Just A Simple Guy
Well-Known Member
Ah, simplicity. I like it!
Is it also possible as bloom progresses and bud sites fill in the wet-dry cycle shrinks to 3 days and I should then go to 2 days with 3 days every 4th watering?
The Proper Way To Water A Potted Plant
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Is it also possible as bloom progresses and bud sites fill in the wet-dry cycle shrinks to 3 days and I should then go to 2 days with 3 days every 4th watering?
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Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
Yep, you got it! You are going to have an excellent grow!Ah, simplicity. I like it!
Is it also possible as bloom progresses and bud sites fill in the wet-dry cycle shrinks to 3 days and I should then go to 2 days with 3 days every 4th watering?
Just A Simple Guy
Well-Known Member
If I don't do anything stupid. LOL!
This is my first serious grow and I'm learning a lot. My space is a custom 3'x2' space in a closet and I intended to do two mainlines in it. Well, one plant went wild and the other's a runt so the big one is taking up almost the entire space and I moved the other into a quickly prepped half bathroom with the 2' 4 tube T5 I used for seedling and early veg.
I didn't understand how bushy a mainline could get. Oops, but it's a problem I'm thoroughly enjoying. Hahaha.
Ok, that's super cool answer that makes my life even easier number one.
Hey Jon, Your welcome.
I am not expert on using Sohum but I had a good experience with it. To answer your questions:
I just used my tap water and I did not PH it. The girl at Sohum told me I didn't need to, so I didn't. Now I think their website says to PH the water. Either way, I didn't notice any adverse effects from not PHing.
I didn't add anything or feed anything extra. I used water only. I wanted to test it and see if I truly only needed to add water for the whole grow, so that is all I did. One thing I did do and was told to do by the girl at Sohum is I had trays under all of my 5 gallon Smart Pots to catch all the run-off. You don't want to wash all the nutrients away, so I watered slow Emilya's way and stopped when the water just started to run out of the bottom and then I let the pots reabsorb the run-off. The run off in the trays usually got reabsorbed within an hour or 2 after watering. I tried to keep the run off to a minimum but I made sure I watered to run off and then I let the pots sufficiently dry out before watering again. I can't remember where I read this but I read that cannabis (or any weed) likes more dry days than wet days.
I did not adjust the PH of my water. I did let the water sit in a trash can most of the time to off gas chlorine but I didn't do it all the time and sometimes watered straight from the hose. There have been several tests done online showing hat chlorine treated tap water doesn't significantly kill beneficial soil microbes but I think best practices would probably be to use chlorine free, PHed water.
BTW, my grow was an outdoor grow.
The first Indo Expo I went to was totally by accident. In 2018, I went to the Denver Fly Fishing show. As I left the show, I noticed another trade show next door and since it was the end of the day, no one was guarding the door, so I decided to check it out because there was some good music and people seemed to be having a good time. And it turned out to be the Indo Expo.. The venders were tearing down their booths and there was this LED light company that had a booth right at the entrance that had 2 huge cannabis plants and they were cutting them down and handing out cuttings put into rockwool cubes to people as they left the show. They handed me 2 cuttings saying they were Blue Dream strain. They asked me if I wanted Gorilla Glue cuttings as well and handed me 2 of those. Then this girl handed me a big Blue Dream branch as I left. I had no intention of growing these. I was going to give them to my cousin who is an avid grower and cannabis consumer. He wound up being out of town, so I took the cuttings home. I threw the big branch into a vase of water and put the cuttings on my windowsill. I thought the rockwool cubes just needed to stay wet so the cuttings almost died until I found out they needed humidity. By the time my cousin got back into town, he had already got his legal limit of clones to grow so totally on a whim, I decided grew the cuttings! My first grow was the 2 Blue Dream and 2 Gorilla glue cuttings and then I made several clones out of that Blue Dream branch that I gave to friends and grew 2 more Blue Dream plants, bringing my total to the legal limit of 6 plants (4 Blue Dream, 2 Gorilla Glue). My goal was to grow these plants for as little money as possible. Home Depot had Dr. Eath soil on clearance for $3 a bag and they had Black Magic Smart Pots on clearance for .99 cents a pot. The Walmart near me had closed the year earlier and I had bought several different organic plant foods at dirt cheap clearance prices which is what I used on the plants. My first grow probably only cost me just under $20! In 2019, I was able to get some free passes to the Indo Expo and I was able to get a whole bunch of free nutrient samples, both synthetic and organic. That LED light company was handing out cuttings again at the end of the day and I was able to get 2 Blue Dream cuttings, 2 Super Lemon Haze cuttings and 2 cuttings called Purple Now and Later and that became my 2019 grow. Those are the plants I grew in the Sohum soil. I went to the expo again in Jan of 2020 and got Super Lemon Haze. Silver Mountain and Harlequin cuttings for my 2020 grow! This year, (since there was no Indo Expo) I am growing a branch that had broke off my Silver Mountain plant in late flower last year that I was able to root and revert back to veg on my windowsill with supplemental light and I'm trying to grow from some seeds.
Damn. Thanks again. That's some significant detail and I greatly appreciate it. Interesting Expo story. So with the soil, I'm gonna try it on the Chunkadelic auto and on the Slurricane photo. In both cases I'm going to attempt to do it with just water as you say. @Emilya said the same thing, not to worry about PH and just water them. So we'll see how one auto and one photo like it. In both cases they will be going from the Fox Farms soil blend I use in the one gallon starter pots to the Sohum on transplant into the fives. So that should be interesting. I'm gonna stick with the Fox Farms soil mix for the other two photos on transplant, and I'm gonna try out the Dutch nutes on one of them. So all kinds of new stuff going on, which is pretty exciting for a humble four plant grow. And yeah, I read like 400 reviews/comments on the Sohum last night from growers who have used it. No consensus per se, other than generally it got very positive reviews, but one of the consistent comments was that it's amazing for veg and early flowering, but by the time you get to like week four or five of flower you may need to augment with some P/K. If that appears to be the case I can try adding the Tiger Bloom in small amounts but we'll do some serious observation first. I hope it just needs water, that's so easy it makes me smile for days.
You are growing in a tent? It might be different in a tent than outdoors like my grow, but I saw no issues in flower and I harvested in early November. I wanted to do only water but I was prepared to give them an organic bloom booster if they really needed it but I never saw the need. I still had some Dr. Earth FlowerGirl Blood Booster that I would have used but I made it through the whole grow on water only.
Are you using Dutch Pro on your other plants? If so, that's what I used last year on half of my plants. I had gotten this big sample pack from them at the expo, I had big plants and a big yield from it.
I would say, you might not get as big of plants from Sohum that you would get from synth nute plants but you should get higher quality bud from it.
Cool. I only care about quality. It'll be a good comparison despite it being different strains. No I'm using a different Dutch company (starts with a "C") that's non sponsored. First time, and I got the whole package with all the supplements. Should be interesting. Yes, in a tent in five gallon pots.
I see you are an indoor grower from the photo here, would say the same watering applies to outdoor grows in pots?The Proper Way to Water a Potted Plant
Also covered: the importance of pH and why we successively up-pot
How to Water
Over the last several years I have put a lot of study into this, and I feel that I can now define the proper way to water a potted plant. Keep in mind that this discussion applies to at least 3 gallon containers and bigger. Please realize that this special plant of ours does not grow like anything else you have ever tried to grow, and no matter how good you are at growing peas, beans and tomatoes, you will have to change your methods to grow a weed.
The first rule of watering is to always water slowly, using no more than a quart at a time, pausing often to let the soil suck air in behind the water as it pools on the top. For me, that involves a routine of watering each of my plants with 1 quart, then taking a nice relaxing drink of whatever beverage I have brought with me to the tent. Then I take a deep breath, making sure to exhale deeply onto this plant, letting her know that I love her. After this, I take a nice big hit off of the pipe that also followed me into the tent, and then after a nice pause and maybe another drink, I go back to plant #1 and repeat the cycle. For 2 rounds, I water the entire surface of the soil, watching it pool up and get sucked down.
After this initial wetting of the top, my watering method changes a bit. Now, I want to do whatever I can to make the outside edges of the container, the wettest areas. Still only using a quart at a time, I now carefully water only there, all around the plant, only on the edges. While doing this, I slow down a bit so that the water doesn't pool as much in the center, always concentrating on the edges. The center will end up getting some too, and that's fine, but the wettest areas of the pot will be on the outside edges and you will be driving nutrient rich soil into the dense original root ball. Continue this, again going slow, maybe with a deep breath in the middle of it, and then continue all around, taking drinks, deep breaths and hits in between each round. Continue until you see the first signs of runoff, and then stop.
Look carefully at the surface of your container now. You will clearly see where the root ball is from your last transplant, because it will now be sticking up just a little bit above the original outer rim. Very fine soil has been driven through the original root ball with the flow of water and soil from the outer edges. This micro fine soil is very rich with nutrients because of its mobility. When you water from the outside edges, you force this micro fine sludge into the dense root ball, where it can do the most good. Once you establish this flow pattern in the container, you can be assured of totally replacing the micro soil in the center of the root ball with new soil, every time you water. Watering in the normal way does not create his circular flow, and root growth cannot be nearly as aggressive.
Lastly, take one last quart of water, and water very very slowly, just in the raised area where the original root ball is. As you do so, watch what happens at the outer edge of the original root ball.
You will see the very finest soil, almost a mud, migrating out of the old root ball, and into the middle! This completes the process of soil exchange in the container. In this manner, all the roots get to take advantage of the nutrients in the soil, and the roots follow the migration of the nutrient rich soil, toward the outer edges, creating lateral growth. I strive to actively drive the soil out of the middle, making room for the roots to grow more dense and bigger there, and as they do, the lateral growth also has to increase. Using this method, I have seen a steady increase in the amount of water needed to get to run off throughout the grow and by the end, plants watered in this way use approximately 30% more water than is seen using standard watering techniques. Watering in the manner I have described allows for a constant circular flow of soil throughout the container and will create an extremely dense root ball.
Now it is time for a truism. It is best to water the roots, not the plant. A healthy and robust root system means a happy and productive plant. Neglect the roots and your plants can die, and certainly will be less than they could have been.
When do we water?
By far, one of the most common plant problems that I see with new gardeners is a lack of understanding as to when to water. New people get it set in their mind that watering every day or every other day is best, or that somehow, mysteriously, they know in their own human minds exactly how much water the plants need. These well-meaning new gardeners will determine that they will give exactly one quart or some other random amount, each time, no more... and no less, and really believe that they are doing a good thing for their plants, making these decisions for them.
Just as bad as these over-thinkers are the tomato gardeners, the "stick your finger in the ground" crowd, who proclaim: it's time to water when it is dry below the second knuckle. What they fail to realize is that when the top 2 inches is dry, the lower half of the container could still be saturated with water. Both of these common mistakes in watering methods are quick ways to drown your plants. These methods are not correct for growing weeds, and using them can actually kill your plants.
Marijuana is a weed, and the main thing that this scientific term refers to, is a class of plant that thrives in adversity. In order to grow it well, you need to understand that this incredibly robust plant works differently than other, less hardy plants. It is an extremely aggressive grower if you allow it to be, and to grow prize winning pot, you need to use its abilities to send out new roots to your advantage.
Watering incorrectly is the most common mistake that new weed farmers make. This plant needs a clear wet/dry cycle in order to thrive. If you keep it moist, you will kill it. The roots will aggressively chase your water, whatever you give them. If you just give a small amount every couple of days, that water will drop right to the bottom of the container. Your roots will follow, and will cluster on the bottom, instead of growing laterally throughout the container, and since they continually sit in the nutrient rich water, the plant sees little need to grow additional roots. How you water makes a huge difference in the formation of the root ball, and how this development happens is up to you.
There are many ways to tell when it is time to water, and if you wait long enough the girls will actually tell you that they are thirsty. They do two things when they see that they need water, they throw out a smell, and they begin to wilt, starting at the bottom, moving up. You can also use the lift method to tell when the container is dry, and almost always you will "feel" a dry container, before the above mentioned wilt and fragrance pump happens. Rusty Trichome taught me an important lesson; every time I think that I need to do something to my plants, I wait a bit... and I try to move at the speed that my plants are moving. "Patience, above all else." --Rusty
If you have a moisture meter you can also use it to find where the wet/dry (water table) line is in your container, and you can watch that wet/dry line move down over time. I used to graph my water table level by day, so that I could project ahead when the wet dry line would reach the last inch of container. Your wet/dry line will never go lower than that last inch or so, because once you get down in there, you are in all the big tap roots and mass at the bottom, and it tends to stay wet there longer because of capillary effect. Again, if you wait for the first sign of wilt and that perfume pump that happens at "water me" point, it will usually be just a bit longer than your measurements would indicate. Once the water table line is anywhere in that bottom inch is ok to water. You have dried out 95% of the water by that time and the roots have been chasing it as the wet/dry line progresses both downward and outward. The suction caused by the diaphragm that is the water table, will have pulled oxygen down deep into the container, and filled any voids. The roots will be happy.
Why do we up-pot?
The art of successive up-potting is important in growing a healthy root system. People like to be lazy. I am constantly seeing new gardeners take a little sprig of a weed and put it in a big 3 or 5 gallon container, thinking that they have done a good thing, and are now done with it... it's on to harvest time! The problem is, this doesn't work, because it gives you zero control over developing the roots, and without crazy watering techniques, almost no chance of a solid root ball forming. It is imperative to successively up pot your plants through stages so that the root system can roughly take on the same size and shape as the plant in order to get the maximum productivity. The roots grow aggressively in these weeds, and if you confine them to a container the size of the plant, they will fill that space in a short time with a dense root system. Putting a plant in an oversized container can and often does, result in all the roots going to the bottom, drowning the plant, root rot and overall poor health because of a lack of a root ball, and certainly less than optimum harvests. It is important to force these weeds into producing a root ball at various stages, to give the plant the ability later on to take in the massive amounts of nutrients needed to produce lots of quality buds.
The plants in the smaller containers can also more directly show you when they are thriving or more importantly when they are not. A strong healthy plant will eventually outgrow its container and an observant gardener is carefully watching the length of time between wet/dry cycles, and directly relating shorter cycles with more robust roots. A smaller container also gives the gardener the ability to see when the moment arrives that the amount of soil the plant is in is no longer large enough for the plant's abilities to be happy in it, because it will be obvious when the plant can drain the water that soil is able to hold, in less than 24 hours. Your soil and your container at that point have ceased at that point to be a good enough buffer, and it is time to double the space the roots have to work with. Let your plant show you when that time is, and try not to make decisions for her.
Why is pH important?
Some people claim that pH is not important, and if you are a pure organic gardener, never applying chlorinated water or salt based synthetic nutrients at your plants, pH indeed is not important. For the 99.9% rest of the world, a very important lesson for the new gardener to learn is the importance of pH. There is a scientific reason why a proper pH allows the plants to use synthetic nutrients, and why being outside of the proper range can cause deficiencies. If you want to grow pot using chemicals, you need to invest in a method to test the pH of any water going into the plant, whether it is plain water or water mixed with nutrients, and whether it is applied to the roots or sprayed on the leaves. If you neglect the pH, you can easily create deficiencies in your plants, and if left unchecked, you can even kill them. If you spend a lot of money on nutrients, it makes sense that you would want to also create the proper environment so that the plant can use these nutrients, but with a pH way out of the 6.3-6.8 range in soil, a lot of those expensive nutrients will just sit there, not doing the plant any good. If you are in a soilless mix, pH in the range of 5.5-6.1 is necessary. It is only within these ranges that all the nutrients are mobile, are able to be broken free of their salt bonds and be in the form that can go into the plants. Most soils and systems are designed so that you can apply liquids at a lower pH and then the soil or the soilless mix causes a drift, so that the pH can visit each spot in the usable pH range for that medium, and all of the 17 needed nutrients will be picked up, each in its turn.
I hope that this study on containers, watering and pH helps someone who reads it. This paper was a result of having to explain these same concepts over and over and over again to new growers at they hit the forums, until finally I put all these thoughts together into this paper. Some of the thoughts previously given have also been refined for this publication, as questions were asked and answered the last time I posted it, and I have learned better ways of explaining my thoughts. Here, I give you, approximately draft 10 of this paper.
Be well everyone and blessings from my garden to yours,
Sense Emilya
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- #871
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
Yes, the main important distinction is that you are growing in a closed container and not in the ground. My method does not care if it is used indoors or out, it works just the same.
Abstrakt
Well-Known Member
Hello Emilya, it's my second time growing this year and still following your water tips and tricks as much as I can. What I am wondering right now is, how can I water with ladybugs hanging out on the top of my soil? Thought about picking them all out one by one and putting them back in their home but that seems extremely monotonous. Would it be preferable to just water as slow as possible and try not to drown them?
Thanks a bunch
Thanks a bunch
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- #873
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
They will fly off or crawl up under a leaf if you annoy them too much. Just start off slow and let them move out of the way for you.Hello Emilya, it's my second time growing this year and still following your water tips and tricks as much as I can. What I am wondering right now is, how can I water with ladybugs hanging out on the top of my soil? Thought about picking them all out one by one and putting them back in their home but that seems extremely monotonous. Would it be preferable to just water as slow as possible and try not to drown them?
Thanks a bunch
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- #875
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
Hi Colatl, and welcome to the forum!
I grow in soil. The soil I use is not special, although in the past I did make a 50 gallon batch of Subcool's Supersoil (his old recipe) and I used that supersoil over and over again for about 6 years before it was all mixed together with the rest of my non-supersoil, and it now is just a collection of soil with unknown qualities that I still use to hold up plants.
What I have done lately after moving to a new house, has been accumulating more soil so I can do bigger gardens. In keeping of that quest I have used the following combination in all of my containers for the last year or so. I am big into repeatability, so I like standard common soils available almost anywhere. I also use layering so that I am not mixing various soils together initially, but providing different layers of different types of soil for the plants to be able to take advantage of.
In the bottom 1/3 of my containers, I use a good supersoil, this year it has been Purple Cow. In the middle third of my containers I use Fox Farm Ocean Forest, a good rich organic soil. In the top third of my containers I like to use Fox Farm Happy Frog, a lighter and mostly sphagnum moss soil mix.
This combination of soils, especially the supersoil in the bottom, would make these containers able to sustain a grow mostly by themselves, needing one to only add filtered water to give the plants everything they need. Rather than take a chance on that, and so as to not wear out my soil to quickly, I choose to give external nutes too. After trying many different nutrient systems, I have found what has to be the easiest and most repeatable way to organically grow these plants, @GeoFlora Nutrients... check them out, they are a sponsor.
Just A Simple Guy
Well-Known Member
Another question for Emilya.
Middle of 7th week flower and I had been watering on a 3-3-3-4 day schedule and today is day 4 and it's the first day 4 in this schedule where the leaves are wilting. All of the large lower fans and only some of the fans higher on the plant.
I take it I should switch to a 2-2-2-3 day watering schedule. Sound about right?
Middle of 7th week flower and I had been watering on a 3-3-3-4 day schedule and today is day 4 and it's the first day 4 in this schedule where the leaves are wilting. All of the large lower fans and only some of the fans higher on the plant.
I take it I should switch to a 2-2-2-3 day watering schedule. Sound about right?
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- #877
Emilya Green
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Hi JASG... I think you are asking about when to try to push water at the plants by cutting off a day of the wet/dry cycle. What you have suggested sounds right, but I would have tried to do that earlier in bloom, like right after you came out of stretch.
Just A Simple Guy
Well-Known Member
Yup, agreed. Note to self for next grow. LOL!
It's also very likely I set her back a tad in veg because of inexperience early on and some minor over watering. After correcting I went into 12/12 on a 4 day wet-dry cycle and after stretch went to a 3-3-3-4 cycle. Probably could have been a bit more aggressive pushing it to 2-2-2-3 but after some of my early mistakes I erred on the side of caution.
Anyway she seems happy and I'm looking forward to harvesting in a few more weeks.
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Emilya Green
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It looks like you did a very fine job... I would not kick yourself too hard. You did shorten the cycle by one day after all, cutting it all the way in half might have been too much, especially early on.Yup, agreed. Note to self for next grow. LOL!
It's also very likely I set her back a tad in veg because of inexperience early on and some minor over watering. After correcting I went into 12/12 on a 4 day wet-dry cycle and after stretch went to a 3-3-3-4 cycle. Probably could have been a bit more aggressive pushing it to 2-2-2-3 but after some of my early mistakes I erred on the side of caution.
Anyway she seems happy and I'm looking forward to harvesting in a few more weeks.
Just A Simple Guy
Well-Known Member
Yeah, I'm not kicking myself hard at all. Any mistakes I made are valuable lessons for the next grow. I have a comprehensive multi-tab spreadsheet tracking everything starting at germination. That's my inner IT Nerd personae. LOL!
To be honest I'm pleasantly surprised it's coming along as it is.
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