meduser180056
Active member
Great post again Sproutco. Your a wealth of information.
Testing Your EC and PH is critical. These two things have improved my grow %100.
I did several grows without either a PH or EC reader and the plants suffered. Too much guesswork.
After getting my EC meter I learned I had been consistently overfeeding. Like someone said above you'd be surprised how high the EC can get in soil/soilless mediums when using powerful nutes like PBP or GH 3 part.
After getting the PH meter I learned that my local tap water has a PH of 9. I used to just water with that tap water with no adjustments. Probably wasn't so bad when I added nutes, but when I was giving em str8 water the PH must have been horrible. Thank god for the natural PH buffering ability of soil or my first grows would have been complete disasters. I started in normal soil, but later switched to Pro-mix.
This is why they say soil is good for newbies because it is so forgiving.
Now I'm calculating my nutrient profile using PH's spreadsheet/lucas formula,
Ph-ing every watering, and always checking EC.
I agree with BabyHughie that testing the runoff is the easiest method, and I also agree that the initial runoff is most likely the best indicator of where the soil is at.
It's more work, but I always test runoff now.
I'm in Pro-mix HP. This stuff is great.
Sproutco- I usually PH my water to around 6.2, but I've been finding the runoff coming out as low as 5.6. I'm thinking 6.4 might be a better PH.
You think 5.6 is too low for Pro-mix? I'm worried it might continue to drift lower creating some PH problems.
Also what EC would you shoot for the run-off of a soilless mix like Pro-mix?
I've been trying to keep it around 1.6-2.0. If it gets over 2.0 I flush.
I recommend ALWAYS checking your runoff after watering. At least until you get to the point where you just know what it is cuz you've done it some many times. Even then you'd want to test it occasionally I think. It's more work, but this guarantees the plants medium is where it's supposed to be. I bought a lil mini shopvac [$30] and I use it to suck up the runoff after they've fully drained. Then I test it.
The shopvac makes it much easier, plus if you leave a plant sitting in the container with it's own runoff pooled around it. It will suck up the runoff within 12 hours. This isn't good if you just flushed out a bunch of nasties such as accumulated salts etc.
End of rant....
Testing Your EC and PH is critical. These two things have improved my grow %100.
I did several grows without either a PH or EC reader and the plants suffered. Too much guesswork.
After getting my EC meter I learned I had been consistently overfeeding. Like someone said above you'd be surprised how high the EC can get in soil/soilless mediums when using powerful nutes like PBP or GH 3 part.
After getting the PH meter I learned that my local tap water has a PH of 9. I used to just water with that tap water with no adjustments. Probably wasn't so bad when I added nutes, but when I was giving em str8 water the PH must have been horrible. Thank god for the natural PH buffering ability of soil or my first grows would have been complete disasters. I started in normal soil, but later switched to Pro-mix.
This is why they say soil is good for newbies because it is so forgiving.
Now I'm calculating my nutrient profile using PH's spreadsheet/lucas formula,
Ph-ing every watering, and always checking EC.
I agree with BabyHughie that testing the runoff is the easiest method, and I also agree that the initial runoff is most likely the best indicator of where the soil is at.
It's more work, but I always test runoff now.
I'm in Pro-mix HP. This stuff is great.
Sproutco- I usually PH my water to around 6.2, but I've been finding the runoff coming out as low as 5.6. I'm thinking 6.4 might be a better PH.
You think 5.6 is too low for Pro-mix? I'm worried it might continue to drift lower creating some PH problems.
Also what EC would you shoot for the run-off of a soilless mix like Pro-mix?
I've been trying to keep it around 1.6-2.0. If it gets over 2.0 I flush.
I recommend ALWAYS checking your runoff after watering. At least until you get to the point where you just know what it is cuz you've done it some many times. Even then you'd want to test it occasionally I think. It's more work, but this guarantees the plants medium is where it's supposed to be. I bought a lil mini shopvac [$30] and I use it to suck up the runoff after they've fully drained. Then I test it.
The shopvac makes it much easier, plus if you leave a plant sitting in the container with it's own runoff pooled around it. It will suck up the runoff within 12 hours. This isn't good if you just flushed out a bunch of nasties such as accumulated salts etc.
End of rant....
