I'm not familiar with GH Flora products, but in general:

Blooming nutrients are usually used only for growing "that". If you're growing edible tomatoes and not "tomatoes", the size of your blooms doesn't matter.

If you're concerned with pollination this time of year, just give each of the open-bloom trusses a good shake with an electric toothbrush, right behind the blooms between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., preferably when the growing area is a little warmer than normal. This rattling action will shake the pollen down on the flowers and you will have made baby tomatoes.

When I've grown tomatoes with GH flora series, I typically run vegative until I see fruit set, then switch to the bloom cycle. however, I would recommend using a little more micro than the bottle label calls for. tomatoes love calcium and that component is where all the calcium comes from. I would short change the grow for the extra micro if needed.

This is just what I was looking for - thank you both! How much extra micro do you recommend? I imagine need to keep the EC close to the original brew.

in 2 gallons, I was using 1-5-6 : G-M-B (tsp / gallon)
G-M-B = Grow - Micro - Bloom

Thanks grizzman - I'll wait till I see the fruit then give it a try. Will keep you posted.

Does anyone have a GH Flora formula for hot peppers? Last season I had too much N in my mix.

zanderspice,

Pop along to this website, it shows you what EC levels to grow your peppers with, along with some good info. - http://www.cosmicchile.com/xdpy/kb/hydroponic-chiles.html

Personally, I stick to the stock levels given by GH (and have had no problems), they have a great calculator for working out what you should feed - http://www.genhydro.com/calculator/index.html

Hope this is of some help :-)

Just thought I would chime in on the pepper question. I started using the Flora Nova series last year and had great success except with peppers.

If I started the peppers out on the grow, the leaves had issues. Some curled, some wrinkled and some just looked weird. I was only using 500 ppm of nutrient solution at 6.2 ph.

As soon as I switched to the Bloom, the peppers were much happier. Since I grow inside, the next batch I started out in the Bloom, and had no issues.

With peppers, I was also using Rock Wool for my media. I tried using grow rocks on the second batch and found that the rock wool seemed to retain more salts and therefore I believe caused a build up.

Anyways, just my pennies worth.

Thanks for the pepper help. I've read a lot of posts from people having problems with too much N in the mix so next year I'll start with a weak bloom solution and up it from there when the peppers start growing.

I find that recommended nutrient level (ppm) is high by a factor of 2 or 3 for capsica.

I grow nothing but chiles in hydro at 400-500 ppm. Nutrient manufacturers recommend 1600 ppm......one must always remember what the nutrient mfgs are selling...........

Peppers use almost no Nitrogen at all. It's weird.

Always start out light and build up.