Feed the soil, and let it feed your plants.

Mix each dose with an equal part of vermicompost or good compost, then scatter it over the soil surface and water it in. It helps the feed break down and feeds the soil biology.

Plain water, until harvest.

Stop feeding after Bloom week 4. The plant draws on what is already in the soil for the final four weeks of ripening. Plain water only: no top-dress, no extras.

Optional, recommended in coco coir heavy mixes.

All Purpose 4·4·4 and Bloom 2·8·4 already carry calcium and magnesium. If you grow in a coco coir heavy mix, add Cal-Mag at 10% of each feed. It is also worth considering where watering is mostly rainwater or soft tap water, which carry little calcium or magnesium of their own.

Same feed, a few adjustments.

Coir varies from batch to batch, most of all in its potassium and chloride, and in calcium and sodium too.³ Whatever the mix, include 10–20% compost or vermicompost; we do not recommend coco coir on its own. In a coco coir heavy mix, use the full 10 ml per litre soil mix, add Cal-Mag at 10% of each feed, and add Mineral Mix at 10 ml per litre. Feed rates stay the same. In our experience coir pots dry out faster, and fresh coir mixes have been measured holding less plant-available water than peat,⁴ so you may prefer to split each feed into two half-doses a week apart.

3. Evans, Konduru & Stamps (1996). 4. Nelson, Oh & Cassel (2004).

A little more nitrogen, into flower.

Add Nitrogen 13-0-0 at 0.9 g per litre of soil, once, at Veg week 4, and feed at 3 g per litre throughout. It takes about a week to release, so it arrives as flowering begins, and roughly doubles the nitrogen available through the bloom weeks. In controlled trials, flowering plants given 30–80 mg/L nitrogen yielded less than those given 160–320 mg/L,¹ and 160 mg/L was the optimum during growth.² The trade-off: the same trials found the leanest feeding gave the highest concentration of aroma compounds. Those trials fed through drip irrigation, so this dose is matched to the step up they found, not converted from their figures.

1. Saloner & Bernstein (2021). 2. Saloner & Bernstein (2020).

A mineral base for the soil.

Mineral Mix goes into the potting soil at 10 ml per litre, with a light top-dress of 1–2 ml per litre once in the season. Measured by volume: one tablespoon is 15 ml. It also comes with both feeds in the All Purpose, Bloom & Mineral Mix Trio.