By Max Sargent

Cannabis fertigation systems are said to improve the speed of plant growth, and they can definitely take some of the labour out of feeding and watering your plants—especially if you have quite a few. More of an intermediate technique, beginner growers would likely do better to focus their efforts elsewhere.

But if you’re ready for it, in this article we explain what fertigation is and how to use it to improve your cannabis grow.


What Exactly Is Fertigation?

“Fertigation” is a combination of “fertiliser” and “irrigation”. It literally refers to giving fertiliser to your cannabis plants along with water. You might be thinking that you recognise this technique. And if you’ve ever mixed liquid fertiliser with water and given this to your cannabis plants, then you’d be right, you’ve been fertigating your cannabis plants all along!

So normal fertigation is nothing new, nor is it a special practice. However, if growing in a coco coir medium, it’s possible to use what’s known as high-frequency fertigation to increase the speed of plant growth by delivering a frequent and steady supply of water and nutrients to your cannabis plants.

High-Frequency Fertigation

Cannabis plants can absorb nutrients more efficiently if they arrive already dissolved in water, rather than having to absorb them from the soil. Thus, giving your plants food in water is a good way to enhance growth.

Fertigation in Cannabis

High-frequency fertigation is the practice of giving plants food several times a day—up to five times. In a normal grow, we feed cannabis plants maybe once or twice a week, so feeding them this regularly can seem foolish, as it would seemingly lead to gross overfeeding.

However, if you use the right delivery method and the right medium, it can be highly effective and stimulate growth similar to that seen in hydroponic grows.

The key is to use a coco coir and perlite mix, as this has excellent drainage, which means that, unlike with soil, this constant watering won’t drown the roots. Second, you must deliver the fertiliser in small but frequent quantities; a drip irrigation system is perfect for this.

The trick is to give very small amounts of nutrients to your plants very regularly so it absorbs most of them, thereby utilising them more efficiently and potentially growing faster.

The Benefits of Fertigation for Cannabis

Fertigation is best suited to larger-scale growth, although it could be used even for a single plant. Alongside potentially improving plant growth, it also automates the feeding and watering process, giving growers more time to spend elsewhere. Here are the benefits of using fertigation to grow cannabis.

Fertigation in Cannabis

Easy to Fit (Retrofit)

Fertigation can employ a multitude of different systems, depending on your preferences and what you have available. Drip lines, flood and drain, capillary mats, flood tables, and even wicking—each can benefit from the precise nutrient delivery that fertigation offers. Fully water-soluble nutrients are preferred as a means of keeping lines clean; however, as long as the system is well-filtered and flushed regularly, organics like compost teas and insoluble additives can also be used.

Adjust Nutrient Levels for Optimal Growth

The difference in nutrient demands between vegetation and flowering can be quite drastic. Fertigation makes the transition from one type of solution to another simple. Whereas time-release fertilisers and organic additives can only be partially flushed away—as some insoluble salts remain in the medium—fertigation allows for a completely clean rinse as the nutrients are already dissolved in water. Once flushed, simply begin feeding the new mix. This eliminates the need to compensate for any undissolved salts that may throw the EC off.

Organic Growing Media

Fertigation is similar to hydroponics in that nutrients are delivered via water. The difference is that hydroponic systems use inert substrates like stone wool, vermiculite, and perlite, whereas fertigation systems use organic substrates, such as coco coir mixes.

Organic grow media contain a high concentration of carbon compounds, which act as a buffer. These compounds lightly bind with nutrients and slowly release them as the medium becomes more diluted. Buffering makes it easier to maintain the best conditions for cannabis growth, without the precision required in pure hydroponic setups. The carbon matrix also allows for a healthy rhizosphere to develop, where microflora interact directly with the root system, promoting nutrient uptake and overall root health.

Consistent and Automated

The systems used for fertigation are all simply automated and deliver consistent amounts of food and water to your plants. For a small-scale grow, this doesn’t make a huge difference in terms of effort, but once you have several plants, automating processes can, over the course of a few months, save you a lot of time and trouble.

Faster Growth

There is some evidence to suggest that automated fertigation systems can improve the speed of plant growth, similar to hydroponic systems. Now, while this may be the case if all other factors are more or less perfect, don’t expect to see a meaningful difference if you’re not already very proficient when it comes to cannabis cultivation. If you want to improve the quality of plant growth, there are many things to get right before using an automated fertigation system.

Liquid Nutrients vs Granular Nutrients

Most growers opt for either liquid nutrients or granular nutrients. Liquid nutrients come in a liquid form—already dissolved—and are then mixed in with water to create a solution that is then fed to plants. Granular nutrients, on the other hand, are added to the soil and then break down over time when the soil is watered.

Liquid nutrients tend to deliver nutrients to plants on demand, whereas granular nutrients break down more slowly. Each has benefits and drawbacks, but in most cases, liquid nutrients should be used in fertigation systems as they are much less likely to block pipework.

Fertigation in Cannabis Nutrients

Important Considerations for Cannabis Fertigation

If you choose to employ fertigation to improve your cannabis grow, then you should know how to do so effectively. Below are several important considerations to take into account if you choose to use one of these systems.

Coco Coir vs Soil

First off, the growing medium. As previously mentioned, a 50/50 coco coir/perlite mix is very well-suited to fertigation. This is because, compared to soil, drainage and aeration are much better, which makes it safer to deliver a very regular stream of water to your growing medium.

If you kept watering soil with a fertigation system, it’s likely that it would become waterlogged and your plants would begin to suffer from overwatering, which would stunt growth and eventually kill them if left untreated—not what you want! So using a coco/perlite mix mitigates these issues and allows you to optimise your efforts.

Fertigation in Cannabis

Inline Filters and Flushing

There are a few things that need particular attention when using a fertigation system. Inline filters in the irrigation system, placed immediately after the injectors, must be included. Organics and compost teas may contain fine particles that can clog distribution methods like drip lines. A regular flushing of the system at the end of every cycle is recommended to keep lines free from buildup. Other systems with larger nominal diameter (ND) piping are less susceptible to blockages.

However, in larger grows, plants at the head of the system could be flushed free of nutrients by the time the drippers at the tail of the system have been cleared. As a prevention, extensive grows are broken into parallel intermediate systems fed separately from their own primary water manifold. Or, each intermediate system is flushed separately, using a common mainline, to maintain water pressure. A backflow prevention device is used immediately before the injectors to stop any source contamination.

Measuring EC and PPM

As with any good grow, you should regularly measure the EC and PPM of the solution given to your plants. If you get them wrong, then you run the risk of overfeeding with certain nutrients and causing nutrient burn or lockout. You could also end up underfeeding your plants, though this comes with fewer dangers.

Depending on the growth stage of your cannabis plants, the optimal EC and PPM measurements will differ, so be sure to familiarise yourself with these values. One of the benefits of fertigation is that it allows you to quickly change the nutrient concentrations of your feed, and that of the growing media, so your plants always receive the optimal nutrient ratios.

Moreover, if you do need to change something, then the coco/perlite mix is easy to flush, meaning you can take it back to neutral and then adjust it from there, making mistakes fairly easy to rectify.

Hand Watering vs Automatic Watering

So far we’ve only discussed using automated watering systems for fertigation, and for good reason. It is technically possible to fertigate as described by hand watering, but it would be very labour intensive and extremely difficult to avoid overfeeding.

Do you really want to mix and deliver very small quantities of nutrient solution five times a day, every day, for three months? If you do, then by all means fertigate with hand watering, but you’ll probably thank yourself very quickly if you set up and employ some kind of automated watering system. These can be extremely cheap and simple, so don’t assume that you'll need some extensive, high-tech network of pumps, pipes, and filters to make fertigation work for you.

Adjusting Pot Size

To a degree, you can use a range of pot sizes for fertigation. Reports range from 9–30 litres, and results are said to be respectable at all sizes. Mostly, it depends on which growing method you’re using (for example, SOG) and how big you want your plants to be.

However, the pots shouldn’t be too big. As the plants only get a small amount of nutrient solution at a time, you don’t want to have so much growing medium that the roots struggle to absorb the solution. When in doubt, err on the side of smaller pots.

Fertigation in Cannabis

Is Fertigation Right for You?

A fertigation system isn’t that difficult to set up, but it could be considered an intermediate growing technique. This isn’t because of the difficulty of the technique itself, but more because it really becomes useful when you’re either growing a large number of plants, or the rest of your practice is so expert that the tiny increase in efficiency can actually make a difference to the quality of your grow.

However, if you’re jumping in at the deep end and growing many plants at once, then some sort of automated irrigation system could be useful, though not essential, so you might as well make it fertigation.

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Privacy Policy - Royal Queen Seeds

To ensure a safe online environment and guarantee adequate data protection, we strictly comply with all legal requirements. In this privacy statement, we provide information about how and for what purpose data is collected, safety measures, storage periods and contact details.


COMPANY NAME: SNORKEL SPAIN, SL (hereinafter ROYAL QUEEN SEEDS)

C/ Vilar d'Abdelà, 5 (nave 1) CP: 08170 de Montornès del Vallès

+34 937 379 846

support@royalqueenseeds.com


The present Privacy Policy sets out the terms on which we will treat personal data at ROYAL QUEEN SEEDS; this includes any personal data collected through our website https://www.royalqueenseeds.com/ as well as any other data we process in the course of our business activities.

ROYAL QUEEN SEEDS collects the following personal data for the purposes listed below:

SECTION 1 – PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT

1.1 Account purchases

Account purchases can only be made if you are in possession of a personal account. When you create an account or purchase something from our shop, as part of the buying and selling process we collect the following personal information that you provide to us:

This information is required for delivery. In addition, when you browse our shop, we automatically receive the Internet Protocol (IP) address of your computer. Based on this information, we can optimise your online experience and at the same time protect our online environment.

Purpose of data collection

We collect and store account-related data for the following purposes:

(a) to carry out obligations arising from any contracts between you and us, and to provide you with information, products and services that you may request from us;

(b) to set up, manage and communicate with you about your account and your orders;

(c) to conduct market research and analysis;

(d) to confirm your age and identity, and to detect and prevent fraud.

1.2 Newsletters

With your explicit permission, we may send you newsletters about our shop, new products and other updates. We send newsletters based on your explicit consent. In the event that you purchase a product, and in accordance with current regulations, we may send you commercial communications in accordance with the legitimate interest of our company, always about products or services similar to those you have purchased or contracted. In any case, you may exercise your right of opposition through the channels announced in this Privacy Policy. The following information is collected in relation to the newsletter:

We do not need to know the sex of the person in order to send the newsletter (data minimisation: by law we must ask for data that is strictly necessary to provide the service, and in this case knowing the sex is not necessary to send the newsletter).

Purpose of data collection

The data collected is used to:

(a) personalise our emails, including your name and gender;

(b) provide gender-specific content.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by using the link provided in the newsletter or the contact information provided in section 2.

1.3 Customer service and contact form

In order to provide appropriate support, our customer service employees have access to information related to the account. Consequently, their support will be highly effective and friendly. The data provided in our contact form is used by our CRM provider, SuperOffice. We will only use your details to respond to your message.

SECTION 2 – LEGITIMATE INTEREST

If you have purchased any of our products, please note that we may process your personal data for promotional purposes, based on Royal Queen Seeds' legitimate interest only to offer you products or services from our company and about products or services similar to those you have purchased. You may exercise your right to opt out of future messages by the means set out in this Privacy Policy or through any notification you receive.

2.1 How do you withdraw consent?

If you change your mind, you can withdraw your consent for us to contact you for the purpose of collecting, using, or disclosing your data at any time by reaching out to us at: support@royalqueenseeds.com.

SECTION 3 – DISCLOSURE

We may disclose your personal information if we are required to do so by law or if you breach our Terms of Service.

SECTION 4 – HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR DATA?

At Royal Queen Seeds, we will not retain your data for longer than is necessary for the purposes described in this Policy. Different retention periods apply for different types of data; however, the longest period we will normally hold any personal data is 10 years.

4.1 Account information

Data relating to the account remains relevant for as long as the consumer is in possession of an account. Therefore, the data remains documented for as long as the account exists. When our customers delete an account, the associated data will be deleted within a reasonable period of time. Requests regarding the inspection or correction of stored personal data or the deletion of an account can be sent to support@royalqueenseeds.com.

4.2 Newsletters

In the event that you give us your consent to inform you about our products or services, we will keep your data until you express your wish not to receive any further communications from us. However, we regularly (every month) carry out a relevance check. Registered customers (and their personal information) will be deleted whenever customers do not reply to our request. In addition, our newsletter mailing has an opt-out feature. Consumers can withdraw their consent by using this opt-out feature.

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Cookies are small information files that notify your computer of previous interactions with our website. These cookies are stored on your hard drive, not on our website. Essentially, when you use our website, your computer displays its cookies to us, informing our site that you have visited before. This allows our website to function more quickly and remember aspects related to your previous visits (such as your username), making your experience more convenient. At Royal Queen Seeds, we use two types of cookies: functional and analytical.

5.1 Functional Cookies

Functional cookies are used to enhance your online experience. Among other things, these cookies track what is added to your shopping cart. The use of these cookies does not require prior authorization.

5.2 Analytical Cookies

Analytical cookies are used for research and market analysis. The data collected with these analytical cookies is anonymous, making it unusable for third parties. The use of these cookies does not require prior authorization.

SECTION 5 – THIRD-PARTY SERVICES

Third-party services are required to conduct transactions and provide our services. In general, the third-party providers we use will only collect, use and disclose your information to the extent necessary to enable them to perform the services they provide to us.

However, certain third-party service providers, such as payment gateways and other payment transaction processors, have their own privacy policies regarding the information we must provide to them for your transactions.

We encourage you to read the privacy policies of these providers so that you can understand how these providers will handle your personal information.

In particular, certain suppliers may be located or have facilities located in a different jurisdiction than yours or ours. Therefore, if you choose to proceed with a transaction involving the services of a third party, your information may be subject to the laws of the jurisdiction in which that service provider or its facilities are located.

Once you leave our website or are redirected to a third-party website or application, you are no longer governed by this Privacy Policy or the Terms of Service of our website.

Web analytics service (anonymous data)

On this website we have integrated an element of a web analytics service (with anonymisation functionality). Web analytics can be defined as the gathering, processing and analysis of data about the behaviour of visitors to websites. An analytics service collects, among other things, data about which website a person came from (the so-called referrer), which sub-pages they visited or how often and for how long they visited a sub-page. Web analytics is mainly used for website optimisation and for a cost–benefit analysis of internet advertising.

Courier service

To complete deliveries we use a courier service. This courier service carries out the delivery between our company and the consumer's home. To complete these logistics, the company requires access to the consumer's name and address information.

Mailing service

Royal Queen Seeds uses a third-party mail service provider to send its newsletter. This provider has access to limited account information related to opt-in consent (e.g. email address).

Marketing services

Royal Queen Seeds has the support of a company that specialises in marketing and communication activities. Their access to personal information is very limited and mostly anonymous.

Payment services

At Royal Queen Seeds we use external payment services to handle our transactions (e.g. credit card payments).

SECTION 6 – SECURITY

To protect your personal information, we take reasonable precautions and follow industry standard best practices to ensure that it is not inappropriately lost, misused, accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed.

If you provide us with your credit card information, the information is encrypted using secure socket layer technology (SSL) and stored using AES-256 encryption. Although no method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is 100% secure, we follow all PCI-DSS requirements and implement additional industry standards that are commonly accepted. Information related to the account is protected with a hashing method. This method transforms the information into a generated hash. As a result, confidential information is protected and invisible, even to us. In addition, our databases are exceptionally protected against unauthorised access. For example, access to the database is only possible and permitted via approved IP addresses (e.g. from Royal Queen Seeds headquarters). Other attempts and addresses are rejected at all times.

Furthermore, data is anonymised as much as possible, so it cannot be directly linked to a specific consumer. With this data, however, we may be able to carry out market research and analysis. In addition, the third parties concerned (e.g. mailing service) are examined prior to our collaboration, comply with the GDPR from the EU and receive a processing agreement. Within Royal Queen Seeds, employees are assigned different access permissions. Specific permission provides access only to information that is strictly required to perform a task. Digital security measures are subject to change and must meet high requirements to ensure the safety of online customers. That is why, at Royal Queen Seeds, we appoint a security officer. Regular verification and improvement of security measures (where necessary) are part of the role.

SECTION 7 – CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time, so please check back regularly. Changes and clarifications will be effective immediately upon being published on the Website. If we make substantial changes to this policy, we will notify you here that it has been updated so you will know what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances, if any, we use and/or disclose it.

SECTION 8 – YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO: