to the supplement market. Or “cal-mag”? Has anybody ever seen calcium toxicity in cannabis? Maybe we should always just be supplying more from the start. Instead of walking a tight rope between sufficiency and deficiency, why not just give it a little more than it needs. There’s no calcium toxicity until you start locking out K or Mg.
Once I grew 2 different strains on the hydroponic reservoir using a 3/2/1 formula. One had calcium deficiency, the other had phosphorus deficiency. I’d rather just make some mistakes for some grows and eventually land on something that does neither of those things.
An interesting thing I’ve seen about Lebanese strains (and also Afghans) is that they let the plants die and dry in place. I didn’t used to think much of it, but it turns out that in plant lifecycles, this actually returns phosphorous to the earth. Fascinating stuff. One thing that I’ve noticed is – and a major problem with running high P cycles – is that it inhibits micronutrient uptake (specifically Fe, Zn and Cu). How interesting that plants that are grown in the region of the dead sea may be deliberately harvested in a way that increases phosphorus in the soil.
Part of the difficulty of growing this plant is that it has adapted to grow all over the world. I wonder how many tricks like this farmers have used, and what impacts that has to plant nutrition.
Anyway, what I’m really looking for is a formula in a better “sweet spot” than generic hydroponic formulas. Minimize the additives, boosters, etc. Just a better formula is all. I don’t care what the individual components cost, because they’re all cheaper than a can of rebranded MKP/K2S bloom booster.
