The Nutrient Calculator--certainly a godsend

I’m working with the Advanced Nutrients Nutrient Calculator (easily found on the top line of their website main page) and currently it’s week 5 of the vegetative growth of my carnations.

As you know, I switched over to their main 3-part fertilizer, Micro, Grow, and Bloom. Oddly enough, you mix all three of these even during the vegetative stage, albeit the Bloom at a much lower percentage.

For instance, my reservoir size is 80 Litres, so during week 5 I mix 128 mL of Micro (always mix this ingredient first, all by itself), then I mix in 128 mL of Grow, followed by 24 mL of Bloom.

“Why do you need Bloom during the grow cycle?” I asked the Advanced Nutrients tech guy, naively. “It’s to balance the N-P-K ratios,” was his answer. “But you must have noticed that the suggested amount of Bloom that you have to mix in is only about 10% of the total fert mix,” said he, knowledgeably.

“I noticed it was a much smaller figure,” said I, “but now that you mention it, it is about 10%.” He went on to explain—“Grow is NPK 2-1-6, Micro is NPK 5-0-1, while Bloom is NPK 0-5-4. When you put them all together, you wind up with an NPK of 7-6-11, which is just about right for your carnations.”

For the totally uninitiated, the NPK ratio is the percentage of Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium in your fertilizer.

Other ingredients that I have to add to the mix during week 5 are Mother Earth Super Tea Grow, to add that organic touch to my synthetic fertilizer, and Grandma Enggy’s Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid. These are products that are also richly organic and are derived from a layer of “leonardite” that is mined from deep within the earth.

I have to mix in 180 mL of Super Tea Grow, while 108.8 mL of Humic Acid, and 100 mL of Fulvic Acid. Remember, the exact measurement depends on the size of your reservoir. In this case, as perhaps in other cases as well, size does matter.

In addition to the Micro, Grow, and Bloom, there are ten other ingredients suggested by Advanced Nutrients. B-52 is a B-complex vitamin to reduce plant stress (500 mL in week 5), while Barricade is a potassium silicate product that literally gives your plant immunity from many pathogens and insects, from the inside out. (14.96 mL in week 5).

By the way, the optimum ppm for week 5 is 1200 and your EC reading should be 1.71. The parts per million (ppm) is a particle count in your solution, and it should go from 800ppm for week 1, to 1400 ppm in week 8. The EC reading has to do with electrical conductivity—don’t ask me to explain it.

No Scorpion Juice, Piranha, Tarantula, or Voodoo Juice should be added in week 5, but these ingredients are very important to add during the course of other weeks.

SensiZym, however, is called for in week 5, to be precise 500 mL of this product containing live enzymes that like to munch on the root debris in your grow medium. It serves to purify your grow medium as well as to enhance the growth of your plants by making the roots more efficient.

Once you mix all these ingredients in your mixing tank, you have to take several pH readings to make sure that the acid-alkaline balance has settled, before adding this nutrient solution to your reservoir. The optimum hydroponic pH balance is 5.6. You may add pH Up or pH Down, depending on the correction necessary.

The Nutrient Calculator is a godsend for growers like me who are not too strong on technical details. I’m an artist at heart, who rejoices in the beauty of my carnations and am happy to have found a company that helps me make sure that they get fed the proper nutrients.

Now only if Advanced Nutrients could come to my home and prepare my meals for me with the same meticulous attention to quality and detail as they prepare the meals for my carnations, I’d be all set.