Need some TDS explanations...

Ok..so a TDS meter measures the total dissolved solids so the PPM...yes?

Ok...to check my PPMs in soil how would I do this? I tried checking the runoff and the first time the water went clear it was over 1000...mine only goes to 1000...anyway after that drained I fed them a gallon of nuted water and while i was adding in 156 the runoff was 753...so while I only feed small amounts there is apparently a lot going on in there...I am using liquid organic soil amendments...so I don't see burning if I overdo the nutes but there will be color changes and leaf twists and all the other obvious signs...I checked my TDS because people are always like feed them a 400ppm solution and I am like what?! If I feed mine anything over 170 they go to hell...so my question is why is the runoff so high while what is going in is low...all my plants are looking good for the first time ever..I just feel that perhaps the reading of the runoff is super high because it is soil, so there are all kinds of soil parts in them... So how do you check the TDS of soil? What would I need to correctly accomplish this wonder?

Is this not something you check in soil?

You would need a soil testing kit in order to test this.

You say you use soil ammendments? Are these added to your soil?

As this could be why your readings are higher as you could be washing out any unused ammendments.


But if you are organic then I wouldn't worry about your TDS.




J

Yeah you dont check PPM of soil with a TDS tester...you use it to see what you are adding into the soil...so like during my veg times i use 400-500 of my veg nutes...and in flowering i use around 1000-1200 ppm of my flowering nutes...its mainly something to just have an idea of what you are putting in for nutes vs trying to rely on measuring specific things...so like if you use commercial nute brands and they call for blah ml per liter stick so many ml's in a liter of distilled water and check its ppm...that will tell you how much ppm is equivilent to using that nute...so you can just put water in a bucket and pour in some nutes and check the ppm and either put more water in or more nutes to get it at the PPM you want

massah said:

Yeah you dont check PPM of soil with a TDS tester...you use it to see what you are adding into the soil...so like during my veg times i use 400-500 of my veg nutes...and in flowering i use around 1000-1200 ppm of my flowering nutes...its mainly something to just have an idea of what you are putting in for nutes vs trying to rely on measuring specific things...so like if you use commercial nute brands and they call for blah ml per liter stick so many ml's in a liter of distilled water and check its ppm...that will tell you how much ppm is equivilent to using that nute...so you can just put water in a bucket and pour in some nutes and check the ppm and either put more water in or more nutes to get it at the PPM you want

Click to expand...

See that is what I thought but I never add solution with a ppm higher than 200, but sometimes my poor plants still look like they are getting too much...so I wondered if I could find out wht the ppm of the actual soil was since I know I am not giving them too much...seems like I just don't really need to worry about it. If they like 140 ppm and look nice then Imma keep giving them what makes them happy