hey everyone you're here with mark boutwell at perfectgardens.com
so i got a similar question from two of our youtubers
glenn and benny the difference is is that one is using fox farm and the other
is using general organics they both want to know how
often they feed their plants with the nutrient line and how often do they
water this is a question that i have gotten
asked a few hundred if not thousands of times throughout
the last decade over the years i've had to create a philosophy around this
question just because it is a great question so
what i normally recommend is to know your nutrient length
and what i mean by that is to know your parts per million or
ec every single time you add something into your water
how you know that is first by going out and buying
a reverse osmosis machine same thing you're going to test the parts per
million before it goes through your ro system
and after it goes through your ro system if you don't have
the money to purchase an ro system then measure your parchment alien or
your ec in your tap water or whatever water
you're going to be using generally to feed your plants second
you're going to start with your base nutrients
you're going to add them in one at a time whatever the recommended amount of
nutrients it is whether it's 1 ml per gallon or a teaspoon per gallon
whatever additive they recommend you're going to add in
only one at a time you're going to check the parts per million
after a few minutes after you add it in because it takes a little bit of time
for it to dissolve and dilute through the water
and then you're going to write it down in a notebook or whatever
so you're going to have one column where it's going to say
what you're using the second column is going to be
the amount you're using and if let's say they increase the amount then
you're going to measure that as well so if they recommend let's say
two teaspoons per gallon in the beginning and then midway through the
grow they recommend three and then midway through to grow again
they recommend four teaspoons per gallon your price per
million is going to be increasing the same amount every single time
whether you're using one two three or four so knowing how
much your parts per million or ec increases every single time you add in
anything into your water is going to be absolutely important why
is that important it's because your microbiology shuts
down after your parts per million goes above
eight to nine hundred parts per million at that point whenever your parts per
million goes above 900 parts per million
i would recommend only feeding your plants once a week
and i'm referencing using soil not hydroponics not any other cocoa
nothing like that i'm just referencing soil because soil will retain your salts
much differently than they will retain in
your hydroton or your rock wool or your hydroponic system the reason why
there's a difference is because your soil
goes through a dry back period every single time you water so you water
and then your soil dries back and then you water and your soil dries back so
what happens every time when it dries back is molecules
will combine to other similar molecules so every single time it dries back
and salts begin to fall out of solution from
it being suspended in water and then it dries back and kind of accumulates a
little bit more and then before you know it these salt molecules begin to build
up in your soil when your parts per million
are above 900 parts per million they are going to be
more common molecules or more common salts
in a water solution that's above 900 parts per million
so any time you get above 900 parts per million i recommend to feed
once a week and then water as needed if your parts per million is below 8 900
parts per million then i would recommend you go ahead and
feed once or twice a week and then in between those you're going
to water as needed what i mean by water as needed is let me
give you a few examples from indoor and outdoor so let's say you are indoor
and you are starting with seedlings you might not give anything to your
seedlings except for some microbiology until your plants
go into clones so all you would be doing is giving it some microbiology to help
build up your microbes and then as the root system got
developed then you might start to add in a base nutrients or
something along those lines so in those early stages you might not
be technically feeding nutrients at all and
just watering and when you water you might water once
every three or four days because obviously your seedlings might be in a
higher humidity environment you might have a
dome over your suit tray or something along those lines so the
moisture isn't escaping the environment and you
aren't going to be watering as often obviously as the seeds begin to grow
and root systems begin to get established or you're starting off with
clones you might need to water once every two
to three days and you might be giving a very small
amount of micronutrients to your clumps as you go into teens you might need to
water every other day so what we're talking about is watering
and when we reference feeding is you're
going to just replace one of your waterings with your feeding
as your plants got taller and went to full flowering who knows you might need
to give water every single day to your
plants because you might be growing in small containers
if you're growing in larger containers obviously there's going to be more water
retention so you might need to water every other dead steel
when you're growing in indoors obviously when you're growing indoors there's a
lot less evapotransportation because the moisture really isn't going anywhere
when you use a dehumidifier recollects and then you take that water you throw
it back into your water reservoir you feed it back to your plants
and you're really your water is not leaving the environment
so your watering schedule is going to adjust
100 dependent upon how you're growing how large your containers are and your
feed schedule is going to adjust if your parts per
million go above 900. if you're a master grower and you know
exactly what you're doing and you're incredibly in tune to your plants
obviously this won't apply to you you and your plants are going to have a
special relationship and you're going to be growing the same
plants in the same strength consistently you're going to know whether your plants
like nutrients or not at some point when you're growing your shrimp consists
of picking out the urine let's say you're growing outdoors now at
this point if you're growing outdoors you now have to take into consideration
other factors are you growing next to a pond a lake a
river are you growing in a semi-desert area
are you growing at sea level are you growing a mile high in the air
when i say mile high i'm out in boulder colorado so i'm a mile
high and water evaporates like crazy here and
i actually have to water every single day it doesn't matter whether it's my
five gallon buckets or it's my garden outdoors i have to
water every single day if i miss watering past 9 30 a.m in the
morning my plants will wilt that day it does not
matter it is like clockwork just because of the
amount of tobacco transportation so you have to once again know your
plants and that's really another little secret
how a master grower will become a master
grower one day it's because they are farming
the same area consistently they know their area
they know what they have to do on a daily basis to create
a healthy growing environment so the plants can meet their potential
and the grower builds the relationship it needs to
have with its environment so that the plants
can be healthy another additional factor that will play
a huge role in how often you can feed your plants
and the strength of nutrients you can't give them is if there are going through
any other additional excess stresses bugs mold wind heat stress whether it's
from the blue or the sun when i say wind if you are
living in an area where there's a large amount of
wind i would highly recommend putting up something that's going to block the wind
because once again we're talking about evapotransportation
and your leaves will dry out obviously when the leaves dry out photosynthesis
no longer begins to work and if you are giving your plants a
large amount of salt versus water because you're giving them
a high parts per million the salts are also going to dry out your
growing environment so when i'm in situations like that i
would normally recommend a grower's name will go above 800 parts per million
feed twice a week and the remainder of the time keep
watering so let's go back over here to the fox farm line
versus the general organic side i guarantee you
if you use all of the general organics additives
you probably are barely going to get to a thousand parts per million
if you use the product turn line and all of their additives
you can get up to 2500 even close to 3 000 parts per million
so knowing your parts per million like we discussed in the beginning of this
video and like anything else the more you do
it the better it's gonna get if you do not have a ph meter a parts
per million meter or an ec meter i highly recommend checking out
blue lab distributed by dl wholesale and
obviously sold by perfectards.com thank you so much please like share and
subscribe and have a great grow everyone
bye