I imagine this is asked frequently and often. So my apologies in advance if I’m wasting time here.
Looking to potentially start an organic grow. I’m a New Englander and plan on using water from the tap. The pH coming from the tap is 9.3, with a PPM of ~117. I’ve read the water quality report for my area. Reading is just about all I could do, because I’m not sure what the results mean, whatsoever.
I understand I’ll obviously have to pH the water and I’m aware of the methods used to remove any chlorine present, but, I’ve read chloramine can only be removed through a filtration process like reverse osmosis. I’m currently renting and this isn’t an option for me.
So my question is, should I waste my time attempting organic if I’m using tap? Or, just stick to the typical bottle nutes as usual. This all stemmed from looking at Green Planets nutrient line, and considering the Medione product.
They have ro systems for like 60 bucks that just hook up to a faucet, or there are pitcher type filters like brita that can filter out chloramine. Bottle nutes still need to be mixed in to water, so it won’t matter if youre going soil, organic, soil less, hydro, or bottle nutes, if you are using chloramine water its going to cause issues
Try fresh spring water, it cost 25cents for 2 gallon, “ convince fee I’m guessing lol” Try finding a spring well near where you live. I’m in New York and my first few grows I did, I used tap water with bottled nutes and it was honestly a pain. My tap water would come out at 9ish ph wise and the Ppm,s were in the 500s. This run I’m doing now is in happy frog and I’ve just been giving it top dress feeding every 3 to 4 weeks n watering when dry, been working out a lot smoother. Just an FYI if you don’t know, adding ph down/up will destroy some of the ppm, not a whole hell of a lot but mine drops about 50-75 ppm. Hope that helps!
Only thing it could be used, 2 different tds/ec meters both confirmed that much of a drop, i use fox farms ph down cus its the only brand stocked local to me. 26 drops of the ph down per gallon drops it from 8.2ish to 6.2ish. 250ish ppm before ph down 180ish after. Natural spring water not the stuff you buy from the stores. Phosphoric acid can definitely affect your water more than just ph adjustments even if its “food grade” phosphoric acid, it’s a corrosive acid no matter what.
I use straight RO with Jacks nutrients. My RO comes out to about 3ppm on a 5 scale. I have never once seen it drop ppms. On average I go through 110 gallons per week. Sometimes as much as 160. Pretty bizarre.
Took roughly equal amounts of nutrient solution from the 55 gallon nutrient stock tank for each clean cup. Added a few drops to the one on the left. Sorry for the dirty hands. Just got off of work.
ro water doesn’t have anything in it ppm wise so there’s nothing the acid nukes as it’s doing its jump of phing. Different water sources will act different.
I’m aware. You said it dropped ppms. I did it in tap. I did it in nutrient solution. I have organic stuff we can test also. Standing water outside, for the fun of it I can pull some water from the lake. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
For true organic you don’t use any pH adjustments and technically speaking you shouldn’t be using anything with chlorine or chloramines. It’s all about maintaining natural soil bio activity which those water additives are designed to kill.
I’m not an organic guy, but based on the situation I’d have to say go salt based. When I have organic questions I like to bother @LiesGrows
If you have a wayer report it should show if there are chloramines present in the water or not as for your ph its a tad high impo but if the pots/beds of soil are big enough the biology should do its job its all about building that soil structure and fertility
Greatly appreciated sir! I’ve been running synthetic using my tap with no issues, I just know chloramine kills any good bio. So I was more curious if the benefits of going organic would be cancelled out by using tap water containing chloramine.
So I’ve ran a few runs using synthetic salt based nutrients. I haven’t had any issues. I guess I should have asked, “would running organic while using Tap water produce lower quality results compared to running salt based nutrients?” Or, “is going organic using tap water containing chloramines pointless?”
I should ALSO mention and I apologize in advance. I’m chatty. lol. I’m going organic because I like the idea of amending the soil and watering using plain pH adjusted water. As well as the beneficial bio working in my favor opposed to killing them off using salt based nutrients. I feel organically grown flower just seems to taste better too? I could be full of shit lol. But by no means do I care about it effecting me as a person. I don’t mind inhaling the chemicals too much. I just want to know if going organic using tap water will give significantly different results, or even bad results than going organic using RO.
There will be different opinions on a lot of these questions, so I can only speak for myself. Never noticed a difference in taste, whether in soil, coco, organic, synthetic or even manure. If thebwater youre using is working i would think itd work the same going organic. I havent ran hydro yet, so far by best results are in coco, using jacks 321 and ro, watering several times a day
