Mega Crop vs Dyna-Gro comparison grow

[lukio]

sure thing, i usually take her 10 weeks. around 0.9ec - shes a fan fave and a wonderful cross

 

[vertnugs]

If someone would like to run a test and let us know how many pounds they can dissolve into a gallon of water before the elements precipitate, I'm all ears.

I would check it out if i wasn't shut down.To bad the old MC thread is gone because if i remember correctly there was info on making a concentrate solution.

 

[Gemtree]

Now this is my kinda thread. I loved the dyna vs connoisseur thread and have grown a killer crop with just a 8oz sample foliage pro bottle and a sample bottle of floralicious plus just to show a friend who spends hundreds that I can lol. Just switched to jacks and got a bit over 20oz under a 600 last round but got some nute burn towards the end so was considering dyna again or possibly mega crop so definitely interested in this competition.

One of my 15 dollar sample grow plants under a 400w lol

first round kens gdp seeds

 

[homebrewer]

Now this is my kinda thread. I loved the dyna vs connoisseur thread and have grown a killer crop with just a 8oz sample foliage pro bottle and a sample bottle of floralicious plus just to show a friend who spends hundreds that I can lol. Just switched to jacks and got a bit over 20oz under a 600 last round but got some nute burn towards the end so was considering dyna again or possibly mega crop so definitely interested in this competition.

One of my 15 dollar sample grow plants under a 400w lol

first round kens gdp seedsView attachment 4393681 View attachment 4393682

Those look great, regardless of what they were grown with!

Res change tomorrow and day 8 pictures.

 

[TintEastwood]

I would check it out if i wasn't shut down.To bad the old MC thread is gone because if i remember correctly there was info on making a concentrate solution.

Info at afn....
https://www.autoflower.net/forums/threads/stock-solutions.73698/

https://www.autoflower.net/forums/threads/update-feeding-chart-for-af.64605/page-23

 

[Gemtree]

Those look great, regardless of what they were grown with!

Res change tomorrow and day 8 pictures.

Thanks I'm just a big proponent of not needing to spend a lot to grow great buds. I try to help people get the best for as little as possible its probably the dutch in me lol. Thanks for the response I really studied the shit outta that dyna competition thread glad you're still on here making comp threads.

 

[Keesje]

Res change tomorrow and day 8 pictures.

I did read that you have a 18 gallon reservoir.
How many days do you keep the same res?
Do you top up in this period?
And if so, how?
Do you totally change your res after a certain time?

 

[homebrewer]

I did read that you have a 18 gallon reservoir.
How many days do you keep the same res?

Weekly res changes.

Do you top up in this period?

I top off once after 4 days.

And if so, how?

By adding water and some plant food.

Do you totally change your res after a certain time?

Weekly res changes.

 

[Keesje]

I greatly appreciate that you answer all questions.

Let's say your reservoir would be about 60 gallons, would you still change your reservoir also after a week with MegaCrop?

 

[homebrewer]

I greatly appreciate that you answer all questions.

Let's say your reservoir would be about 60 gallons, would you still change your reservoir also after a week with MegaCrop?

The short answer is no.

I think that the reservoir and the table should match so with that being said, a 60 gallon res flooding a 2' x 3' (roughly) table with just six plants is overkill, IMO. If that were my setup, obviously that would be plenty of water to last a number of weeks but I would be curious about the mineral composition of the reservoir at the end of that time. Would it still be in balance? I know for a fact that it wouldn't. These plants aren't pulling up the elements in even amounts across the board. To some extent, they're picking and choosing what they want, when they want it. Now that isn't exactly how it works but I think you get what I'm saying. I've done tests where I changed the res every 2 weeks (while adding back water and food) vs every week. Yields were down by like 20% if I recall correctly. So a res change isn't just 'fresh' food, it's a rebalancing of the elements too. If I wanted to go 2 weeks between res changes then I'd probably need a 30 gallon res. Does that make sense? I think that's just big enough where I'm not wasting food but also 2 weeks isn't too long between res changes where the res gets so out of balance that I'm hurting yields. This is just a guesstimate.

So in short, I think a 60 gallon res would be much better suited for a 5' x 5' table with say 9 plants and a 1000s HPS over head.

 

[homebrewer]

Day 8 today

As I previously mentioned I’ll be doing weekly res changes. The pH of the res here at the end of week one was 6.22 which isn’t terrible at all. The freshly mixed up food at a feeding level of 1.1 EC landed the pH at 6.44 so for whatever reason I needed to make a pH-adjustment this week to bring the pH down. If I were using DynaGro or any other liquid plant food I’d have figured out the correct protekt-to-base ratio to give me a starting pH of around 5.7. MC already contains silica though. We'll check in next week with a freshly calibrated pH pen.

Today I mixed up 100 grams of food into about a gallon of water before dumping the solution into the reservoir. MegaCrop is not that easy to work with. This stuff wants to stick to my measuring cups which means my measuring cups need to be rinsed to get the trace amounts of food off. Between measuring and mixing and rinsing, it probably took 7 mins to set this reservoir up. With DG it takes 30 seconds.

The plants look really good though so no complaints there. Good growth, good branching, i'm pleased so far.





I'm getting a film in the bottom of my res with MegaCrop. It's not a big deal but it's not something I've encountered with any liquid food I've ever used. It's not a growth of any kind, it's particulate like a fine dust.

 

[homebrewer]

Day 8 With DynaGro below. As you can see the MC plants had a bit of a size advantage going into this comparison but given the footprint of my light that doesn't really affect the yield as much as you'd think.

 

[Axion42]

When I tried MC in my rdwc I also got that film on the bottom of my buckets, wasnt good for my circ pumps.

 

[arcalion]

I'm getting that too with MC, so I bought a water pump and put it at the bottom of the res. You can get one on Amazon for 30$ for Two of them, keeps the water mixed up so it doesnt have a chance to chunk up etc etc definitely helps

 

[homebrewer]

Cost

I buy DynaGro 1 gallon at a time ($55) and to make this an apples-to-apples comparison I’ll be comparing DG’s 1 gallon to MegaCrop’s 2500g size @ $32.69 (includes shipping). They mix up a similar amount of reservoirs but the gallon of DG will last about 5 weeks longer.

So the first thing that I want to address is the inaccuracy printed on the bags of Megacrop. They claim that 4gs of their product into a gallon of water equals 1.2EC (840 ppm). I measured 4 different times out of 2 different MC bags with a freshly calibrated EC pen. The best I came up with is that 4gs of MegaCrop into a gallon of water equals 0.87EC (610 ppm) which means MegaCrop is over-stating their potency by nearly 38%. I also checked out MC's website some months ago and they had a lot of misleading information about the cost of comparable products on the market. For instance, they calculated their own cost of use at a feeding strength of 1.0 EC but when they calculated the cost of a competitor's product they did so at feeding levels sometimes well over 2.0 EC. That's shady as hell and it's the same thing AN used to pull when attacking their competitors in the market. That bit on their website has since been taken down but used to be here: (https://greenleafnutrients.com/product-comparison/?v=b457452c21b1).

In the defense of MegaCrop, and let me be clear here, they do lie on their bags, however, those recommendations are safe for your average idiot grower who doesn't own a ppm/EC pen and blindly follows the manufacturers recommendations. Even feeding at their high end of 6gs/gal, you're still safe. Compare that to many other feeding charts, DynaGro's included, and following them to a T will absolutely scorch your plants.

So let’s figure out the real cost of MC in my 18 gallon reservoir. I’ll be feeding at around 1.1 EC from start to finish which means MC (90g each week into the reservoir) is going to cost $10.59 for this 9 week flowering period. DynaGro at the same feeding level costs $15.12 (115mls each week into the reservoir). Now this is a difference of $4.53 over a 2 month period. Obviously the difference in price increases with the scale of the grow and at some level the price difference between the two products could outweigh the inconvenience of dealing with dusty dry foods that need pH-adjustments every few days. Yield would be a factor too. If MC is more of a pain to deal with but yields more then obviously that’s something to consider too. Generally speaking in my life, time is the most important commodity so naturally I’d always be leaning towards the liquid foods in any wet vs dry plant food comparison.

Full disclosure here: I do use a couple other additives along with DG. They're not necessary but they are beneficial and I believe these products are already included in the MC dry mix that I'm currently using. So with DG, the money that I'm not spending on pH-up and down could easily be negated by the couple additives that I use.

So it looks like Mega Crop did not take down the cost comparison that I saw on their site. It can be found here (https://greenleafnutrients.com/product/mega-crop/?v=7516fd43adaa#!/NPK).

So what rubs me the wrong way is that they are comparing their own cost of use at 4.1g servings which equals 633 ppm (0.9EC) to 10ml/gal servings with DynaGro which equals 1150ppm (1.64 EC). That's not an apple-to-apples comparison and when calculating cost at these very different feeding levels it becomes VERY misleading.

Let's looks at the Aqua Flakes Comparison too. I've used Aqua Flakes in the past and I actually really liked it. It's a 2-part food and you use equal parts from start to finish. Super easy! So MC is claiming that this is THE most expensive plant food option on their list. They're saying that 40L of Aqua Flakes only makes 587 gallons. That means that users are feeding their plants with a total of 68.1 mls/gal! If I recall the potency of Aqua Flakes correctly, that's a feeding level of 5451ppm (7.78 EC). I'm thinking someone forgot to carry a 1 or something? If shooting for 1.1 EC, Aqua Flakes users only need about 4.5mls/gal of each part. At that feeding rate, 40L of food makes 4444 gallons of food.

So as you can see MC is not doing apples-to-apples comparisons here which I think is shady and misleading. So far it looks like MC is a good product and they shouldn't be resorting to these lies to sell their plant foods.

 

[Coloradoclear]

Definitely keep this going! I like the positive comparisons. Went from Advanced to Megacrop and haven't looked back!

 

[Keesje]

It would be nice if MegaCrop or Greenleaf would react here. But I guess they are not active here anymore.

 

[homebrewer]

It would be nice if MegaCrop or Greenleaf would react here. But I guess they are not active here anymore.

So aside from the horrid math with the Aqua Flakes cost comparison, MC *may* be getting some of their numbers from the manufacturer's recommended dose? MC is one of the least expensive foods on the market but their worst offense is over-stating how much cheaper they are. For the average, experienced grower reading this, MC could potentially save you a few bucks per month per light if you were only using their single bag of 9-6-17 dry food which is all that I'm using in this test.

This is a nice transition into today's update as I'd like to talk a little bit about their NPK content as it pertains to hydroponic use.

 

[homebrewer]

Day 15 today...

So things are moving along as expected. In terms of the overall health of the plants, they're perfect. The structure however is my only critique and that leads me into what I wanted to talk about today: NPK content of Mega Crop. Mega Crop supplies a NPK of 9-6-17 and that is accompanied by plenty of calcium, magnesium, and every other element along with some extras. But the NPK is what I don't love. If you don't mind the hassle of a dry food then I think a 9-6-17 would be fantastic in peat/coco/dirt. As for hydro (in my experience), this NPK grows excessively leafy and branchy plants at the expense of yield. You're much better off in hydro using a food with a 1-3-2 or a 1-3-3 or a 1-3-4 NPK ratio. Nitrogen seems to be taken up in 'excess' in hydro if more is supplied than needed. All you *need* is enough to support green, healthy leaves. Anything more than that and you start getting the excessive branching that can be seen below. I've run foods like DynaGro's Grow (7-9-5) and Foliage Pro (9-3-6) from start to finish in hydro with less than stellar results. Sure, the plants were healthy and the flowers were resinous and fragrant but the leafy, branchy mess that high N foods produce makes them less than ideal for hydro. Those foods are absolutely killer in peat/coco/dirt and I would suspect that MC would perform just as well, they're just not your best choices for hydro growing.

So to get the best results here with MC in hydro, I think adding a PK booster is essential. I'm not going to in this test but if I did, I'd probably run about 600ppm of MegaCrop and add about 150ppm of a PK booster. GH's Liquid kool bloom, DG's Magpro, or a MKP dry food, would all do the trick. The thing about *needing* a PK booster is that the addition of one starts to cut into the cost saving of MC. DyanGro's bloom formula is a 3-12-6 which clearly doesn't need a PK boost. Adding more K to the DG formula would be beneficial but it's not essential.

As far as plant maintenance goes, I've been trimming, topping, and pruning, since the 1st day of flower and I'll have to continue to do so up until day 25 or so. If I don't I'll end up with hundreds of bud sites that will develop into nothing more than leafy, airy garbage.

Mega Crop plants looking healthy as can be:




A branchy mess that needs to be properly managed. Believe it or not I've been pruning and topping a couple times per week...


This is the result of a hydro formula that supplies more N than is needed. I've seen this same growth with DG's grow and foliage pro formulas.




DynaGro Plants after 14 days. Clearly less branchy and much easier to manage overall...

 

[Keesje]

I think that every line that says that you can do both veg and bloom with the same product, is not lying, but they are not telling the truth either.
Greennutrients also had a PK Booster.
https://greenleafnutrients.com/product/bud-explosion/?v=796834e7a283

I really enjoy your posts and your explanations.