I've just got the first glimpse of a looming problem.
Plant number 3, the main object of my worries, is showing a teeny tiny bit of brown tips on one of the top leaves (and I think even on yet another leaf, though the browning is too small to tell conclusively yet).
I have no idea if it is
1) overwatering
2) underwatering
3) lack of nutrients
4) too much light.
I doubt it is 4.
As I have been mentioning in previous posts during the last two days, I really have no feel for watering with soilless.
Considering my experience with soil, I feel like I am overwatering.
Most sources I have consulted say it is so very difficult to overwater coco coir + perlite.
That being said, my case seems special since I started with soil and transplanted to soilless.
3 seems possible, but I am adding Remo nutrients and have added somewhere between 4.6L-5.1L of water in 48h, but there also been a lot of runoff.
Could I have overwatered the middle portion that has soil?
Ah, I am already dreading what will happen when I open the tent after the coming dark period.
A few data points on the weight of the pot.
The pot weighed 4.2kg when I transplanted without watering.
I added 800mL water that first day and the weight went to 5kg (no runoff).
The next day I added 2.7L with 1L of runoff and the weight was 6.7kg.
There was some runoff over the next hours as well.
The next day (this morning) there was this runoff. I didn't measure it at the time and I didn't weigh the pot unfortunately.
I then added about 1.1L of water and left it for a few hours, but the weight right now (hours later) is down to 6.4kg. (I actually don't remember if I did an extra 500mL at some point to start the day, I need to be better at keeping track, and I will be from now on).
Thus, the total water added was 4.6L-5.1L and the extra water in the pot right now weighs just 2.2kg. Thus the total runoff must be around 2.4L-2.9L.
Intuitively, this sounds like I overwatered. That much runoff seems to indicate to me (based on nothing but baseless intuition about something I know nothing about) that I kept the coco + perlite fully saturated basically since yesterday.
But the truth is I don't know how to interpret, in terms of saturation of the medium, the fact that the pot is lighter right now than it was yesterday despite watering.
Does this indicate that the medium was very saturated yesterday, it lost some water (the runoff I observed this morning) to become just saturated, then it maybe became 90% saturated, and then I brought it back to way more than saturated by watering it today?
Does all extra water after saturation runoff?
Anyone here a water detective?
Hopefully someone can give me a light, because right now I am going to err on the side of less water and maybe try to keep the pot between 6kg and 6.4kg (as an initial guess of what is ideal).