I have limited indoor space, a spouse who can’t stand the aroma of cannabis, and plentiful sunshine. I’ve been growing outdoors. I use a soilless mix and nutrients from salts. I’ve had a number of successful grows, but a recurring issue: how to manage water.
The nutrient recipes call for nutrients in every watering, but what about rain? Do I feed anyway and risk overwatering, or skip that day’s feed? I’ve been treating it as a judgement call, but I don’t trust my judgement. If it rains for too long I feed anyway, but for small rains I let the mix dry out. My logic is that if it rains a lot the mix will be saturated anyway so adding some more will likely just increase the salt density as a lot of the water will drain out. If it doesn’t rain much I’m hoping the rain will carry some residual salts from the mix to the roots.
My judgement isn’t perfect. I have a grow going now and see signs of overwatering. Not too bad and I still expect a good grow, but it’s there. Is there a more systematic approach?
Likely the best answer is to switch to a super soil mix and use only water, no salts. I’m not sure I’m up for that big of a change, though. Do others do salt growing outdoors, or am I making a fundamental mistake?
I also grow outdoors and when we get rains I do not worry about them once they dry back out I hit them with the food they seem to take it well I use Mega Crop one part outdoors so damn simple a cave man can do it lots of others are the ones that brought it to my attention. Rain IMHO does not get them as wet as hand watering IE rain needs to go through canopy first.
Heavy rain usually lowers EC by leaching nutrients out, so it isn’t increasing the salts density. Testing EC after days of heavy rains is the approach here because salts require more active management with rain.
That wasn’t quite what I meant. If it rains hard the vessel will become saturated with just rainwater. If I water with nutrients after that I will give the plant some nutrients, as some of the water that drains will be the rainwater.
I’m kind of getting the impression this is a bad idea. I should let the mix dry out completely before feeding. I think the plants can handle inadequate nutrients better than too much water. The gotcha here is if it rains a lot. I think I had some problems this time because of an unfortunate coincidence. I start my seedlings inside and move outside when they need a bigger vessel (I use grow bags). A few days after I did that a hurricane passed close to us and we had heavy rains several days in a row. I protected my plants with a cloche covered in plastic, but a lot of rain water with no nutrients went into the grow bags. I added nutrient water anyway, so the plants get some nutrients, but it meant there was too much water when the plants were fairly young.
It didn’t seem to hurt much. There are a few leaves showing signs of overwatering. The mix has dried out thoroughly now and I’m back on schedule. I don’t think those few curly leaves will straighten out though. All the new growth looks good.
Damaged leaves will not fix themselves, as you said new growth looks good ya golden, we do not get hurricanes here but do get heavy rains at least optimal times, outdoor grows are not for the faint of heart, if I loose one out of 6 I feel lucky to have the other 5, going the full 12 alotment for this yrs grow, sorry if I did not give you a answer you needed our growing enviroments are way different, I am in Northern Lower Michigan.
No problem. This was an unusual event I didn’t plan for. I am in Kailua Kona, on the leeward side of Hawaii Island. Our climate is usually very dry as the ocean winds drop their moisture on the windward side over Mauna Loa (a 12,000 foot mountain in the island center). I usually don’t have to think about rain that much, but just occasionally a hurricane will follow an unusual path and we get significant rain. It’s a rare event so I don’t think about it. It seems like if the plants are nearly grown they can withstand it easily. These were just about 9 inches tall when the rain hit. I do something similar to you, the state allows me 10 plants so I plant 10 assuming I will lose some, but normally when I lose plants it’s due to pests, not weather.
we have North winds just bring a chill down, we have had a snow maker going (SE winds) for a week now I enjoy the winter most yrs, it’s time for warmer days, it will be here in April’s mud season…
The issue with too much water in pots is lack of oxygen to root zone. This will not happen to an extent over a few hours or even overnight. You could maybe see some issues with plants after a few days but as soon as pots start drying out all should be good.
You also have to remember that a completely saturated pot cannot get more saturated. So if you have a pot saturated with low ec water and feed slowly it will just push some of the water out and replace it with your nutrient solution. The already saturated pot will still be saturated leaving the exact same condition for roots but you would also have plant available nutrients following.
That’s what I was thinking, and the reason for my original practice. Perhaps this is a rare but unavoidable problem when I had several consecutive days of heavy rain.
With a light rain the mix might be still wet, but not saturated so I’m better off waiting for it to dry. For a heavy rain I might as well feed immediately and then wait for it to dry.
