Hydroponic Nutrients vs Soil Garden Fertilizers

This page will compare a typical hydroponic nutrients fertilizer blend with three commercial fertilizers for soil gardens. The comparison is between my 'generic coverage' brand of hydroponic nutrient mix, 'Miracle Gro' in powder form, 'Miracid' which is basically 'Miracle Gro' for acid loving plants and 'Osmocote' which is a special blend for vegetable bedding and early propagation. You may find this to be rather interesting....

Element	Hydroponic Blend	Miracle Gro	Miracid	Osmocote
Potash	22%	10%	15%	14%
Nitrogen	10%	30%	15%	14%
Phosphoric Acid	8%	10%	8%	14%
Calcium	5%	-	-	-
Magnesium	1%	-	-	-
Sulphur	2%	-	-	-
Boron	.05%	.02%	.02%	-
Copper	.05%	.07%	.07%	-
Iron	.2%	.325%	.15%	-
Manganese	.05%	.05%	.05%	-
Molybdenum	.05%	.0005%	.0005%	-
Zinc	.05%	.07%	.07%	-
Inert compounds	51.55%	48.46%	60.61%	58%

With the exception of some missing elements, the 3 commercial blends aren't too far off from the hydroponics nutrients mix - but they are 'off' enough to mean the difference between success and failure when growing hydroponics plants.

So... if you do not choose to use a commercial blend of hydroponic fertilizer nutrient then the next best would be to mix your own. It would certainly be possible to measure and add in the missing elements to get a balanced hydroponic fertilizer but not advisable - that is a science all its own.

What do I do? I am more interested in getting a system off and running in an automatic mode than I am in tweaking nutrients so I buy a pre-mixed blend. But, 'to each his own'...

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