My soil grow failed & I've got to get it right this time...help a noob out...

[stillanoob]

So you're talking about using a PPM meter or some such? Is that something that's essentially mandatory? I completely understand the concept of PH, but it sounds like this is something extra I will have to learn...I"ve heard of PPM's but haven't paid much attention.

 

[stillanoob]

With the run off thing.. I'm supposed to water until at least 15% of whatever I poured in comes out the bottom of the pots? Each time I water?

 

[drifting]

you can get a ppm pen off of ebay for like 10 bucks. its well worth the investment

 

[stillanoob]

So if you ignore PPM's, it can severely hurt you?

 

[unregistered190]

This mix I'm using is kicking ass.

1 x Bag of Ocean Forest
1 x Bag of Canna Coco
1 X Bag of Happy Frog
1/2 Bag Chunky Perlite
30# Earthwormcastings
6 cup pulverized dolomite lime 2-1 Cal/mag ratio
6 cups Bone Meal
3 cups Blood Meal
3 Cups Azomite
3 cups Greensand
3 cups Kelp Meal

looks good...what size bag of perlite to use 1/2 of? thanks

 

[drifting]

So if you ignore PPM's, it can severely hurt you?

IMHO yes. alot of the time we get excess salt built up in our mediums. knowing how much is goin in and coming out really helps to keep things in check

 

[jayjayfrank]

coco has nothing in it. no NPK. if you use general hydro 3 part(micro/grow/bloom) exactly at 3 to 5 ml per gallon each in RO water you might be able to do it without a ppm pen but you have no way of knowing exactly how much you are feeding them without measuring. so maybe, if you know exactly the formula math for your solution you could get by without a ppm pen, but no reason not to have one. coco takes on the NPK of the water you feed it(kinda sorta). some stuff builds up, some stuff gets let go. you only flush at the end, never in the middle or anything.


you MUST have some way of checking the ph and adjusting the ph. i had a cheap ph pen but i dropped it in a bucket of water and it died so now i actually use the general hydroponics ph drops, cheap, easy, no calibrating, good enough.

every time you water you want runoff. you want ATLEAST 15%, it can be up to 40%(or 100 who cares). some people have coco so dialed in they have NO runoff but that seems really hard to me.

the trick about ppms is watching the plant flower and knowing when they should get lower or higher. and even then when it gets lower you cut out certain things at certain times(first grow, then micro, then bloom). but again this all depends on the plant, each one is different and the enviroment changes things.

 

[stillanoob]

What if I use distilled water only? Since it's a micro grow and all, I could find it practical to buy all my water...

 

[SecondAttempt]

I think the first thing you need to do is figure out what ate your roots, and eliminate that... use whatever nutes and medium you want but with no roots you're pissing in the wind.

Distilled water is fine but you will want to add cal-mag because you wont get either like you would with tap... that being said, some tap has too much and without an EC/PPM meter you have no idea what is going on with your tap.

GH micro and bloom only... 1 part micro to 1.5 parts bloom, 6micro to 9bloom is pretty standard but you may want to go lighter given your wattage. The ratio is more important than the concentration, but there is no need to exceed 6:9... feed your plants what they can handle.

1ml:1.5ml
2ml:3ml
3ml:4.5ml
4ml:6ml
5ml:7.5ml
6ml:9ml

Coco is the best... never even tried soil.

 

[stillanoob]

No GH vegg?

 

[jayjayfrank]

i thought about going to RO or buying water too until i got a ppm meter and found out my water is only 100ppm. 90ppm-120ppm depending on the time of year. it works out fine. tap water has some minerals in it but at such a low ppm in doesnt make that much of a difference. if it was much higher like 300-1000 i would use RO.

i myself use 1/2 teaspoon per gallon Veg+Bloom as my base and spray dynagro protekt+foliagepro and azamax for bugs in veg and use 100ppm of koolbloom at the end of flower.

when starting out and not really sure - the genhydro 3 part is like $35 and makes like 300+ gallons, lasts forever, super stable and solid. its carried every where, even amazon. and you can totally talk to a bunch of people about it cause everybody uses it. you get a lot of control when you water daily and have the nute ratios matching the plants growth. but it takes time and experience to dial-in any one plant strain or grow space. have fun.

 

[jayjayfrank]

while i have not used it myself, i would actually try and use all 3 gen hydro micro, grow bloom. at a 1:1:1 ratio.

3ml/gal of Micro, Grow and Bloom is 250ppm ish
66 - 24 - 82 with the cannastat calculator

5ml/gal Micro, Grow and Bloom is 416ppm
110-39-137 should be fine for normal growth

you can drop grow and double bloom
5ml micro 10ml bloom and get something like
81-66-114 hopefully helping plant build more flowers


so on and so forth.

 

[sweetestsin420]

1

 

[The Hummus Monk]

3 Words:

Phillthy's Soil Mix

 

[BrownThumb]

I dunno,if you had problems with soil,i'm not sure you should go down the coco with hempy path just yet. I would suggest a soiless mix. That stuff is VERY forgiving for the new grower. Easy to work with,flushes nicely if you make a nute mistake,easy to judge when to water.ect. Hopefully someone will back me up on this suggestion. Whatever path you choose I wish you the best.

I am just starting out my first hempy grow; I think you should try that and think that you'll have plenty of support here if and when you need it, but you probably won't because it's so simple (or I wouldn't be doing it). I have had soil issues too, but mine were self inflicted wounds...being a cheap ass and cutting corners. I am going to run soil next to a hempy this next run, so maybe we can take notes on each others grows if you also go the hempy route. BTW, I am doing the traditional 3/1 Perlite/Vermiculite w/ the GH Flora series for nutrients on the good ship hempy.

 

[mowood3479]

id go with sunshine soiless mix or promix bx

 

[This2ShallPass]

I was once (like 6 months ago )where you are so I will share what saved me. I was trying various pro-mix and other soil-less mixes and different additives and my previous incarnation on this board had a pretty good thread going in the Infirmary. It's easy to over-complicate things after reading all the fantastic information on this forum.

Coco hempy's stopped me from over and under watering. Switching to the KISS method of Maxibloom (+ a dash of Epsom Salt) feeds my entire crop from the same bucket and stopped me from having multiple buckets mixed up all over the place. I first transplanted a pro-mix plant into a 2 gallon hempy and that plant took off within 2 days. That was the "watershed moment" for me. Also consider the KISS method at least until you get your sea legs. It took another headache out of the equation for me and I'm still using it for now.

Also, coco works better for me because my tap is at 7.0 and with the Maxibloom it ranges from 5.3 at 1000 ppms to around 6.0 at 700 ppms so I just alter my dosage up and down the scale and that gives me the pH swing and eliminates one more chemical to add and one more chance to f*ck up.

Hope you get something from that and good luck!

 

[stillanoob]

Ok, I think I'm settled on coco hempy buckets. Now, can someone tell me if I am understanding the fundamental concept of PPM's correctly.. can someone evaluate the following statement and tell me if it's wrong, partially correct, or completely correct:

PPM's are measured with something called a TDS meter. PPM's are a direct measurement of the concentration of fertilizers in your water. Depending on your location, some chemicals can already be in your tap water, which is why plain tap water measures above 0 ppm. If the # is too high, then you might have hard water, but the concept is that you want to put the amount of fertilizers in your water to get your PPM's in a specific range for each stage of plant growth, whatever is the ideal # for the stage your plant is in....PPM's too high and you can starve your plants for water, too low and a nutrient deficiency might happen.

Is my understanding correct?

 

[This2ShallPass]

I have a barely basic functioning understanding of all of this but I will summarize what I think I know and then more knowledgeable folks can teach both of us. I accumulated all of this from many threads on this forum over many months of reading.

PPM means Parts Per Million which measures how many TDS are in your water. TDS means Total Dissolved Solids.
The reading you get on the meter gives you the ppm's.

As you add nutes to the water, that reading will of course increase. This is how you get an accurate measurement of how strong you mix your nutes.

Tap water can differ greatly from city to city, small towns, well water, reservoirs, recycled, and so on. It's like the old Cable vs DSL argument... it just depends on where you live (and why you grow). Tap water has nutrients that are very helpful for plants (including chlorine) but others either have no choice (well water, live in Mexico maybe) or just prefer a more iron grip on every aspect (commercial, medical growers, personal preference). Personally my tap is very good and I consider myself lucky.

Now here is my understanding of how your ppm's relates to pH. There is a picture diagram that people post here that shows how the different nutrients are available to the plant at different pH's. The range for plants in coco to accept the nutrients is from 5.5 or slightly lower to around 6.2. For soil the scale is higher. Most of the nutes overlap in the middle of the scale but there are also important nutes at either end of the spectrum. In order to get the full use of the nutes you must "swing" the pH up and down (not furiously).

Now, the more nutes you add, the lower your pH goes. So for example... I start by adding a lot of nutes for a batch and get my ppm's up. I just mixed up 900 ppms which gave me a pH of 5.8 for this feeding. 5 gallons will last about 3 days. Next batch I mix to the low 800s, next batch down to 770 or so, and then I start swinging back up or maybe take it down one more.

For the record I do use both a pH and a ppm meter; however recently my pH meter died and I stupidly ordered a replacement from China. For a month I relied on the ppm meter and never had a problem. When my new meter arrived I dropped it in the current batch and it was exactly what I thought it would be.

I hope that was accurate and helpful.

 

[This2ShallPass]

I can't edit posts yet, but my current batch of 900 ppm nute mix is not 5.8 but 5.5.

Next batch will be lower ppms and higher pH. I just typed it up backwards.