Ph and Watering

C

Christine20

Member
Helle there,

Just ringing with 2 simple questions:

I am using a drip hydroponic system and wondering what s your opinion about the ph of the water. I am very confused as a lot of people are having different opinions. I heard that the ph from veg is different as the ph of flowering.

The second question is about watering. I am watering my plants 15min/1 hour in day time and 15min/3hours night time. I don't know if it s to much or it s ok. Again a lot of opinions on that matter.

Thank you very much !
 
L

Larry3215

Well-Known Member
Christine20 said:
I heard that the ph from veg is different as the ph of flowering.
Click to expand...
No. It needs to be the same all through the grow - from about 5.5 to 6.1 or so with the target being around 5.8 as an average.

Christine20 said:
I am watering my plants 15min/1 hour in day time and 15min/3hours night time. I don't know if it s to much or it s ok. Again a lot of opinions on that matter.
Click to expand...
Let the plant tell you what it wants. You can tell if its no getting enough water - the stems will get soft and bendy and drooping leaves.

In theory, you want to water the minimum you can get away with - BUT - you do NOT want to let the roots dry out. They air prune and die if they dry out.

In hydro, you cant over water like you can in soil. DWC roots spend there entire life under water and do just fine. That assumes your water is well aerated of course, and in drip, good aeration is automatic.

However, the roots can get more oxygen from the air directly when they are just barely damp.

The ideal situation from the roots point of view, is to have a constantly refreshed, but very very very thin layer of water on the roots at all times. That will provide the perfect environment for feeding and getting the max O2 at the same time.

Thats not easy to do unless you are running HPA or AA aero. Things like NFT, and LPA are the next best followed by Flood/drain and the other types of hydro. The more time the roots spend under thick layers of water, the less O2 they get.

Your drip system fits in between F/D and NFT.

Even if you let your drip run full time, you wont see that much worse results than if you manage to hit the perfect balance of wet/dry. You also run less risk by watering more often than less often. If the roots dry out even a little, the plant suffers and growth will be slowed. So its much safer to err on the over watering side of things even though - in theory - you will get better results by cutting back on the watering time.

Remember - you cant over water, but you can under water. As in most things associated with our plants, a balance is best.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top