Water Expirement - Lesson Learned!

Im growing widow and bagseed in five gallon pots with FoxFarm soil. For the last year and a half I've been using a 34 oz bottle to water my plants about once every four days (at the end of four days they will start to wilt if they haven't already).

During vegatation the plants look as healthy as can be. However, about 1/2 way through flowering there is obvious (really obvious) nutrient deficiencies.

Anyway, I'm a week away from harvesting and my girlfriend....er, my finance' (just proposed 8 days ago), begged me to harvest one now-even though it's not quite ready-so we can have it for Thanksgiving.

So, before watering this morning, I put the most done looking plant aside and watered the remaining plants.

After harvesting the early plant I decided to water the dirt even though there was no longer a living plant, just the stump. I used my regular 34 oz and let it soak for about five minutes.

This is when I learned something completely unexpected...

After I tipped the pot upside down and shook out the pot of dirt I saw that ONLY THE TOP 20 PERCENT OF THE DIRT WAS MOIST.

Huh?

Sure enough, the remaining 80 percent was bone dry. Not a drop of moisture. How could this be? I've been watering with 34 oz for 1 1/2 years and the plants have never showed a sign of a lack of water. How could they look so vibrant when less than a quarter of the plant was receiving water?

The reason I thought there had always been enough water is because there has been run-off. The floor gets wet because my pots have holes in the bottom. I just assumed that before water runs off ALL the soil must be saturated.

How not true.

So...

I waited about two hours then put in another 34 oz's. There was a lot more run-off but overall it was nothing. You see, in total I use 14 quarts of water (3.5 gallons) for the 11 plants. The entire run-off on the second session of watering was right at 1 quart.

In short, I doubled the watering and less than 10% wasn't utilized. Holy cow.

Now I wonder what would have happend if ALL the soil had been properly watered. Would I have had a bigger harvest? Would I have done it in a shorter amount of time?

Jeez. What a waste.

Well, this evening I'm going to do a third watering and see how much more is utilized by the soil. (Because of the holes in the bottom of the containers I'm not worried about over-watering.)

And all this time what did I miss???

My suggestion is to do an expirement yourself and see if your plants are getting enough water.

if the water is running out of the bottom of the pots it makes sense to assume that it is also passing through the bottom half of the soil... else how would it get to the holes atthe bottom of the pot?

soil is also quite a dense medium. pack your pots wrong and you will get spots where water is difficult to penetrate.

It's very possible that the soil may have been packed too tight. The runoff would be from mini rivers in the soil AND between the soil and the inner wall of the pot. I will say that when I added the soil to the pots I tapped the pot on the ground about ten times (just like tapping the filter of a cigarette and packing the tabacco tighter) and then pressed it a little. I did this because eventually the dirt settles and big gap forms between the soil and the inner wall of the pot.

I just did a third watering-again, 14 quarts- and a got about 1 1/2 quarts of runoff. I can say for certainty that the pots are now really heavy!!

It'll be interesting to see how the new cycles fares...

do you use perlite?

I've noticed this also when watering but I use a potting mix. I don't use any type of water schedule. I just water when my plants look like they need watering. By this time the potting mix is dry and cracked and most of the water the first time around goes right down and out the holes. I just keep watering until it takes a lot longer for the water to seap out of the holes.

But if your plants were surviving and not showing signs of dehydration, I wouldn't worry about it too much.
At least you got to harvest.

i wouldnt worry either unless your plants are showing signs of dehydration, if it is that worry some, buy a 10 dollar moisture tester, and it will tell you where your dry spots are, and just water accordingly.. hope this helps

p.s. btw, 5 gallon pots are effen huge, how big you growing? 3 gallon will work just fine for any height under 4 ft atleast, (thats just my personal experience), just think about it, your not growing root, your growing flower

cloneup said:

i wouldnt worry either unless your plants are showing signs of dehydration, if it is that worry some, buy a 10 dollar moisture tester, and it will tell you where your dry spots are, and just water accordingly.. hope this helps

p.s. btw, 5 gallon pots are effen huge, how big you growing? 3 gallon will work just fine for any height under 4 ft atleast, (thats just my personal experience), just think about it, your not growing root, your growing flower

Click to expand...

ahem, generally bigger roots mean bigger more vibrant plants because of ease for the roots to uptake nutes.