LOL! Yeah, I think so! Brands of ferts & thier numbers & individual ingredients are just as varied as the opinions of those who use them, so... My personal opinion of ferts, here, is pretty much this:
- Whatever you use, follow the directions,
- Err on the side of caution (less is more), and
- Always, always, always flush (water only) for the last 21 days before harvest.
That said, I'd also do 3 more things:
- Supplement weekly with a nice homemade AACT (Activated Aerated Compost Tea: Sounds "advanced", but is truly an easy & reasonably inexpensive investment, and your plants will looooove you for it!),
- Use Superthrive sparingly & whenever "needed" as a de-stressor, including after heavy pruning & defoliating,
- Get & use "Sledgehammer" by Foxfarm to flush the mineral salts & nasty residue that's a byproduct of using fertilizers. It kind of "unclogs" the "circulatory system" of the plant's root-structure, & helps it absorb future nutrients even better. It's like giving your plant a good & healthy cleanse, if you can swing the $16.00 (or whatever the cost at your local grow-shop).
Oftentimes, I don't like to spend money without good reason, and I know that the AACT sounds like a costly project, but dig this: A 5-gallon bucket that you prolly already have lying around somewhere, or else buy a new one for 5 bucks. A cheap little air-stone might be 4 or 5 bucks-- or a bigger one for $7 - 8. Not sure what your set-up would be, but say 6, maybe 8 feet of air-tubing: 2 bucks or so. Now the pump would be the killer on the wallet, but a strong(-ish) pump that's adjustable and'll feed four separate tubes might cost $25 or 30 or so, but you can get a single-tube air-pump that does it's job well-enough for a 5-gallon bucket for maybe 15 or 18 dollars, IDK. But-- when you invest $20 or so towards some bat guano, your adding rocket-fuel to your flowering! That stuff is crazy. Dig it: You got 2-4-4 ferts there. That middle 4 is what affects flowering... And bat guano skyrockets that number (my personal stash of bat-poop is
.5-12-
.2). And by making a tea of it (perhaps with other compost goodies, like your banana peels or my egg-shells), it feeds the soil good healthy bacteria & fungus that make the plant strong & productive,
without over-fertilizing it because tea isn't a fertilizer. (Instead of steeping a "tea-bag" of bat guano that you'd then dispose-of, if you conversely poured the powdery bat-poop into the soil
directly, it would continuously feed the plant because it's just existing there atop & within the soil itself, and then this might over-fertilize your plant... But teas are awesome because they're light & quick without messing-up your nute-cycle)
Something to note, however, is that teas are amazing for feeding living soil... And although I'm not scientist, I do play one on the internet
, and my theories are that organics support soil ecology a lot better than chemical ferts do, and it looks like you're already on the right course. (Do remember, now, that Superthrive is not a fert, but it's also
not organic. That's why I foliar-feed that, on those rare instances that I use it. It preserves the soil a bit while administering it via the best nutrient-delivery system the plant has: It's leaves.)
I wish I could share in some of that tasty stuff when it's good & ready.
I'm unsure exactly how your own elevation & longitude-line factors-in to your outdoor grow-cycle (versus my own, here in New England). She should be starting to stink up about this time for you...
Yeah, maybe a week or two... I'm unsure what's happening microscopically on the plant, & when resins are produced, but mine usually start smelling sweet & fine a few weeks before the first signs of real trichomes, but this may also vary from strain to strain, I'm unsure. For me, my little green girl-- my "Rella99"-- is just starting to whaft her first little stinky pheremones.
