Bloom boosters Fact: Every grower wants a bigger harvest. Even growers who are satisfied with what they’re yielding now wouldn’t mind having more flowers or heavier crops come harvest time. So, how exactly do you get a bigger harvest? Your crop success is the direct result of how attentively you nourish your plants — and the products you use to nourish them.
Growers who routinely reap big harvests from their crops use bloom boosters — nutrients that boost your crops’ flower production during bloom phase. We know you want to know more about bloom boosters, so in this article we’re going to talk about:
- The chemical breakdown of a bloom booster and how to select the best bloom enhancer for your crops
- How bloom boosters promote stronger flowering
- The importance of optimal nutrition at each stage of your crops’ life and how you can provide this optimal nutrition
- Two Advanced Nutrients bloom boosters that can change your flower game for the better
Whether you grow in soil, hydro or coco, this information’s for you. While bloom boosters are just one piece of the puzzle for achieving a bigger, healthier harvest, they alone won’t get you there. For more information on successful grow tactics that’ll really kick your crops into high gear, check out our other articles, including how to increase your maximum plant yields during the vegetative stage.
What Is A Bloom Booster?
A bloom booster is a fertilizing compound developed to support healthy, sustained flowering during a plant’s final development stage.
Every bloom booster contains the following macronutrients:
- Phosphorus
- Potassium
There are many bloom boosters on the market, and all of them have different ratios of key macronutrients formulated for various crops. Choose a bloom booster that’s specifically designed for the crop you grow, because using the wrong bloom booster can give your plants a nutrient imbalance and derail their flowering.
How To Increase Yield During Flowering With Bloom Boosters
Bloom boosters deliver a late-stage punch-up of phosphorus and potassium, as well as additional nutrients like calcium, sulfur and magnesium.
Each macronutrient plays a specific role in your crops’ flower development. Certain crops need a higher ratio of phosphorus to potassium, while others need more potassium than phosphorus to thrive. We can’t stress this enough: You need a bloom booster meant for the specific crop you’re growing. When you pick any old bloom booster off the garden center shelf, you’re gambling with the possibility of getting the wrong ratio for your crops.
Crops that get too much nitrogen can suffer from nitrogen toxicity, which causes leaves to turn dark and curl at the ends into a clawlike shape. Left untreated, leaves on plants with nitrogen toxicity will turn yellow and wither as the plants die.
Too little phosphorus leads to similarly yellowing, stunted leaves and eventually, smaller, underdeveloped crops at harvest time. Plants that get too little phosphorus are also more vulnerable to pathogens, which leads to dead plants. Too much phosphorus can also result in underdeveloped crops and nutrient lockout of zinc and magnesium, which crops need to grow healthy and strong.
A potassium deficiency causes leaves to turn inward, become weak and break easily. Crops that get too little potassium are also more susceptible to pathogens and pests. And as with too much phosphorus, too much potassium can cause nutrient lockout. This is a blockage that keeps the plant from absorbing the micronutrients it needs.
Necessary Nutrients For Flowering
Phosphorus, one of the primary macronutrients in a bloom booster,
helps your crops mature faster. It also directly increases flowering and aids with energy conversion and plant respiration, promoting increased cell division. In turn, this leads to greater crop growth. When a crop’s phosphorus level decreases, its flower production decreases. This is because a phosphorus decrease causes a decrease in cytokinin activity.
Cytokinins are growth factors that promote cell division and differentiation in a plant’s roots and shoots. Their activity also affects axillary bud growth, apical dominance and leaf senescence.
Among the many positive attributes of potassium, it also activates certain growth-related enzymes in the plant’s body and increases overall quality of yields.
Nourish Your Crops At Every Growth Stage To Maximize Plant Yield
Bloom boosters can help you correct any mistakes you might’ve made earlier in your crops’ life. In every growth stage, crops have specific nutritional needs. When they get the optimal nutrient blend in each stage of growth, you’re maximizing your average plant yield. But don’t assume a crop that had a rough start is doomed to be a poor producer. Even late in the game, a bloom booster like Overdrive can extend the plant’s flowering period and provide a helpful energy boost, thus increasing final yield.
In the first stage of your crops’ life, it’s all about getting the right base nutrients. Getting the combination of base nutrients — like hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon — optimized, along with setting up the optimal pH level, is the grower equivalent to getting a good night’s sleep and eating a balanced meal before a marathon: It creates the foundation for unparalleled success later.
Once your crop reaches vegetative stage, you should be supplementing with a root mass extender, like Voodoo Juice, to increase the plant’s ability to take in nutrients by extending its root system. You should also use a B-vitamin formula, like B-52, which supplies the vitamins that bulk up your crops’ metabolic and immune systems while promoting growth through increased enzymatic activity and amino acid synthesis.
Then comes the bloom phase. This is when you want to use a bloom booster. Growing big, healthy flowers takes a lot of energy, and a late-stage bloom booster replenishes any nutrients that are running low once your crops reach the later part of bloom phase. By delivering these nutrients at this stage, Overdrive also extends the bloom phase, giving your crops more time to produce the high-quality yields you desire.
Read more here about the steps to take during bloom phase to increase yield per plant. For additional information about boosting your harvest yields through your crops’ life cycle, read this post about the last few weeks before harvest.
Big Bud And Overdrive, Two Must-Try Advanced Nutrients Bloom Boosters
Use Big Bud during flowering stage to increase your harvest weight, density and size. Not only will your harvests be bigger and denser, they’ll also be more aromatic and flavorful.
Overdrive is an invigorating product that boosts crop potential late in the bloom stage for big harvests. Put simply, Overdrive sends your crops into, well, overdrive. By supplying plants with a unique nutrient blend that stimulates flower productivity, big, high-quality flowers are now a firm possibility, even with plants that are genetically predisposed to smaller flowers.
How To Increase Yield During Flowering By Using Big Bud And Overdrive Together
You can — and should — use Big Bud and Overdrive together. Big Bud is designed to be used from the second week of flower until two weeks prior to flushing, whereas Overdrive is a finishing touch, meant for the two weeks prior to flush. Advanced Nutrients research has found that when growers use our bloom boosters in a series, they achieve their largest, most potent harvests. Overdrive and Big Bud provide key nutrients for your crops, but in different doses and at different times.
Don’t Miss Out On More Harvest-Boosting Tips And Tricks — There’s More Where This Came From!
Want more information that’ll help you cultivate your best harvest ever? Subscribe to the Advanced Nutrients newsletter today to get more grower-centric articles delivered right to your inbox. Using bloom boosters is just one of the ways you can invest in a bigger, better harvest. Keep your eye out for future articles about other cultivation strategies you should be using.
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