These girls are running wild on me , They are in 20 Gallon pots, Pro-Mix, mixed in with about 30-40% Perlite and a good mix of Dolomite lime, before they were transplanted from 3 Gallon pots I was having issues with runoff PH being around 5 or lower. I was PHing Down my 7.4 ish tap water to about 6. but still ended up being really low. Now, in these 20 Gallon pots I cant really seem to test whats happening. See attached photos. They have been in the pots for about two weeks, and only in the last two feedings did I PH the water down to 6 but I feel like they might be getting worse because before then I was letting them have the nutes at 7. Any advice ? Also, the soil seems to be drying up daily, is that a thing? Any advice would be much appreciated !
Promix is meant for drainage/low water retention the fact that you mixed another 30-40% perlite in is most likely the reason for your drying issues... Also, promix is mostly peat moss, some limestone, and a wetting agent... Its a soilLESS medium.. basically you need to provide the nutrients, and this is just a medium for the roots to grow and get their oxygen. Id recommend feeding heavy with a good AACT (actively aerated compost tea) to get some nutrients to her immediately, as well as top dressing pretty heavy with compost and/or worm castings. Then possibly add something to put down as cover, whether its mulch, straw, cover crop, whatever... Just something to keep the moisture in there a bit longer, it will help on hot days to keep root zone cool as well... I cant see where your pots are/stem meets them so I dont know if you already have something there or not but if not it will help. Next time you can still use the promix, or any peat based, coco based mediums, but be sure to know that its pretty limited on nute content, and because they dry so quick, any time you have run off your leaching nutes out with it, so youve got to keep up with it.. Not very good option for letting plants go wild outdoors. If you want to do that, you can make a soil mix with HP and a bunch of compost, and then just feed water until flower when you can add a little boost to finish off the season.. It just makes it so you provide everything the plants need before the season, and let the rain, or you watering couple times a week, or less, depending on pot size/cover/amt of rain/etc. Just stay organic for everything if you go the compost/soil root... All the microbes in the soil are doing all the work for you instead of you measuring liquid nutees every watering, you add water and they do the rest to make it available to the plants, without giving too much... You still have to keep an eye on them but just makes it so much easier... If you do go this route, DO NOT ADD any non organic nutrients, you will kill off the microbes in your soil... One last thing... You should harvest rainwater and use that, the ph will be good and it wont have chlorine in it (my town adds chlorine to the water for treatment you can find a water report usually from your town/city/state? to see the amounts of things in your water... To keep it easier.. harvest rainwater (get an IBC tote or something) and that way you can just use that to feed.... If you're using water from your hose, and you grow organic, and your water has a bunch of chlorine in it, you should fill buckets, let them sit open for a day or two outside and let the chlorine off gas... you can stir them every couple hours or throw an airstone in there to speed things up... But that will avoid killing off a bunch of your microbial life in the soil... Sometimes I just water from the hose because I dont have a million buckets and hate hauling it... But my town doesnt add that much chlorine, so in my case it hasnt been terrible... there's enough microbial life to restart if I killed any... better than dying of thirst IMO...
This link is worth a read and bookmark as well as researching your local water supply info... usually posted online nowadays, You may have personal well water that you would need to have your personal well water tested.
Water is water right? Wrong. I see a lot of growers that have all this knowledge about nutrients and photoperiods but know very little about the water they use and that not all water is created equal and some water isn't very well suited for growing at all. I decided to do this thread to help...
www.rollitup.org
Sorry for the rambling, first smoke of the day has me going.
