One of the good things about my part at uk420, is I get offers of products to test and evaluate, if I’m interested, I take them, but only on the bases that I can say exactly what I find with no holds barred.

For this topic I am trying, two new to me organic fertilisers, a pre release soil/compost inoculant and finally a prototype mini Grostar quad parabolic reflector.

For many years most of the staff at uk420 have recommended BioBizz as the best buy organic liquid fertiliser, it produces good results time after time and sweet tasting smoke. Hundreds of you, our members have reaffirmed our conclusions. I have recently been offered two relative newcomers to the organic fertiliser market to try/test.

They are GHE’s biosevia Organic Grow and Bloom and B.A.C. Organic Grow and Bloom. I thought it was time to see how well these products compare to the BioBizz products really that the main purpose of this topic.

The fertilisers:- [attachmentid=134329]

I will be using a small 4 ft x 4 ft grow area with a mix of known clones, 36 in all, I know exactly how they grow and perform with Biobizz even so I will feed a third [12] with each fertiliser. Lighting is from a 600w Ventronic ballast, for veg a 600w sunmaster halide, early flower 600w sunmaster hps final 3 or 4 weeks back to the halide.

Compost is Westlands hanging basket and container + JI with a little rock dust mixed in and a new inoculant I’m trying from RootMagic, I already tried one grow with this inoculant and it performed very well for me. No its not on the market yet but I’m reliably informed it will be soon.

A quick run through of potting into final containers.

Plants in 1.1 litre pots ready to go into final Pots:-

A healthy root ball:-

A good dust of inoculant in the planting hole:-
Below is a pic of the prototype mini Grostar quad parabolic reflector, though mini is a bit of a misnomer as at 28 inches square its hardly small, You can see the Grostar and the plants below it two days after going into their final 6.5 litre pots.
[attachmentid=134331]

Finally up to date a pic, 3 days after transplanting into final pots showing these plants have no transplant shock, in fact a couple are already showing roots at the drainage holes. From taking the cuttings to now they have only had water, no feeds suppliments, just tap water as it comes.

[attachmentid=134332]

As usual,
great stuff OT1
especially looking forward to hearing how the 'RootMagic' goes,
Thanks,

redgrotto

Ho OT1

Nice to see your detailed as always, I'm interested in one of thos parabolic reflectors so interested to see how your results turn out.

Nav

<pulls up a pew>


Shall watch this with intrest!

I've been thinking about treating myself to a couple of the bigger Grostar shades in a month or 2
so i'll be watchin with interest OT. Any initial impressions?

Ok a few facts and figures, it is often said fertilisers cost a lot, I’m not sure about that so I decided to do a few sums

BioBizz bloom 1Ltr costs about £9 at the maximum recommended use of 4ml per litre, it makes 250 litres of rtu feed at 3.6p per litre.

Bio Sevia Bloom 1Ltr costs about £13.99p at the maximum recommended use of 2 ml per litre, it makes 500 litres of rtu feed at 2.8p a litre

B.A.C. Organic Grow 1Ltr £14.45p, at the maximum recommended use of 3ml per litre, it makes 333 litres of rtu feed at 4.34p a litre

Taking them against chase organic tomato feed at £7.95p a litre, at the maximum recommended use of 6.7ml per litre, it make 150 litres of rtu feed at 5.3p a litre.

That make the comparable garden centre organic liquid feed nearly twice as dear as the cheapest and still costs more than dearest cannabis organic feeds I'm testing.

I tend to use the cannabis fertilisers at a lower rate than the maximum recommended by the manufacturers with what I consider great results, so they go a lot further for me.

Ok comments on the mini Grostar, first its not on the market yet, as I said its a prototype, not sure when it will be for sale, I’ll ask if you like.

This is the first time I’ve used it from vegging cuttings for a full grow cycle, I have used it over the last 4 weeks of flowering and for vegging cutting to move on.

Impressions; It does have slightly brighter pools of light in places, the corners as an instants, not enough to cause hot spots or any damage, it has the best spread of light of any reflector I have used to date. I’ll try and show what I mean with a pic when I go to hps, the camera does not show what the eyes can see with a mh lamp.

It gave me the best results from the plants in the corners of the room to date. Somehow corner plants always seem to come out below average.

I want to see how it does with a full grow, I won’t really be able to answer fully on this until late June.

ill be following this one closely, am also intereseted to see how your 600w sunmaster digi ballast performs OT1 compared to a standard ballast, should be interesting to see how this turns out because your using less than the 50w per square foot recommended lighting

good work fella

monty

Them shades look wickid ot1 Don't look very carrying into premises tho Do you know if the manufacturer may be making fold down ones or is it hard to do due to the metals used??

honoured to see you at work, ot1. Im sure many of us will be following closely!

ill be pulling up a chair for this one if thats ok ot1

Hi ot1 , cheers for sharing this mate . just wondering if the new reflector your testing has the lamp vertical ?

Very Intresting Ot1 as always!

Will be looking in with great intrest!

Just wish you would write more for us as your topics are so informative! I think i have read all your topics on this board!

OT1 ROCKS! (-_-)

Tmontana the 50w per square foot recommended for lighting is IMHO totally wrong as a blanket figure or even as a rough guide. The amount of light you get from a 250w hid at 50w per sq ft is way less than the light per sq ft from a 400w and a 400w produces a lot less than a 600w lamp at 50w per sq ft.

I do know how the plants being used perform with the same 600w lamps useing a proultra at 50w per sq ft, so far the Grostar is looking on par or slightly ahead with only 37.5w a sq ft.

Webby the whole thing is its formed from one sheet, it is bulky but it was wrapped in black plastic, it did not look suss taking it from the car to the house.

johnyblaze yep its vertical.

pushprocess, I would love to write more, but to be honest I just don’t have the time.

Hazy biosevia make mineral salt hydro fertilisers as well.

Final note just to say the final pots were rooted out last night so it took less than 5 days so I have switched to 12/12 and hps.

interesting ot1 , always thought it d be more effecient to have the lamp hanging vertical , just couldn t find a good quality reflector . look forward to these becoming available .

Hazy sorry I was wrong, I was thinking of the BAC products, but saying that BioBizz also say the same thing so do, Earth Juice.

To be quite honest hydroponic growing goes against all organic principles and its banned by all the uk certification bodies and so it should be.

Hi OT1,
A great thread that i will watch with interest.

Do you find the sunmaster HPS better than the NAV T SUPER? Also do you let the water stand before watering or is it straight out of the tap?

Many thanks ,
Murran

Hi OT1, will be watching this one with interest looking forward to your crazy sativa shenannginans

B

Hello murran, yes I water straight from the tap, we have both chlorine and chloramine in our supply, as far as I can see it has absolutely no detrimental effect on the plants. Of course I use a mix of hot and cold as mains water in mid winter in town is usually under forty f, in the country its often just a few degrees above freezing. To plants this is like you being dropped naked in the arctic ocean then slowly warmed up, and repeated every few days. I run my water from a mixer at about 68 to 70f for watering both summer and winter only a compleat moron would do otherwise, try watering with just cold in the winter and all sorts of nutrient problems and deficiencies will appear.

Owd and Vrg who's growing skills I respect, rate the sunmaster hps highly, it has performed very well for me, I have not done a direct side by side comparison with a nav_t super, maybe thats another trial to do another time.

Edited to add, Blab I'm not intending to do a full pic grow diary, just record how the plants do with the different nutrients and maybe give a smoke report and see what a few friends into connoisseur puff think blind testing three samples.

Thanks for the Reply Ot1
Ive always used NAV T SUPER'S but maybe i'll give the sunmaster a go.
Murran

Hmm just been looking at the camera output in ps of the light levels from the sunmaster, its identical with and without a uv lens filter.

The camers white balance set to daylight in sun.

So to comment the light output has a peak at the blue green spectrum, there is virtually no blue, there is no uv plenty of yellow orange and red. It for sure doesn't match ventures chart.

The tallest plant is 28 inches they are going for it.

[attachmentid=135080]

Hiya Ot1, fascinating as ever.

I'm looking forward to your analysis of the grostar reflector, I've always been under the impression that vertical parabolics wern't particularly effective in light diffusion, reflection and spread when compared to horizontally mounted bulbs in efficient horizontal parabolics like the adjustawing.

Regarding your testing the spectrum output of the Sunmaster bulb (which one do you use by the way) via your camera and looking at this in photoshop and it not matching the spectrum output of Sunmasters spectograph (I may be wrong about this) but would you not have to set the cameras white balance at the same kelvin temperature as the light source you were analysing to get the correct spectrum outputs?

Babygro I’ve always used horizontal lamps including a true horizontal parabolic about 20 years ago, it was a good reflector but to big and very awkward to use and adjust. Because I use sog I need maximum horizontal spread in every direction. I still have a couple of reflectors that only reflect on two plains, I tried the Adjust-a-Wing, its probable the worst reflector I have ever tried both for light distribution and for creating hot spots. The Pro Ultralite gives a much more even output in all directions. I can’t answer for the science behind the mini Grostar, but so far the plants seem to like it and the canopy is the most even I’ve seen so far. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, it could be like the man who jumped off the empire state building said half way down, “its all fine up to now”, I will really know how the mini Grostar performs when the plants have been cropped and are in the jar. The problem is it does make sense to me that horizontal should be best, Owd uses a different vertical parabolic reflector, he rates it as the best he has ever used, so does VRG. Its worth me giving this one a go, its the result that counts, thing is plants don’t read books, they respond to the enviroment you give them.

You can’t set the white balance on my cameras to a combined colour temperature, if you try to set the white balance under hps it cant shift the centre point far enough and everything looks blue.. Cameras are not spectrographs, mines an ancient coolpix 995, if it is set to balance white, out of direct sunlight on a clear day, its pretty much in the centre of its limits and its pretty flat from uv to red. Take a picture under another mixed spectrum and you get a shot of all the colours it receives, seeing the sensor only responds to red, green and blue photons and blends of them, its not very accurate but gives a fair indication. If there are no blue light peaks it won,t record them, if there are any it will.

I take a lot of macro shots of flowers, one of the things about this camera is is its very sensitive to the uv spectrum, even on light cloud cover days you need uv and polarising filters if you don’t want the nectar guides to show.

Hiya Ot1, thanks for your reply.

Well I'm certainly interested in hearing your analysis on the mini grostar as I'm in the market for an efficient reflector because for my next grow I think I'm going to try the 250w Lumatek digital ballast. My main reservation with going with the 250w is the relatively limited choice of HPS bulbs available for it.

I also agree with you in that vertical parabolics really shouldn't be as efficient as horizontal reflectors in terms of light intensity. Their strength certainly seems to be the even light distribution they produce but at the price of reduced light intensity. It stands to reason that a horizontally mounted bulb has 50% of it's surface area to distribute light directly downwards and 50% that is reflected back from the reflector, as you know reflected light is far less intense than direct light. A vertically mounted bulb only has a tiny surface area to distribute light downwards and the rest is effectively reflected light - so it cannot produce as much light intensity as a horizontally mounted bulb.

As with most things I guess it comes down to which compromise suits your growing situation the best - a high wattage 600/1000w bulb in an efficient vertical parabolic over a wider area for even light distribution or a smaller 250/400w bulb in an efficient horizontal reflector in a smaller more concentrated area where light spread is less important than light intensity.

Regarding the camera white balance, I hear what you're saying. I have a Canon D30 digital which does have an adjustable white balance so I may experiment a little with different white balances and taking a look at them in ps - thanks for the heads up on that, I'd never thought of using a camera to look at spectrum distribution.

hi ot,been following your growing methods for a while now with great results cheers.
i,ve been pondring on a couple of thoughts as to the changes you,ve made to your set up and supplies etc.
1,do you still use your own soil mix.
2,do you still use 60/40 hps/mh.
3,are the new digi ballasts up to scratch now.
i know your a busy man but if you get time then thanks
i was surpised to here how bad the adjust a shade was,i use one and it works great for me.
to be honest i bought it because the large reflector can hold 2 lamps so i could get the benefit of 60/40 hps/mh,in saying that it works great aswell and can be turned easily every light cycle.
i know im just a novice,just wanted to share my thoughts.....cheers jaffaman

ot any info on the new products you,ve been testing,just curious...peace jaffaman.

Any updates for us OT!!

Looking great by the way!

Hi OT1,
I`d be very interested to know when the mini Sunmaster reflectors will be available if you could possibly find out,I was gutted when I realised my space wasn`t wide enough for them at 33".
I`m upgrading to a couple of 600w digital ballasts shortly and they would compliment them a treat .

Many thanks,
Burns

got my eyes on that mini reflector aswell , looking forward to a review once the grows been done OT ,
P.S cheers for everything you do here , first grow is underway with a shed load of help from you and this site !!

Hello OT - I don't believe we have 'met' as it were...

I got a free sample of biosevia at the expo and decided to rear my seedlings/potential mothers on it (in WL MP+JI) - I wondered how things were going with the evaluation? Any significant difference in growth?

Cheers

come on ot give us something to chew on(you know we,re all dying for it).
i appreciacte that your a busy man but you got to remember your the guru around here that we all want to here from and respect.
i know it might not sound like disrespectful but in my eyes its actually a complement to you.
peace jaffaman.

I'm chopping right now, I'll report back in about 3 or 4 weeks when its dry, see how much each produced and most important of all had time to smoke test them.

None of the fertilisers have caused any problems, all are very healthy, loaded with trichomes and look to have done well, at this point it looks like Biobizz may still just have it on yield, but you can’t tell until its totally dry.

thanks ot will keep i wee eye out for the info.
jaffaman

Ok some results on the fertilisers, The reason for the trial was to see how two new organic fertilisers compared to the old standard BioBizz grow and bloom.

As a reminder there were 36 plants total all grown in Westlands hanging basket + JI all under one light using identical clones, they were divided into 3 lots of 12 plants the BioBizz fed as always and the two new fertilisers fed to the levels recommended by the maker.

First yield:-
The biggest yielder was BioBizz so taking that as 100% how did the B.A.C and Bio Sevia do:-

The 12 B.A.C plants only produced 55.9% of the weight of the BioBizz plants, I think the flowering npk ratio is not good.

The 12 Bio Sevia plants produced 95.7% of the weight of the BB pants so pretty close as far as yield.

General comments on the product from my observations, the B.A.C produced the densest most crystaly bud, the scent a little more fruity than normal, the BioBizz buds were just as they always are and the density close behind the B.A.C buds, The Bio Sevia buds were definitely a little more airy than normal and slightly lighter in colour, the aroma was much more complex than normal with flowery and fruity overtones, that sort of stimulated you and made you want to smoke it.

Smoke report:- blind 1,2,3 samples were given out.
Not every one has reported back on this yet but, some preliminary results, so far the Bio Sevia was the favourite for smell, taste and smoothest smoke the B.A.C came second and the BioBizz came bottom, one tester even said they thought the BioBizz bud had a slight chemical twang. 3 smokers did not notice any difference between the samples smell or taste wise, [interestingly 2 smoke with tobacco]! Strength wise, 3 thought the B.A.C stronger, 3 the Bio Sevia and 2 the BioBizz. The most liked overall was the Bio Sevia bud.

As a final comment if you use a very fine rose Bio Sevia bloom had a sediment that kept blocking the rose, it makes it a pain in the arse to use, I ended up changing to a courser rose.

As a comment on the mini Grostar, factoring out the fertilisers used, the central room yields were pretty much on parr with normal, but I always find the yields on the periphery and especially the corners are down on the centre. The Miro mini I was given to test, increased the yield of the periphery and corner plants against those produced by a Pro Ultralite by just over 10%.

I think the reason the Grostar works so well is the Miro its made from working with its form to distribute the light, that requires the high mirror like reflectivity of Miro. I have looked at the dimpled mini grostar, personally I don’t think they could get near what the miro model does.

So my personal advise is, if you want a mini Grostar go for a Miro model, so be it if it costs more, its the best shade I’ve tested to date.

many thanks OT1 - very useful results there... looks like I am safe with Biosevia

Very interesting, cheers OT1.

Hi OT - most interesting as ever

Smell/taste is very important to me, did you find the difference between BB/Bio sevia pronounced enough to turn you from the trust worthy BB brand, or would you be inclined to stick to the 'if it ain't broke....' mentality?

B

Hi OT.
So what are your thoughts so far?
Are you thinkin on changing nutes, and are you gona start using the new reflectors?
Or are you happy with the way you are grwoing already.
Philly.

B, Enough to shell out some hard earned and buy 5 litres of bloom to test it more fully. All of the fertilisers produced a good smoke that absolutely no one would turn their nose up at, we are mostly talking about connoisseur puffers who smoke neat here, talk about fussy . I have to say I was surprised that there were noticeable differences.

Try a small bottle and see what you think, personally I think its a viable alternative to BioBizz, only you know what you like at the end of the day, you can’t just take my word..

Pros; I like the npk ratio of the Bio Sevia bloom, the plants liked it as well, its the first organic bloom fertiliser that I think needs nothing else during flowering. Cons; I don’t like the sediment.

I have enough of the B.A.C. left to play a little more as well, the plants were very healthy to the end but just did not flower like they should! I’ll see if I can fine tune things a little rather than than follow their recommendations.

Philly I am useing the new mini grostar in the current compost trial, as for nutrients see my post above to blab.

Interesting stuff mate - looking forward to giving the Bio Sevia a whirl, sometime in the future.

the interesting thing with BioSevia is it can be used for hydro too with a mineral additive

would like to see how it does in hydro

excelent read, thanks m8

Nice findings ot

I may have to give the bio sevia a blast then As you say, diff tastes for diff peeps

Cheers OT

I have no probs with BB nutes atm, but it's good to know there is a viable alternative to fall back on - it'll be good to hear your thoughts after more testing

B

thanks for the info ot good to have a professional veiw on the new products.
peace jaffaman.

This is for mainly for jaffaman, but others may be interested.

1, No I don’t still use my own compost mix, as I got older the work lifting and mixing has became to much, my mind is willing but my body is not so good. I would still prefer to, for a couple of years a friend did it for me, its a lot to ask and he would forget the odd ingredient. As a comment some of the newer compost are pretty good and I think they will improve further.

2, I tend to change the lamps as I outlined above, it suites what I have at the moment. I still think a mix all the time is better, but I would make changes ie start with 40/60 hps/mh, then 60/40 then back to 40/60 for the last few weeks.

3, To be honest no, I think it is still emerging technology, they are the best by a long way as far as driving hid lamps and the light they produce, the radio interference is sorted, but reliability is still a problem. I went up one day the red light was on, the lamp was fine, it was the ballast that had failed. Ok I have spare ballasts, so could replace immediately while the digital unit was replaced. Its a faf doing that in the middle of a sog grow, also I don't look every day, at some points I may only look every 4 to 7 days. Ok there is a no quibble 3 year new for old on failed Ventronic ballasts. I asked the shopkeeper at the time and he said mine was the only one to fail on the latest version, they have sold lots and I’m sure there may have been others since. The thing is venture are a main stream manufacturer, to make profit, the things they sell have to be reliable, so the way I see it any glitches will rapidly be sorted out. I like the Ventronic enough to have dug deep bought some more to replace the rest of my coil and core ballasts, if that means anything.

As to your Q about the sunmaster hps, I don’t think there is a lot between it and the Nav-t-supers but without doing a direct side by side in the same room I can’t really tell to be truthful.

As a final comment using the adjust a shade as you are is a good idea with two lamps, its main problems are its size and that it reflects mainly in two directions off set to one side, so its light distribution over 360 is very uneven. With your set up its much more balanced, a quarter turn every day for 4 days then back would distribute the spectrums very nicely, its a lot of faff is all.

I hope this helps, Ot1

cheers ot thanks for the info
peace jaffaman

hey ot1 just thought i would show you the small adjustment i,ve made after a wee tip from your good self.
after a wee bit of thought i came up with this for the lights to be turned a quarter and i must say it does the job a treat,
thanks again ot1.
peace jaffaman.

forgot to say ot,i need to get some more halides for the flower room,i use the 400w venture whitelux 4000k coolwhite.
last night i found a web site that sells 400w whitelux but rated at 5200k daylight.
which one do you think would be better.
paece jaffaman.

5200k every time, glad things are working out for you.