Hello again, it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm
I promised a while back on another video to describe the way that I use liquid feed as part of my fertilizer
Program here on the farm and I do prefer to apply it with a hose end sprayer like this
I'm going to get into that in a minute
I think the topic is one of those ones where you could just go with the pat answer: "go to the store buy a powder
Use as directed"
but I think we can do a little bit better than that and I'm gonna start with showing you how to measure the
Concentration of your liquid feed to learn how to best use your liquid feed fertilizer
I want to introduce you to this meter here
Which is an electrical conductivity meter
electrical conductivity measures the salt level or the fertilizer salt level that's in the water and
the higher the concentration the higher the reading
So I want to show you that even coming out of the tap
This water is not entirely pure
of
Salts
And you can see just even coming out of the tap here. It's coming up with a measurement of
0.13
and
my experience has shown me that if I
Use the liquid feed fertilizer the powder
which is usually comes to you brightly colored like this either bright pink or bright blue and if I put in a
full tablespoon
Try to level that off this is a half tablespoon measure so I have to do two of these and
If you put in a full tablespoon
Back into that gallon what I usually end up with is a number somewhere around
3.5. I'm gonna stir this around and put it back in
With that liquid feed fully dissolved. Let's give it a test here and see how close we are
And
Not bad pretty close to exactly what I always test when I put in a tablespoon of the
Liquid feed fertilize 3.5 would be a little bit heavy if that's what you were growing your plant in entirely
So if that were the only water that were in your pot
It would be quite heavy therefore the instructions that are given by the manufacturer are that this concentration?
Here is usually for outdoor plants. We're pouring a little bit of water like this
around the base of an outdoor plant
We'll give it a boost that it needs but has a large volume of soil and a large volume of soil water to dissolve into
Plus it's raining out there. You're doing other waterings, so it's not too strong
They usually recommend that if you're using your liquid feed
indoors that you use it at a rate that is
1/6 that amount so
Probably instead of three point five. You're probably talking about amount
That's just over point five and you'll use that in your houseplants on a routine basis
As
Powerful a tool is I think it is to understand your EC there are limitations to this
So your customization has to come with a little common sense. For instance your EC meter can't tell you the difference between
your
commercially prepared nutrient solution
Fish fertilizer, which would be rather good for your plants or
Table salt which will be rather bad for your plants
Outside now, let me show you how you can combine this with another tool
this is called a hose end dialer or a hose end mixer that will help you to customize your
Liquid feed to whatever you want it to do. So inside this
Cup
You would mix a fertilizer solution
it uses a siphon like this to pull up the solution and mix it with your hose water at a
Specified rate up in this top portion here before it
Sprays it out in one of the patterns that you'd like
You can see that the dial dials all the way up from on the bottom here. It's
3 or off and at the very top
It goes all the way up to 55 and it with quite a range there
So if you mix a stock solution, you could spray it through quite strong if your wrap applying to a planet
that is a heavy feeder or
Seems to need it and you can dial it way down to a weak
Solution for say new seedlings or a plant that doesn't need quite so much
So into the cup here I mix the stock solution and stock solution in my case I do it that
I'm hoping to catch the numbers on the side there
But it is around a hundred mils
or a little over six tablespoons or just under half a cup and
That number that I'm using I just use it to be consistent. It's rather arbitrary
You can see that from the stock solution that Miracle Gro talks about that. That would be just around
six full gallons at full strength
Or quite a bit more at a reduced strength or a dilution. So
then that gives me the flexibility to not have to go and
mix over and over and over again and you could certainly put in a bit more and even spray at or even
Have to fill this a lot less frequently now
That I've put in the powder. I'm going to
Add in the liquid
Then screw it on and give it a little bit of time to dissolve after that
I'll show you how to use your EC meter to test what's coming out of the end of this sprayer
okay, it's all mixed here and
even at the highest rate on the dial here 55 when I spray this through I still only get an
EC of about
1.75 or
1.76 and
That's fine with me. I actually don't want to run this an
Extremely high strength. So what I really actually
prefer in my most of my growing situations is to dial it down to about
42
And about 42 I
Get an EC
just above
1.0
And I'll show you why I like to do it
But at that rate you can see obviously I get an awful lot out of this container. I don't I don't have to refill that
very frequently what I'm taking at that concentration, I
Mentioned in my previous video on fertilizer that the way I prefer to fertilize plants in containers
Particularly, my roses and containers is that I use a slow-release
Coated fertilizer like this this Osmocote or the coated type fertilizers that release over the course of three or four months
But I also like to use them at the low end of the recommended rate
The reason I do that is because they can vary quite a lot and how fast they release based on
Temperature and moisture. So if you get a a
Warm humid patch you can actually have this release a little bit stronger
So I like to put it in at the lowest rate
recommended on the package and then I can watch the plants and see and then I can top up with my liquid feed fertilizer as
Needed as I can see whether the foliage is coming in a little bit
pale or whether it's just not performing the way I'd like to
Then I can add a little bit of liquid for eliezer without having that risk of burning it outright
It's also handy that during those times of year where I'm not actively fertilizing plants in the greenhouse
But then I find plants that are blooming and I go. Okay great
Then I can just pop on the hose end sprayer and give them a little bit of extra fertilizer
one other way that having this combination of the hose and sprayer and
The EC meter is really handy is then you can play around an experiment with other single fertilizers
So if you suspected a magnesium deficiency
Based on the condition of the plant or if you wanted to pump up the levels of calcium
You can go with fertilizers like calcium nitrate or magnesium
Sulfate and add those into your liquid feed and just see how they do
It gives you a little bit of room to play around on if you're doing those single fertilizers, though
I would dial it down a fair ways because you really don't want a high ppm or a high EC of
A single fertilizer you might over feed the plant for one nutrient or another
I guess I can anticipate one other question coming from this which is what if you wanted to go ahead and
Use a hose end sprayer like this one
But that you didn't want to go out and buy an expensive
EC meter and I guess my point on that would be that once you're not
Testing the rates that you're putting out
You do have to default back to the manufacturers guidelines on what to use if you're using it in conjunction with
this
Coated fertilizer then what I would say is once again
Use your coated fertilizer at the lowest
recommended rate and then maybe cut down the liquid feed rate to half strength or a quarter strength just to top up the
The granules. All right. Thank you so much for watching today
if you have any questions about fertilizer or anything else about growing I'll leave those in the comments below and thank you so much for
watching