bagabones73

hello all

i am trolling around reading for educational purposes - i was reading a thread from the nursery that inspired me to ask you for clarification in reference to testing your run off

what i thought i got was--?

the medium ph will rise out of range if watering is infrequent - so does this mean i can gauge whether or not i should water more frequently based off the rise of the ph in the medium vs the res.

if medium ph is with in proximity of the res ph then water sched. is good !
if medium ph is greatly higher than ph of res then water more frequntly to replace with fresh nute water and b4 ph climbs during duration between waterings?

is this true?

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knna

Good question, bagabones, but i think its very difficult to give a general valid answer to this topic.

First off, it will depend of the medium and nutes used.

Most times, nutes are acidic. When watering cycles are spaced, the nutrient solution increased its concentration and this lead to a dropping ph in the media. But the degree of this drop depends strongly on the CEC (cation exchange capacity) and buffering ability of the media. And it depends too at some degree of the size of the pot.

It would depend too of how matched are the plant's nute requeriments with the nute profile. Too much variables to give a general valid answer, IMO.

As general rule of thumb, i think we can say that when using spaced waterings, we may start at higher ph than we have used for frecuent waterings, due the media ph will drop due to higher nutes concentration. But i woulnd sell my plant's health on this effect, because it depends on how plants uptake nutes. At periods with strong anions demand, as along the preflowering stage, the media ph perfectly may raise still with a spaced watering.

With frecuent waterings, i think we must take a ph target both for res and media. If media ph is constantly over the target, low the res ph and viceversa.

With spaced waterings, it would be needed to check media ph evolution against res ph evolution and act on consecuence. I think this is part of the art of growing, so it cant be generalized.

knna

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