Heavenly Hybrid
Well-Known Member
Hey Ase, and any one else for that matter. I’m curious if you test your runoff in coco? I’m hearing some differing opinions about whether it matters or not, so I thought I’d ask around a bit. 
Ase's Multi-Strain Quadlining In Coco
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JustMeds
Well-Known Member
I don't grow COCO but have read a bit on it. If you check your runoff and the PPM's are more then what you are putting in you are over feeding. If it drops a lot you need to up the feed. Now to sit back and see if I am right.
JustMeds
Well-Known Member
I would think this would help also. I would ignore the first column for COCO.
Heavenly Hybrid
Well-Known Member
Thank you, I’ll check this out! Looks like it could be really helpful.I would think this would help also. I would ignore the first column for COCO.
My apologies, I wasn’t specific there, I was wondering about run off pH. Sorry about that!
Derbybud
Well-Known Member
I never look at run off in coco. Just watch what you put into it and how the plant looks and you'll be fine.
I’ve run coco for 3 years now and never check run off. It will just cause you to chase ghosts that are not there. If you water coco daily to a small amount of runoff you’ll be golden.
Heavenly Hybrid
Well-Known Member
Awesome, thank you guys so much!
I’ll stop wasting my time on that bit then!Im starting a new line of nutes and the company they sent me a few of their charts. I won’t include the feed summary as it’s prob not useful to you, but their general recommendations chart may be the best one I’ve ever seen and prove helpful. Very impressive how they mapped so much content about the complete grow cycle into a single page.
Nice chart, thank you for posting that.
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- #1,590
Hey Ase, and any one else for that matter. I’m curious if you test your runoff in coco? I’m hearing some differing opinions about whether it matters or not, so I thought I’d ask around a bit.
Here is my opinion on the matter. Once I got my way of growing down I still ph'd and ppm'd every single bucket for about a year. I always checked my runoff and I was pretty meticulous about knowing these numbers. After that long I ended up determining that my PH was always the same really. I choose to always water my plants with nutes in them so I don't do the whole load up with one bucket with a heavy feed and then just do water the next couple times. I believe you should water every day with nutes in it for coco. Because I do that generally my ppm doesn't fluctuate that much so neither does my PH. I'd rather feed every day but at lower amounts if that makes sense?
For almost 2 years now I haven't PH'd anything no matter if it's feed going in or runoff coming out. However, I have my way of doing things and my plants seem to be always pretty healthy. I don't even measure what nutrients I am putting into my buckets anymore. Every once and a blue moon I'll pull out my PPM pen and test it and I'm usually right where I want to be. Everything is just an educated guess now and believe it or not you will get there at some point. I haven't used a drop of PH up or down in ages.
Now there is another part to this that I want to recognize. There are many people with differing opinions on the matter but most people that have experience like me (Derby,Penny, etc..) probably could do the same thing I do and have healthy plants. It's like when you do things over and over you can almost get it perfect without measuring (repetitive learning? or something...). I do believe if you are learning then it is good to PPM and PH both the water going in and the runoff. It can tell you a bit about what's going on with the part of the plant you can't see, the roots and how they are functioning. Also if I had any sort of unhealthy issues happen the first thing I'd do is pull out both my pens and do the same thing. I think it gives you a good starting point to try and figure out what is going on. You'll see why shortly but really just the runoff PPM can tell you everything but PH can be a double check.
Higher PPM usually causes lower PH. There may be no science to back up my theory here so take it with a grain of salt but it's worked for me when I was learning and had some issues in my first couple grows so I feel comfortable putting it out there. Let's say I put a big feed into my plant. (1000 PPM and 5.5 PH). If I test the runoff and the PPM is 1300 and PH is 5.0 then that is a red flag for me. That means salts are building up in the coco and are essentially being flushed out. To me it signals a couple of things. The roots aren't uptaking everything that you are putting the plant (could be lockout and leaves would probably show this) OR your coco is getting too dry and nutes are being left in the coco because roots don't have the water to absorb the nutrients up and they turn to salts. You will often see salt build up start to happen on the rims and outsides of the pots (if using airpots). Every different mineral in nutrients absorbs at a different PH level so maybe some of the minerals that absorb in 5.8 PH range are getting absorbed but the ones in the 6.2 range really aren't and being left behind. The leaves will also tell you this though and they will identify the overage/shortage of that mineral and show a different difference or burn because of it.
Generally this does not work as well the other way. If you measure the PPM and PH and it's way lower then what you are putting in then the PH doesn't tend to go really high in numbers (ex. 200 PPM runoff and 9.0 PH). In that example PH probably stays at 5.5 if that is what you are putting in and won't shoot up to 9.0 but you'd think in theory it might because of my example with the higher PPM. So I always recommend to focus on PPM in runoff and not so much PH. If you have a really low PPM then your plant is absorbing everything and probably needs more feed. You can often see this when branches and fan leaf stems stay purple. A small amount of that purple can be genetics but mainly it's underfeeding and often happens in mid flower. Plants really don't show anything worthwhile except overfeeding in veg.
So while I will agree with most of the people that posted that PH is pretty irrelevant in runoff, I do think that it can give some information on what is going on in the bucket. I always recommend for new coco growers to water so you are getting some runoff once the plants are big enough. Doing this too early on kind of just causes you to have saturated coco all the time and can cause algae buildup and make it more difficult for roots to absorb anything. The first few weeks you really have to be careful and only give a bigger amount of water every 4-5 days and then just littler waterings in between. Enough to make the pots feel like they are holding water and not let the coco dry out but not to have any runoff. I error on the side of drier in this stage. Once the plants really take off in veg the roots have filled the pot and they will begin to drink like crazy and then you can just give larger amounts of water every day because by the next day they will be dry-ish again.
The solution always when having problems in coco is to water so you get a lot of runoff like a mini flush. In this water you want to include a feed that is pretty small (if you have been feeding 800ppm cut it to 400) and then give the plant a balanced set of the nutrients. I don't mean 5ML of each of the bottles but rather do some quick math and give them enough of each bottle so the N-P-K is about an equal parts ratio of 1-1-1. You want to give them enough of that water so what is going in (in terms of PH and PPM) is exactly whats going out. It's basically a reset and hopefully if there is any salt buildup or excess minerals of one kind in the coco then it was absorbed in the large amounts of water and flushed out.
With all that being said I just use basic saucers now that my plants sit in and when I have runoff I just let it sit in the saucer and the plant just absorbs it throughout the day. I try to have just the tiniest bit off runoff (like drops) because then I know the water has gotten all the way down to the bottom of the pots. I also will note how much feed that takes to get there and I'll feed the same the next day. If I get no runoff then I probably could feed a little more and the plants are drinking more and more. If I get a bunch of runoff then I know I can do less the next day and it's almost perfect. The one thing I really want to make clear on this topic is that testing runoff anything really doesn't tell you the problem. If your PH or PPM is way off then something else is the issues. People think that if their PH is really low they can really spike up the next PH (with PH up) of the next feed and it solves everything and it really doesn't work like that. If you have a runoff of 4.0 PH and you think it's a good idea to put PH up to 8.0 to hit 6.0 in the pot then you'll be disappointed with the results. Now you are filling the plant with a really high PH and basically flushing the old 4.0 PH out and your plants still won't absorb anything because the PH is way too high. This is why I recommend the whole balanced reset thing.
I hope this didn't cause you more confusion but you asked so you got my opinion. This is a topic with many opinions but this is what has worked for me. I hope it helps.
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- #1,591
This is a very interesting chart. Paying attention to the black line specifically, it kind of follows my feed chart in the very first page of this. I've always considered PPM and EC to be relatively similar and that just may be because of my lack of knowledge here but technically maybe I should be using the term EC when relative to feed and nutrients rather then PPM. Oh well this journal will be done soon so I won't change it but whenever I come back to start a new one I should probably start using that.Im starting a new line of nutes and the company they sent me a few of their charts. I won’t include the feed summary as it’s prob not useful to you, but their general recommendations chart may be the best one I’ve ever seen and prove helpful. Very impressive how they mapped so much content about the complete grow cycle into a single page.
Good advice Ase, the one thing I've learned if you're having issues with PH/EC it always pays to look at your Temps/RH first. Temps, RH and VPD is another set of variables that will cause a new grower to start chasing ghosts that he can't see.
Heavenly Hybrid
Well-Known Member
Thank you so much for the detailed info Ase! I bookedmarked this because I know I’ll be needing to look at it again and again in future grows. I always appreciate your approach to growing and a million thanks for this golden information!
I used to go by PPM, but because I try lots of different nutes, I would encounter some based on 500 scale, others on 700 scale and a lot of times they wouldn’t be labeled... which can lead to crazy over/ under feeding. Now I use RO water and go solely by EC (just works better for me). I like your approach of daily nutes, btw.
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- #1,595
Totally agree. I've said for a long time the 3 most important things in growing are:
1.Environment
2.Lights
3.Grower Experience
If your environment is off and your RH is high then the plant absorbs more through leaves and less through roots. If it does that it won't be uptaking nutrients and you'll likely have lockout. If it's too hot things dry out and that is the number one problem in coco. Not enough lights and the plants won't handle big feeds because they don't have the energy to do so. If you have weak lights you have to feed weak feeds and the plants will be small. Environment is the most important thing for any plants anywhere with sun/lights being right behind it. Grower experience helps but it's not a huge factor like the other two.
Checking runoff is more of a tool to double check that something is wrong but PPM and PH are rarely the problem. I chased those ghosts for my first years of growing for sure. Now it's pretty funny that I don't PH or PPM anything going in or going out.
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- #1,596
This was always a problem when I tried to figure out how to relate other lines of nutrients to the feed schedule I came up with for General Hydroponics 3 part series. People would measure theirs and PPM would be all over the place. I always vowed I would revamp the schedule to EC but never got around to it but I will for sure on my next journal, whenever that may be. I'm also lucky to live in a part of the world where my PPM coming out of the tap is 20-25ppm. No need for RO water here!
I got tired of chasing ghosts so started learning what was really happening. It's made life so much simpler.
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- #1,598
Of course! Just remember I am no scientist! I have come up with a lot of theories I use on my own. They work really well for me and have for other people as well but I don't have empirical data to back it all up. I just have my tents and this journal and I'd say i'm comfortable teaching it because the results I get are pretty solid. Someday I will really nerd out and do all the necessary research to back it up but until then, I'll call it an educated guess.
Thank you so much for the detailed info Ase! I bookedmarked this because I know I’ll be needing to look at it again and again in future grows. I always appreciate your approach to growing and a million thanks for this golden information!
Jealous man, that’s a HUGE cost saver. This is what I’m working with out of the tap... yummy.
Heavenly Hybrid
Well-Known Member
It kind of seems like there are two types of growers. The scientist and the naturalist. I’ve been going the scientist route, with measuring everything meticulously and keeping track of every little detail. I feel like it’s worse for me, since I did almost none of that for my first grow. Not that it was a spectacular grow the first time, but it was better than what I’m dealing with now. I want to be more in tune with the plants, and less on the numbers. I know it takes time and experience, but that’s what I’m aiming for and adjusting my mentality towards from now on. I get all the numbers and charts swimming around in my head and it’s too overwhelming when things are going wrong. That’s just me anyhow. Thanks again for the insight, I truly appreciate it.