I have two autos that are 6 weeks old tomorrow. I water them every other day with 24 oz of distilled water. A guy on a different forum says I should be giving my plants one gallon and possibly a gallon and a half, every two days. This seems insane to me. BTW, i’m using 7 gal cloth pots. What are your thoughts on this guy’s recommendations?
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When I was using soil I shot for enough water to last two to three days before the pot felt light. Pictures will always help with answers
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The amount of water cannot be prescribed as every plant and every environment varies. The proper way to water a mature cannabis plant is to water thoroughly to runoff and then let the soil dry out before watering again. Thirst between plants can vary widely and things like the humidity in your grow space can also contribute to soil drying time.
Pay no attention to him if he cannot understand that plants and environments can vary.
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Thank you Midwest and Underthestairs. I have never watered so much that I had run-off because I was always afraid of root-rot. But i’ll try it and see what happens.
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I’ve been doing it for years without problem. I water to runoff virtually every time I water once a plant is established.
Note: overwatering isn’t how much you give a plant at one time. It is watering too often and not letting the soil dry out between waterings. You won’t experience root rot unless you skip these wet/dry cycles.
Additionally, root rot is rare in mature plants.
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Exactly this.
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If growing in soil, He’s pretty accurate on that. If you’re going to water/feed it takes a gallon and 1/2 to get a 20% runoff on a 7 gallon pot.
I use 1 gallon on a 3 gallon pot to get 30% runoff.
That number can be played with depending on how much your plant uptakes in a day. I believe the most important point here is actually getting the runoff whatever amount of water/feed that it takes.
My comments above their based on growing in soil. I use Happy Frog soil. I don’t start running to runoff for the first 30 days basically the vegetation stage as Happy Frog soil has plenty of nutrients and I get my money’s worth out of simply keeping her wet.
When I get into the flowering stage I run off so I can keep an eye on her EC as that tells me how to feed her. It allows you to also keep track of your pH so your plan is up taking proper nutrients. When feeding to run off this way you’ve gone allow the appropriate dry time whether it’s 24 hours or more you got to let the plant uptake everything and dry (not bone dry)
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I use a 10 gallon pot, and grow organic. When plant is in full swing, I might water 1 1/2 gallons. I don’t necessarily water to runoff, but I usually get just a little. And then wait for it to get dry. Indoors, that might be over a week.
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I have some that drink a gallon a day and some drink a gallon a week.
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I will give an outlier perspective for those it may help.
I grow organically in decent soil seed-to-harvest, in 5 gallon food-safe buckets, with GroBucket inserts; so maybe ~3.5 gallons worth of soil.
I do not feed, just tap-water only. The water doesn’t appear to have chromium, based on local water quality reports; gets PH’d to the ~mid 6s with drops; and I do leave it to air out 24-48 hrs+ for chlorine reasons.
Since I have no runoff, and just top-off the reservoirs with water as needed, I can now really see, compared to prior grows where I hand-watered, how much my autos can drink. It is sometimes 1 gallon plus of water a day in late veg/flowing, and that’s in my small containers.
I realize now that I likely could never effectively hand-water them in soil as well as using a Sub-Irrigated Planter (SIP) type setup…and hand-watering took significantly more effort and hours per week.
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That happens when the roots SIT in soaked soil days on end. Unless a living soil a soak/dry cycle works great. Just my thoughts.
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Curious, are all soil grows made for runoff numbers?
Im new, seems like a little more info needed to be asked.
Thank you to all who replied. I had no idea I should be watering that much.
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Well, I just watered one of my girls (7-gallon fabric pot) with 48 oz of water, very slowly. After a few minutes, I had runoff in the tent. This is the most i’ve ever watered any of my girls, and this is my 3rd grow. If I were to have put a gallon or more in there, I would go fishing in my tent. And that is exactly what I thought was gonna happen. So, thanks again for the suggestions but I will stick with 36 oz/per watering from now on.
No, it depends on the combination of the grow conditions/environment…I don’t own anything that could test PPM (and have no “runoff”).
Nobody asked what kind of soil, soils that have nutes in them dont normally want you to feed for runoff like living soils. Fox Farms, pot4pot . Etc…
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Thanks for the reply. I’m using ProMix with a few amendments. I can see that I will never be pouring a gallon (or more) into my pots at one time, ever.
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What do you consider slowly? My 5 gal pots take at least 30 to 45 min to get from dry to full. I used promix organik as my base when building soil. It hold water very well. Almost too well lol
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Valid question from CCB for you.
When I was hand-watering 3.5g pots with a pump sprayer, it routinely took about 10-15 minutes each to saturate without getting hardly any runoff. It was a tedious balancing act of thoroughly saturating at neccessary points in the grow, without washing out nutrients since it was soil-only for food.
I got to the point of weighing the pots every time I watered, to know how many pounds they had lost, and then calculating how many minutes of spray time that would necessitate. My sprayer fully pumped up would put out ~1 pound of water every ~3m, so I knew that if the pot weighed 15lbs full at the end of the last watering, and weighed 10lbs now that it would need ~15m of watering (~⅝ of a gallon) to saturate, but not spill out the bottom and sit in a lot of water.
Watering in soil is an art and a science, that used to take me many hours a week, and I still wasn’t always watering the optimal amount they wanted to drink. I now am learning that SIPs alleviate the majority of watering challenges…fwiw.
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Thank you Mozzy.
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