This is the general guide he posted on the asklucas website for watering denser mediums such as soil, coco, peat etc.
1. use no more water than the plant will consume in 24 hours (if roots stay wet, they use up the oxygen, and no new oxygen will be acquired until the medium dries out enough to breathe)
2. water with plain water for 2 irrigations, then feed at full strength in the 3rd irrigation, or, use 1/3 strength nutes with Every irrigation.
3. On the feeding irrigation, allow runoff from the bottom of the pot, so you can test the TDS and pH. IF the TDS of the runoff is higher
than 1800 TDS (all TDS values are at .7 conversion), reduce the amount or frequency of adding nutrients in the future waterings.
4. Flush the medium with plain water IF the runoff goes over 1800.
5. If pH goes below 5, in the runoff, flush the medium with plain
water.
6. Ideally, the runoff TDS and pH should be ~1300ppm @~5.8pH
Now I have looked up and down posts for a few hours now and I can't deduct this question anywhere. If the pots are watered only enough to be dry after 24 hours, how do you achieve runoff? Even in 3 gallon smartpots and using Promix it takes almost 3 times the amount of water used in a day to achieve runoff.
Second question is this, he suggests feeding at 1/3 strength if irrigating every time, However, if you feed at 1/3 each time without runoff to ensure they dry out in 24 hours the medium will build up salt REALLY fast and the PH will drop. How would you handle this?
I'm experiencing this problem, the grow went really well adding only enough water for the plant to use in 24 hours (in two gallon pots this didn't produce any runoff) but in the second week of 12/12 the leaves started going yellow and after testing the runoff my PH had dropped and the ppm was about 2300. This was week 3 of 12/12 when I tested the runoff. Now I flushed the plants with plain water to try and get the PH up a bit and the ppm down but doing so it took them 3.5 days to dry out.
So my overall question is this, if using the lucas formula and using promix, feeding at 1/3 every time and trying to achieve a dry-ish medium in 24 hours; then how do you avoid salt build up and when should you flush if at all? How do you achieve runoff? It seems I would have to use 2 gallon pots (seems really small space for roots) in order to achieve both runoff(slow the buildup of salt) and drying out in 24 hours..
1. use no more water than the plant will consume in 24 hours (if roots stay wet, they use up the oxygen, and no new oxygen will be acquired until the medium dries out enough to breathe)
2. water with plain water for 2 irrigations, then feed at full strength in the 3rd irrigation, or, use 1/3 strength nutes with Every irrigation.
3. On the feeding irrigation, allow runoff from the bottom of the pot, so you can test the TDS and pH. IF the TDS of the runoff is higher
than 1800 TDS (all TDS values are at .7 conversion), reduce the amount or frequency of adding nutrients in the future waterings.
4. Flush the medium with plain water IF the runoff goes over 1800.
5. If pH goes below 5, in the runoff, flush the medium with plain
water.
6. Ideally, the runoff TDS and pH should be ~1300ppm @~5.8pH
Now I have looked up and down posts for a few hours now and I can't deduct this question anywhere. If the pots are watered only enough to be dry after 24 hours, how do you achieve runoff? Even in 3 gallon smartpots and using Promix it takes almost 3 times the amount of water used in a day to achieve runoff.
Second question is this, he suggests feeding at 1/3 strength if irrigating every time, However, if you feed at 1/3 each time without runoff to ensure they dry out in 24 hours the medium will build up salt REALLY fast and the PH will drop. How would you handle this?
I'm experiencing this problem, the grow went really well adding only enough water for the plant to use in 24 hours (in two gallon pots this didn't produce any runoff) but in the second week of 12/12 the leaves started going yellow and after testing the runoff my PH had dropped and the ppm was about 2300. This was week 3 of 12/12 when I tested the runoff. Now I flushed the plants with plain water to try and get the PH up a bit and the ppm down but doing so it took them 3.5 days to dry out.
So my overall question is this, if using the lucas formula and using promix, feeding at 1/3 every time and trying to achieve a dry-ish medium in 24 hours; then how do you avoid salt build up and when should you flush if at all? How do you achieve runoff? It seems I would have to use 2 gallon pots (seems really small space for roots) in order to achieve both runoff(slow the buildup of salt) and drying out in 24 hours..
