So i want to know what would be the negative effects of watering with 1/3 tap water (well water collected before the water softener) then 2/3’s feed. So i can get more runoff but not a bunch of wasted feed down the drain.
Pro mix hp
Synthetic nutes
10 gallon Fabric pots
Feed every 48 hours
So to keep the numbers simple, i would water with 1 gallon of tap water. Wait a few minutes then 1 gallon of feed. Wait a few minutes then 1 gallon of feed so i can get good run off. If i didn’t use the tap i would be using 3 gallons of feed instead of 2.
What water are you using to mix the nutrients in?
Be aware of what the well/ tap water is PH and PPM numbers.
3 gallons into a 10 gallon pot seems to be a lot of water.
When my 15 gal pots (actual is about 13 gallons soil) are pretty dry I use about 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 gallons to get slight run off but it gets wicked back up soon after. If I use more will get more run off. Of course your medium may be different in water holding capacity.
You can absolutely do what your thinking just be ready for a lot of run off. You may want to wait a little longer between gallons to allow it to absorb evenly through soil.
Hope this helps
Ro water mixed with the nutes. The gallon measurement is not accurate. That was just to keep the example simple. They are on drainage trays so i can have a ton of runoff. I was running into salts buildup (run off ec was climbing) and after 3 feedings i needed to flush the media with tap water to flush out those salts. So to combat that i need to have more runoff on each feeding so i don’t need to flush with tap but i don’t want to waste expensive nutes.
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The obvious answer is check your well water ph/ppm.
Now me personally I wouldn’t go putting 3 gal into a 10 gal pot. I try to stay around 10% water. But I did do something similar. I would feed my 5 gal pot a few grows ago with 750ml or basically 15% by volume. What I did was assumed watering 250ml of just plain water sat out/bubbled to gas off chlorine. I would wait around 10 mins or so then slowly pour the liquid on hoping that it would push the plain water down and then the nutes would stay. I did this with liquid organic nutes. It worked great for me because once I learned I DIDNT NEED PH/PPM things to me became easier. I never watered to runoff after finding this out. Prior to this I did water to runoff. Even with adding 750ml I barely got any runoff.
I spent 50$ on a ppm/tds/ph pens they all broke within a month or so. After that I said fuck this I almost gave up but I had just stopped using ph up/down started mixing my nutes and using them said fuck it if the plant dies it dies. I had some complications during my first grow and like most I freaked out but after that first grow it’s only gotten better. I still don’t use ph/ppm if it wants to live it will do the work. ( by this I mean the plant roots themselves can adjust the ph )
Ofc you using synthetic things are different 100,000% as your ppm/ph matters.
Hopefully this will help somewhat.
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