EC and ppm

[Cannaconnect]

My plants are begging. I’m in Mississauga Ontario Canada. My run off is around 4000EC or 2000ppm.
what is the optimal EC for vegging cannabis in organic soil ? And what is the optimal EC for cannabis flowering ?

 

[Emilya Green]

My plants are begging. I’m in Mississauga Ontario Canada. My run off is around 4000EC or 2000ppm.
what is the optimal EC for vegging cannabis in organic soil ? And what is the optimal EC for cannabis flowering ?

hi @Cannaconnect ... begging? They look great! Runoff in a soil grow tells you nothing useful at all. An EC or PPM reading on your runoff is useless and there are no optimal numbers for it. If you are talking about your incoming nutrients, and the EC or PPM that mix should be as it hits that soil, then we are talking about some thing real but other than that, I really don't understand your question. Is this going to be an organic grow where you add nothing but water, or do you plan on fertilizing these plants? I am curious what soil you are in and what organic nutrient line you plan on using?

 

[Cannaconnect]

I’m growing in 10 gallon fabric pots. Top dressed
Gaia green 10 tbs of 4-4-4 all purpose
10 Tbs of 2-8-4 bloom
My own compost soil 2”
My medium is promix organic. MP.
before I added these my EC was around 5000EC. Then it rained whole day. Now my ec is around 4000ec. I give nutes in 3rd 4 th week.
also my Ec before was 10000-12000 run off. How then do I measure before what I put in. ?Like you said. ?
How

 

[bobrown14]

You dont need to measure run off in organic soil. It's meaningless.

Whats in your soil mix before plants are added is what you want to focus on.

Organic soil is water and let the microbes do the heavy lifting there's no way to measure what work they can do presently.

The idea is to inoculate the root zone and rhizosphere with proper microbes and fungi and let them work with the plants roots and root exudate.

Inna symbiotic relationship with roots and microbes thats where the nutrients in the soil that are locked up due to CEC are broken down for the plants to uptake along with water molecules.

So in this setup - what do you want to measure.

Get a soil test - this will tell you if you organic soil mix has what is optimal for plant growth. You get a soil test in a soil testing laboratory. Not sure where they are where you're at but you could call Black Swallow soils they are near you and they will know where you can get a soil test.

The soil test will tell you what your soil CEC is or cation exchange capacity along with all macro and micro nutrients and the optimal ranges of them as well and the ratios of all important elements in the soil.

 

[Cannaconnect]

hi @Cannaconnect ... begging? They look great! Runoff in a soil grow tells you nothing useful at all. An EC or PPM reading on your runoff is useless and there are no optimal numbers for it. If you are talking about your incoming nutrients, and the EC or PPM that mix should be as it hits that soil, then we are talking about some thing real but other than that, I really don't understand your question. Is this going to be an organic grow where you add nothing but water, or do you plan on fertilizing these plants? I am curious what soil you are in and what organic nutrient line you plan on using?

Doesn’t the run off tell me if I have enough nutes in soil? If my EC is under 1000 then I should add more
And if run off is over5000 EC then it’s good enough with nutes.
right??

 

[Emilya Green]

It is possible to preload soil with all the nutrients that are going to be needed in the grow, and then as Bob mentioned, let the microbes and the natural organic feeding cycle take over and actually feed your plants. To do this correctly the raw nutrients in an unusable form are added to the soil and then the soil is composted for 2-3 months to cook all of these nutrients into the soil. A soil prepared in this way has locked up the nutrients temporarily so that even though there are enough nutrients in there to choke a horse, the plants are not damaged by them.

You have not done this. You have added immediately available nutrients, 4-4-4 and 2-8-4 for a total of 6-12-8 to your soil build. This does not require microbes to process it, and instead of a slow release of the exact nutrients the plant wants and gets with the organic feeding cycle, you have tossed the entire kitchen sink in there, in a hot readily available mix of nutrients, thinking like someone adding liquid nutrients every other time mixed with the water, you have put it all in the soil, asking the young plant to deal with it, now, and thinking you can regulate it by adjusting the EC.

Less is more in this nutrient / plant game, but you have gone the other way and over pre loaded your soil. Your plants are likely to not like this situation at all, and likely will not be able to handle all of this. So many nutes all mixed together at the same time are going to interfere with each other, and along with an overly strong mix, some of those nutes are going to lock out other parts of the nutes. You have no control over this situation and if it is as I say, an overload situation, there is going to be nothing you can do to fix it as you watch your plants burn up. But you were planning on adding more nutes in week 3/4... you really dont need all of this. If it were this easy, to just add all the nutrients needed to the soil before you start, everyone would do it this way. How easy it would be to not have to worry about feeding the plants every other watering. There is a chart called Mulders Chart of Mineral Interactions. You are going to become very familiar with this chart as you witness how all of these bio-available minerals act when put into the soil in large amounts, all mixed together.

I hope I am wrong. I hope that all goes well for you, but I have seen this before and it usually causes such dramatic problems that we see these gardeners in here asking why their grow is having problems. Keep in touch, send us lots of pictures, and with luck, we can help you when and if the problems occur. Best of luck, I am pulling for you.

 

[bobrown14]

Organic Soil has very little to no soluble nutrients so what are we measuring in the run-off water?

This is a simple understanding. Look up "soil food web" if you don't believe me.

You're trying to somehow tie soil-less growing practices with soil growing practices.

You gotta make a leap of faith and let all those ppms and fertilizers and measurements and all that jazz that comes with growing with bottles or in soil-less media go..

It's just that simple.

Dont over think. Testing run off from organic soil is a fools errand.

IF you need to know whats in your soil - GET A SOIL TEST DONE.

It's how the PRO's do it.

If you think you're gleaning any information from run-off you're not.

Mix your soil
get a soil test
adjust soil mix per the soil test result
Grow plants with water.

That's how we do it. No pH testing soil, no ppm testing run-off no bottles
Water for the win... grow trees you will.