Just really wondering if you should water till run off or not in coco read quite a few sites saying a bit of both. I read ask Edds coco guide and he says to water frequently low doses but you can hit em hard when you want? Btw this is my first grow have 5 shiva skunk at about 6 weeks. I've not had any run of yet as scared to over water them. Any info is appreciated as I'm a noob! Lol
everyone who posted is correct BUT..... it depends what type of nutrients you are using and what your feed solution is PH at. Coco has excelent air/water retention, because of this water retention trait it also holds any nutrient thats in the feed water. If you leach every watering you are wasting nutrient and water. The key is to feed a lesser strength nutrient than normal and feed little but often. That way the plants have a chance to eat up all the newly delivered nutrient and water, then have a breif chance to dry out before the next feed cycle. If the feed times and nutrient strength is on point then there is no need to encourage runnoff or leach the media before flowering or switching to a ignitor or bloom booster.
I am in the process of running 2 mothers and took 8 clones from them today. The mothers are in 2.5gallon nursery pots. Each pot has a bottom layer of 1" hydroton. Then perlite on top of that to keep the soil from washing out. Then I use sunshine advanced mix # 4 for the main media bed, followed by another 1" layer of hydroton and finally another layer of perlite. They are fed advanced nutrients PH perfect G,M,B with additive B-52. I am dosing fertilizer salts at 1ml/L and 2ml/L for additives. My PH is 5.7, EC is .98, PPM is 535.
Plants are only 9-10" tall and have 1 set of nodes for every inch. 39 days from seed. I feed cycle is supplied by a 1056GPH magdrive on a cycle timer set to feed 10sec and off for 1hr. The cycle timer has a built in photo cell that allows plants to feed only durring lights on. If you feed at night the plants can become sussecptiable to problems and disease. I never have runoff, I never flush.
Now to test the accuracy and efficencie of your feed cycles and rate that your plants are consuming the nutrients you can encourage some runoff. Do this by hand and test for EC and PPM and PH. Since you are in coco, you are hydro and PH is needed at 5.5-6.0 and if your nutrient values have decreasses from your feed water values, your good.
My feed schedual delivers 2.5 fl. oz. every time. when I notice the plants stop responding to the nutrient values, its time to up the dose. Plants do speak, you just need to listen. good luck hit me if you have any ?'s
