Old Hippy 127
New Member
On my first grow, I had a lot of anxiety about watering; that's a common problem. I ended up watering my plants too much and was lucky to get a reasonable yield of good bud. I learned to be patient and to give them less water. However, I was still having a lot of questions about when to water the plants, and some anxiety that I was doing it wrong. There is a great post on 420 titled, "How to water a potted plant." I suggest you read it since it's well worth your time. That post got me thinking about a different way to use a rapidtest moisture meter. This is what I came up with.
Drill a hole, approximately the same diameter as the shaft of the rapidtest moisture meter, 1 inch from the bottom of your container. Move up approximately an inch and 1/4 then drill another hole in line with the first. Continue this inch and one quarter spacing to drill a number of holes, in line with each other, until you get to just a few inches below the surface of your growing medium.
You can now insert the meter horizontally into your pot, and by using various holes, assess the moisture content at various depths in your growing medium. The following pictures show the meter reading taken in various holes in the container. The pictures are not in any order.
in most cases, you will note increasing moisture content the further down you go in the pot. The bottom hole will almost always show a good amount of moisture. For this particular plant, illustrated in the pictures, the medium is consistently dry all the way down to the bottom. In other words, it's nearly time for this lady to get watered.
I think if you use this method, you will eliminate a good amount of the anxiety about when to water your plants.
You can get very scientific if you want, and actually chart the results. I found that to be very educational.
The best part is I now have an empirical method to reinforced my patients, and provide this weed with the wet / dry cycles it needs to thrive.
Happy growing... from an old hippie!
Drill a hole, approximately the same diameter as the shaft of the rapidtest moisture meter, 1 inch from the bottom of your container. Move up approximately an inch and 1/4 then drill another hole in line with the first. Continue this inch and one quarter spacing to drill a number of holes, in line with each other, until you get to just a few inches below the surface of your growing medium.
You can now insert the meter horizontally into your pot, and by using various holes, assess the moisture content at various depths in your growing medium. The following pictures show the meter reading taken in various holes in the container. The pictures are not in any order.
in most cases, you will note increasing moisture content the further down you go in the pot. The bottom hole will almost always show a good amount of moisture. For this particular plant, illustrated in the pictures, the medium is consistently dry all the way down to the bottom. In other words, it's nearly time for this lady to get watered.
I think if you use this method, you will eliminate a good amount of the anxiety about when to water your plants.
You can get very scientific if you want, and actually chart the results. I found that to be very educational.
The best part is I now have an empirical method to reinforced my patients, and provide this weed with the wet / dry cycles it needs to thrive.
Happy growing... from an old hippie!
and I don't think this wild work for that lol. Hats off to you for ingenuity though!
