> the hardest part was figuring out what, exactly, I had to add to the water to get the plants to flourish.
If you don't want to engineer it from first principles: MasterBlend Tomato[1]. Plants love this shit. I've grown a lot of plants hydroponically using this blend, and also use it to water/feed my soil plants.
> Mix 8 oz. of 4-18-38 in 100 gallons of water along with 5 oz. of Magnesium Sulfate. Completely dissolve. Then add 8 oz. of Calcium Nitrate and completely dissolve.
(At a smaller scale: it's about 12g 4-18-38, 6g Magnesium, and 12g Cal Nitrate per 5 gallon bucket.)
Self taught alert! I haven't gotten into fermentation of food waste yet, which would be very effective. But I make my own liquid fertilizer from food waste by passing it through the digestive system of maggots. Although this isn't very "bio available" because of more "complex" biomolecules, I have been getting fantastic results so far with greens, beans, cabbages, etc.
I followed the following [0] video for making a simple liquid fertilizer setup using 2 paint buckets (not in English but easy to follow). The advantage IMO is that risks associated with things like overfertilisation are minimised.
If you don't want to engineer it from first principles: MasterBlend Tomato[1]. Plants love this shit. I've grown a lot of plants hydroponically using this blend, and also use it to water/feed my soil plants.
> Mix 8 oz. of 4-18-38 in 100 gallons of water along with 5 oz. of Magnesium Sulfate. Completely dissolve. Then add 8 oz. of Calcium Nitrate and completely dissolve.
(At a smaller scale: it's about 12g 4-18-38, 6g Magnesium, and 12g Cal Nitrate per 5 gallon bucket.)
[1]: https://www.masterblend.com/4-18-38-tomato-formula/