For more frequent feedings the base nutrient should be used at a lower rate since it is being applied more often. It is also a good practice to use plain water in between feedings to avoid the possibility of excess nutrients accumulating and causing an imbalance of nutrients that can lead to them becoming unavailable to the roots. Another thing to keep in mind is how quickly the medium needs to be watered.
Some mediums lose moisture faster than others so the more often the plant is being watered, the more often it will need to be fed. This is the best way to start on the right foot. After obtaining a good grasp on how the plants grow and react to different nutrient rates then you can start tweaking the program to improve plant development.
Indoors, the vegetative stage is typically around 4 weeks from start to finish, not including the seedling stage. Once again, this can vary from plant to plant, and with the space allotted, but 4 weeks is generally about the amount of time the plant needs to develop to a size that can support heavy flowering.
The general rule of thumb is to switch to the flowering stage once the plants are around halfway to the point they should be when fully grown. Also, for beginner and first-time growers, I would recommend only using the base nutrients and Cal-Mag if needed for the first couple of runs just to get a good grip on how things work.
Pretty much every single person that gets into growing cannabis first does it because they want to achieve a big, beautiful yield. But it can be a mistake to think that the end game is the only game. Paying complete and nearly exhaustive attention and care to the garden during the vegetative stage is the foremost way to ensure that the plants will be ready for a successful flowering phase.
There is no room for cutting corners in the quest to achieving impressive yields. Nutrients for Cannabis Like other flowering annual plants, cannabis requires at least 16 essential elements nutrients , insufficient amounts, to properly develop and reproduce. Feeding the Cotyledons When cannabis seeds spout the first leaves are called the cotyledons. The next type of tea that you can use to feed your cannabis plants are referred to as botanical teas. Botanical teas are made by steeping a plant-based fertilizer meal or combination of meals in water.
C ommon combinations include an alfalfa and kelp meal tea, or a neem seed meal and kelp meal tea. It is similar process to making tea you would drink, but on a larger scale.
Botanical teas are mostly used in lieu of top-dressing with similar meals, rather than in addition to. These paint strainer sacks or nut milk bags work perfectly! With alfalfa and kelp tea, start on the light side first. Add the meals to your tea bag and tie it closed. Dunk it up and down a few times in the bucket of de-chlorinated water to help it get saturated.
Next, set the tea solution aside and allow it to steep for about 24 hours. If you can, stir on occasion to increase the infusion. Some folks like to use an air pump and bubbler to aerate their botanical teas.
Once the meals have steeped for 24 hours, pull up the bag and wring it out. Repurpose the spent meals by adding them to your compost pile, spread in your garden bed, or around the base of a shrub or tree!
Last but not least, it is time to water plants with the tea. Use it soon after you remove the tea bag. Simply give it to them as if it were their routine water.
Repeat this process up to once every week or two. The last type of tea that I want to mention here is a personal favorite of mine: compost tea. We make actively aerated compost tea from worm castings to feed our garden every couple of months — not just the cannabis! I recently published an article alllll about aerated compost tea, including step-by-step instructions and a demo video about how to make it. Check out this post to learn more! I am not going to rehash all the nitty gritty details here.
Compost tea provides your plants more than just nutrients. Unlike the other types of teas described today, aerated compost tea is biologically active and FULL of beneficial microbes like bacteria, fungi, nematodes, and more. I highly suggest making and using aerated compost tea for your garden and cannabis. Like other teas, apply compost tea to the soil in the place of water.
Once a month or so is plenty! Compost tea would be most beneficial to use when you are first building your soil , to inoculate it with beneficial microbes! You can also apply compost tea as a foliar spray, which I describe in the referenced post above. Say what? Another fun and effective way that many organic growers enjoy to feed cannabis plants is by fermenting other plants! Some gardeners and farmers use only KNF practices, and swear by it!
Fermented plant juices are commonly made with already kick-ass, nutrient-dense plants like comfrey, borage, stinging nettle, yarrow, mugwort, purslane, and even aloe vera. KNF emphasizes utilizing whatever is locally available. The young portions of the plants are harvested, mixed with brown sugar to feed beneficial microbes, and allowed to ferment for about a week. That concoction is then diluted and applied to plants as a soil drench or foliar spray. Therefore, I am not going to go into detail about it in this post, but it is at least worth a mention in case you want to look into it further!
We both agree it is something we want to play around with more, so I will likely report back with a dedicated post all about fermented plant juice in the future. One final way that people feed cannabis plants is through foliar sprays. By spraying fertilizers, teas, or other products directly on a plants leaves, they can quickly and readily draw the target nutrients straight into their vascular system.
On the other hand, we do give our cannabis plants routine foliar sprays — but more so with the intention of pest prevention and control instead! An article all about pest control for cannabis is coming soon. One nice and mild option is a kelp foliar spray. Create a kelp meal tea using the same process as explained above in the botanical tea section. Only use about 2 teaspoons of kelp per gallon of water. After the tea bag has steeped for 24 hours, pull out the bag, add the tea to a sprayer, and use it immediately on your plants.
You could also apply each on their own. As I previously elaborated on, aloe feeds plants dozens of micronutrients and minerals, and both help promote disease and stress resistance!
We add powdered aloe and silica to every pest control foliar spray as a little something extra special. More so than fresh aloe gel, a little powder goes an even longer way! This aloe powder from BuildASoil is x concentrated. There are many other foliar sprays out there! These are simply the ones we are most familiar with. To apply foliar sprays, a pump sprayer is most convenient.
For any type of foliar spray, it is best to apply them very early in the morning or after sundown to avoid frying the wet leaves in direct sunlight. We generally spray our plants in the evening time. Furthermore, we do not recommend to apply these foliar sprays directly on to the buds. Therefore, the foliar sprays described above are only applied during the plants vegetative state, and cease once the cannabis begins to flower.
I realize that all of this may not sound extremely simple, especially for a newbie…. But let me tell you, it is less complicated and far more natural than the methods and products many growers out there would recommend. Do not feel the need to implement all of the methods you learned about today! Choose a couple that sound most interesting and doable. Furthermore, you can use most all of these techniques to nourish all sorts of other plants too!
As I said, we treat our cannabis much like the rest of the garden. Organically, and with love. In closing, hope you found this post interesting and informative. May it help guide your quest to grow quality, healthy, happy organic cannabis at home! Please feel free to ask questions, and spread the love by sharing this article. I am planning to grow 5 different strains and plan on using apotforpot kit.
Do you know anything about this? And if I still should buy additional nutrients? Please advise. Hi Clar, I am not familiar with that brand or kit but it looks like it includes everything you need to grow a plant through its full cycle. Good luck! If so, what are your thoughts on using this product as part of your watering?
We typically just use regular meal amendments, malted barley, compost, etc. When should you stop watering before harvest? This varies, but generally from 1 week to 3 days before harvest. The ideal time depends on the strain, but any time within this range will result in better buds. The answer to this common question is the same as above: follow the nutrient schedule.
That generally means feeding once a week, but you can break down the weekly amount over multiple feedings, if you are using smaller pots that need water multiple times a week.
Keep it simple. The last few feeds before harvest should be just water, to flush the nutrients out of the buds before harvesting.
Buds full of nutrients do not taste as good. The nutrient schedule provided by your nutrient brand should have this flushing period on it. As mentioned above, a lot of different factors determine how often you will need to feed your weed plants. We are going to take a look at the most important ones here, starting with the growth stage. Marijuana plants have vastly different nutrient requirements, depending on their current stage of growth. And the requirements do not just differ in the amounts of nutrients overall, but the amounts of individual nutrients as well.
You can probably guess that young plants require fewer nutrients than more mature ones. Once they enter the vegetative stage, you want to start them on nutrients, gradually increasing the dosage throughout veg. They need a lot of nitrogen during this phase.
Once they enter the flowering stage, they need more potassium and less nitrogen. Keep increasing the amounts of nutrients until the very end of the bloom stage. At that point, you should cease all feeding and flush the plants with only water. The grow medium you are using has a large impact on the nutrient requirements.
If you are growing in coco, nutrient requirements will be high, because this medium does not contain any nutrients of its own. Soil, on the other hand, already contains nutrients, so you will need to feed your plants less. If you are growing using hydroponics, you will need to be very exact with your nutrient ppm and continually monitor it to ensure a steady supply. Different lines of nutrients have different concentrations.
Obviously you will need to feed less often, if your nutrients are more concentrated, and vice versa. As mentioned, follow the nutrient schedule included with your nutes but cut down on the recommended amounts. As mentioned, the recommendations given are only a guideline—a good starting point. You will need to adjust from there.
Your plants will tell you. But you have to know how to read their language. Nutrient burn happens when the plants are getting too many nutrients. This either means you are overfeeding them, or there is a buildup in the medium.
Generally, you will first see darker green leaves, with tips that are yellowish and brownish. They will also bend upward. In simple terms, fertilizer is plant food made from natural or industrially produced substances that growers apply to soil and plants to optimize growth.
The nutrients in fertilizers may be beneficial to many different plants, including potted houseplants, flowers like roses and hydrangeas, and cannabis. Essential plant nutrients present in fertilizers may help cannabis cultivators raise a healthier crop of marijuana plants with more abundant leaf growth and, eventually, flowers. If you want to grow big buds, the right cannabis fertilizer can help you reach that objective.
Without a good fertilizer, the buds on marijuana plants may not reach their full growth potential. Further, marijuana grown with fertilizer will probably be healthier overall, which can translate to more pleasant and full-bodied flavor in the buds. A cannabis garden needs a combination of essential nutrients and trace, or micro, nutrients. The best marijuana plant food will offer a balance of a vital trio of nutrients. The big three primary nutrients that marijuana plants need to grow are NPK — short for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
NPK are the collective building blocks of any cannabis fertilizer, as well as any thriving marijuana plant. Cannabis plants also need carbon dioxide and oxygen, which they obtain through airflow, and hydrogen, which comes from water.
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