S
sicoroot
- 61
- 18
Hello growers !
are you throwing away the run off water from your pots or you feed it back to the plants ?
I have been sucking it up ( not by mouth ) and pouring it back into the plant, until recently when I realized the big difference in EC/PPM of this water that passed through the soil vs the same water before watering the plants.
I recently purchased a pH and EC pen and was surprised by some of the measurements that came out....
I filter my tap water before drinking and for the plants too with a Berkey carbon filter system and the pH ranges from 7.1 to 7.6, ppm500 readings are very low with a value of 10 and the corresponding EC value on the pen shows 0 ( both bluelab pens ).
I was surprised by the EC/ppm level being so low so that I thought the pen was out of calibration, so I did calibrated it just to make sure and the reading came out as wrote above.
I did some other test with water that has some dissolved salts in it and the ppm/EC measurement was way higher....so it seems like the pen is telling the truth.
I thought the low ppm value came from the effect of the carbon filters but after doing a cross check with unfiltered water the results are pretty much the same.
So it seems like water here is very "soft", in fact all my appliances that use water ( kettle, dishwasher etc ) has no traces of salt build up.
Now back to the run off question...I did another pH and EC test on the run off water and realized that the ppm/EC values are waaaay higher. Of course water dissolve minerals as it passes through the soil but I was surprised to see that the EC value went up to 4.6 and ppm500 around 2300.
pH stayed fairly stable to what I feed with ( I lower the pH before watering using earth juice pH down to a 6.7/6.8 value ).
I'm trying to grow organic and it seems like the pH is not so crucial as in other grow styles but I still try to feed with a more correct pH as 7.5 ( as average for my tap water ) is a bit on the alkaline side for what ganja needs.
So after all these discoveries I then thought that pouring the run off water back into the pot is maybe not a good idea considering the amount of salts dissolved in it.....
I'm going to do a slurry test soon just to see where I'm at with the soil itself.
are you throwing away the run off water from your pots or you feed it back to the plants ?
I have been sucking it up ( not by mouth ) and pouring it back into the plant, until recently when I realized the big difference in EC/PPM of this water that passed through the soil vs the same water before watering the plants.
I recently purchased a pH and EC pen and was surprised by some of the measurements that came out....
I filter my tap water before drinking and for the plants too with a Berkey carbon filter system and the pH ranges from 7.1 to 7.6, ppm500 readings are very low with a value of 10 and the corresponding EC value on the pen shows 0 ( both bluelab pens ).
I was surprised by the EC/ppm level being so low so that I thought the pen was out of calibration, so I did calibrated it just to make sure and the reading came out as wrote above.
I did some other test with water that has some dissolved salts in it and the ppm/EC measurement was way higher....so it seems like the pen is telling the truth.
I thought the low ppm value came from the effect of the carbon filters but after doing a cross check with unfiltered water the results are pretty much the same.
So it seems like water here is very "soft", in fact all my appliances that use water ( kettle, dishwasher etc ) has no traces of salt build up.
Now back to the run off question...I did another pH and EC test on the run off water and realized that the ppm/EC values are waaaay higher. Of course water dissolve minerals as it passes through the soil but I was surprised to see that the EC value went up to 4.6 and ppm500 around 2300.
pH stayed fairly stable to what I feed with ( I lower the pH before watering using earth juice pH down to a 6.7/6.8 value ).
I'm trying to grow organic and it seems like the pH is not so crucial as in other grow styles but I still try to feed with a more correct pH as 7.5 ( as average for my tap water ) is a bit on the alkaline side for what ganja needs.
So after all these discoveries I then thought that pouring the run off water back into the pot is maybe not a good idea considering the amount of salts dissolved in it.....
I'm going to do a slurry test soon just to see where I'm at with the soil itself.