[Student Of Life]

Ok I've been buried alive by the amount of work to do in the garden, and thought I'd ask the forum for some advice. I'm transitioning to flower soon (very late, girls are super tall), and want to figure out this watering thing first.

For veg, I gave them on/off days until roots filled pots, then fed once daily by hand. Runoff almost every time (were a few days when res emptied out before the last row got to runoff). Been seeing some odd issues lately so checked runoff, and it's between 2 and 4 EC across the board. That's odd to me, since I always get good runoff, use .5mL/gallon of drip clean, and feed between 500-700 ppm (1-1.4 EC). So is the salt buildup from not watering often enough? Overfeeding? Not enough dripclean? Not enough runoff?

Next questions relate to watering quantities. If going from once daily feeds to multi-feeds, how do you modify the amount you feed and the strength? And does going from veg to flower demand changes in quantity?

[slipdefeu]

Hey

yep salts build-up, what the size/number of pots, size of plants/room?

[YetiOG]

I ran coco with no run off and experienced no problems. Originally i did runoff and watched runoff ppms, but stopped upon seeing others succeed with no run off.

If the plants look fine they are.

Coco gives off K naturally during its breakdown which tends to make reading runoff ppm somewhat inaccurate. It wont necessarily correlate to whats going in, and whats used, not used or build up

[maimunji]

I aslo run coco with no run off and have build up. Also low ph from run off reading, but plants looking good and healthy from start to finish even with run off 2.6 ec. . I speak with a lot experienced growers in this site and almous all say I need run off ppm and ph to be same like my rez. I trust them.

[Student Of Life]

slipdefeu - Pots are 5 gallons, 20 girls total, 2+ month veg from seed so they're all overgrown, room size is I don't know off the top of my head.. around 11x6. Two 600 MH's on parabolic reflectors cover pretty much the whole room.

YetiOG - Plants don't look fine though. Some do, but majority have little symptoms here and there and a few of them are quite beat up. pH has always been stable, nute ratios have been good, temp/humidity/co consistent, clean room, scoped for pests, etc. The only factor left in determining what's wrong with them is this runoff.

[maimunji]

5 gal is too much for multiple feed daily unless you have really big trees there. You will just throw your nutes and water through them. I think stoned40years tell you to not go above 2 gal. Why you not take this advice? Also if your tap water is good switch to tap I think you have cal def from pics all over your threads.

[dansbuds]

i think your problem lies in the volume of coco in the 5 gallon pots . when feeding once a day the plants can't use up the amount of nutes your feeding because theres to much being held onto the volume of coco . with smaller pots , the plants will be able to use up the nutes faster than the coco can hold onto .
to remedy this your going to have to really flush the coco alot with a 1.0 EC feed at a ph of 5.9 ...... run at least 5 gallons of that feed through each pot & then check the runoff again to see where they are now ...... you may have to do it more than once .
next round ...... go with 3 gallon pots max !

[slipdefeu]

+1 dans

I think you can go under ec1 for the flush

[Student Of Life]

maimunji- My plants don't look like they did 2 months ago friend lol. I couldn't afford to take the advice to buy more pots. I had 1's and 5's + saucers already. The room cost alot to put together so I couldn't afford to head out and buy 2's + saucers or 2's and trays.

dansbuds - Good hearing you say that lol, because that's what I decided to do this morning. Flushed them all out with .4 EC ph'd water until the runoff was .8 EC (down from 2-4 EC). I plan on spraying tonight before lights off with half strength liquid light too. Lemme tell you, flushing that much water through that many plants without trays is a nightmare.

[stoned40yrs]

Originally Posted by Student Of Life

maimunji- My plants don't look like they did 2 months ago friend lol. I couldn't afford to take the advice to buy more pots. I had 1's and 5's + saucers already. The room cost alot to put together so I couldn't afford to head out and buy 2's + saucers or 2's and trays.

I bet if you crunched numbers it would have been way cheaper and a better grow to go with 2s.
1- 3 gallons less coco per container
2- 60% less feed to saturate the container each feed time
3- a 2 gal container fits inside a 5 gal saucer last time I looked
So all you would have had to buy is the BEST fabric containers on the market. They are so cheap I use once and throw away. 75 cents each. Root Pouch Thin Blacks. I grow 8 foot trees in them