It doesn't dissolve, it only goes into temporary suspension, and settles out as soon as agitation stops. BTW - there is no pathway into the plant for large organic molecules, so you would essentially need to wait for the fish powder to be washed into the soil where it would be broken down before it can be taken up by the plant. Not the most efficient way to fertilize. In those plants that benefit from foliar feeding, fertilizers in ionic form are far more effective than emulsions at providing supplemental nutrition, but roots are still, by far, the more efficient and reliable pathway. If you actually NEED foliar feeding, by default, there is something wrong with your basic nutritional supplementation program and your efforts are best concentrated there. Al

Grizzy, Thanks. What I read is if compost tea is not aerated, the microbes that make it work tend to die. I can strain the tea to make sure it will work in the sprayer I have - it's made to spray decks with and has some different heads I can attach depending on the liquid being used. I also did a search of this forum and a lot of posts from a couple of years ago seem to think using it as the solution was not a good idea, but I think most of the people who replied were not using a DWC method. If things go as planned, I will start my second season tomorrow - I have six tomato plants (four Legend and two Mira) to place in buckets, once I get the pH and ppm where I want. Within two weeks, I should have 28 plants growing, then add about another 20 plants over the following six weeks. My nuits are not that much different from compost tea, though. I'm using tomato-tone (a dry fert that has some water soluble N and some that isn't water soluble) but also adding a small amount of fish emulsion and then a couple of ground up female multivitamins - the female ones have iron! I also aerate this for 36-48 hours, which helps to dissolve most of the stuff. One thing that I learned was to mix everything in a container than add it the buckets. So I got a 32-gallon plastic garbage can that stuff goes in and then gets added as needed to each individual container. My choice of plants to start with are Siletz, Legend, Red Delicious, Mira, Sacramento, Florida 91 and IT-06-313. I haven't tried growing anything in a GH or done much with hydro, but in the dirt, I had about five good weeks of harvest. If I trim the bottom leaves, keep temps level and keep a close eye on the ppm and pH, I'm wondering if I can get eight weeks from most of them? Without making things too complicated, what I need is six ripe tomatoes per plant per week - on average. My dirt experience says this should be a piece of cake, once the plants get mature and the fruit starts ripening. My hydro experience says ??? Mike

To the above comment, It is not so much that the plant needs calcium/potassium more, it is rather that calcium and potassium are larger ions (cations) and can push the magnesium ions off of the soil particles, rendering it insoluble for the plant roots. Most nutrients in soils need to be able to bond with the sand, silt or clay particles to be available to plant roots, this is the rationality behind using gypsum to break clays...what it is actually doing is pushing sodium ions off the clay and replacing it with calcium, which helps air and water move more freely through the soil. I'm hoping that a foliar spray of Epsom salt will bypass this competition in the soil.

If organic, try Neptune's Harvest Fish emulsion 2-4-1 and Maxicrop Seaweed Powder. If not organic, try Miracle-Gro 15-30-15 at 2 teaspoons/gal, or Miracle-Go for Tomatoes at the recommended amount. 15-30-15 used to be called their "All Purpose" formula but they changed things a couple years ago and I think they now call it their "Bloom Booster" formula. (The old Bloom Booster was somewhere around 10-52-8.) Do NOT use their current "All Purpose" formula, which has a high first #... Just look at the rear or side of the box for 15-30-15... if you use a different water soluble brand, just make sure the middle # (phosphorous) is equal to or higher than the first #. Mark