EC and Organics !

[Romeu9]

About EC and the use of EC meters using Organic nutrients or additives:

For quite some time now I've been reading comments or in chat sometimes too, that its not right or even logic to read EC wen using organics (also about Enzymes but lets leave it for just about the EC matter for now), well that is wrong.

I know it by experience, but here is something from other place about it:

01-12-2010, 05:35 PM

#9

Dr.GreenBuds

Marijuana Toker

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Oct 2009

Originally Posted by

Dr. Indica

Organic foods have to be broken down into use able salts before the plant can even use them. That's why they don't read, there's no salt to read. The Humboldt Organic line is 100% organic, nothing synthetic is added. Bloom is made from rock phosphate and kelp, Deuce Deuce is made from Ascophyllum Nodsum Seaweed [ the best kind ] , and sulfate of potash [ wood ash ]. Verde is made from Ascophyllum Nodsum Seaweed, Tech Grade Phosphate [ finely ground ]...etc...it's all organic with the Humboldt line. Shit stinks, the pH is usually always on target with it also.

Peace

"Ultra-concentrated organic formulas designed to give your plants the balanced nutrition needed during the vegetation and flowering period. Made using the finest and freshest organic ingredients, none of our products are imported from overseas making our prices affordable to the consumer."

That is taken right off of their website and the first phrase of the statement

"ultra-concentrated" means that it has been changed from its original form and condensed.

Although you are right about their ingredients you are wrong in the fact that just like every other company that makes a liquid nute and claim they are 100% organic

you can still use a ppm meter with organic liquid nutes.

because their formula isn't just those ingredients in a bottle they are derived from those sources to make a concentrated formula that includes all the benifits of those sources.

http://www.rollitup....m-organics.html

In the post in wich the above text came from, they were talking about one product in specific but, we all are dealing with concentrated products nowadays, check the viscosity of your products and its very understandable after doing so.

This changes a bit the way of feeding the plants and what values to consider wen control is active about keeping up with what the plant wants to be fed (only possible at un acurate level wen using un EC meter), and specialy in flowering period wen we want to keep them on a steady evolving until harvest, right?

Simple trick is to give them what we want as EC value and remind that for next watering, giving it a higher dose of enzymes to turn the uptake into higher values, or a lower dosage of nutrients also un option) to finaly turn usable what was fed in the last feed (this is very important wen using fish emulsion for example since its a very thick liquid, by the thickness of the products before being diluted its noticeable how hard will be for the plant to use it all, if with one or with two waterings), very easy to adapt after sometime as other feeding regimens people use.

Let me know!

Take care

[Flail]

great info!

[Flail]

After Much thought and some idea organizations i think i've come down to the thoughts on this subject as follows;

Mentally, we really shouldn't treat organic(or veganic) any differently then we do our Chem nuits. Aside from the

things we implement to make sure organics don't spoil (air stones) With the right Ideology and the right attention paid

mixing and matching shouldn't be an issue.

Having that said, I must stress that MUCH care must be taken. In my opinion using these nuits alone or in combination with chems

is not something a beginner should tackle.

As mention before, you can't really read at the point of mixing the EC content of your organics, thus relying on you the grower to there fro take into account the instructions on the label and some interesting math work. which you don't necessarily need exacts in order to be successful.

so I'm gonna pause here and make a mention about Veganics and Organics, IMHO this is something that you generally want to have some experience in growing before you tackle the organic medical certifications, BECAUSE if you run into issues there are less options available to fix the issues while keeping that certification

if you going to put that much effort into selecting to go with organic nuits you would do your plants justice nowing how to fix them your your wasting your time and the plants time.

the reason for saying this is, pot has been grown in chem fertilizers commercially for a long time, and the one we complain about generally are not flush properly.

SO if we take better care in the flushing through out and the last final flush, we can avoid that taste at the end and be able to have free range of picking the nuits and additive that work in our own individual systems.

This brings us back to the initial point of measuring Organics with an EC pen. or rather the lack of ability to.

leading us to a more advanced feeding method of following the instructions and adjusting as the plants need it.

this takes a little bit of brain work.

and common sense states if you can't measure or control it DON"T USE IT. i wouldn't put back yard compost into my soil mix

I don't know what is in it after its been decomposing, and in what concentrations

The math regarding multi part nuits can get a little complicated. to understand the final mixture of these nuits one must follow these

theorys

for example, your average a+b formulas if you use each independently you will get the NPK percentages that you see on the bottle.the OVERALL end ratio will change when you add the second and or third and or additives, so continuing with the presumtion we are using only a basic a and b formula

so i will work this out here for you guys. say for example your base nuits in an a and b formula have the npk ratios of 2-1-6 and 0-5-4

so theoretically lets assume that these mix at 5ml per 1L of water (this wil come in handy later in the calculations)

so the formula to figure out what the final ratio of NPK would be as followed

(a-a-a + b-b- / 2 = final npk ratio {for more complex feeds the number of products added is the number the whole is divided by}

(2-1-6 + 0-5-4)/ 2

(2-6-10)/2 = 1-3-5

1-3-5 this is an important number now in this process ( or the results of your nuits in this formula)

because if you are goign to use organics this will be the ratio you aim for (as in your results)

So now here it gets complicated, you can't measure with an ec metre and i want to show this stuff exact so I will be doing the next sets of calculations with the nuits i use.

Right now I am using 5 products.

Advanced Jungle juice 3 part

Cal-Mag +

and A green up product that is half organic or so

JJ Micro 5-0-1 / 132 ml per 100L

JJ Grow 2-1-6 / 132 ml per 100L

JJ Bloom 0-5-4 / 132 ml per 100L

cal-mag 2-0-0 / 5ml per 4L

Green up 1-3.5-0 / 5ml per 1L

so lets break it down into 4L denominations

JJ Micro 5-0-1 / 6.3 ml per 4L

JJ Grow 2-1-6 / 6.3 ml per 4L

JJ Bloom 0-5-4 / 6.3 ml per 4L

cal-mag 2-0-0 / 5ml per 4L

Green up 1-3.5-0 / 20ml per 4L

if you have slightly sensitive plants mixing all this at 4L might burn your plants

if you've had enough math at this point and still are curious how to mix without hurting your plants

find the lowest common mixing point, mix them to that mixing point (like i did above) and add a 1/4 of the volume of water

to the nutrient solution this will water it down to somewhere inbetween 80%-90% of full strenght, which will give you room to play

if you cant measure out 0.1s of a ml 9 sometimes its hard to be that accurate

so now comes the math...

(5-0-1+ 2-1-6 + 0-5-4) / 3

(7-6-11) / 3

(2.3 - 2 -3.6)

(5-0-1+ 2-1-6 + 0-5-4 + 2-0-0 + 1-3.5-0) / 5

(10-9.5-11) / 5

(2-1.9-2.2)

as you can see by the math I would be underfeeding if i took my above comment and didn't do anything beyond that.

but also take into account that my base nuits are FAR more concentrated then my additives so the additives in my case don't change much

also note that this is veg formula at the moment for me. numbers can be seriously different in bloom

since there is very little change in the ratio of my base and base + additives i personally dont water my solution down more then a cup or two of extra water just to help with mixing before PHing

also this doesn't really measure the similar values that an EC would this is merely showing you how to identify where in the macro nuits you are either under or over feeding (not enough % or too much % in final mix)

bottomline, Watch your plants, if they dont look happy if they are growing weird, take a step back, make sure you are not over feeding your plants

do a flush and dry out to make sure if you notice things going ill, and whie you let them dry out, do the math figure it out so it doens't happen again

[Dust]

Very nice infos guys

I do measure my EC with my organic nutes too

[Romeu9]

Thanks for the time, Flail!

Let me clarify something here, organics are EC readable as good as the chemicals, the diference is that they will probably stay in the soil (and Im talking about soil grows) until the next feeding, since they have to be "transformed" first so the uptake becomes possible after that transformation.

With good Enzymes - during stages that the plants metabolism are working quite fast - its possible to feed organics nuts and additives and having the plant feeding everything we pour into the soil... Meaning that plants use all the organic nutrients we are feeding them in just one wet/dry feeding cycle!

I flush the same amount of water same the total pot size every 4 weeks, taking readings of goes out of the pot from the drain holes.

About your thoughts about N-P-K rates and maths about the 2 or 3 part nutrients, I agree with you, Ive done some of those maths at the time I used a 3part chems nuts.... but I realized there's better ones and formulated to be one part for veg and one part for flower, realy cool! I use bio-mineral organic one-part nutrients. As we talked, remember?

No need to kill our brains with those maths having almost all brands with one parts in the catalog.. And having in just one liquid what we had before with 2 or 3 will be better since the mix will be lighter too, gotta love that.

In the chemical sintetic side of it we have the Green House Powder Feeding!! Amazing one parts, with a EC control that feeding makes wonders!!

Take care!

Edited January 23, 2012 by Romeu9
Stoned writer correction

[PsychoMantis]

nice post i also use EC meter with organics

[Bam-Bhole]

Maybe I should do it too..Just noticed I used my nutes with 1ml/1 litre instead of 1ml/10 litres ..lol

That's why they are so huge and strong. Good that I flushed them properly with annaflush , so the taste is nice and the ashes bright and smooth - not sticky black..