AG lamp temp in kelvins?

[Ellen]

Thanks Peat, for reposting the information on the AG nutes. Good stuff and helps those of us using them to decipher some of the conversation here. I might try at some point though to attempt using what Shane is using as it seems to be a little less complex for a beginner like myself. Not as much guesswork.   

[BBinNM]

Ellen, it all boils down to guesswork. Using the 3 part series gives one more control if one knows what they're doing. (I don't quite fit that category yet) And having an EC meter like a BlueLab only tells the concentration of "conductive things" in the water, the real NPK and micronutrients concentration is still unknown.

Peat, I've never truncheoned a lady, especially for Christmas but that's a great idea.

I'm off to mix up Peat's Bloom mix, back in a few hours with results.

[gisette]

...I'm using the hard water micro so mine will always be less than yours. Just stay on the bloom mixture indefinitely now, don't move to the ripen phase.

Gisette - Bruce has come up with some good results here. Perhaps mixing the 2/3 mixture in a gallon may do it for you? It's hard to say what this will come out as. Perhaps we will all have to chip in and get you a truncheon for Christmas. 

I started growing my lettuce at 0.8 but progressed to 1.6 to 1.8 The plants flourish at this strength, in fact, when I tested the AG tablets (for lettuce), the EC came out at 1.7

Peat & Bruce: Aha! Bruce had me worried with the target 0.8-1.2 for lettuce - I thought I remembered 1.7...

Aw! I'd love a BlueLab truncheon for Christmas!  So generous! Thank you thank you! What's that? It's the thought that counts? Heh.

Peat: Good clue that the hardwater micro will result in lower EC... I did email my daughter's chem teacher (actually, I've known her since I was in high school). Maybe she has something... Need to construct my experiment. And torture involve Kid in the proceedings. Bwahaha.

In the meantime... Yes, I know it's lame. However, my basing minor nutrient corrections on these hints, without measuring devices, is helping my plants. I enriched my 2 underperforming lettuce AG's last night, just a tad. In less than 12 hours, the results were pretty stunning. The 1.5-2 week old mustard and lettuce greened and seemed to grow 1/3 bigger overnight. I'd pretty much given up on those mustard greens (and may yet replace them), but they're looking almost viable today. And the 3-day old seedlings in my Pro100 - which you'd think would do fine the first week on AG starter nute tabs - are twice as tall. (Still, 4 out of 7 pods weren't germinating enough plants at 3 days, so I added more seeds from my own heatwave blend stock.)

Thanks for the EC's for the AG tabs! I'd noticed that on the box (the box gives %NPK for the nutes - possibly a US labelling requirement), that herbs and lettuces have the same proportions, and the small/large tabs have the similar but lower %'s. Strange that they put less-strong nutes in the MasterGardener kit. Though I suppose the idea was that they might be used for other fruiting plants and flowers which couldn't take tomato-level nutrients. I don't think my flower kit ever came with that info...

Bruce: your plants are gorgeous, especially your peppers! They got me feeling so inadequate... Then I remembered my peppers are all supposed to be miniatures.  Yours are still a much deeper green, though.

[Peat]

Peat, I've never truncheoned a lady, especially for Christmas but that's a great idea.

LOL Bruce. 

That makes two of us. 

[gisette]

Peat, I've never truncheoned a lady, especially for Christmas but that's a great idea.

LOL Bruce. 

That makes two of us. 

I knew there had to be a catch. 

[BBinNM]

Thanks Ginger, you can do it and being truncheoned isn't necessarily a bad thing! And thanks for the extra info, Peat. I'm surprised so few use GH nutrients, they are the ones I've always known and considered the best.

I found a third little tomato this morning and the other two are doing great. it's a little surreal seeing the tops doing so well while the bottoms have met a horrible death. Hopefully this will get things right and I can quit worrying about it.

I mixed up two batches of Peat's Bloom mix for the tomatoes and peppers and the results were surprising. I found a pitcher that holds a full gallon without being filled to the brim so added one other result. Also, I'm using the normal Micro for two reasons - 1. Our water changes and will be changing more as the city slowly integrates Rio Grande water with the current well water. 2. That's all my hydro shop had. 

Note: This is strictly for my water as it is today, yours will probably be different but there is considerable leeway in the mixes as you can see. The PH buffers in the GH nutrients try to keep a PH around 6.3 but they can only go so far and my 7.5 PH seems to be the limit. You may not know the EC level of your water but a simple tube & drops PH test kit is cheap and available many places. Another note, I don't know how my plants are going to react to this mix so this is all experimental but based on solid data.

Peat's Bloom mix, per 3.2 liter, a full AG bowl - 8.5ml Flora Micro, 4.2ml Flora Grow and 12.7ml Flora Bloom (this is GH's 1-2-3 tsp per gallon mix put in blending order and scaled down to fit)

Starting water -  0.4 EC, 7.5 PH
1/3 Peat's mix - 1.2 EC 6.5 PH
2/3 Peat's mix - 2.0 EC 6.4 PH
Full mixture ---- 2.7 EC 6.3 PH
+ 10% water -  2.5 EC 6.3 PH
Full Gallon ....   2.3 EC 6.3 PH - YES!!!!!

This was so nice I removed the tomato deck, did a thorough cleaning - roots were 3" past the pump filter and replaced the mix. One note - I met some resistance lifting off the deck and saw it was roots growing around the the crossmembers so I removed them before completely lifting the deck.

I have been waiting about 30 minutes between mixtures, giving the PH buffers time to work before measuring but found they are immediate and don't change so I sped up the last two measurements.

Then I mixed another gallon with the same measures all at once, stirring in between ingredients and got exactly the same readings. Nice!

Sorry this is so long, I cut it down as much as possible without missing too much.

[BBinNM]

Whew Ellen!! Love the new avatar. Wanna come look at my AGs?

[Ellen]

Whew Ellen!! Love the new avatar. Wanna come look at my AGs?

HA Bruce! I've got an AG pump to replace this evening so I'll be busy, but thanks for the offer. 

[Peat]

So far so good Bruce, perfect EC for your tomatoes - I guarantee you will get great results, and your plants will appreciate the new feed.

As you have found, you don't have to wait 30 minutes between mixes - the whole process is quite quick if you just add and mix in between. You pH is far more stable than mine, I have to add pH down every time to get it in the zone. It's all going pretty well for you, not as difficult and daunting as it may first have seemed. 

Those two struts in the AG, I have removed both of mine - they just get in the way.

[gisette]

Thank you thank you, Bruce! Good to know. Sounds like for the peppers, the straight 1-2-3 tsp/gallon formula, scaled down by 15%, would work perfectly. (3.2 liter / 3.8 liter per gallon. I think.) Or, Peat's formula in ml, added to a gallon.

My water's somewhere around 7.3 pH, by the same kind of cheap kit you were mentioning. And I had a salesdude out from HomeDepot who confirmed borderline crunchy, probably calcium load. (No, I didn't buy any of the salesdude's stuff, but it was educational.) These days, we usually run it through a Brita filter. Which makes it far better to drink, and cuts down on the chlorine, but can't do much of anything about the hardness.

Yeah, when I moved the pro100 bowl (intact, as we discussed ) to my new Deluxe, the pump conked out, and I rummaged inside. I think I managed to pull roots away and whack it enough that it's pumping again... I'd like to avoid removing the pump for a real cleaning, because it'd do a lot of root damage, the way it's entombed in the pedestal. 

[BBinNM]

I was informed that a Tsp is different than a tsp so I changed it in my last post. Who'da thunk it? Being a man, we go by quarts, gallons, 12 packs, kegs and jerobaums. I thought I was doing good using halfway correct punctuation but noooo. Makes sense tho, come to think about it.

Also, I diluted my herb mix down to 1.8 and used a little PHdown to get it to 6.3 this morning.

[gisette]

Great avatar. Your photo? 

A T is a Tablespoon and a t is a teaspoon. However, spelled out as you had it, Tsp is clearly a teaspoon, whereas Tbsp is a tablespoon. I disagree with your copy editor.

In any event, the GH bottles give the formula in tsp per gallon.

[BBinNM]

Boy, have I been chastised for that temporary avatar, twice. Jeezus!! I may not be around in a few hours or I may not care to continue. You can reach me at bruce@nmred.com . The mods can try junk@over-the-hill.com but don't hold your breath.

[gisette]

Bruce, I hope you didn't take my quip as chastisement. I even changed my avatar (also temporarily) to go along with the game.

Truly, I was playing, not chastising! 

[BBinNM]

I'll be damned, I can still log in... No Ginger it wasn't you AT ALL, I was enjoying our little avatar hopscotch. TPTB asked me to change my nasty avatar and after I did, I got more crap from h20 two hours later. I thought we were all adults here but evidently we aren't and I won't play their puritan games. You probably have a message about your filthy avatar waiting, too. What a bunch of...

never mind.

[gisette]

TPTB... Who be dat? I like to know who's on my special list. 

[gisette]

OH, duh, The Powers That Be. Yes, well, they're already... special.

Did find a great souce of raspberry-blowing avatars, though. 

http://www.bigoo.ws/images/tongue-smile

[gisette]

Bruce & Peat : Alright! I mixed new batches of GH nutes as per your testing on Peat's Rx, Bruce - 3 formulations, and replaced the water on peppers, older greens, and my coleus/snapdragon composition. (For those, I went with 4.2/4.2/4.2 ml in a half gallon. May change my mind on that later, but I don't want the coleus to flower, and snapdragons happily bloom until they can't stand up, anyway.)

I was waiting for a new roll of litmus paper so I could test the pH. It's... probably somewhere nearer 6.5 than 6 or 7. Good enough.

I also needed to persuade my peppers' pump to start running again. Man, that is such a drag when you've got big plants growing... And I had to remove & strip the dratted pump twice before I got it going again.

Peat's lettuce inspired me. My mustard experiment is getting a little greener. Perhaps the right formula will even make it happy. 

[Peat]

Those darn pumps again, I'm with you on that front. Replacing them when the AG is full of lush foliage is extremely aggravating!

That pump that's gone on you, I hope it's not the newer type?

[gisette]

Yeah, this is my new pump - got it in early July, part ceramic. But it's not gone. It just needed some forcible persuasion. The peppers have been growing in that bowl for ~70 days now, and roots had entombed the pump, and gotten in past the filter & pantyhose barrier. Hopefully, it'll be fine now.