hydroponic Homemade Hydroponic Nutrients

obeychase

obeychase

Has anyone ever experimented with creating their own hydroponic nutrients? Half of what we pay for is just plastic bottling, transportation and water. I also don't want to ingest a bunch of synthetic fertilizer in my lettuce and pepper plants.
 
If I have to, I will purchase a $12 bottle of floragro and flormicro, I just want to know if there's another alternative.
 
lol you dont want "synthetic nutrients", but are willing to buy floragro if you have to?

they are exactly the same thing.

there IS an alternative, however the upfront cost is usually to much for folks to bear.

you need quantites of fertilizer salts and a decent scale able to do +- a tenth of a gram, and 250+ grams.


i started out buying like 60 bucks worth of ferts from some aquarium place... i ranout after a year or so and then bought like 200 bucks worth of calcium nitrate, potassium nitrate and monopotassium nitrate and peters STEM.

this was back in like 2013, and it should last me several more years at the rate im using it.

i dont bother buying epsom salts online. i buy a few lbs at a time at the CVS down the street. there is no sense in storing 10's of lbs of epsom salt because its readily available.
that 200 bucks i spent was probably like 2,000 dollars worth of flora grow, micro and bloom.

honestly though. i find myself reccomending the premixed salt formulations like maxigrow more than i do DIY salt formulations.

id only reccomend doing what i do, if you are looking to tinker with formulations or produce different formulations for different plants.

also... you can get somethign like maxigro and just add more calcium nitrate or phosphate or what ever you want to further fine tune, but this requires a bit of math that may or may not easy for you depending on your math history.
 
queequeg152 said:
lol you dont want "synthetic nutrients", but are willing to buy floragro if you have to?

they are exactly the same thing.

there IS an alternative, however the upfront cost is usually to much for folks to bear.

you need quantites of fertilizer salts and a decent scale able to do +- a tenth of a gram, and 250+ grams.


i started out buying like 60 bucks worth of ferts from some aquarium place... i ranout after a year or so and then bought like 200 bucks worth of calcium nitrate, potassium nitrate and monopotassium nitrate and peters STEM.

this was back in like 2013, and it should last me several more years at the rate im using it.

i dont bother buying epsom salts online. i buy a few lbs at a time at the CVS down the street. there is no sense in storing 10's of lbs of epsom salt because its readily available.
that 200 bucks i spent was probably like 2,000 dollars worth of flora grow, micro and bloom.

honestly though. i find myself reccomending the premixed salt formulations like maxigrow more than i do DIY salt formulations.

id only reccomend doing what i do, if you are looking to tinker with formulations or produce different formulations for different plants.

also... you can get somethign like maxigro and just add more calcium nitrate or phosphate or what ever you want to further fine tune, but this requires a bit of math that may or may not easy for you depending on your math history.
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I appreciate the ideas. I would most likely be looking into premixed powders like the maxigrow you are talking about. Like I said, I would rather not use synthetic nutrients but if the process to creating homemade nutes is truly out of my realm of capability, well, looks like $12 floragro is the way for me. Thanks for the suggestions, I'm definitely going to look into premixed powders. I'm new to hydroponics and am looking to become a little bit more involved with my nutrients. I'll do some research!
 
I used one of those pricey 2-part mixes in my Kratky grow, and it did not work for me. My chillies were laughably stunted.
 
I now use a off-the-shelf citrus feed at half strength with some Advanced Nutrients additives thrown in. The plants are doing much better. My plants aren't BIG and bushy like some, but no more crinkly leaves and funky discolourations.
 
The Masterblend/Calcium Nitrate/Epsom Salt mix is cheap and easy to come by and works well. I bought a 5 lb bag each of Masterblend 4-18-38 and Calcium Nitrate on Ebay or Amazon and after making over 100 gallons of mix, not put that big of a dent in it. You can get it really cheap if you have a wholesaler like Southern Ag nearby. I found Masterblend equivalent there, 25 lbs for 27.55 and 50 lb of greenhouse grade Calcium Nitrate for 18.54. Seeing how long the 5 lb bags are lasting, I probably shouldn't have stocked up so much.
 
Peter S said:
The Masterblend/Calcium Nitrate/Epsom Salt mix is cheap and easy to come by and works well. I bought a 5 lb bag each of Masterblend 4-18-38 and Calcium Nitrate on Ebay or Amazon and after making over 100 gallons of mix, not put that big of a dent in it. You can get it really cheap if you have a wholesaler like Southern Ag nearby. I found Masterblend equivalent there, 25 lbs for 27.55 and 50 lb of greenhouse grade Calcium Nitrate for 18.54. Seeing how long the 5 lb bags are lasting, I probably shouldn't have stocked up so much.
Click to expand...

This. I'm in my first real season trying to grow. After reading around here and asking lots of questions, I grabbed these three from Morgan county seeds online. Cheap and very easy for noobs like me, haha. It will last for years.
 
Greetings Chase, just wanted to share an idea. Two ingredients that are foremost in my tiny garden are bat guano and Norwegian kelp. We have a lot of thrift stores around these parts and you can usually pick up a coffee press for a few bucks. You can make a nice solution by putting these two ingredients in the press. Since hydro usually relies on a circulatory system (in most cases) the idea is to not foul the pump intakes. You can take the extract from the press and run it thru a coffee filter to further fine the solution. On a side note there are two types of guano as I am sure you know, the insect eating bats, and the fruit eating bats. Insect eating bats produce a guano usually high in nitrogen which is good for the growth phase. The fruit eating bats tend to have guano high in phosphorus usually used in the bloom phase. Both the bat guano and Norwegian kelp are organic, but you can add to this combination if you like. I guess the trick is to filter out any large particulates. You can even blend the ingredients in a dedicated spice grinder prior to using the coffee press if you choose to go that route. Hope this is helpful and apologies if the thread is off topic.
 
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