What Is The Ideal Cannabis Feeding Schedule?

[0:06] What's up, you amazing growers? I'm back with an all-new episode of the "Homegrown Podcast," brought to us by Homegrown Cannabis Co., which you can browse top-notch cannabis seeds at www.homegrowncannabisco.com to start your cultivation journey today. If you don't know who I am or if this is your first time listening, be sure to follow along on whichever platform
 

[0:29] you're listening from so you never miss out on any of these episodes we release. I go by Chronic, and I'm from the Cannabis Chronicles on Instagram and YouTube, along with the host of this amazing podcast. In today's episode, we're going to break into what the ideal cannabis feeding schedule is for photoperiods and autoflowers, as this is one of the most frequently asked questions that we get.
 

[0:52] So be sure to sit back, grab your favorite cannabis, and pack a big bowl or light up the tastiest dab you have as we cruise into some cannabis content. Let's begin. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about what the ideal cannabis feeding schedule is for your cannabis plants. Now let me first say that you have not been tricked.
 

[1:13] There is no perfect feeding schedule or recipe for every strain out there. However, in this episode, we're going to break down how to judge and feed your cannabis strains with great success across the board. Just know each and every cultivator using various amendments and growing various strains will need to dial in their feeding schedule to perfect their actual feeding regimen for their specific girls.
 

[1:36] To start off, let's go by the rule of thumb which is the fact that most growers can get away using ratios of NPK, or nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium at a 3:1:1 ratio of nitrogen to phosphorus to potassium. Now, when you get more involved, you can begin to switch up blends towards flower and go more at a 2:2:3 ratio for some
 

[1:59] growers boosting flower nutrients very heavy into early flower. However, the 3:1:1 ratio is a good quality ratio to stick with through all stages that won't generally burn your plants or ruin your crops most of the time. Now, I say most of the time because variables in specific nutrients can be quite strong depending on the type of nutrients being used.
 

[2:22] This is why I also recommend using organic nutrients like Homegrown Cannabis Co.'s organic nutrient line, which has been by far the best line I've used, and I've used quite a bit. Whatever you end up going with, whether it's Homegrown's line or another line though, just make sure you're not overfeeding. Now you're probably sitting there listening like, "Well, yeah.
 

[2:43] That's why I'm here listening to you tell me how to feed my plants." Well, unfortunately the answer isn't really simple for photoperiods or autoflowers. What I recommend is feeding half of what's recommended if your plants are older than one month of age, and if they're under that age, generally you should only be feeding one quarter of what's recommended to
 

[3:07] really nothing. Now you can also just give a small amount of unsulfured blackstrap molasses for the first month too at one teaspoon per gallon. However, Homegrown Cannabis Co. created a very light kelp extract that works wonderful for germinating seedlings. This is called Germ Genie, and you can grab any of their products that I mention at www.homegrown.supplies. Now
 

[3:32] let's talk about when to begin feeding your seedlings. If you decide to snag Germ Genie, you can really use it right off the gate using a very small amount to soak the soil the first feeding which, with seedlings, I only give them water every 7 to 10 days, so if you feed the first time, they should be good for two or so weeks.
 

[3:54] Now, with the first two weeks, I really don't do anything if I don't have Germ Genie. If you're using molasses or other nutrients, I would just wait until week 3 or later to begin a light feeding, as sometimes those forms of sugars and other brands of nutrients can really burn your seedlings at such a young age. Molasses has a ton of nutrients aside from just being a simple sugar,
 

[4:16] which you wouldn't want to accidentally overfeed a seedling as they aren't as hardy as a vegging or flowering plant. Now with that being said, though, overfeeding a flowering plant is just as detrimental as overfeeding a seedling in my opinion. It can cost the crop severe weight potential or resin production. So the best way to gauge when your plant needs to eat is to do what Kyle Kushman
 

[4:37] and I discussed on the podcast where I sit down and ask him a whole bunch of questions about growing with Nate Hammer as well. What we talked about was feeding your plants during the veg cycle slightly heavier than normal until they get light tip burn, known as greenhouse burn. Once you have that tip burn, you begin flushing with
 

[4:55] water and a sugar or carb if you're using organics to keep feeding the microbial life, but allow the nutrients to not burn the plant. This way you're using your nutrients to the max. You can dial in your perfect feeding for that plant, and you can begin letting the plant now tell you when it's hungry. Now we're going to take a short break with @natehammer420 from
 

[5:15] Instagram to bring us the latest updates with Homegrown Cannabis Co. Be sure to stay tuned, pack another big bowl, or ready another dab for when we come back from this amazing break. When Isaac Newton coined the phrase, "Standing on the shoulders of giants," he was talking about the amazing minds that came before him. It's a phrase that embodies the Homegrown collaboration with Steve DeAngelo,
 

[5:39] Kyle Kushman, Nikki Lastreto, and Swami Chaitanya. They are your giants. These legends are sharing more than just their vast amounts of knowledge. However, they also have a range of homegrown seeds we have lovingly christened Cultivars with Character. Each seed is a personal favorite, especially chosen pheno selected for resilience, reliability, and ease of growth. Basically, they're more forgiving phenotypes of classic, time-honored cultivars
 

[6:04] with all of the quality. My advice? Choose their seeds, stand on their shoulders, and aim high. It's exactly what they're here for. Head over to homegrowncannabisco.com for more details. And we're back from that amazing break with @natehammer420 from Instagram. Definitely check out his page where he posts some seriously cool behind-the-scenes content with Homegrown Cannabis Co. Now, as I was saying prior to the awesome break, plants really will tell
 

[6:36] you everything if you watch them and listen to what they show you. When a plant's tips begin to burn or get chlorotic spotting on the edges, it's a good sign something is going on with your feeding, whether it's pH imbalance, overfeeding, or a toxicity of one particular nutrient. Your plant is letting you know what's going on. Now, if it begins at the leaf tip and starts to slowly decay towards the center of
 

[6:59] the leaf, that's a good sign you're overfeeding completely. So this is where you would want to notice those leaf tips early on and begin flushing your plants instead, so you can begin a fall fade to a lime green tone instead of all that burning or necrotic leaf damage. That lime green tone or almost yellow color will let you know
 

[7:19] when your plants are actually hungry again, and you can begin feeding slowly to dial in the perfect dose for that strain. Each and every single cannabis plant will be completely different with feeding, and autoflowering cannabis strains will be much more sensitive to nutrients than any other strains. Also, the 3:1:1 ratio for NPK may not always work, especially if you're a coco
 

[7:41] grower and you need more PK at the start if the coco is holding on to it. This can cause growers to need to feed more PK early on, but less later on during the grow. So variables can change how much you are feeding as an individual grower to your plant. How often and which blends you're using really make a difference,
 

[8:01] as really, I can't give a perfect ratio for each of you unless you are growing the same strains as myself, using the same exact nutrients, grow medium, and you have the exact same environmental factors, which environmental factors have a massive role to play in how often you may need to water or feed your plants. Along with that, growing organics or
 

[8:24] par-synthetic or solvent-based blends will make a difference as well, as each one will vary when you feed and how often. Synthetic or solvent-based blends don't need to be fed as often and have specific times when to feed specific ratios, as some are chemical based and mixing some parts at the wrong time can kill your plants or cause a severe reaction.
 

[8:45] This is why I always recommend growing in organics. Now, there are veganic growing methods which, veganic acts like organics, however, it's all vegan based, which if you live a vegan lifestyle, nothing against you, and that's your thing, and I totally get it. You're living that lifestyle that you set. However, for myself and plants, they just aren't vegan, so I like
 

[9:05] to feed organics, which is exactly what you would find in nature. Plants consume various nutrients from plants to animals and even minerals. The microbial life in the soil will eat what's decaying or available around it, like bone or blood that may have been soaked in the soil, and many other nutrients which they will then leave excrement behind for the
 

[9:23] plant roots to utilize for food. These various bone meals, blood meals, or fish meals will give massive boost in a multitude of macro and micronutrients, along with giving more access to various terpene profiles to enrich the cannabis. Fish excrement, bone meals, blood meals, simple sugars, carbohydrates, and salts or minerals found in nature are what give cannabis and many other plants their specific smells, taste, colors, and
 

[9:48] profiles amongst genetics determining many factors in that as well. The reason I mention this is because with growing organics, you're feeding microbial life, and so each and every feeding, you want to be giving some form of simple sugar or carbohydrate to keep the microbial life from starving, as traditionally flushing the soil is usually done with plain water pH-ed
 

[10:07] properly. Doing this in an organic-based environment can starve your microbial life, which can be severely detrimental to how fast your plants will actually have access to organic nutrients. Organic nutrients work off slow release most of the time, and even fast release formulas aren't really necessarily fast release in a sense. It still takes time for the microbial life to break down the
 

[10:26] nutrients given to them to make them accessible. Whereas solvent or par-synthetic blends are instantly accessible blends as they are chemically formulated to be the specific nutrients found in microbial excrement. They're just derived by chemicals and not nature. This means you don't need to feed every time with those types of blends, since there is no microbial life to really worry about.
 

[10:46] So no matter what, at the end of the day, I honestly can't tell you the ideal feeding schedule for your cannabis plants. I can give you my suggestions, my experiences, my advice, and some knowledge on cannabis and how it feeds with various types of blends. However, at the end of the day, you will have to dial in your cannabis feeding with each strain you're
 

[11:08] growing. Now, I will say a good rule of thumb is to feed every other time. Meaning if you fed the 1st of the month, on the 7th through the 10th, you'll give only water, and if you're in organics, you can do water with a sugar or a carb. Then you wouldn't want to feed an actual feeding again until the 17th through the 20th of that month.
 

[11:28] This is a staggered feeding schedule. Using that plus the quarter dose of what's recommended rule will help prevent you from burning even the most sensitive of autoflowers. Now to close off this episode, I'll be going over a question I get asked a lot within the realm of cannabis feeding, and that is how a grower knows when to begin feeding flower nutrients.
 

[11:49] For autoflowers, it's a bit different than photoperiods, as photoperiods have to be flipped to 12/12 to begin to flower, so you kind of know when they're going to flower. What I do with autos is this I like to grow in a nice blend of soil, which I use Roots Organic 7-0-7 blend, which works really well for my grows. I then feed Homegrown Cannabis Co.'s
 

[12:09] organic nutrient line the entire grow up until the point I see pistils forming. I use the various stages they provide within their nutrient line at the preferred times, using stage one and stage two the majority of the vegging stages. Once I see pistils form on my autoflowers, that's when I begin to flush with water and molasses until I get a fall fade forming, or that light
 

[12:32] green to lime green tone. Once that lime green tone sets in, that's when I go ahead and feed my autoflowers a heavier PK feeding or swap over to flower time nutrients. Homegrown Cannabis Co.'s organic nutrient line has two stage three flower time formulas. One is specifically for the first two weeks when you flip to flower, or as a boost of PK during flower. It's a very
 

[12:58] heavy PK ratio of zero nitrogen to 13 phosphorus and 17 potassium, which works wonderful for that transition phase. This allows the plant to really know, okay, it's time to flower. This helps with packing those leaves full of PK, which will come into play later on when the plant is utilizing all of its storage for bud development. Now, for photoperiods, all you need to do is swap
 

[13:21] to a heavier PK feed or gradually increase PK the week prior to 12-12 swap, reaching your target PK ratio by the seventh day of the flower swap. This works best for photos to help transition them over a two-week period. Now, if you do have that greenhouse burn prior, with a photoperiod, I would flush it slightly prior to that one week before
 

[13:44] 12-12, so that you don't burn your plants feeding the excess PK over the next two weeks. Once in flower, feed your flower time nutrients, and voila, you're all set. For anyone listening using synthetic or solvent-based blends, just follow your feeding charts of your blends. They will tell you when to feed, how much to feed, and when to change to
 

[14:05] flower nutrients. Or if your plant's flowering, what to feed them, or how much of it to feed them. Now, there really isn't much more I can tell you, aside from listing off a dozen nutrients I've talked about before that could help you in prior episodes, which if you want to listen to more episodes on cultivating cannabis, be sure to follow along on whichever platform you're tuning in from
 

[14:26] and browse the podcast. If you'd like to check out any of the nutrients mentioned from Homegrown Cannabis Co. in today's episode, be sure to head over to www.homegrown.supplies. I highly recommend their blends. They really are quite phenomenal. If you want to grow your own medicine at home, you need your very own top-notch seeds. And look no further, and head over to
 

[14:48] www.homegrowncannabisco.com to find your top-notch strains or strain that fits your needs. If you'd like to chat with me or join a forum of over 4,000 cultivators, be sure to check out www.homegrowncannabisco.community and tag @kronic, that's K-R-O-N-I-C, and ask me a question or simply have a chat. Homegrown Cannabis Co. has created a very simplistic way to document your grows and
 

[15:14] keep track of your garden, which you can sign up for free at www.homegrowndiary.com and browse countless other cultivators' gardens, ask questions, and see what they're using for their grows. I am Kronic from the Cannabis Chronicles on Instagram and YouTube, and I'll be back with a brand new episode of the Homegrown podcast brought to us by Homegrown Cannabis Co. every single Wednesday.
 

[15:37] Be sure to follow along on whichever platform you're listening from, so you never miss out on this amazing cannabis content. I hope you all have an amazing day. Much love, happy growing, and peace. If you enjoyed this video and want to learn more about growing your own cannabis at home, hit that like button, subscribe, and turn those notifications
 

[16:02] on to keep up to date with the amazing marijuana content Homegrown Cannabis Co. has to offer. See you next time.