Question about water run off

I hear a lot about water run off. If you have that much water running to the bottom of your pot wouldn’t you be over watering the plants? I thought over watering was a bad thing.

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Yes and no. It’s true you don’t want to keep the plant wet all the time. But, you need to water enough that all the soil in the container get’s moisture. Typically in doing so, you have the runoff. But, you have to wait until the soil is dryish before watering again. Often over watering is not the amount given at once but repeatedly giving it too much water without letting it dry a bit.

I hope that helps :slight_smile:

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Thanks Matthew420. Don’t want to mess up my 1st grow.

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I have found that it is a lot harder to over-water with the fabric pots that a lot of the growers have taken to using. You still allow the soil to partially dry to keep oxygen going in as @Matthew420 was saying. I use the weight method to tell when the plant needs water.

The main idea of watering enough to have water run out the bottom is to prevent accumulation of salts that accumulate in the soil from the nutrients. Those salts will mess with the pH and make the water around the roots be different pH from the pH you are watering at. Sometimes that difference can be very large and effect the plant growth.

The watering technique I use is to have approx 10-15% of the intake to run out, that makes the salts, or at least most of them, get flushed out and keep the pH range where it is supposed to be. Some use up to 20% run-off. Checking the run-off every other feeding or watering, I was able to keep better control of my pH than ever before.

I used more water than previously but am going to get a decent yield of approx 2 oz of dried bud from a plant that is only 14 inches tall. It has 10 cola’s on it that are thick and smell awesome. On final flush today.

Hope this helps. Just wanted to give you an answer to your question. Everyone streamlines their grow methods. The first grow is always scary, you think everything will kill their plant. Truth is cannabis is pretty hearty and will take a lot.

Good luck on your grow. Jerry

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Okay thanks Jerry. I am using the three gallon cloth pots with my two
plants that I’m scroging. I have one larger plant in a regular flower pot.
I have been feeding them nutes every other watering. Maybe I should give
them a good flushing. “Chromie”

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Not sure you really need to flush, but I would allow a little water at least to come out the bottom each time you put in water or feed her. I couldn’t believe the veg that I had on my Strawberry Kush this grow, was lush andd as green as I have ever seen. I also had no pH problems to speak of. One time I got a little high in the run-off so I just pushed a little more fluids through it.

Check you run-off on a regular schedule and you can head off pH problems before they occur. If it is off, then consider adding more water to wash it out, maybe not a complete flush.

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Well said TxGrowman! Exactly!

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Hey TxGrowman thanks for sharing. Run off was a little high so I got a gallon of good pH water and flushed. Checked a few hours later and it was good. Looks like I’m good to grow. Getting a lot of bud’s coming on this girl.

. I am in to 9 days of 12/12.

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Rock it brother ! Looks nice. Keep on top of the pH and that lady should take off. Tag me, I want to see this lady in action.

Will do my brother. She not only looks good but smells good too. I’ll
update picture as she bud’s out.

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Sorry to get off the subject, but how the F did you do that??

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It is all in my journal. Take a look.

Right away!

@TxGrowman Yeah, now I remember your thread, that was an amazing grow you had! So your trick was LST’ing in order to keep the plant short?

There were a lot of little things that I did to keep her short. It was a matter of not having a lot of room in my grow box.

I kept the light fairly close to the plants to stop the plant from stretching right at the beginning. The veg period was shorter than recommended to prevent it from getting too tall. I did trim some stems off and did LST to keep them short.

It was the first time I grew Strawberry Kush so I was unaware of the height that it could grow to. I know now that I can let it veg a little longer next time.

Another thing that likely stopped it form getting too tall is that I put it in a 3 gallon fabric pot due to the size of my grow space. I used three gallon pots previously but always the hard ones. The fabric pots grew an amazing root ball and it actually became root bound. AS you can see at the end of the grow journal, the root ball was a hard cylinder. It contributed to it staying small also. Next time I will use a 5 gallon now that I have the method for keeping the plant short.

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Thats great, thanks. I also have a rather limited grow space, so I Fim’ed and LST’ed a Strawberry Haze plant. Now it looks like a freaked out octopus or Jimi Hendrix having a bad hair day. But I’m far from the yield you got. Lot of grandpas here (I’ve got two future growers!)


How many colas u think i got coming using lst on the girl thats flowering? And hopefully my baby girl that i fimmed 3 times will yield…lol