My ebb and grow came with a free Technaflora kit. Because I am too cheap and lazy, I am using the fertilizers in the kit for vegetative on this grow. I will be going strait Lucas Formula for the flowering using the GH flora series, so I have plenty of GH flora micro and bloom laying around.

Well, I have been changing out my res every five days or so and just ran out of the 'BC Boost' part of the three part fertilizer that came with the kit. I ran out in the middle of adding ferts. After using the last drop of boost my solution sat at about 240 PPM. I desire running them at 600 PPM right now.

What I did was break out some GH micro and bloom and added them at a rate of 1 to 1 until the PPM came up to 600.

Now my res is about 2/5 properly mixed BC technaflora and roughly 3/5 GH flora (without using grow) at a decent ratio.

Does anyone see any problem with doing this? Of course this is a stop-gap measure but Im curious what peoples thoughts are on this. I don't believe it would hurt the plants.

I wonder if anyone has ever ran a whole crop doing something like this.

Techna Flora Boost is just Nitrogen , calcium and iron. All other Techa Flora nutrient formulas are complete formulas with all major, secondary and micro nutrients, except for calcium, and iron. GH micro is a complete formula. The GH bloom is a combination of Phosphorus, Potash, magnesium, and sulfur. The Techna flora and GH micro bloom are nearly the same except that all the Techna Flora basic formulas are low on nitrogen, calcium and iron. As the GH products are good in those areas your nutrient mix is fine. Techna Flora has there own strange logic for their not adding the proper nitrogen, calcium and iron to their regular mixes which I have b never seen an explanation for that makes any sense. I can only assume it to be mainly a marketing gimmick. Basically their boost is just calcium nitrate and a very small amount of chelated iron. There is nor eason they could not just be added to the regular formulas rather than being sold seperately. Essentially the omissions just make them capable of saying their products are different.

Overall this batch you just mixed if mainly made up of techna formulas will be low on nitrogen and calcium. The degree depends on how much of the mix is Techna Flora and how much GH. Techna Flora with boost is about 5% nitrogen as is the GH mixed. However the Techna Flora is only about 1% without the boost added.

Yes, the plants show no sign of slowing up or anything.

Problem with Grow and Bloom is neither has much nitrogen, pretty useless for vegetative stage. I could get a pint of GH grow and use it in replacement of the boost and finish off the 'kit', waste not want not.

Of course 90% of the 'kit' is basically snake oil so once I use up the actual fertilizer I will toss the rest.

Or go to any local green house horticulture shop anf pick up a small box of calcium nitrate. For a 150 ppm concentration of calcium at 100 x dilution factor it would only take 10.5 ounces of calcium nitrate to make a 1 gallon jug. That would be enough for the needed nitrogen boost for 100 gallons of nutrient mix as it would also supply 123 ppm of nitrate. They also added some urea to get the nitrogena little higher but I would not recomend thai as urea is a slow release nirogen that accumaltates n in the nutrient solution and there for causes pretty dramatic daily declines in pH especially during budding. If you wanted to boost the nitrogen up a little bit more to the standard 150 ppm it would only take adding 2.8 ounces of potassium nitrate fertilizer. This is also readily available in one pound boxes at greenhouse horticulture type stores. I haven't checked but it is possibly available in graden centers like Fred Meyers HD and such. Both the fertilizers are very common fertilizers. You could definitely buy the two 1 pound boxes of fertilizer for less than a gallon of the retail mixed nutrient. Even Iron III Nitrate is sold at the garden centers if you want to go whole hog. It would take 3 grams per liter or 11 grams per gallon of 100x concentrate. As this is less than 1/2 ounce the additional nitrate it adds will be fairly small.

I decided to go out and just buy a quart of GH grow. I bit the bullet and paid 11$ for it. This time I got the actual GH brand rather than the cheap GH flora clone that I have gotten from a local hydro shop for years. The owner of a local shop duplicates the formula made by GH and sells it for 20$ a gallon (he sold it for 15$ a gallon up until very recently.)

I will not buy from his store any longer, however, because the last time I stopped by there were strange, 'cool looking,' people working there who had no interest in selling me products. It has been just the owner and his employee working there since the mid 80s, and he runs it out of his house. These strangers sole cause seemed to revolve around my admitting that I grew weed so that I could, 'sell it to them for their dispensary.' One of the people had that Wilfred Brimley, walrus mustachioed, look that so many cops favor. The whole situation smelled to high heaven of a police sting. I suspect that the owner got popped for growing (I know he was in dire straits financially, spends too much money on traveling and hookers while shunning his tax obligations) and is letting the cops use his store to sting people. Anyway, I angrily informed them that, yes I was a legal medical grower, and no I do not sell pot. Upon hearing this they became almost apologetic and I took the fertilizer I bought and left. I will not be going back. I morn my loss of cheap fertilizer source, but the thought of cops entrapping legal medical growers pisses me off to no end. The store goes by 'Seattle Hydroponics' and 'Hydro-tech.' http://www.hydro-techn.com/ If you are in Washington state do NOT buy from that store and if you do, don't be stupid enough to agree to sell them anything.

Having said all of that, I have a quart of GH grow which I have mixed with the grow part of the BC nutrient kit at the same ratio I would use the B.C Boost. The plants have really responded well to this mix. Here is a comparison of the GH grow and the somewhat equivalent BC boost formulas:

B.C technaflora Boost

Guaranteed Analysis (3-0-2)
Total Nitrogen (N) ..... 3.0%
3.0% Nitrate Nitrogen (N)
Soluble Potash (K2O) ..... 2.0%
Calcium (Ca) ..... 3.21%
Iron (Fe) ..... 0.0409%

Ingredients: Calcium Nitrate, Potassium Nitrate, Iron DTPA

General Hydroponics FloraGro

FloraGro Guaranteed Analysis 2 - 1 - 6
Total Nitrogen (N)2.0%
0.25% Ammoniacal Nitrogen
1.75% Nitrate Nitrogen
Available Phosphate (P205)1.0%
Soluble Potash (K20) 6.0%
Magnesium (Mg)0.5%
0.5% Water Soluble Magnesium (Mg)

Derived from: Ammonium Nitrate, Magnesium Nitrate,
Potassium Nitrate, Magnesium Phosphate, PotassiumPhosphate, Potassium Carbonate, Potassium Sulfate,Magnesium Carbonate and Magnesium Sulfate

I am running my system currently at 800 PPM.
One thing that I have noticed mixing these two brands, my PH has been rock steady. When I used GH micro with the BC, my PH stayed at 5.7 for four straight days. After dumping nutes and using the BC with the GH grow, it rose a little then stayed at 5.7 for two days now. Just thought I would note that.

akfatman this question is for you, because the GH grow formula derives from so many more sources, is it superior to BC Boost for using with the grow and bloom parts of the BC fertilizers? Just curious.