General Hydroponics FloraGro, 2.5-Gallon

Quality product, use this as part to the 3-part system. Consistent product. Purchased this company's product multiple times.

The Flora series allows simple adjustment of nutrients to match the life stage of the plant. Everyone will need to purchase FloraMicro, FloraGro and FloraBloom to get started, but then separate bottles as needed. It seems costly to spend about forty dollars on a set of nutrients, but it works out fine over time, especially when the growing situation doesn't require large amounts of liquid. A typical batch has between two and three tablespoons (30-45ml) when plants are in their final stages, but less when plants are young. Most plants require a feeding or nutrient change about every ten to fourteen days. Our tap water, luckily, is between 6.8 and 7.0, which is good, so we don't do anything to it except add nutrients. It's a good idea to test the water, but don't obsess over it after that. A lot of the testing equipment I got was only useful the first little while of growing. Soon, the plants started "talking" in their way. Most vegetables are not very picky. For hydroponic use, recommended dilutions on the bottle work fine as the only addition to water after any pH adjustments. There is no pH buffering in these nutrients, so they are not quite like the single component Miracle food that comes with AeroGardens. Pak Choi, mustard spinach and early bush beans all grow fine in FloraGrow, with good yields and deep green foliage. We use FloraGro successfully to grow vegetables in do-it-yourself hydroponic systems. So far, we've tried deep water culture with an air pump, recirculating deep water culture, ebb-and-flow, nutrient film and Kratky type setups. For economy of nutrients and general flexibility, ebb and flow is a favorite. Floragro really stands out from many other nutrient systems because it does not settle out of the solution easily. Settling of nutrients is not an issue for recirculating or ebb-and-flow systems, but it is an issue for deep water culture, especially those using the Kratky method. The big surprise with FloraGro is how it well works with container gardening. We have excellent results growing bush type zucchini in a five gallon bucket filled a conventional soil mixture. We feed the zucchini by watering it with the same concentration of nutrient as it would get in a hydroponic setup, but allow the bucket to drain at the bottom through holes in the sides. A fruit-bearing bush zucchini in warm weather uses about a half-gallon of water per day, sometimes more. Zucchini are heavy feeders that love water. Growing them in a bucket keeps ventilation high under the leaves -- so far we have no white mold growing this way. Other plants in our soil-based large container gardens were suffering a bit from weak nutrients in spite of starting them in a good compost / sand / topsoil mix. Adding some FloraGro mix really perked them up without burning. Miracle would be less flexible but cost less too. As much as we like the FloraGro, we use the powdered General Hydroponics MaxiGro for hydroponic jalapeño peppers in a deep water culture. For those, a tablespoon of the dried nutrient per gallon of water and four gallons of nutrient mix works great. I top up the reservoir with water as needed, but add a teaspoon of dry nutrient every two weeks. I stopped changing the water out after a while with no bad results. Leaves are deep green and plants have many beautiful small flowers. Growing leafy green veggies works well with FloraGro as well as MaxiGro. If we were simply growing crops that yield only greens, we might go with MaxiGro becuase it comes in a "Family Size" container. MaxiGro does not mix as easily as the FloraGro, but it does tend to stay mixed and so far, it seems to lower pH when added. All nutrients should have higher dilutions when starting out, or when first using in an AeroGarden (unless one is using the supplied nutrient with the AeroGarden). Most plants will recover from nutrient burn, but it is better to avoid that stress in the first place. Timing of nutrient availability means a lot to some plants. Beans for example, have a huge demand for nutrients just before they bloom. Anticipating that need with a bit more nutrient after the mature leaves set on the plant is much better than having the plant rob its lush foliage to produce blooms. It would be nice to save a bit of money, but overall, the flexibility of this nutrient system is really terrific.

I recently converted all of my plants to leca with hopes of ridding myself of the annoyances of soil in an apartment with no outdoor space. I quickly realized I had not done nearly enough research on how to do this transition properly. My pothos, a plant I assumed care of from my late mother, started fading quickly. I was in a panic. These nutrients were recommended by Knot Dude on YouTube, and I cannot be more grateful. My pothos perked back up in 2 days and has popped out new leaves over the last few weeks. My pink princess cuttings have new root growth and my rubber tree has released a new leaf. This was so easy to use in combination with a PH Control kit. I am so pleased and will be buying another set to send home with a friend who is receiving some of my plant cuttings in leca ~

A little more pricey than other fertilizer but as the old saying goes " you get what you pay for" this fertilizer is well worth the extra pennies it cost

Great Product would purchase again.

Works very well.

I had bought some hydroponics solutions from a local supplier but the lettuce plants never seemed to be doing well. I decided to buy the GH Flora Gro and Flora Micro and try it out. What a difference! The lettuce plants did remarkably better in one week! Leaves wider and longer, same with the cilantro and parsley. I have tomatoes in buckets and those seem to have been doing well with the solutions from the local supplier, but when I had to top up I added some Flora Gro and Micro instead, I will see if there is any change in the near future. One of the tomato plants has young tomatoes and it seems to me that they have grown bigger, faster than normal since I added the Flora, but it's early days yet. These are cherry tomatoes and they are already cherry sized and still green. UPDATE Wow! The Romaine lettuce leaves have widened considerably, hopefully it will form a head (it's been hot so not sure, but it's at least making an attempt to do so unlike before), the pak choy's leaves have also grown wider, as has one of the parsley plants, and the basil cutting has grown more and bigger leaves. The spring onions and garlic chives not doing as well, I suspect their pH and EC might be different. I've set up a grow light since I'm using a two tiered hydroponics kit with 54 planting holes that I bought on Amazon for the leafy vegetables and the bottom row doesn't seem to be getting as much light even though I'm growing outdoors under shade cloth. I checked the pH of the tomato plants nutrient solutions and the solutions were a little too acidic after the plant roots had absorbed nutrients, once I got that corrected I measured the EC and it was about right. I've ordered the Flora Bloom to use on the tomato plants, hopefully they will send out more blooms and give more yields. The cherry tomatoes are about an inch in diameter and haven't ripened yet. I've also bought some CaliMagic and will use that in the leafy and fruiting crops.

Get that general hydroponics three-step and I promise you you will not need nothing else forget all the hype and the bull crap simple and basic that's all you need