General Hydroponics Flora Micro, 2.5 gallon

2nd or 3rd time buying bc it's my favorite so far for my rare house plant collection

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.

Good stuff. Easy to use. Feed charts are a little hot.

Balanced fertilizers

The media could not be loaded. The product itself is great, no issues there. The only problem I had was the flora micro came busted so it was all over the inside of my package, and you can see it squirting out the bottom so I knew it was definitely perforated. I’m going to have to buy a funnel and a new bottle to put it in which is annoying, but it happens. 4 stars because it made a mess all over the inside of my car and in my kitchen, but still a great product when used correctly with the whole trio.

Great stuff

EASY TO DIAL IN THE RIGHT AMOUNT NEEDEDfound the label chart very helpful and accurate for my grow

Easy to use. My hydroponic system has never been more productive.