Is the Lucas formula legit?

GrowUrOwnDank

Well-Known Member
Thanks guys for all your input! I want to give the plant what it needs like everyone else and get back nice yields in the end.
Soo from what I understand, LF will work for almost all strains more or less. Its for the common grower to get above average buds.
If I want to get specific with what a strain's nute needs at different parts of its life, will I just have to guesstimate what a strain needs?
Talking with people on forums to see what they do?
Lucas Formula is your meat and potatoes. That scientific stuff is your caviar and costs in time and or money, attention and the learning curve/experience. Being scientific is being all dialed into each detail of the horticulture or whatever. Costs time-money. LF is more like just set it and forget it. And grows serious dank too. Perfect for a micro grower. Plus genes are constantly and rapidly, evolving and changing. Yeah that kinda science is over my head. But, I like to read about it. :bigjoint:
 

rkymtnman

Well-Known Member
LF will work for almost all strains more or less.
yep. i dont' run full strength Lucas, only at 1.0EC and it's fine for every strain i've run.

it almost pH's itself around 5.8 and is very pH stable too.

the only thing i don't agree with it is that it says you can run it at 8/16 for the life of the plant. i burn the shit out of my plants at 8/16. i run it at 1/2 then 2/4 then 3/6 then 4/8 as the plant can handle the increase in EC.

with the low strengths (1/2, 2/4, 3/6) i do add cal/mg as I find my plants need it. when i get to 4/8 or 5/10, no more cal/mg
 

rkymtnman

Well-Known Member
Yeah Man! That was written by the grower whose handle is pH. He was actually the one who noticed the make-up of the Nitrogen in the Grow and Micro, so he posed the question, and several of us tried it to see what happened. After we all did a couple of crops using that method of leaving out the Grow component entirely, pH wrote up that formula. That was in the late 1990's.

Lucas was a grower in that forum (adpc) although I don't remember if he participated in our testing. He then posted it on OverGrow and it became known as the Lucas Formula.

:mrgreen:
awesome man! thanks. i love learning the back stories on growing's history. so was Mel Frank's guide about the same time frame: late 90's? or was he before that?

where were you guys growing at? SoCal at the time of all this?
 

blackforest

Well-Known Member
yep. i dont' run full strength Lucas, only at 1.0EC and it's fine for every strain i've run.

it almost pH's itself around 5.8 and is very pH stable too.

the only thing i don't agree with it is that it says you can run it at 8/16 for the life of the plant. i burn the shit out of my plants at 8/16. i run it at 1/2 then 2/4 then 3/6 then 4/8 as the plant can handle the increase in EC.

with the low strengths (1/2, 2/4, 3/6) i do add cal/mg as I find my plants need it. when i get to 4/8 or 5/10, no more cal/mg
Good to know on dropping the cal mag at higher ec, also agree with ph-ing itself to 5.8. I always ran it all the way through, but only at like 2ml/gal. I'm going to drop it since I'm at 1.0 ec and everything is super green with no deficiencies. I even use lucas for my soil grows, cause I'm used to it. Works great in soil too, but I do run ppm's closer to 1.8-2.4ec in soil for flower.
 

rkymtnman

Well-Known Member
Good to know on dropping the cal mag at higher ec, also agree with ph-ing itself to 5.8. I always ran it all the way through, but only at like 2ml/gal. I'm going to drop it since I'm at 1.0 ec and everything is super green with no deficiencies. I even use lucas for my soil grows, cause I'm used to it. Works great in soil too, but I do run ppm's closer to 1.8-2.4ec in soil for flower.
i've been using the flora duo series for about a half year now. use at 5/17 A to B and it's Lucas. mixes up nice and clear instead of that brown micro stain (root rot or stain? lol)

i've been using Si for my second grow. don't know if it makes a difference yet or not. doesn't hurt for sure.
 

Yodaweed

Well-Known Member
Lucas formula works great to start with, i'd say it's an excellent guide for beginners, i'd suggest using it if you are new and working on building on it.
 

Psyphish

Well-Known Member
I used to use Lucas Formula in hydro and slightly modified H3ad's formula in coco but stopped after trying pH perfect AN products. Never had perfect results with Lucas.
 
7 Grams per gallon of tap water. Been using it for years with great results.
I went from RO water to tap water (in hempy buckets) and 7 grams per gallon. It does work great. I add a little micro a few times early on to get the trace nutes sorted. I boost with Koolbloom at half strength when they are feeding heavily.

Mostly, it's just 7 grams maxibloom. I think I'd do nearly as well or just as well without the Koolbloom or micro.


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