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01-10-2014, 09:31 PM #10Senior Member
DWC-Bucket-System-Grow my equipment and questions
Growlie, part of the fun of this is the discovery that you'll go through. I said use soil because it's easier and it looks like you've got some nice seeds and naturally you don't want to waste your time and money, and soil is just a little easier than hydro. Either way you can't overdo the ferts or you'll kill the plants. Hydro is good in that you can measure the ppm on demand, meaning you can see where the fert amount is right away. You can't really do that with soil too well. That's why for a long time it was very popular advice to flush a soil grow with water whenever someone had a complaint about a problem. In this forum and others, "flush with water" was given as advice so often that people just accepted it as standard procedure. The only time you want to flush is when you know or suspect that too much fert was given to a soil grow. Changes to ppm/pH happen because the ferts you put in the water change these values. You'll probably measure your plain water at around 7.0 pH and small amount of ppm as there will be some minerals in the water. As you add ferts, you're raising the ppm because you're putting more minerals in the water, but these tend to be acidic so the pH will go down, indicating that the mix is becoming more acid. This is normal. Typically, you shoot for a ppm of around 600-700 for a new grow with a pH around 6.0 or a little higher. Some people say 5.8 but that might be too low. Try not to worry so much about pH however. Focus more on the ppm. As plants grow they will take ferts up out of the water and your ppm will drop. You will also have to raise your ppm to around 1000 or perhaps a little more as time goes on. You can see that a hydro grow takes more care to avoid killing the plants and some of this will be a trial-and-error kind of thing; you'll have to think as you go along, but you seem like a smart person so this shouldn't be hard. Hydro is easy and grows plants very fast when done right. Soil takes longer but is easier and more stable and doesn't really require the pH/ppm evaluations like hydro does. Here's some reading: Fertilizer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fertility (soil) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hydroponics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For soil growing and new growers I usually suggest they keep it very simple, which means a potting soil grow and in the US foxfarm and roots brand soils are widely sold with good success. To raise the fert level some, I usually suggest that these people use powder ferts like foxfarm's fruit and flower, just one half cup of fert for every two gallons (4 liters) of potting soil. Then you just add water when the soil dries out. It doesn't get easier. you can do what you want and the hydro idea is fine but maybe play with it some using other seeds, like tomatoes if you want. The soil grow will just take longer. also, please avoid using "faggot" here. thanks.
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