the Hand Watering coco thread

[padster007]

thanks alot bone! making sense now.

heres the worrying part tho after the feed a gave them last night i checked the runoff this morning and was shocked, the ph was 7 after going in a 5.6ph and the ec was nearly off the metre reading 3 on the ec the plants are still heavy and im worried ive over powered my babies. should i do anything or wait till they get alot lighter then go to a low feed regime like you said. thanks for your help bone ill show you some photos if it will help.

 

[bonecarver_OG]

for now, stop giving them rhizotonic to start with. im definetly sure you have overfeed them hehe hope things sort out. FIRST - dont panic! second - flush, third - adjust your feeding to the usage of the plants.

let the substrate dry out a bit to start with - give those roots a break. to me it sounds like you have allready a lot of nutes/salt build up in you coco. try watering with only ph'ed water for a while untill you see nute need in the plant. then id start feeding lightly again. with this high EC this early, i would definetly recomend you to water with ONLY ph'ed water every two times for a good while.

for best results in flowering the EC of the substrate shouldnt be too high when entering 12/12, because if it is it doesnt really leave a lot of headroom for the plant to be feed. specially i think you might get problems when you start with flowering boosters etc.

keep it cooler from now..

btw - did you use canna nutes? im stoned cant remeber-...

 

[bonecarver_OG]

just a pic to bring some colour....

handwatered - 30º temps - its summer here!! - and because of the HIGH heat i managed to burn the tips a bit.. - because higher heat means quicker water evaporation and this means the nutes concentrate very quickly... leading to higher ec - so with heat - lower nute EC, more frequent flushes etc gives a bit better results.

peace!

 

[padster007]

LOL! yeah im using canna a + b plus rhizo. when should i water with ph'd water when it drys out a bit or straight away, thanks for taking the time out to answer my posts ive been stalking this site for quite some time and i find your threads the bizz. i thought it would be a build up of nutes im such a newbie.

its been fairly hot round here for the past week and i live in a well insulated house so i have problems with my humidity ive had to install a humidifier as my humidity was below 25% RH now with the humidifier i get around 40% RH i get ive moved the lights about 3 foot away. i think ive got the setup right the temps dont go over 28c at its hottest. its just me and my newbie nute feeding problem, but i will make sure its starts at a minimal feed from now on.

i think whats made me over power them was a freind whos using the same coco and feed as me but he feeds from the tray and lets it soak from the bottom using 100% coco and 30ml a+b and his plants are flying, i think i might have to sabotage him. lol;P

 

[padster007]

that looks so good im so wanting some of that, you the man of coco.

 

[bonecarver_OG]

wait one day - dont over water since having a medium waterlogged is not good - specially for younger plants.

i think whats made me over power them was a freind whos using the same coco and feed as me but he feeds from the tray and lets it soak from the bottom using 100% coco and 30ml a+b and his plants are flying, i think i might have to sabotage him. lol;P

sounds like your mate likes to over do it a bit on the side of nutes hes feeding will pretty much give continuosly too much N - giving at start plants that look very healthy and they will grow big untill they go a bit too dark - and then there is really nothing to do to sort it out besides massive flushing... a lot of nutes means more N and that works against THC production.

theoretically your friends method is just pushing up the salt high up in the pot every watering - its never gonna flush out like that. if you not talking about an ebbflow system - where actually in some way the excess salts get diluted back into the water every watering, and finally in those cases its the big amount of RO water used to balance up the water EC, that actually is the key to success..

i would NOT recomend to use the watering on the tray method since that will increase the chances of root-rot and salt build up.

 

[padster007]

cheers mate ill post back later to see if all goes well. thanks

 

[padster007]

ive just flushed the plants with ph'd water at 5.7 the run off came back at 6.6 the ec of the ph'd water was 0.6 ec and came back 2.0 ec. put 2L of water through each pot n gathered about 1.3L run off. have i put enough ph'd water through

 

[bonecarver_OG]

it seems like you havent done enough...

flush them out properly untill you notice the drain water have a EC as close as possible to the input EC.

but finish of by giving a watering with mild nutes.

no point flushing out all the nutes and the NOT ad nutes again as replacement....

if u got ec 2.0 well - i think u should to start with give much less nutes, and water every 2 waterings with a whole lot of ph'd water, untill things start going back to normal.

also it seems maybe you have vegged the clones a long time in same small pots without flushing? is it so?

 

[padster007]

no i there only 9 days old now n they went into 10l pots i feed with ph water the day befor a gave a 500ml feed the new leaves are very yellow and most leaves have crispy brown tips with light purple stems. i will flush again until its leveled out thnx once again

 

[DeezyH]

. anyone got any helpful advice it would be greatly apreciated, plus how do i perform a correct run off test with coco.

Padster,

There is a thread http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=121215 in this forum with some great information, you should check it out. Here's a link that specifically talks about testing the PH and EC:

Just watched this Canna video on youtube. It doesn't talk about runoff specifically but gives step by step instructions to measure the PH and EC of your soil. Its at 5:50 if you want to skip ahead.

Part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SMPNg1DCGE

The video is split into 3 parts, some pretty good info in there if you want to check the other ones out.

Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsJXJED0qD4

Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbqF2HANJBA

 

[bonecarver_OG]

what brand coco are you using?

 

[seanpferguson]

these are my mazar freebies.
they're about 10-12 days old.
they're in 75%coco, 25%perlite.
i water every 12 hrs with 10ml cns17 + 5ml Calmag+ + 4ml greenfuse. i water until it has a nice run-off. just read about wanting to wait til its kind of dry/not sopping wet. sry bout the pic quality.
theyre starting to show signs of overnute... should i cut back on nutes or flush or both?
any suggestions are welcome. you guys and girls are NUTS! thx.

 

[BobbleheadJed]

these are my mazar freebies.
they're about 10-12 days old.
they're in 75%coco, 25%perlite.
i water every 12 hrs with 10ml cns17 + 5ml Calmag+ + 4ml greenfuse. i water until it has a nice run-off. just read about wanting to wait til its kind of dry/not sopping wet. sry bout the pic quality.
theyre starting to show signs of overnute... should i cut back on nutes or flush or both?
any suggestions are welcome. you guys and girls are NUTS! thx.

I think you are right to want to cut back on nutes. I use CNS17 (old formula) for vegging clones. I run them at 1ml/gal CalMag and 5ml/gal CNS17 grow until they are over 12 inches tall, then up it to 2ml calmag and 7ml CNS17. But those are Mandala genes that need less nutes and I only water once per day. If you are watering twice per day, you can use a lower nute level because you are replenshing the coco more often.

If your plants aren't showing signs of being over-watered then I wouldn't worry about over-watering them. I've seen some people get nice results watering 3-4 times a day.

 

[bonecarver_OG]

a bunch of good advice there, bobble head

in many cases the solutions to problems have a logical solution. feeding light because your feeding often makes a lot of sence... an other aproach is to use same EC - but to water more often. its the same effect but more expensive on nutes...

 

[Greyskull]

yo bone whats up man.
been lurking in this thread for a while.
i've been ebb n flowing in my 1.5g pots for some time now, but recently added another table/light, and didn't want to add more water because i didn't want to mess with the extra rh, so i have been hand watering them daily... 1/2L x2 passes. 5 weeks in and its not as hard as I thought i would be, and i dont have to change out and huge reserviors, which is nice. i am mixing 20L water for the nute solution per day (for 20 plants per 4x4)...

i may actually switch to hand watering from e&f for sake of giving the plants fresh food every feeding, partially to save 2-3hrs on rez change days, paritally to "save" water since i wont have to dump 45g of nutrient solution per table.

I got a cool hydrofarm telescoping watering wand that i hook up to a little 140gph pump with 10ft of 1/2" hose and it makes things e-a-s-y.

 

[padster007]

i flushed out again last night and put the ph'd water in at 5.7 and it was coming out 6.3 also got the ec down from 2.0 to 0.8 to 1.0. then after the flush i gave a 200 ml feed of A+B which was about 8ml A and 8ml B at ec 1.0 and ph'd at 5.7 them levels look a bit more respectable than the first flush! the pots are soaked now so will i have to leave a couple of days to dry out?? before the next feed then ill feed ph'd water. cheers bone for taking the time to help.

 

[bonecarver_OG]

padster - no problem at all flushing in coco takes a little bit longer time than hydro mediums, but its faster than soil atleast glad ur on the rigth track...

greyskull sounds cool - u gotto show us the setup!

 

[Sweet Inc.]

...because higher heat means quicker water evaporation and this means the nutes concentrate very quickly...

This exact thing happened to me a few days ago. Three days after transplant from starter cubes I had to flush the pots untill runoff EC was 0.20 or less, and they have been drying out for two days now. As the coco is really moist still, how should I feed the plants? They are only about 10cm tall with two sets of true leaves, looking a bit pale and there is purple in the veins and underside of leaves. I thought about giving them a very small feed of 0,5EC nutes tomorrow, would I be on the right track? I don't wanna drown the little plants as they look over-watered already.

Btw, this thread is some critical info for anyone starting out with coco.

 

[bonecarver_OG]

let it dry out a litle bit more and then water with nutes. pale leafs are usually because lack of N.