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EC/ppm of run off from pots

Pinhigh

Pinhigh

So we are coming towards the end of the grow season here in Australia. My chillis have done reasonably well this past year, however I have noticed some signs of overfertilization in a few of my older potted chillis. My chillis are potted up in a mixture of potting soil, various composts, perlite, coir + lime. They get watered when they wilt, and are fed a super low dose of GH FloraNova Bloom every other watering. 
 
I remember reading somewhere on this wonderful site about measuring the ppm/EC of water run off from pots. I have one of these for my hydro plants:
https://www.bluelab.com/products/type/meters/truncheon-nutrient-meter.aspx
So I decided to test some of the run off from my pots. My "best producers" measured between 500-800ppm(TDS). However some of my plants that havent produced too well (also the ones showing signs of overfert) were up above 1800ppm!!!! This is probably due to being in the same pot the whole grow season, and not giving them a proper flush for a while.
 
Consquently I flushed all my pots and got the run off on all of them down to about 500ppm.
 
My question is what should run off be in regards to ppm in this sort of medium? and does anyone have and measurements from plants that have produced heavy crops? (obviously this will vary with other factors too).
 
the truncheon converts at .7... so 1800 ppm is 2.6 ec.
 
thats fairly high, but not terribly so.
 
i suspect you did not observe any scorching of the leaves?
 
its entirely likely that this high ec was not directly responsible for the plants poor performance.  it might simply be a symptom of the plants poor performance... meaning a big healthy plant consumes far more nutrients than that of a small shitty heat stressed one.
 
were you watering these plants to runoff?
 
i water my plants at 2ec all day long, thats 1400 on your scale. naturally the conductivity of the soil rises above this somewhat, but i manage this by ensuring a decent amount of runoff.
 
Yes, always water to run off. With a ec of 2, how often are you feeding? I assume you have a feed/flush cycle of some sort?
The plants did have some scorching, also new growth was somewhat shrivelled and some brown spots on old growth.

I'm thinking I will give them a feed as you have suggested (1400) with my nutes once the soil has dried out from its flush?
 
every watering is at 2ec.  no flushing except for the ocassional rain storm.
 
post some pictures of the bad plants, might be something else going on .
 
Hey pinhigh not an expert but I've got several plants going at all different ppm levels. I don't personally use ec because I use balanced nutrients and use rain water which already has a ppm of like 3.

Anyways to maybe try to help you I noticed several of my larger plants not producing and I had ppm levels in the 1000 plus range. They weren't necessarily showing over nute signs but the flowers were dropping big time. I lowered the ppm to 400 and in two days flowers began to set pods. I think if you lowered your run off to 500 you are in a good range. People have always told me here that less is better than more on the nutes.
 
Yellowfin2na said:
Hey pinhigh not an expert but I've got several plants going at all different ppm levels. I don't personally use ec because I use balanced nutrients and use rain water which already has a ppm of like 3.
Anyways to maybe try to help you I noticed several of my larger plants not producing and I had ppm levels in the 1000 plus range. They weren't necessarily showing over nute signs but the flowers were dropping big time. I lowered the ppm to 400 and in two days flowers began to set pods. I think if you lowered your run off to 500 you are in a good range. People have always told me here that less is better than more on the nutes.
Click to expand...
Awesome to hear!

I haven't been home in a few days, most likely will be on Sunday, so will see how they have all reacted with a few days at that ppm. If they are still looking a bit average I will post some pics.
Thanks again!
 
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