Put the soil pen in a drawer. I don't even pH test with the vials anymore. Honestly once I got nutes tuned I never test those unless there is a head scratcher. Thus far in bags I don't have any issues or salt stains or anything. I even have the water tight enough so that one paper towel under them is about enough of a drip catch, more like 2.
Since I restarted with now 3 harvested generations and 2 aborted seeds plus a mutant cancer seedling, I have needed my test kit 4-5 times (4 vial n/p/k/pH). And mostly because I was restarting fresh making mistakes. Now I can make mistakes with no test kit, which is a cheaper way to fuck up.
And if I had room for Carly the columbian... she has a LOT of potential to go and no more room to do it in. Flower is already going to have me like converting the top to a zipper panel. Topping ain't going to send her sideways enough anyhow. I can't clone yet either so that's out, every spare dime is into jerky selling right now. As it is flower might get Totally Pure Disco, she owns half the available canopy space as is.
Which is fine, this fox farm is cocked and loaded. Shit's lethal ninjitsu. The octo-alt-lamp is ready to RAD PHOTS!
Round Three, FIGHT!
I may still own one buried deep in a grow bin in the crawl space, I haven’t used one at least in 2 years, if you look at my pots one of them has a mechanical PH meter, it never varies from 6.9-7.1PH, hell for all I know it dosent even work but u leave it there it looks good

I just look for any major swing if it’s in that zone I don’t even worry about it, in 7-8 months I’ve been running these bags it’s stayed within that range no matter what I feed or water with, living soil really does PH balance itself. Combine that with actual feedings once a month, and supplemental top dresses and I really mean “if you feel like it” the basic easy feed of craft blend has all you need in reality, anything else is a top up
My normal top dressed for a 30 gallon tub like these
4 cups craft blend
1/2 cup gnarly Barley
1/4 cup Pushin P (I feed this in veg as well, the living soil goal is to have all nutrients availabe at alltimes of the grow, the rhizosphere will control uptake of nutrients based off plant root enzyme excretion back into the rihizosphere)
About 2-3 cups earthworm castings
1 cup kashi blend
Usually a few cups of rice hulls mixed in, cover crop gets dropped at top dress times
I run white landrino clover for cover crop (30gals were cropped and dropped and are reseeded and are coming up again) clover pulls nitrogen directly from the air and deposit is it into the soil, when you drop it and work it in it adds more nitrogen plus organic material, that mixes with the peat, EWC plus the worms breaks that down into new useable nutrints for the soil, and you can just repeat this till you need to run again, I’ve been doing this all summer since I chopped these plants down, the nutrints don’t go anywhere they just build u til something uses them
The cover crop is Tri-purpose besides organic material and nitrogen accusation the roots also help keep the moisture mobilized in the soil so the bag dosent become stagnant, plus I want to keep packin those worms full of food to keep producing EWC and reproducing to maximize population
Another fun fact worms will self regulate their own population based off population density, once the space becomes crowded to a certain point, density, food scarcity, etc, they will stop reproducing and laying cocoons until the population decreases
Waterings, below is what I use, they get rotated I use one of them, next watering plain water, then the next, then a plain water again etc
Advanced nutrients Organics line Big Mikes OG tea (2ml/gal)
Organics alive FPF (1ml/gal)
Homemade FFJ (3ml/gal)
Alaska fish fertilizer (3tbs/gal)
Only reason I don’t need to guess with watering is the ecowitts, fuckin excellent, especially since I don’t want a full dryback I know my minimums and maximums, I can water at any time and adjust water amount by soil moisture percentage present at time of watering
Here’s a few fun old videos from me figuring them out, first run in the bags, a week long time lapse after the video of planting into the pots for the first time