Pot Drainage Smart pots perhaps not that smart?

[LJ farming]

I’m starting to think my smart pots might not be that smart. I am currently in week 3 of flower but have yet to get runoff from my pots. I feel I have over watered a couple times trying to get runoff to get rid of the excess salts and still no drainage. The plants look good to me but I fear that the salts are building up for a very unpleasant surprise for late in flower.
I am currently using 5 gallon fabric smart pots that work great outdoors but perhaps a bad choice for indoor. I am watering about 1/2 gallon per pot every other day. Nutrients are given each watering and I’m currently at 1110 ppm. I also have had a very musty smell 2 times over the past week. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated about the smell and potential run off issue.

 

[CannaRed]

What kind of media is in the 5gal fabric pots?
I'm coco/perilite mix, I water 5 times a day to runoff each time.
Coco needs runoff every time to keep EC within parameters when coco starts to dry.
If coco dries, ec spikes!

 

[troutman]

Maybe, slowly keep watering until you get a runoff?

 

[Creeperpark]

You can do one of two things, one, is to allow 3 days of drying time or until the plant's wilt, then water heavy or until runoff with feed water. Or two, you can lower your ppm 50% or less and keep the same pH without any run-off. If it were me, I would lower the ppm intake of nutrients but feed with every watering with a low EC. The plant will use a lot of ppm when you feed low ppm and so there's no build-up of excess nutrients. Its important to keep the same nutrient ratio just a lower ppm.

 

[LJ farming]

My grow media is Promix HP which if you are not from North America is a brand name of 2/3 Peat Moss and 1/3 perlite.

My plants have never shown so much as one burnt tip but like I said originally I fear it is coming. Also I use well water that starts out at 380ppm so actually nutrients getting added would be less than 800 PPM maybe this is one of the reasons I have not had an issue. Also I use the Hardwater flora micro From GH to compensate for the 380 starting PPM. I have just always made sure to follow the 20% run off rule with outdoor and if I give each 5 gallon pot 1 gallon of nutrients I do not get runoff and have to wait a minimum of 3 and probably 4 days before I can water again.

I do have an RO system on order so hopefully that will get me a truer nutrient ppm?
I hesitate to cut the current ppm in half because that would only be around 200 ppm of nutrients and today was the beginning of my fourth week in flower but if this is what I need to do I will.

Troutman if I am going to water slowly until I get runoff should I just use Ph’d water no nutrients to do somewhat of a flush? Thank you guys for all your help and perhaps some of the above information will lead to different answers but that is seriously all I think I did not include in my original post and I apologize for that because it all seems important after reading your comments.

 

[LJ farming]

Also it sure seems to me that the plants need to be trimmed up on the bottom and potentially thinned to get rid of popcorn and let airflow but a good friend of mine that has been growing for over 10 years says absolutely not. Any of you guys have a suggestion about this?

 

[Switcher56]

My grow media is Promix HP which if you are not from North America is a brand name of 2/3 Peat Moss and 1/3 perlite.

My plants have never shown so much as one burnt tip but like I said originally I fear it is coming. Also I use well water that starts out at 380ppm so actually nutrients getting added would be less than 800 PPM maybe this is one of the reasons I have not had an issue. Also I use the Hardwater flora micro From GH to compensate for the 380 starting PPM. I have just always made sure to follow the 20% run off rule with outdoor and if I give each 5 gallon pot 1 gallon of nutrients I do not get runoff and have to wait a minimum of 3 and probably 4 days before I can water again.

I do have an RO system on order so hopefully that will get me a truer nutrient ppm?
I hesitate to cut the current ppm in half because that would only be around 200 ppm of nutrients and today was the beginning of my fourth week in flower but if this is what I need to do I will.

Troutman if I am going to water slowly until I get runoff should I just use Ph’d water no nutrients to do somewhat of a flush? Thank you guys for all your help and perhaps some of the above information will lead to different answers but that is seriously all I think I did not include in my original post and I apologize for that because it all seems important after reading your comments.

I'm from Canada as well and use Hp Promix and I add another 25% perlite to the bin I store my soil in. I use fabric pots as well and they are the bees knees.

2 things why folks don't like "peat moss":

• when it is dry it is hard to water = "blow outs" as water finds the path of least resistance; and
• when "wet" remains wet for too long e.g wet for 6-7 days when I flush.

5gal pots are on the large side for indoors. I grow in 3 gal pots which are more like a 4gal pot. I water thusly. W D D F D D W where, Water, Dry, Feed... I use tap water from a (de chlorinated 45gal drum in garage, which supplies a 5gal bucket in back hall) with Remo nutes and PH up. I like having to PH up as I like growing with a PH swing within the "zone" I fertilize once a week. Whether watering or feeding @ a rate of 1.5l per session (learned from experience after many grows).

HP Promix has PH buffers but, the water to 10% run off, is something that has spilled over from the coco side of the house, AFAIC.

Day 36 flower.

 

[jwm]

I switched to slow release dry ferts. So much easier and better results as well.
No flushing
Love smart pots but they do take a minute to get the watering down.