The Flora Series from General Hydroponics is a classic three-part hydroponic nutrient regimen. It’s been the go-to nutrients for decades, used by everyone from hobby hydroponic growers to NASA researchers. It’s made up of three parts that you mix together; they are FloraGro, FloraMicro, and FloraBloom. These three parts together contain all the primary, secondary, and micronutrients needed for your hydroponic garden.
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When mixing a three-part hydroponic nutrient solution, it’s a little more complex than just pouring in the different amounts of nutrients and stirring. This three-part nutrient solution has to be added in a specific order.
Before Mixing Your Nutrient Solution
Before anything, make sure your reservoir is clean. You don’t want debris or chemicals to get into your nutrient solution. When filling your reservoir keep track of how much water you’re adding. I recommend keeping it at whole gallons for easy measuring.
How much of each nutrient gets added to the solution depends on where the plant is at in its life cycle. Make sure to check out the general hydroponics feeding schedule for the proper dosage for each nutrient part. Do not mix the three nutrient parts together before adding them to the water. The Flora Series needs to be added in a specific order
How to Mix Flora Series 3-Part Nutrient Solution
Step 1- FloraMicro
The first nutrient solution you should always add to the freshwater is FloraMicro. The other nutrients can be added in any order after FloraMicro, but FloraMicro should always be added first. If your area has really hard water there is also FloraMicro hard water specific. FloraMicro provides nitrogen, potassium, calcium, and micronutrients to your garden. This first part is the building block, giving the plant the nutrients that it needs to build strength and make different processes work.
Make sure to measure out the exact amount of nutrients you will need for the amount of water that you are using. After adding the nutrient, mix the water around with something clean. After stirring I like to let it sit for a couple of minutes before adding the next nutrient.
Step 2- FloraGro
The second nutrient solution that I add to the reservoir is FloraGro. FloraGro provides your plants with nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, and secondary minerals. Theis part of the nutrient series gives the plants what they need for structural/vegetative growth and helps build a healthy root system.
As before, after adding the nutrients to the water, let it sit for a couple of minutes before moving on to the next nutrient.
Step 3- FloraBloom
The final nutrient in the three-part nutrient mix is FloraBloom. FloraBloom provides your garden with high amounts of phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, and sulfur. This part of the nutrient mix stimulates flower and fruit development, as well as enhancing flavor, aroma, and essential oils in your plans.
When mixing in the nutrient solution, repeat the same steps as before, measuring the exact amount of nutrient needed and then stirring well.
As a final step, you will need to measure the pH of your hydroponic solution. It should be somewhere between 5.5 and 6.5. Using a three-part nutrient is a great general feeding and can also be a great way to allow yourself the ability to tailor your nutrients to the different types of plants in your garden. Mixing these nutrients is a simple weekly task and between reservoir changes, plain water is used to top off the reservoir.
July 23, 2020 at 2:56 am
What are these “exact amounts” you keep talking about in the article? It would be helpful for you to specify the amount of each nutrient to add.
August 1, 2020 at 11:20 am
Hey Paul. The amounts actually vary depending on the amount of water your using and the strength that you want your nutrient regimen to be. Here is a link to the feeding chart for general hydroponics.
November 23, 2020 at 5:05 pm
Do you know for how long the mixed solution is stable for? I mixed up enough into 2L of water (about half a gallon) and only used half of it. Can I store it in a cool dark place and if yes, for how long? I couldn’t find the answer on the product website… Thank you so much!
December 2, 2020 at 10:42 pm
I’m not really sure exactly how long it’s good for after mixing. You definitely would want to store it in a dark clean container, but I would really recommend only mixing what you plan on using immediately. The rich stagnant nutrients is going to be an invitation for the growth of things you don’t want to grow.
December 8, 2020 at 9:30 am
Hello Michael,
I recently ordered a General Hydroponics 3 pack including FloraMicro, FloraGrow, and FloraBloom, anticipating that these would be essentially all I might need as I take essentially my first steps into hydroponic gardening. At the same time I certainly understand that there would likely occur additional expenses. This being the case, I’d certainly not be surprised to find that some other nutrient additives might be used for tweaking plants further down the road.
But then last night while having a look at the General Hydroponics website and searching for their recommendations for how to use the three base nutrients, I stumbled across the “Flora Series Recirculating Program”, a URL which your website also points to. In addition to the 3 Base Nutrients, I encountered quite a number of additional additives, which VERY quickly racks up a serious expense by comparison to the Base Nutrient trio.
Making up the additional list are RapidStart, Liquid KoolBloom, Floralicious Plus, FloraKleen, Armor Si, Diamond Nectar, FloraBlend, CALIMAGIc, FloraNectar, and Dry KoolBloom.
My main question boils down to this. Are the three base nutrients (FloraMicro, FloraGrow, and FloraBloom) sufficiently up to the task of creating proper yields of vegetables…or is this array of additional nutrients really needed, as would be suggested on the General Hydroponics website? Many thanks in advance!
December 9, 2020 at 1:46 pm
Hey Keith! FLoraMirco, FloraGrow and FloraBloom are base nutrients, and depending on what your growing are oftentimes all you NEED for your hydroponic garden, especially if you’re just growing leafy greens. The other products are supplements which help increase plant functions giving them a boost. Some vegetables like tomatoes and peppers will suffer from blossom end rot which can be prevented with more calcium in your nutrient regimen and can be fixed by adding some calimagic.
This General Hydroponics page lets you know which each of the supplements helps with. As you can see most of them are boosters or enhancers. Hope that helps but just shoot me an email if you need any further assistance!
December 16, 2020 at 4:37 pm
Many thanks! The idea of having to invest that much more money into what’s currently a fledgeling project I found to be less than appealing. Having done quite a lot of soil-based gardening during the past several years, I definitely understand the need for calcium in tomatoes and peppers…and the likelihood that a calcium supplement would almost certainly be necessary. Strangely, I currently live on top of serious beds of limestone very near the Ohio River, which easily provide sufficient calcium. All of that limestone, however, comes at the cost of having very high ph levels. When I mixed the water and nutrients most of a week ago, I was quite uneasy when I saw the ph level coming in at around 5…and having to up the ph, when I’ve become so used to fighting to bring it down. In any case, thank you again for helping to clarify my concern. And thank you also for your offer of assistance should I run into future problems.