Seeking the Best Nutrient Mix: What Works for You and Why?

With HP or BX i'd suggest adding more drainage amendments, like vermiculite #3. If you want more frequent irrigations, use perlite, but otherwise vermiculite #3 also adds some available silica, which is beneficial in small ways that aren't a deal breaker, if you don't. BX is 15% perlite? you want to bring that proportion up to 50% with a little applied algebra. Nowadays, i just add 8 cu ft of verm#3 to 1 compressed 3.8 (~7 uncompressed) cu ft bale of BX or HP. It's closer to 55-60% vermiculate, but has worked really well, and it almost perfectly matches the amount I need for 2 grow cycles. Otherwise, i'd use a bit less and shoot for 50% of volume, including the existing perlite. This can fill ~20 five gallon pots, 12 extra 1-gallon pots for culling of defective/weak plants and a few more 1 gallons to do a breeding cycle. I prefer promix because it's cost effective and consistent. No concern about inconsistent processing of the sphagnum peat. No worries about Na+ as with poorly processed coco coir. Fertilizer isn't about any person's "truth". It's about competition between some molecules and maintaining levels in the substrate that allow the plant to easily get what it needs. Not all nutes enter throguh "mass flow" (diffusion across a membrane). Some of it enters through 'active transport' where the plant grabs it when it needs it - some sort of feedback loop of control exists. These are real teams from plant biology you can look up. Our gut also has active transport going on, if it sounds familiar. The point is, you want to maintain a ratio and concentration that keeps everything available but does not inhibit each other. It's no coincidence that jacks, masterblend, southern ag, and several others, including the precharge of BX or HP, is all very similar. Before they changed it, floraflex has a very similar "pro line" but it was 4-5x more expensive to by the floraflex name. I bet the new 'pro lone' products still come out to similar ratios/concnetrations. Growbuddy? hydrobuddy? there are apps that can take your gauranteed analysis labels and hit ppm targets for each element of nutrition with any set of products. Even if they choose to ignore the existing knowlege base with their own instructions, lol. For a visualization of all the interrelationships, google "Mulder's Chart" - it can help when diagnosing problems with a leaf symptom chart, too. whehther you do this in a measured and precise way with soiless or hydro methods or with soil/organic type nutes, really doesn't matter to the plant much. One way takes a lot longer to learn and relies on consistence of products that are inevitably inconsistent... whether soil or some animals scat etc... LOL You can tell i prefer the measured approach, but each to their own. A living soil that can provide everything in acceptable proportions from seed to harvest is an awesome thing if you can manage to get there. Low-effort, great results is hard to deny. Soilless/hydro is fairly low effort, but not like that. I'd look for something like Jacks 3-2-1 setup. Masterblend has one too, but they put the 'micros' in with the calnitrate forcing you to buy their more expensive branded cal nitrate rather than generic which is molecularly the same and cheaper. You'll find more than one brand with a similar setup because it's based on the same research / existing knolweldgebase. A base product with goo amounts of P, K and all micros + Calcium nitrate + magnesium sulfate (aka epsom salt). If you see a setup with these 3 products used, it's very very likely the same thing give or take a few tenths of a percentage on the ratios. The ratio and charge of BX out of the bag is very similar. It's a bit lighter on the K, being the major difference. https://www.domyown.com/msds/PRO-MIX_HP_MYCORRHIZAE_Technical_Bulletin_2023.pdf https://hydrobuilder.com/media/pdf/safety/promiixbx3.pdf 2 sources to confirm. I guess it's a bit lower on Mg than jacks formula too. follows the 4-2-1 for K-Ca-Mg, but i find the marijuana plant needs more a greater proportion of magnesium than that. N 120-130 P 40-60 K 180+ Ca 100+ Mg 75ish S 100+ then in flower drop N to 90-100ppm when you see darkness start to creep into lower leaves.. usually about 2 weeks into flower for me. This is a low EC starting point. Adjustments for local variables will be necessary. Temps, RH and atmospheric CO2 being part of this equation, too. Even so, any adjustments made will be small, like a couple tenths of a gram per gallon. No matter what you use, there will always be a little fine-tuning and trial and error invovled. The better options will be very minor adjustments with slowly progressing symptoms that are easy to diagnose. Anything that deviates from that is trash and often goes hand-in-hand with denial. It's not foie gras. You can't force feed it. The environment and genetics will set the demand for the plant. you just learn how to meet it.