Old man newbie from South East Asia

[Backlipslide]

We had a few mornings in a row of -20, now we’re back to the -5 to 0 degrees in the mornings.

 

[VanIslandConnoisseur]

Too much water, wait til dry an inch down, and water til runs off a bit how well-draining is the medium?

 

[VanIslandConnoisseur]

Should be watering every day or 2 for best results from my experience

 

[rocco72]

it drains very well... almost immediately.

 

[VanIslandConnoisseur]

Well wait til dry an inch down and shpuld be ok but thats too much, too much perlite my guess

 

[VanIslandConnoisseur]

Or if you let it dry out too much it will drain instant, if too quick drain is issue, try transplanting to slighly bigger and add coco only to retain moisture,

 

[rocco72]

guess i'll do that for the next few days. will keep you posted of the outcome. thanks for the assistance Van.

 

[VanIslandConnoisseur]

Ok ive always watered when dry half " - 1" down , when the medium drys outs to much it doesn't absorb water nearly as easy

 

[rocco72]

BTW, how often should i be watering with Nutes?

 

[VanIslandConnoisseur]

Every water as long as ppm is right in my opinion

 

[Old Salt]

I've grown in coco/perlite for the past three years. I used General Hydroponics' Flora Trio and supplements for all of my previous grows. I used 35% of the recommended label strength during my last grow. I have had it up to 40%, and found my plants developed nutrient burn, You must always use a nutrient solution with it, and apply enough to get 10% - 20% run off. This keeps salts and unused nutrients flushed out of the medium. I kept the pH between 5.8 and 6.2.

Here's a picture taken five minutes ago of what's in one of my tents now:

Granddaddy Purple under Mars Hydro TSW-2000​

For this grow, I switched to Mega Crop. The seed for the plant above was dropped Aug 31, so it's 95 days old. I flipped it ten days ago. I vegged it longer than normal, as I'm showing what the Mars Hydro TSW-2000 is capable of. The plant is one meter or 40" from side to side, and over 90cm, or 36" tall from the coco/perlite.

Mega Crop​

 

[rocco72]

it might look like i have nutrient burn as i have been using 100% of the recommended label strength. i'll give it a week to see if theres any improvement . definately be lowering down the percentage of nutes this time round.

 

[Old Salt]

What I recommend is dropping to 30% of the recommended amount of nutrients, and watering until 50% run off today. Then keep the nutrients at that strength until your plants show signs of a deficiency. If you have a good pH pen, keep the ph between 5.8 and 6.2. If you use pH paper or a low cost pen, keep the pH as close to 6.0 as possible. Calibrate your pH pen if you use one before each use.

The reason for the different pH recommendations is that paper and the low cost pens are not very accurate. They easily are 0.2 pH off. The pens have an accuracy of 0.1, and precision of 0.1, which means the reading will be ±0.2 pH.

 

[Backlipslide]

If you water, and get immediate run off. It could be, because there is a channel running from the top of the soil, down to the bottom. Acts as a funnel. Be careful with this, because you may think you’ve watered the entire root system, but indeed, just watering a section of it.

 

[rocco72]

Hey ,

It's been awhile but here's an uupdate. Old Salt's advise helped a ton. Plant turned out alright except for the delayed growth. It only started flowering in week 5 and am now in week 9. Looks like about a week from harvest. Thank you all for the insights earlier on.

 

[Silverfox125]

But I've read that I should keep the PH between 5.6 to 6.2 when growing in coco...

You are correct on ph for coco.

good luck