{"id":111,"date":"2023-04-24T12:58:54","date_gmt":"2023-04-24T17:58:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timgrows.com\/?p=111"},"modified":"2023-05-14T23:09:13","modified_gmt":"2023-05-15T04:09:13","slug":"nutrient-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timgrows.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/24\/nutrient-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Nutrient management"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Each species of plant have unique nutrient desires. In addition, nutrient needs vary based on where the plant is in it&#8217;s lifecycle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s a ton of information out there on what nutrients plants prefer at different times of their life. I&#8217;ve read through a lot of information on the topic but honestly, that sort of information doesn&#8217;t stick in my memory.  I often plant multiple plants in the same container (something that other growers often discourage) but I take a super simple path that most plants seem thrive in.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My nutrient blend might not be optimized to harvest the maximum tomato crop but I&#8217;m happy hauling in more tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce than we can eat as a harvest.  I believe that hydroponic growing is so efficient that even less than perfect conditions still outgrow most dirt gardens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My recipe for nutrient management is super simple:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>I start plants in rock wool with no nutrients at all<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I move plants into a propagator tub when I first see roots poking out of the bottoms of the cubes. The plants get their first taste of nutes here but only at 25% strength.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Once the roots are hanging down a few inches into the nutrients I give them a couple weeks of half strength nutrients.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>After that I simply follow the label on my nutrients and watch how the plants react.  <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In the hot weather the plants drink a ton of water. If needed I top up the tubs with tap water between nutrient solutions.  A huge tomato plant might drink close to a gallon a day in the heat of the summer.  Topping off is normal and as long as things don&#8217;t totally dry out the plants seem to tolerate the fluctuations in water level. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The plants eat what they want in the nutrient mix and leave most of what they don&#8217;t want in the tub.. I&#8217;ve done grows where I never changed the nutrients from seedling to harvest.  It works but I don&#8217;t recommend that approach. Things can get nasty and small problems like algae can snowball fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You probably want to change the nutrient solution every few weeks. Just add plain water when you notice things getting low. If you continue to add nutes into a tub, over time the solution will be skewed towards the stuff that plants don&#8217;t want. If you drain and refill every couple of weeks you will always know that you are running pretty close to the values on the side of the nutrient package. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Listen to your plants. If you notice your plants growing as half an inch a day, pat yourself on the back and don&#8217;t change a thing. If things look meh and you aren&#8217;t blown away with the growth check your ph first the bump up the nute concentration just a little. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each species of plant have unique nutrient desires. In addition, nutrient needs vary based on where the plant is in it&#8217;s lifecycle. There&#8217;s a ton of information out there on what nutrients plants prefer at different times of their life. I&#8217;ve read through a lot of information on the topic but honestly, that sort of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[13],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timgrows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timgrows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timgrows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timgrows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timgrows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timgrows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/timgrows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timgrows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timgrows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timgrows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}