Happy New Years to the DGC crew and their families!
Ive been paying more attention to my PPM’s recently due to issues with my well water that we discussed a while back. Now I’m using a RO system from HydroLogic and have my water down to the 80ppm range (from 1025!) and my plants are doing better. But, as a regular user of Recharge, im wondering how it changes or throws off ppm?
Since Recharge isn’t a fertilizer, adding it before you measure the ppm’s of your nutrient solution will give you a false reading. That’s easy to avoid. But, what do you do if you check your runoff? Does the soil capture all the Recharge? I suspect not; but I’m trying to figure out how to check PPM’s of runoff and compensate or allow for the presence of Recharge?
Im transitioning away from bottled nutrients and ALL salt based nutes on my organic journey so I won’t be as concerned in the future; but I’m still curious about this. Hoping maybe you can address this for all us Recharge fans!
Thanks!
DTOM420
a,k.a. Dark Star 420
Interested and Following, measured my runoff and did not notice anything strange…I mixed just recharge no nutes and had under 50 ppms…my readings mixing a batch for a friend with nutes to convince him to try it..I saw no difference from the readings I would get on a regular feeding…7-750 ppm range with or without Recharge….I did notice an interesting spike in ph on the plain batch..why after I add recharge ,the ph in my r.o water rises from 6.8 out of r.o to 7.5 post Recharge? One packet in 5 gallons no other nutes…settled 4 hours..8 ppm on raw r.o water…no big deal adjusted it down just curious. Coco grower here.
Thanks AZKushman! I actually haven’t added it solo to my RO water and checked the ppm’s I guess I should have before posting. That’s what I get for posting while medicated! Lol! I’m surprised that you saw such low numbers, though. How’s that possible? Recharge makes my water so dark brown that I figured surely it’s got to raise the ppm number.
On the ppm target numbers…. I always figured that those numbers were a reading of the strength of the nutrients, essentially. So, going too high meant that you basically made your feeding too hot. So, I’ve been adding nutes until I get to that number AFTER subtracting the ppm number of the water I started with. This is correct, isnt it? I mean, when you say to target 750ppm, you’re talking about adding that much nutrient solution to your water; not targeting that number as the total ppm reading of the final solution you feed. Is that correct?
I have a recharge only watering to do tomorrow morning and Ill check the ppm change for ya.
My tap water runs 180-250 ppm. I don’t ever check runoff cause I believe a lot of shit gets collected by the fabric pot so I do ‘t believe it to be accurate.
I run organic bottles at 1.1EC (about 500ppm) and alternate waterings with recharge only on the 2nd. Watering every 3rd day.
I don’t ph anything nor do I even check ph cause my nute line and recharge will buffer and my soil (FFHP/FFLW-50/50) buffers my ph as well.
My plants have no burn and all light green perky growth throughout.
My guess is Recharge doesn’t have a lot of solids?? Since you’re measuring TDS and theres not much change…🤷🏻♂️I’ll update you tomorrow.
Forgit to add….it’s not better to subtract water ppm because that water has soluble metals for the plant to uptake as well…at least that’s my understanding.
As I stated above, I use tap water. So, I get the yearly water report which is available on my water district website in PDF. That gives me an idea of the iron, calcium, etc in my water before adding my nutrients. More than anything, it tells me if my tap water is good to use for my garden.
Hey! So turns out my girls are at the water every other day stage…so I have the data.
3gl water – 72° – 223ppm
Recharge 3 Tsp (went with 1tsp/gl for sake of experiment) came to 323ppm.
I was extra accurate with my measurements and my Hanna HI98311 was calibrated this week so you can be damn sure that Recharge is 1tsp/gl:100ppm
Now I wonder how my garden will look at double strength recharge😁
@Not_a-Meme_Guy Thanks for that, brother! Great info. I’m still trying to figure out about ppm and how all to use it and understand it. I mean, I know it’s a reading of the total dissolved solids in the mixture and you can use it to determine the strength of a dose of nutes you’re adding. But then I hear references to target numbers or max numbers as if a number too high would be detrimental to your plants, somehow. Of course, too much salt based nutrition will be toxic but is there something about a particular number that, beyond that, a cannabis plant can’t handle root exposure to the solution? For example, let’s say you put 10x the dose of Recharge into a gallon of 0ppm RO water. The ppm reading would be over 2000 which, if it were some bottled nutrient, would fry your plant; butbtheres little to no nutrition in Recharge and you can’t really overdose a plant on microbes. So, would there be a problem with doing that? I wouldn’t think so.
What I’m trying to determine is, let’s say I have 200ppm water and I add 600ppm of nutrients and another 100ppm of micronutrients. That puts me at 900ppm which is up at, or above, the max numbers recommended by lots of folks. If I then went and added Recharge in the amount of 100ppm, is that additional ppm meaningful other than as a measurement of how much Recharge I added; or is it adding to the total PPM’s to where there’s a number ‘thou shalt not cross lest your plants shrivel and die?’ Lol!
Not sure if I’m explaining it right.
Thanks for the post! It was featured on Grow Talk EP 770. DGC!