watering advice confuses me sometimes

[imgrowing]

everybody says to saturate the pot when top 2-3 inches are dry, but what if the middle and bottom is still wet?
wouldn't that promote root rot or drown the girls?
i'm in 7 gallon fabric BTW

 

[AZreefer]

More accurate method is based on pot weight. When your pot is dry give it a heft. Fill it with 2 gallons slow, real slow. Heft it again. When you can lift it as easily as you could dry it's time to water. I believe a 50% dry back is the suggested practice for soil.

The dryback is not suggested practice for coco though.

 

[Sunin]

7 gallon will take around 1,5-2 gallon every 3-4 days if it's soil and full of roots.
I always look at fans, if I think it's time to water by humidity levels and weight of the pots I will wait one more day for flop of fans

 

[Cape1]

7 gallon will take around 1,5-2 gallon every 3-4 days if it's soil and full of roots.
I always look at fans, if I think it's time to water by humidity levels and weight of the pots I will wait one more day for flop of fans

I've been hitting my 15 gallon pots with about 1.5 gallons every couple of days, and it seems to be enough. I may go up to 2 gallons to play it safe. I'm really not concerned with over watering at any single feeding.

I'm new to this, but my main determining factor is how the plant looks. I let them get too dry before and they drooped. Now, I've gotten better at catching them right before that happens. Like you, I use weight as one of the key indicators.

 

[Sunin]

this is nice video that shows when plant get thirsty and what she does after before almost death from thirst

 

[quirk]

everybody says to saturate the pot when top 2-3 inches are dry, but what if the middle and bottom is still wet?
wouldn't that promote root rot or drown the girls?
i'm in 7 gallon fabric BTW

It absolutely would keep your roots in a saturated, unbreathable environment in the scenario you describe. I never have understood that knuckle crap. Before I got used to watering by weight I would check different levels to make sure I wasn't watering too OFTEN. Grommets work well with fabric. Would you water the pot with the readings shown? 5 gal airpot, equal parts FFof, FFhf and perlite.

 

[Thatoneguyyouknow_]

More accurate method is based on pot weight. When your pot is dry give it a heft. Fill it with 2 gallons slow, real slow. Heft it again. When you can lift it as easily as you could dry it's time to water. I believe a 50% dry back is the suggested practice for soil.

The dryback is not suggested practice for coco though.

depends on soil mixes really. I have several mixes going because im very rural and get what i can work with and its often different stuff. I have some mixes that seem to do better by weight, some that seem to do better by sticking a pinky finger in the top lol.

With underwatering they wilt from the bottom up and loose turgidity, they get softer in their tissues. With overwatering the entire plant droops and also stiffens a little.


You dont ever want soil to dry out 100%, and that goes doubly so with coco mixes.

There will always be some amount of moisture down below in a soil mix, much like outside in the ground. If the deepest substrates the roots have acess too totally dry out, that's a big problem, the plant will almost immediately loose its ability to full regulate fluid pressure. But so is leaving that deep substrate totally saturated. That creates an anaerobic (oxygenless) environment after some time. Cannabis is one of the fastest moisture cycling plants i know of too. If they have access to the appropriate moisture, they can take sunlight exposure levels that will sun burn some columnar cactus lol. If theres too much moisture they over saturate themselves in attempts to transpire as much of the moisture away as possible. If you have a USB scope, you can actually see the stomata on a dry plant closed, and on an overwatered plant theyre usually all open.

Yea, im the information vomit guy. Howdy.

 

[Natep]

Hardest part about growing.

 

[Sunin]

Yea, im the information vomit guy. Howdy.

I love information vomit
Sometimes I read academic research just for fun

keep it coming

 

[mstrpkl]

Im a first time grower so im not the most experienced, but so far what iv done has been working really well. At first i wasnt watering the entire substrate, some vets of the game told me to start, so i did, and iv seen a massive difference in growth speed and amount of time between waterings.

What i usually do is il do the 1st knuckle trick, thatl let me know the top soil is dry so il agitate that layer a little just so its not all packed together, just been easier for me to water it when i do that because the loose soil absorps the water easier. Then i push on all the sides of my bag. Since i have a fabric pot, the moisture seems to escape a little faster on the outer edges of the soil so i can hear a little crunch when i poke the bag if its dry. Then il look at my fan leaves and check if theyre lifting to the light or leaning towards the floor. The leaves are usually the biggest indicator, so @AZreefer gave me the idea to take a daily picture of the plant from the same angle and swipe between the pictures, you can see how the leaves go from perky to droopy over time

 

[AZreefer]

I've been hitting my 15 gallon pots with about 1.5 gallons every couple of days, and it seems to be enough. I may go up to 2 gallons to play it safe. I'm really not concerned with over watering at any single feeding.

I'm new to this, but my main determining factor is how the plant looks. I let them get too dry before and they drooped. Now, I've gotten better at catching them right before that happens. Like you, I use weight as one of the key indicators.

I hit my 15 gallon pots with 3 gallons. But I only have about 10 gallons worth of media in mine.

 

[Natep]

Get a city picker pot. Then you only need to worry about filling it up when its empty

 

[HeadHunterpipes]

Cannabis.Roots need oxygenated water and or 100% RH like in a hydroponic/aeroponic systems.

 

[Beachbumm]

everybody says to saturate the pot when top 2-3 inches are dry, but what if the middle and bottom is still wet?
wouldn't that promote root rot or drown the girls?
i'm in 7 gallon fabric BTW

There's a lot of bad information floating around these days in the Cannabis world and that 'stick the finger in' bit is some of the worst;

you water when the pot is completely dry, you tell if it's dry by picking it up and seeing if it's very light

 

[RootFarmer]

Sticking your finger in a 7 gallon pot is useless. You are correct about the rest of the soil still being wet and leading to root rot. It would help tobknow what kind of soil are you using?

 

[imgrowing]

Sticking your finger in a 7 gallon pot is useless. You are correct about the rest of the soil still being wet and leading to root rot. It would help tobknow what kind of soil are you using?

sorry about that, i'm in pro mix hp with a few handfuls of EWC mixed in. also using gaia green dry amendments.
kind of hard to lift 7 gallon pots with a scrog net though (last time ever scrogging)

 

[RootFarmer]

sorry about that, i'm in pro mix hp with a few handfuls of EWC mixed in. also using gaia green dry amendments.
kind of hard to lift 7 gallon pots with a scrog net though (last time ever scrogging)

Thanks for that. I can appreciate that. Are you actually scrogginsg or simply using a support net? People seem to confuse the two often. You don't need to pick up the whole pot. Just lift an edge to get a feel for the weight. In general, the amount of water you use should be appropriate for the plant size/stage of growth. With the exception of combined peak growth and super hot weather, I rarely need more than 10% of the total soil volume to fully saturate. Take your time when watering. Ideally you want to water from the top down vs the bottom up. Here's what I mean by that. If you add a lot of water quickly to dry soil then the water will sink immediately to the bottom of your pot. In order to fully saturate at this point you basically keep piling up water, in a sense. That is going to leave a lot of mud in the bottom of your pot depriving roots of essential oxygen and result in an uneven dry down. Try adding just enough to moisten the top of the soil and wait a minute. Then proceed to add a little at a time, working the water down to the bottom of the pot. This is watering from the top down. Make sense?. I get more even saturation and dry down this way.

 

[LoveGrowingIt]

I never have understood that knuckle crap.

It actually provides a small amount of useful information, but it doesn't indicate when to water. If the soil is moist at finger depth, then it not time to water. If the soil is dry at finger depth, it means it might be time to check other indicators, such as the weight of the pot, meter readings or the look of the leaves.

everybody says to saturate the pot when top 2-3 inches are dry, but what if the middle and bottom is still wet?

Who's everybody? I never said that's time to water.

The dry-and-drench method of watering is probably most important during the vegetation stage when one of the main goals is to promote deep root growth. Too frequent watering tends to grow shallow roots--and fungus gnats.

 

[Sunin]

kind of hard to lift 7 gallon pots with a scrog net though (last time ever scrogging)

isn't it? much much harder to asses plants in scrog. but doable
(I am also cured from scrog for a long time)

 

[dakotaoutlaw]

everybody says to saturate the pot when top 2-3 inches are dry, but what if the middle and bottom is still wet?
wouldn't that promote root rot or drown the girls?
i'm in 7 gallon fabric BTW

imo i put a series of samll holes im my fab pot then on the sidea as well for drain off then i use a 7 in 1 probe then i can check the moistier from any side or top or bottom so i dont over wtaer or drown them if that helps idk if u already know that but hope i could help