Why do we feed, water, water with soil?

Dontjudgeme

Well-Known Member
It seems to be generally accepted that plants being fed in soil should follow a schedule similar to this. Water with nutrients, then just water a couple times. We dont do this in coco or hydro, rather we give a steady consistent amount of nutrients that the plant is happy at. So why in soil? Would the plant not be just as happy or happier if given a steady feed every watering at lower amount? lets say normally you give 900ppm, then just straight water twice. Why not split it evenly into 300ppm every watering and be feeding them exactly the same amount? Those numbers are just an example, important part is just feeding at 1/3 strength every watering rather than feed, water, water. Is there an actual reason why they prefer a varying concentration? I dont see why hydro should be any different.
I understand where you are coming from. All jokes aside, cause I read through 4 pages and figured I seen and laughed enough. I don’t exactly understand the feed water water schedule myself. When I used chem nutrients, I always fed, water fed, etc to the end. Plants never seemed to mind, so why fix it if it isn’t broken. Now that I primarily use dry amendments, it says to use a certain amount of tsp per gal of medium that typically last 3-4 weeks. So to your point, why give all the teaspoons at once to last a month if I can do it once a week and ensure the plant doesn’t experience that gap between the next top dress. Still equates to the same feeding right, just done in a different way. Just like lowering the PPMs so you can feed every watering vs that weird feeding schedule that I honestly never heard of until you mentioned it.

There must be something to their brand that requires feeding that way, I don’t know. All in all, everyone has made some really good points, maybe a little sarcastic along the way, but still good valid points. Try the bottles method and see if you can make any sense of it, then try it your way and see which one works better. What works best for you is what counts, not what the bottle tells us we should do. Thanks for sharing.
 

Buds420grow

Well-Known Member
when using an organic matter free soil mixture like peat/perlite/lime, you need to feed every irrigation. Dont confuse the newbie
or coco coir like me. Wizzlebiz really helped me out on that stuff he was a big help. I wasn’t feeding everyday with the coco and once I started everyday all my issues went away.
 

JustBlazin

Well-Known Member
Honestly I used to do feed water feed when I used salt nutrients, I found that if I fed everyday I would end up having to flush my plants at least once a cycle. I go up and down my stairs with too much water already:wall: so if I can grow my plants without wasting gallons and gallons of water every cycle, I'll gladly feed water feed and never have to flush thank you very much. did this method for years with great results. And FYI got my biggest yield using this method but was also the only run I only ran 1 strain so that helped as well.
Now I just use dry amendments with promix and straight tap water, no more mixing all those bottles or having to waste all that water flushing
 

Abyssal

New Member
Really? For starters straight from the instructions on multiple nutrient brands, i literally see it all the time in posts, videos, grow journals, etc. You act like you've never even heard it before. Search feed, water water on google and read a couple threads of it being discussed. Literally like 90% of people recommend straight water between feedings
Common sense should tell you this is wrong. As long as you don’t over feed you should be feeding every irrigation. Think about it, put that same plant in soil out in a field and the nutrient supply is constant, it never turns off like when you do the pure water part of this thing. Also, if the plant NEEDED a period without nutrients, just water it would have to have the ability to shut off its own uptake of nutrient because of the in a field analogy, the nutrients don’t shut off in the soil, in which case you STILL wouldn’t need to do this because the plant can do it itself

The only reason you’d ever need to do this water only thing is because you’re massively over feeding so need to keep flushing the soil
 
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