Grow With Me – Day -7 – Preparing Fabric Pots
Preparation of you soil and pots is necessary if you want to make sure you have the best start for your plants. You want to be able to make sure both the pH and ppm of your starting soil is in the proper ranges. To do this, you want to do a slurry test on your starting soil:
After your measurements, pH balance the soil so that you are in the grow zone by premoistening it with water at the opposite end of your targets. Making it a habit to calibrate your meters every now and then helps too. Then add a small layer (1-2 inches) of perlite on the bottom of your pots to help prevent overwatering your plants.
Then add the premoistened soil and let the pots “brew” for a week prior to planting seeds inside. This will give your plants the optimal start for growing.
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So will the mix still be the same for the happy frog in a 5 gallon pot, in the future…
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If you’re before week 5, I would
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Can I use your Auto Feeding chart with FoxFarm Cultivation Nation 70:30 or would that change to much?
I did not prep my pots correctly i def soaked the dirt and this has caused a wonky data point on starting pots. i am bringing them all closer in weight. But you can tell the difference and can understand how much this can affect plants.
yup, Im glad we’ve been tracking all data, lets us standardize.
A couple of questions:
1.) After the microbes have grown, do you want to stir and turn your soil, or should we leave it as is?
2.)Are we concerned with PPM/TDS when we’re first prepping the soil?
3.) Does keeping seeds refrigerated increase germination rates? If so, should all seeds not in use be refrigerated until germination?
Thanks for the knowledge. You’re changing the world for the better.
no need to stir, they will grow with the roots
2) absolutely, ppm is just to know how much is in, but pH should absolutely be balanced.
3) Keeping seeds cold helps seeds last longer. I wouldnt put seeds in the refrigerator if its only for a couple of days, its more for long term storage until ready to use.
Can the water were using to test the soil PH level be tap water? Or do I need to add a couple drops of hydrogen peroxide?
My seed was put in a small pot after germination and now has sprouted. Do I have to wait 24 hours for the slurry test then transplant? Or am I able to do the slurry test wait a few hours and transplant to its forever pot?
I was going to ask the same question! Because my slurry test is brewing now with plain tap water. In my container I mixed 1 cup of water with a few drops of H202 the night before. Then poured it out, wiped it down. Dried it, put in 1 cup of soil, and one cup of plain tap water. That was yesterday. Today I’ll be actually doing my slurry test. I guess this is better than pH balancing before mixing, because you know how your water interacts with your soil…? Lol. Best guess.
Great community 😎..
Look forward to it getting to my country and unpucker some old school assholes 🙌✌️💚💚
I’m trying to locate the formula for balancing the soil. Unfortunately I can’t find the description the video says it’s located. Please point me in the right direction.
Grow With Me – Day -7 – Preparing Fabric Pots
some people dont realize theres a photo that is actually a video, you must click play on it and the video explains it, let me know if that worked.
I cant see a link to the formula.
I understand why your doing it but dont get why you used the opposite of the difference
Just take your measured reading, subtract the target, then go this same difference away from your target on the other side.
What is your slurry pH?
my ppm came out to 2900, is there a video to help with that?
That’s fine, there’s was a variance as seen in the end of the video. Since we are during down, the discrepancy is not as drastic.
Hello the link that says you are in the grow zone doesn’t seem to work
ughhhh, amazon back at it again, this was the image that was in the link that used to hosted on their cloud and I guess theyre not doing that anymore:
Its crazy. I found that after my slurry test, for every 1.4 ph increase in feed water, there was only a .18 change in the soil Ph. Once I raised my Feed water Ph to about 12.07, It was only then that I was able to obtain a slurry test of 6.2 Ph…. Let me know your thoughts
It’s directly correlated to ppm. For example, a ph of 8.0 with a ppm of 500 will greatly change the soil ph while a pH of 8.0 in a ppm of 10 will hardly do anything. This is why I pH balanced the slurry, then mixed it into the soil in the video because that will be a significant change to the whole soil it was mixed into.
How long do u let the mixed soil sit before transplanting?
I average 5 days
My soil only got to seat for a day before I had to transplanted. Was having problems with germination and got confused on the soil timeing. Its my verry first grow. I did soil test and ph balanced. I use O.R. water. How much will this affect your program?
the idea is to let the rhizosphere multiply which has a symbiotic relationship with the roots of the plant. Eventually, the beneficial microbes will grow. I wouldnt sweat it.
Can you explain why we PH our soil to 6.2? To my understanding, I thought the sweet spot was 6.5. So why not pH the soil at 6.5?
6.5 is ideal for bloom,
5.8-6.2 is ideal for veg.
The ph drifts down as the plants consume which is why we aim for higher pHs later.
Oh, I didn’t know that for veg. Thanks!
So lets say your water ph is at 6.5 and your soild ph with the slurry test before balance is 4.5, do you take the difference and add it into the water, which mean i would raise to ph in water to 8.5 so when i add the water in the soil that it would equal to 6.5, if that makes any sense.
Yes I would take that slurry, mix it into a gallon of water, then bring this pH up to 8.5 and mix this gallon with the rest of the soil (3 fabric pots worth) that should bring it a lot closer to the actual targets listed in the chart.
ok and would this be the same method for doing the juice as well cuz i was starting to freak out a lil thinking i wasnt doing it right all the way but the plant is growing though.
No, the juice is not pH balanced in the end. You add it to plain water to hit the target ppm, THEN you pH it.
so you fix the juice and add it to the water until it hits the ppm im looking and then ph balance it correct?
i prepped my pots but before that i did my slurry test and let it sit for a night, i then tested the soil and it was 6.0PH so when i prepped my 1.75 gallons of water it was 8.0PH (just tap water) so i balanced it up to 8.2 to make sure that when it had mixed the starting soil PH would be 6.2 i also added a squirt of hydrogen peroxide into the water before mixing it with the soil, i will now let my prepped pots sit for 5 days
when i did my slurry i didn’t PH balance the water you mix with the soil i just left it as what it came out the tap does this matter! my thinking behind it is that because i took my reading after i let it sit and it was 6.0PH was i right to just increase the 1.75 gallon water that i mixed with the soil i put in my 3 pots to 8.2PH because the original reading before upping the PH was 8.0PH ?
As long as you used the same water in the slurry to balance your soil out, you did the right thing
Yup
So it says 1 to 1 water to soil, is there an amount? 1 cup of each? 1 quart of each? or it doesn’t matter much?
Nevermind there’s a second video on this page 🙂
Hey! Thank you so much for your grow videos. My water PH is at 8.52 and slurry PH is at 4.96. That makes my target PH 12.06. This seems to be a bit high, but I wanted to double check I did it properly.
No that’s wrong,
The target should be around 6.0 so it’s just 1 ph higher. I would mix that slurry in with a half a gallon of water and ph it to around 9 and mix it in with 5 gallons of soil. Then test the slurry again. If it works for each pot, do the same.
I realized I didnt strain the slurry, i will try again!
my slurry test is 6.4.
tap water is 7.9.
pre pots at what ph?
then what should my ph roughly be at when feed?
7.2
add half a gallon of that tap to every 5 gallons of soil, let it brew for at least 5 days before germinating seeds.
ph of feeds will be the same 7.2 until you get your dunk runoff readings.
my tap water has a ph of 7.30
slurry ph is 5.75 and the PPM measured at 2,200
what would the correct Ph to feed at and prep my soil?
You want to check your water for chloramine Is Chloramine Toxic for Your Plants? Dangers of Chlorine
I would feed at 7.5 for the first 4-5 weeks until dunks.
Yes, I checked with my local water authority and as of the last time they updated chloramine is not in use!
Great
Hey what’s up man?? I watched your coco vs. soil. Coco was the clear winner. If I wanted to use coco instead of frog dirt. Treat it the same?? Do the slurry test. Ph and ppm tests?? Lastly, following your veg and bloom juice recipes my ingredients need to be identical to yours?? Same types of everything, correct??
Pair this with the drip videos:
https://www.howweedgrow.com/sdm_downloads/general-hydroponics-coco-master-feed-schedule-trio/
Thanks man!!!
Thank you for all these videos.
Considering to get a subscription, to be able to grow together with videos.
However, i live in Europe and soil of that specific trademark is not available for us. And I am not sure how you calculated all numbers for feeding.
With subscription, do you think i will be able to learn how to run those numbers right?
(I am very new to this, still waiting for my tent to be delivered)
Thanks again
Find bio bizz light and tripart
Those are good replacements for happy frog soil and general hydroponics trio, respectively
Find any calmag that has 5% calcium and 1.5% magnesium, epsom salt at any pharmacy.
Once you have that, nothing in the formulas need to be changed:
I started my soil test with 7.0 PH water, which had 288ppm. After the slurry test, the water was 5.5 with 2090ppm. I saturated the soil with 6.9ph water and let it brew for 4 days. I’m using an autopot, and I collected some runoff that accumulated in the basin below the pot. That water tested 6.7PH and 3740ppm which is a HUGE shift. I’m using fox farm happy frog soil, and a 50/50 soil/pearlite mix. I tested the pearlite for balance(basically the same thing I did with the soil slurry) and that was all good. 7.0 went in and 7.0 came out. Did I screw something up? I recalibrated my bluelabs ph and apera ppm meter, and the numbers are still that high.
thats not accurate, you would need to do another slurry on the same soil.
Chances are, you barely got any runoff, hence the high reading. It needs to be volume to volume. Get at least a quart of runoff and it will be more accurate.
Hey I’m trying my first grow and I’m conducting a ph test on my soil and it came back as 4.9. I used tap water and happy frog soil. What can I do to get it up?
Mix that slurry with a 1.5 gallons of water then add pH up until the water hits 7.0. Then mix it with 3 fabric pots worth of soil just like in the video
Hey there, so I’m running a grow atm but for the next run I wanna try your workflow/method. First issue I found is the soil I can’t get my hands on it in Germany. A small bag(12l) is here 110€/125$.
Is there any other soil you can recommend that I can get in EU/GER?
For soil: https://amzn.eu/d/iJEFKC3
For nutrients: https://amzn.eu/d/ckoI04O