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Why Garden Centre Fertilizers Suck: The Truth Behind the Label · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
• 0:06
  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, the inventor of gold leaf,
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  as it's called in the US, or liquid gold in the UK.
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  And one of the questions we often get asked about our fertilisers.
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  Including gold leaf and many of the other fertilisers and biostimulants,
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  is why don't we sell them in garden centres, or nurseries as you call them in the US,
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  or the big box hardware stores like b&q home
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  depot and places like this well i'm going
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  to talk about why that's not really possible
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  and because of the the way that sector works and
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  the sort of products that go into them and why you should probably avoid buying
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  your fertilizers from garden centers nurseries and
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  hardware stores so the main
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  problem is that these products are formulated for
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  hitting a specific price point for the general public the
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  general public is a condition to buy on price and
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  as a result most store-bought fertilizers are
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  formulated using the cheapest possible ingredients that
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  includes low-grade urea based nitrogen
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  all of the potassium and
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  the magnesium and the chlorine is coming from chlorides
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  which are really good for getting into solution but magnesium
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  chloride calcium chloride potassium chloride
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  they're not good for plants they are the cheapest possible form of those nutrients
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  and they cause other issues the chlorine causes loads of issues for the plants
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  it's like the sort of stuff you'd put on grassland chlorine you wouldn't put
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  it on high value horticulture but they end up in these.
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  Home home fertilizers at garden centers
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  because they are just cheap and then filler filler
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  products to inflate the weight of the product so they may
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  meet the bare minimum requirement for npk on
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  the label but they're not necessarily the
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  best thing that your plants want and in fact the likes
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  of tomorite and miracle
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  grow can sell a bottle of fertilizer for
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  to a garden center for less than
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  it would cost a company like ourselves to fill
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  a bottle with water that's just the
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  unit economics that the economies of scale that
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  someone like miracle grow can do so they could fill their
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  bottle with these these cheaper fertilizer ingredients
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  whereas we couldn't even fill it with water and deliver it
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  to the so that they are the margins being
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  made are small but they're just selling so much
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  of it so the likes of ourselves selling premium
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  fertilizers for hydroponics and horticulture
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  higher end horticulture we do not sell to garden centers primarily for this
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  reason and also because if you if a garden center started selling an expensive
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  product no one would buy it in the general public because they they wouldn't understand it.
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  The second reason is that there's this illusion around seaweed with the general
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  public, especially in the UK.
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  I went to a plant finder's fair once with a customer, and this should have been the premium...
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  Customers for fertilizer these guys should have known and girls should have known about,
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  anything about to grow premium plants they were looking for
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  rare plants so they were you know these are
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  not just people off the street looking at plants these are these are connoisseurs and
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  i asked i asked everyone there what do they use currently for fertilizer and
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  90 said seaweed extract and like you've just got your head in the hands going
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  this is why we don't sell to the general public because seaweed contains no macronutrients,
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  no NPK,
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  no phosphorus, no potassium, no nitrogen, no calcium, very little sulfur.
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  But they think when they're buying a seaweed extract at the garden center or
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  the hardware store that they're buying a fertilizer.
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  They're not, they're buying a biostimulant. And any NPK that's in there has been added.
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  So the likes of MaxiCrop, they add npk to
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  seaweed extract because the general public think that seaweed
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  is a great fertilizer they don't understand the difference between a biostimulant
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  and a fertilizer both have their
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  place but then seaweeds are not fertilizers and
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  so you are just you try and sell fertilizer into
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  that market where people are preconditioned to buy seaweed extract
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  which is actually one of the best-selling you know
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  products in the garden center you're banging your head against a brick
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  wall and then the third reason you should
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  avoid garden center fertilizers is
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  that they don't contain any calcium or sulfur as
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  a general rule and so all liquid products will
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  will not have calcium in in a garden
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  center unlike gold leaf in
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  the us or liquid gold in the uk which is a liquid product that does
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  contain calcium crucial for cell wall formation
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  and tip growth you get black rotting growth if
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  you don't have enough calcium you get blossom end rot in your
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  tomatoes so the likes of tomorite is designed
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  for tomato growers doesn't have any calcium in it and yet
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  the number one problem with tomatoes is blossom end rot and then all the powdered
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  products don't contain any sulfur and sulfur is essential for protein synthesis
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  flavor aroma very dull yellow leaves if you don't have sulfur and so these emissions
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  lead to deficiencies and that's why you shouldn't buy garden center, nursery fertilizers.
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  They are the cheapest chips, the calcium, the chloride based,
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  and they don't have any calcium or sulfur.
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  The other one is that nurseries and garden centres can be extremely hot in the
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  summer and extremely cold in the winter.
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  They're not like going into a grow shop, which is temperature controlled.
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  They can stay on the shelves for months or even years. They're dust collectors.
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  That's why a lot of fertilisers are not white bottles because you can see the dust on a white bottle.
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  Whereas liquid gold and gold leaf that's in a white
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  bottle because it doesn't sit on a sorry it doesn't sit on
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  a shelf for a long time and over time
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  micronutrients can precipitate and degrade in stored
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  in these non-optimal conditions you
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  shouldn't be storing fertilizers above 40 degrees
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  celsius but they will be you know in a nursery in sort
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  of you know those garden garden centers are basically
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  built inside greenhouses old greenhouses then um
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  so you're have faded potency on the old stock you
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  know the other reason is that you've got misleading labels and
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  targeted products you've seen them tomato feed
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  orchid boost cactus care bonsai products
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  these are often the same base formula but
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  with minor tweaks and often just more
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  dilute so orchid cacti bonsai citrus
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  are normally just the same fertilizer just
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  diluted down and to make them weaker and even
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  worse than that miracle grow sell ready to use pre-diluted fertilizer in bottles
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  that is morally repugnant to me because the amount of plastic required to deliver
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  the same amount of fertilizer as a bottle an undiluted product is crazy the
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  amount of plastic they're using.
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  Miracle grow are using tons and tons of fertilized to deliver product that should
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  just be diluted at home and i think they shouldn't be able to sleep well at
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  night because of that it's a disgrace and so really you're you're buying dilute
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  fertilizer if you're not careful.
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  So watered down and marked up ready to use are often 99 water less than 0.1
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  percent nitrogen so just think about the amount of you know gasoline required
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  to get that to the store as well,
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  another reason you shouldn't buy garden center or nursery based or hardware store fertilizers,
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  no after sales expertise or support if something
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  goes wrong what do you do if something goes wrong while using
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  gold leaf in the us you phone their technical team if you're
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  using a utremer product like liquid gold in the uk you phone
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  our staff you can phone me directly and you'll get superior
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  technical support from people who are trained agronomists or
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  even plant scientists whereas you really are hit and miss when it comes to a
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  hardware store or a garden center you'll probably have someone who's got no
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  training whatsoever and if they do it'll be someone with a basic horticultural
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  qualification you might even
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  get a sales rep even worse so that's very contradictory very different.
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  And of course, if you buy it in a grow shop, then you're obviously going to
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  get those grow shop hydroponic experts who will know what they're doing and
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  they can give you loads of advice as well.
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  And then the other reason you shouldn't buy garden centres and nurseries based
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  products is, especially from the high-end ones, is you're paying for the shopping experience.
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  Much of what you buy pay for in a garden center is the
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  retail experience not the quality of the nutrients or the
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  food whatever you're buying from that garden center the plants
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  it's nice packaging branding it's a nice
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  experience there's a cafe wide aisles with
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  lots of choice but is it really what you're after should you be going
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  to a grow shop and buying the best
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  possible fertilizer and the people who are in the know
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  the people who grow you know giant vegetables and rare plants
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  and and show produce often
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  go to hydroponic shops even if they're not hydroponic growers
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  because they know that's where you're getting actually getting good value even
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  if it's more expensive you're still getting better so what
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  to do instead buy from a specialist hydroponic store look for transparent ingredient
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  lists and complete profiles avoid ready-to-use and dilute products invest in
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  proper base nutrients supplements like silicon cal mags tricontinol boosts.
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  Well, it's good to look at humic acids, seaweed extracts,
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  all these sorts of extra things that you can put on top of your base nutrients
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  rather than buying cheap chloride-based products.
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  So the truth is, fertilizers and garden centers keep your plants alive,
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  but they really help themselves thrive. A bit like really cheap bargain supermarket pet food.
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  Going to keep your dog alive, but is it really what it needs to thrive?
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  They're built for the masses, built for the people
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  who don't know what they're doing and just want
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  to buy on price they're not built for precision and optimization
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  and in hydroponics that's a big risk as well so if you buy a product that doesn't
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  get any calcium sulfur and is full of chlorides then you are on for a loser
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  and also if you buy there's the baby bio herb product i analyzed once it's ph12
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  that is unbelievable you know that is.
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  100,000 times more alkaline than it should be on the logarithmic scale.
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  I haven't worked it out, but something like that, it'd be 10,000 or 100,000
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  times more alkaline. So your plants would really suffer unless you were growing
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  in soil there to buffer it.
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  So yeah, some crazy pHs you'll find in a lot of the cacti bonsai products that
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  you'll find for sale in a UK garden centre.
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  One company that I'm not going to mention that do these specialist fertilisers,
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  their products can be like ph1 ph2 i guess from the phosphoric and nitric acid
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  that's in it really dangerous gonna,
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  burn you never mind the plants if you get that
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  on you so yeah be careful and then seaweed extracts as
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  well they can be really high ph so if you
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  are interested in more advice on that then more than happy to
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  advise you but as i say don't be buying cheap and
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  nasty fertilizers from you know the pound
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  shop from the dollar store from home
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  depot or garden center any garden center you always go to a hydroponic store
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  or a specialist supplier okay that's been hydroponics daily for today why you
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  shouldn't buy garden center fertilizers any questions give me a shout and if
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  you are a grow shop remember my giveaway from yesterday we've got a periodic
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  table of plant nutrients.
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  Available to anyone who would like a poster to go up in their store. It's an A1 size poster.
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  It's the bee's knees. It's really good. I've put a lot of time and effort into
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  it and I can show you it's really good and your customers who come in will really enjoy reading it.
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  Thank you very much for listening. Until tomorrow, that's been Hydroponics Daily.