New grower problems

[potbelly]

hahah understandably taking a bit of a hit.

 

Luckily all the bits and pieces were quite cheap... ie under $30

[smokinjoe]

If you could spare $20-$30 do the following.

 

Firstly "obtain" a milk crate taller than your pots.

 

Purchase a drum 20-30l is a good size. Or obtain one from somewhere. If there is any restaurants nearby they will have plenty. Be sure of course it didn’t contain anything toxic. Bunnings stock them if you haven’t got one handy.

 

Install an Aqua Shuttle to the drum. It will screw straight into a normal drum fitting. Bunnings stock these also.

 

If you buy it as a kit it will come with poly tubing, but if not just buy some tubing.

 

Also buy some drip emitters, which will flow sufficient to provide the amount of water your plants will require throughout the day. If you find the soil is too wet back them off a bit.

 

Whack it all together and you have yourself a fail safe watering system.

 

Mark a line at 20L if the drum doesn’t have one; then you fill to that point and mix up your nutes with accuracy.

 

I have seen this in action and they work perfectly.

[Hector]

Constantly wet coco is a recipe for disaster.

imo it likes a good soak then dry out, not saying a dripper won't work, just hard to dial in as the plants drink water when they want, not when the soil says it's full of water.

Their water/nutrient consumption goes up and down throughout the grow cycle.

[smokinjoe]

You can get low volume emitters that are annoyingly slow to watch drip, especially baked.

 

You can also adjust the flow to them.

 

I'm trying to find some online but proving difficult. I'd find them in <10 secs in an irrigation supply shop.

Edited December 30, 2008 by smokinjoe

[potbelly]

Weird thing with PH of my plain standing water.

 

I mixed some ordinary vinegar to bring the ph down to 5.8 3 days ago and I double checked this with my digital ph meter and a aquarium ph drops. (Though aqaurium one only goes down to 6)

 

Today I thought Id check it before watering and both methods of tester is showing ph levels of around 6.6. Same water with the coco A&B mixed in which is in the 2L coke bottle is reading 5.9.

 

Any ideas why this might be happening?

[Hector]

Ready for a headache?

 

pH rise is dependent on 2 things.

*The amount of Bicarbonate in the water &

*The amount of CO2 being released from the water.

Bicarbonate is present in most water, particularly ground/bore water. It is only slightly alkaline ie, it can only make pH rise to 8.3, but, it has strong buffering capacity(resists pH change). So the first thing to realise is it is the amount of Bicarbonate present that determines how much pH Down is required.

So the pH has been lowered by removing the Bicarbonate(HCO3). The bi product of Bicarbonate removal is Carbon Dioxide(CO2) and water(H2O).

Undiluted CO2 will mix with the water to form Carbonic Acid up to a concentration of 0.5mg/L where it actually has the effect of lowering pH.

If the Carbonic Acid level rises beyond this however, and is exposed to the atmosphere, the CO2 will slowly be released, this loss of acidity causes a corresponding rise in pH.

 

And I'm not making this shit up

[potbelly]

Update for day 2. Watered this morning with straight water with no nutes. Only 10% run off. And this time I made sure it was only 10%.

 

The plant in the blue pot isn't looking crash hot. Tips of the leaves are burning off. I am hoping this is due to the overwatering and any new leaves will be ok. Others are looking up and up.

[Hector]

Overwatering?

Not even a thanks for answering one of the biggies regarding pH?

Happy Gardening.

[potbelly]

Thanks everyone for helping out. It did end up being overwatering problem. Thanks also for answering the ph question.

 

In regards to ppm of run off what is a good reading?

My tap is 100ppm, I mix the nutes till it gets to about 700ppm and the run off is 500ppm

 

Wtf does this all mean?? I have no idea...

[tarantula]

Sorry for posting here but I have some simple questions to ask : I have 4 plants, 1 month and a half in veg. Anyway, some leafs are very big, so I wonder if I can cut some down because the space is pretty small ? Will this affect my grow?

 

I use a 250 W MH lamp for veg., is 20 cm distance to close from the plants for this wattage at this age(1,5 months)?

 

Thank you

Edited January 9, 2009 by tarantula