Banana Punch - Barney's Farm

@monikers22, I mix most of my fertilizer myself. (This way it costs basically nothing) If you'd like I can post a rough guide on what I use when. This will probably be a large wall of text though!

@Danylo, that would be awesome

@monikers22 Pseudo-Guide coming tomorrow! Gotta update the running grow today first 😅

@Danylo, my main concern is, in your 12-12 experiment, when do you switch from Nitrogen diet to Phosphorus/Potassium diet? Is it week 4? Or is there some visual cues you await for, that tell you to start giving Phosphorus dominant feed?

@monikers22 Specific answer first: My plants get two different ratios of NPK: A) During veg and until _after_ flower stretch (when the plant has stopped growing its frame completely for a few days) they get about 24-8-18 N-P-K. B) After stretch I switch to 21.4 - 10.4 - 20.4 . At this exact point I also feed an extra 200mg/L of MonoKaliumPhosphate (0-52-34) for two waterings. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unfortunately, due to the plant being illegal for a long time, a lot of the conventional wisdom around nutrition is not very accurate. Some of it is straight broscience or even fantasy. 1) You don't really need to reduce Nitrogen by a large amount, the plant still needs it to build fresh chlorophyll (which is rather fragile) as well as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The last thing you want in late flower is yellowed-out leafs that can't do photosynthesis and just chill there, blocking direct light from reaching other parts of the plant that could. More metabolism = more metabolites. (eg. cannabinoids/terpenes) There is some research that indicates that severe nitrogen deprivation during flower can increase cannabinoid/terpene concentration per volume/weight. This heavily reduces overall yield unfortunately and I have never tried it because it seems somewhat complicated to get just right. 2) The plant actually needs quite a bit less phosphorous than a lot of the conventional wisdom would suggest. (Unless you are making seeds - that process needs a little more AFAIK) I wouldn't believe just some guy on the internet, and you should neither. So as an example I added one very good study on nutrients during the flowering process: A) Bevan, Lewys & Jones, A. & Zheng, Youbin. (2021). Optimisation of Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium for Soilless Production of Cannabis sativa in the Flowering Stage Using Response Surface Analysis. Frontiers in Plant Science. 12. 764103. 10.3389/fpls.2021.764103. PDF here : https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2021.764103/full ...this study was done by the "School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada" they do some really cool research! Another good source for information are Shiponi and Bernstein from the "Institute of Soil Water and Environmental Sciences, Volcani Center"

This will be the longer and more general answer ... To preface this my tap water has just about nothing that a plant needs (like so many places don't) and a plant REALLY needs those N-P-K, Calcium, Magnesium and Micronutrients! So this is basically "how to turn your tapwater into a multivitamin energy drink for your plants!" Nitrogen-Phosphorous-Kalium (Kalium is called Potassium in some places): almost completely taken care of by using a combination of 18-8-18 mixed with nothing (veg) or at 4/5ths (80%-20%) with 1/5th 05-20-30 (flower). Adjusted for Calcium Nitrate these values are about 24-8-18(VEG) and 21.4 - 10.4 - 20.4(FLOWER) I buy these as salts ("Compo Expert - Hakaphos") hilariously cheap so most of my fertilization costs me nothing. Hakaphos may not be available where you live but there are almost always comparable products (Peter's and Jack's for USA for example) Calcium is mostly taken care of by Calcium Nitrate ("YaraTera Calcinit") which also delivers some additional Nitrogen in the form of Nitrate (very easy/fast for the plant to pick up, but uptake raises soil pH) (costs almost nothing too ❤️) Magnesium I get from Epsom Salt: costs pennies. (also provides some sulphur) Micronutrients (Iron, Manganese etc.) are usually included in the NPK salts. I also use a liquid algae product "Mairol - BioAlgae" Many algae products will fulfill the same role. This should be what a plant actually NEEDS, but I also use: Plagron Silic Rock : Delivers some silicon to the plant for "stronger stems and budrot resistance" I haven't had budrot since I started using this so IM NEVER STOPPING. SHOGUN Sumo Active Boost: contains (among others) Triacontanol derived from alfalfa sprouts, which is an (actually working) organic growth stimulator. It's kinda on the expensive side but you don't need much and I havent had a bad harvest since I started using it. You'll have to pry it from my cold dead gardening gloves! So what does all of this mean in numbers (at least for my products): In 1 Liter I put just about: (small values for beginning of veg, large ones for full flower) 350-650mg NPK salt, 140-200mg Calcinit, 150-200mg epsom salt, Silic Rock or other pH down to hit ph 6.1-6-2 and then anything extra like algae. Granted this is for my specific local pH 8-ish tapwater with 40mg/L calcium and 7mg/L magnesium at EC 400. It's also specific to the soil-mix I use which comes with (N-P-K) 210-120-260 mg/Liter at ~ph5.7 Chloride here is at ~30mg/L and does not harm the plants - yours might be higher. I (fortunately) don't have experience with that. This all-in-all is very specific and each value depends on the product itself as well as all other products used and their sepcific values. It also took me some time to dial this in and I sure as hell had my share of ph/nutrient based problems. ----------------------------- IF YOU HAD PROBLEMS LAST GROW AND JUST WANT SOMETHING THAT WORKS, the recommendation I can give is: 1) Find out what's coming out of your tap in terms of pH/EC/cal/mag 2) Buy a complete set of soil and nutrients from _either_ Canna OR Plagron. (Soil Mix, Veg Nutrients, Flower Nutrients and CalMag product. Depending on your tap water pH you might need their stuff to adjust it to ~6.1-6.2 also. All the other fancy and expensive ones are not needed for a very good result.) If you do this and follow their Nutrient Calc/Scheme for your tap water type there should be no nutritional problems. (There might still be some typos etc in this I'll check again tomorrow when I'm sober💩)

@Danylo, "At this exact point I also feed an extra 200mg/L of MonoKaliumPhosphate (0-52-34) for two waterings." - what was the observed benefit of it? The study you mentioned says P and K had practically no effect on yield.

@monikers22 , At that point the plant actually stops doing what it is doing and starts something else (with slightly different nutrient needs). This just helps the growing medium to provide this new profile earlier instead of gradually. Also as it is on top of the normal nutrients it increases the soil EC a little during this time. As K is a cat-ion and P is an an-ion the ion-balance isn't trown completely out of whack by this either. What does it do ? Maybe (possibly...) very little, but at this point I'm looking for little things to optimize. 😁

@Danylo, okay. but on week 4 you show different plants on photos. one plant has side stalks almost as thick as the main stem and the main stem looks like it's about 2cm in diameter. It looks more like a 6 week old plant, not 4 week old, am I mistaken? Anyway, this is very impressive for such small grow box. I like the idea of 12-12 from seed for small grow space, to have it start flowering as soon as it's mature enough. Will try to re-create your experiment as I did run into issues in the past, from plant obesity to height issues in a limited height grow box.

@monikers22 , Just went back to check dates on the pictures and they're 4 days apart (It's the same plant). The other pictures do obscure the stem structure, and the 7Liter airpot's tiny diameter makes things look a lot larger than they really are. Apart from that the Banana Punch DID have some of the best stem genetics I've ever had. Even the lateral branches were VERY sturdy! Good luck with your next run bro, 12/12 was very fun! If the laws here allowed for more plants I'd have one extra tent running this all the time!