House and gardens low ppm...

Hello, I have a question if anyone can enlighten me. I have always use blue planet nutrients in the past. I grow in 5 gallon DWC bubble buckets. When using blue planet nutes I have always added all nutes for the week and then just topped off with regular water till the next rez change (1 week). With a fresh bucket of clean water and nutes in full flower the ppm is in the 1500-1700 range and slowly goes down all week as I only top off with regular water. Now I have recently decided to give house and gardens line a try. The thing is, when I add all nutrients for the week per the feeding chart, the ppm is much lower, around 600-800 and by the end of the week it's 200. To me this seems low in full flower but the plant is growing magnificent. My question is, would more nutrients help an otherwise healthy plant as I have grown monster 20 oz plants using blue planet nutes at twice the ppm? Can a plant gain with more nutes or should I stay with feeding schedule?

In my experience, and many others as well, plants do better when grown in the 600-800ppm range than they do at higher levels. Most of my strains would burn at the levels you were using. One of the main reasons they do better is that they take up more water at those lower levels, which means they get more of the minerals and micronutrients drawn up along with the macros.

If I were you I would mix up a second bucket and use that for top-ups

DrBlaze said:

In my experience, and many others as well, plants do better when grown in the 600-800ppm range than they do at higher levels. Most of my strains would burn at the levels you were using. One of the main reasons they do better is that they take up more water at those lower levels, which means they get more of the minerals and micronutrients drawn up along with the macros.

If I were you I would mix up a second bucket and use that for top-ups

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agreed. i don't think i've ever been above 1.2EC (600ppm). less is more with nutes.

1500 on DWC?!

You never gave us a scale, but since you said you mixed H&G per directions (most nutrient manuf. give you high directions) im going to guess 500 scale. Which is 3.0EC

Famed grower Heath Robinson states he never exceeds 1.4EC and he grows monsters.

Growing monsters is mostly strain, environmental conditions, light penetration(wattage) and canopy spread (thinking scrogging) in no particular order. I would think excess nutrients would do more harm than good in terms of yield.

For my plants I run peak 600-800ppm in veg. And in flower they usually like it lower around 500-700ppm but I think its because my flower room is hotter than my veg room and they drink more water to stay hydrated so I find my feed rises at the same starting point so I lower it to compensate.

And yeah if I topped off with straight water id run them down as well. An ideal condition is where your plants are drinking water and nutrients and the feed is staying somewhat constant. So if you dilute whats left the feed is going to drop. Measure the ratios that you use per gallon and if you add a gallon a day make sure you add those nutrients back as well.

Or mix up a big container at once, feed and top off from that.

Yup I used H&G and never exceeded 1.4,5 EC @ .5 and it worked well. My res is 120 litres and that would allow me to not top up but just change every 7-14 days depending on stage which also worked well. My EC would stay pretty much the same, rising just a bit over the period.