Home made marijuana nutrients

A question from a fellow grower:

I’m using a Hydro system and want to add homemade nutrients. Homemade because the budget is tight. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get the N, P and K from? Also what would be a good all round fertilizer for the rest of the needed supplements (like iron, etc.).

A different issue I’m facing is the temperature of my water. I’m at 78 degrees and trying to cool the water with icepacks. Any suggestions?

Well it depends on what type of water you are going to use. Tap water, well water and mineral spring water may have quite a bit of the micro nutrients such as calcium, iron, etc.

You can grow with miracle-gro or other regular off the shelf plant foods, not ideal but it can be done:

There is no absolute cheap way to grow. Whether it be time, money or a combination of both.

You cannot make adequate hydroponic nutrients cheaply. I know because; I make hydroponic nutrients. I have to buy a minimum 5-6, 50lb. bags of nutrients; Plus, Many 5lb. bags of chelates for micro nutrients. Boron, etc, etc.

Cheapest way to go hydro is to buy a base nutrient system.

General Hydroponics 3-part, about 30-40 bucks for qts.
DutchMaster Advance A + B Bloom, Add Max, Silica, Zone. ) I use this now to measure side by side; Using my
“custom” mixes against commercial nutrient systems. Not bad or, too high priced, once you are set up. you use less of the additives 1 to 3 than the A+B. Around 50-60 bucks. Will last beyond one grow. Maybe 2. Depending on your consumption.

It will cost you more than 60 bucks to put together all the necessary tools, minerals, and monitoring equipment to control all of it.

I’ve been using miracle gro tomato plant food for veg and miracle fro cactus liquid drops for bloom it didn’t cost much like $20 I found out about these on someone’s post

Yeah, I’ve recommended this mixture before, it can work and especially if used as described in the garden guides link above. It works better in soil than hydro but with the additives in the link above it can work pretty good and you can swap out to the cactus juice about 3 or 4 weeks into flower.

So; IMO, If you just bought a real hydro nutrient, such as 3=part. you would not have to add a bunch additives. Maybe CalMag+

I have a question regarding this idea of using MG Tomato for VEG, and Cactus Formula for Bloom. Does the Cactus Formula contain more potassium (K), than the Tomato formula?

I also an going on the record here. Miracle Grow does not contain the formulas that are optimum for MJ growth. If you choose to use MG, that is a personal choice, and you can do much better without all the hassle of adding this, or that. Peace

Ok, the recommendation in the link above drops the concentration down to about half or less, actually to about a third, 1 tsp. as opposed to the normal 1 tbsp. per gallon recommended on the box, miracle grow tomato pant food is normally 18-18-21, so at a third it would be 6-6-7, then the cactus drops at full strength, so normally it is 2-7-7, as you can see it gets quite similar to the Lucas recommendations of NPK ratios. Like I said, it is not ideal and likely you would want to add 1/4 tsp. Epsom salts and 1/4 tsp. calcium chloride, or if you have hard water you can probably skip the calcium chloride.

It is likely the most affordable and most readily available plant foods available to most people, especially if they don’t have a hydro store nearby, but yeah, I’ve gotten lazy in my older age and general hydropnics Flora nova bloom takes all the guess work out and isn’t that expensive and so I would use that mostly nowadays or our very own THC booster.