DIY Hydroponic Nutrient Solution at Home | Hydroponic Fertilizers for Fruiting Vegetables Recipe

Last updated on October 15th, 2022 at 05:26 pm

DIY Hydroponic Nutrients Guide

So, you’ve looked everywhere and can’t find proper information on how to make Hydroponic fertilizer at home or Hydroponic Nutrients at Home or DIY Hydroponic Nutrients from appropriate raw Hydroponic fertilizers available in the market.

You must also be wondering if you can use normal fertilizer for hydroponics. I am going to share all this information in this post ahead

By learning how to make DIY Hydroponic nutrient solution yourself, you can save lots of money (almost 3-5 times) by avoiding purchasing ready-made hydroponic nutrients online or offline and make your own Hydroponic Nutrients at Home.

I will be sharing recipe of Hydroponic nutrient solution for fruiting vegetables that I use to grow various fruiting vegetables like Tomato, Bottle Gourd, Eggplant, Bell peppers, etc.

Materials Required to make DIY Hydroponic Nutrient Solution at Home

So, let’s get started……

To make Hydroponic Nutrient Solution, there are few things that you’ll need such as :-

(1) TDS meter for Hydroponics or EC meter for measuring concentration of salts

(2) pH meter for Hydroponics for measuring pH of nutrient solution

(3) Small weighing scale (like the ones used in jewellery stores) for weighing fertilizers

(4) Fertilizers ( I am going to mention those in a while)

(5) Phosphoric Acid or Nitric Acid (For pH down)

DIY Hydroponic Nutrient Solution for Fruiting Vegetables

So, here I am trying to make 100 Ltrs. Hydroponic Nutrient Solution for my Bottle Gourd plants and the nutrient formula looks something like this –

N- 170 ppm

P-55 ppm

K- 342 ppm

Mg- 50 ppm

S- 170 ppm

Ca- 198 ppm

If you are new to chemical symbols then above mentioned symbols are for following nutrients, N-Nitrogen, P- Phosphorus, K- Potassium, Mg- Magnesium, S- Sulphur, Ca- Calcium

You must know now by the names that these are the Macro nutrients plants are fed in Hydroponics for optimum growth along with some micro nutrients such as Iron, Manganese, Zinc, Molybdenum, Nickel, Copper, Boron, Chlorine, etc.

So now, I have 100 Ltrs of water in a container and you can see that with the help of TDS meter or EC meter, TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) of base water is around 80 ppm. Whenever you try to make hydroponic nutrient solution, make sure your base water TDS is below 150 ppm so that nutrition can be provided to plants in an effective manner

In my case, tap water at my place is around 600 ppm to I have to use Reverse Osmosis system to reduce it’s TDS

Fertilizers required to make DIY Hydroponic Nutrient Solution for Fruiting Vegetables

Below is Nutrient recipe for solution and in order to achieve mentioned above nutrient formula for 100 Ltrs. of nutrient solution I need following quantities of these fertilizers-

(1) Calcium Nitrate – 90 grams

(2) Magnesium Sulphate – 53 grams

(3) Mono Potassium Phosphate – 13 grams

(4) Mono Ammonium Phosphate – 10 grams

(4) Potassium Nitrate – 15 grams

(5) Potassium Sulphate – 62 grams

AND

(6) Micro-nutrient Chelated Mix EDTA – 800 mg

Please do note that micro-nutrient quantity is in milligrams whereas other fertilizers are in grams. Micro-nutrients are required in very minute quantities but have profound effect on growth of the plants. I have used Chelated micro nutrient mix here because it’s easy for a beginner to use combined micro nutrient mix rather than using Individual chelated micro nutrients or combination micro nutrients fertilizers

You can easily find these fertilizers online by clicking the names of fertilizers above or at Farmer seed/pesticide shops

DIY Hydroponic Solution making Process

Now, take some water out from your main reservoir in a small container/jug and mix any one fertilizer first (preferable the one with least quantity required) and make sure it is completely dissolved before putting that water back in the reservoir or main container

Likewise, again take some water from the reservoir and mix other fertilizers one by one making sure previous fertilizer is completely dissolved before moving on to another fertilizer

Once you have mixed all fertilizers, check the TDS of Hydroponic Nutrient Solution which in my case is around 1100 ppm. You can get TDS reading of anywhere between 1000-1300 ppm depending upon quality of fertilizers and TDS of water used to make nutrient solution

Also, we need to check pH of hydroponic nutrient solution as well. Preferred pH range of solution where plants can easily have access to nutrients is generally 5.5 to 6.5 and it should be made sure that pH always stays in that range. If pH is out of this range then plants are going to have hard time absorbing nutrients in right way which may lead to deficiency/toxicity

Here you can see that pH of solution is 5.4 which is slightly lower, you can raise the pH using regular tap water. Just add tap water in 500 ml increments to increase pH and reach your desired number. In my case, pH is not way off so I won’t be doing anything

Now, 100 Ltrs of Hydroponic Nutrient Solution is ready for my Bottle Gourd plants and you can also use the same hydroponic recipe / formula in other fruiting vegetables as well. It is not specific to each and every vegetable but it will give you fairly good results even if you want to grow bottle gourd or cucumber, Tomatoes, Bell Pepper, Eggplants, etc.

Also, one thing to note here is that this nutrient solution is full strength nutrient solution which is meant for mature plants. If you wish to use it for seedlings or younger plants make sure you dilute it with plain water, adjust the pH and then feed to the plants

For e.g. Seedlings require nutrient solution TDS below 500 PPM so you need to dilute one part of full strength solution (1100 TDS) with two parts of plain RO water or any water with TDS around or below 150 ppm to get low TDS nutrient solution for seedlings.

The full strength hydroponic nutrient solution I mentioned above is 1x concentrated hydroponic nutrient solution. It is not hydroponic stock solution which is highly concentrated and is made to quickly make large batches of diluted nutrient solution

100 Litres is just an example and you can make less or more nutrient solution as per your requirement by keeping the ratios of fertilizers same

If you want to learn how to make hydroponic stock solution or hydroponic nutrient solution from scratch for multiple vegetables and be fully equipped with nutrient making knowledge, you can always enroll for our single session short online training and reach out to me at smgardener99@gmail.com OR WhatsApp me on +9172062-34611

Hydroponic Nutrient Short Online Training Information

Before, proceeding, if you want in depth knowledge on how to make nutrient solution for multiple plants and vegetables and also get multiple hydroponic nutrient solution recipe (s), you can try our short online training session which will help you in following –

(a) How to prepare Hydroponic Stock Solution for larger requirements

(b) How to increase or decrease any particular nutrient(s) as per plant requirement

(c) How to reduce costs of Hydroponic nutrients

(d) You will exactly know what you are feeding to your plants

(e) Prevent/Treat deficiencies at earliest with most effective methods

(f) Avoid huge pH fluctuations in Hydroponics, nutrient burn, EC/ TDS issues

You can also check out my Hindi YouTube channel (link below) for more information on Hydroponic Nutrients and how I grow plants hydroponically

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