Tips On How To Mix Hydroponic Nutrients Properly
There are many temptations that normally arise during the management of indoor hydroponic gardening systems. After running the garden for some time, some people are tempted to overlook the whole required process and tend to do shortcuts. However, what you should know is that the process of acquiring the right solution for your hydroponic farming systems has no shortcuts. If you don’t do the mixing properly you won’t get the best results with your plants. Ignoring certain nutrients while using more of others will only work to the detriment of your project. The plants will either acquire a stunted growth or will showcase weird growth tendencies. The mixing process is essential especially in the case of multi-part hydroponic nutrients. This happens to more complicated than a majority of growers think. The guidelines explained below are just a pointer as to what you need to do: Use the right proportions of water for the mixing of nutrients The right volumes of water will give the best solution for the nutrients. Plants are known only to use completely dissolved nutrients. They can’t absorb solid substances. A major problem arises when two-part or three-part nutrients are used. In case you do the mixing in very little water or when the parts are still concentrated, there arises the formation of a white precipitate. This could come about within a span of sixty seconds or more depending on the formulation of the nutrients. Calcium sulphate is the most common precipitate formed. Dissolution becomes hard to take place especially with increased delay in dilution. The difficulty here is that you will have a precipitate that won’t be of any use to the plants within the hydroponics nutrient solution.
Just by way of advice, if you want to avoid the formation of the precipitate, ensure you add most of the water before mixing the nutrients. Also stir properly as you add each part of the nutrients.
Which of the nutrients should come first during the mixing? The best hydroponics nutrients guide will give you the right procedure when doing the mixing. It is advisable that you start with nutrients that bear phosphate. This will have a very big bearing on the nutrient solution’s stability mostly affected by high alkalinity. High pH levels of natural water are caused by high alkalinity. The addition of more nutrient dose to the high alkaline water will only reduce some nutrients’ stability. This will hamper their usefulness to the plants. The mostly affected nutrients include sulfate, copper, manganese, iron, zinc and calcium. Some people try to pre-adjust the pH levels of the water which has been proved to be very difficult. The best option would be to do so after the addition of all the nutrients and other solution components. You have to start with the nutrients that will lower the pH level followed by the ones that raise it. What amounts of each nutrient part should you add? Do not do rough measurements. Make sure you add equal amount of each part of a nutrient. Do not be deceived that the excess of one nutrient will compensate for the other.