Inserting your finger up to the 2nd knuckle in the soil is how I’ve always done it. If finger feels dry at that depth I water. Nice and simple. Also can’t understand people adjusting water PH when in soil. I was always led to believe soil buffers your solution to the correct levels.
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That’s my method too.
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Don’t get me wrong. I let the soil buffer itself. I was just making note of the pH of the water going in. It’s raising on its own now without my help. The purplish tint is fading now.
And the overhead shot. I found the right focus level for all of them in focus lol🤔
The auto is growing the 3rd set of leaves now. Little finger and thumb appearance from what I see so far. It’s either that or it grew it’s 4th node already and I doubt that. I do see bracts already forming near the bottom serrated leaves.
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I finally got a humidifier. The cost of boiling water all day to raise humidity to 50% from 30 was 5kw electricity and 7 hours of gas for my rangetop. Within 5 hours humidity dropped back to 30 and the house felt noticably cooler at 70f.
Not the best quality, but it’ll do
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So far so good. It’s at 40% humidity now after a hour. It says it covers up to 600sqft, so it shouldn’t be having this much trouble 
.
It’s already almost halfway through the tank too. Let’s just hope it’s evenly spreading it around the apartment as I have about 500sqft if I’m being generous to my apartment. 2 100sqft rooms, 1 25sqft bathroom, a 50-60sqft hallway, and 1 80sqft kitchen. I went low-ball as I’m not messing my tiny ass apartment. It’s closer to 400 though making my place qualify as a medium size area for a humidifier.
Oddly, our orchids thrive on LITFA, sitting in a south-facing window all day, every day. It’s nearly the opposite of what is recommended on the little tags that came with them. They have all outgrown their pots long ago and just keep flowering, year after year. Perfect for my wife’s “black thumb” skills.
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You almost show up in the photo there. Just blurry enough though, so unless I just have shit eyes you’re good there.
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On another note one of my friends told me they were using Papa’s perfect poop fertilizer and I looked it up to find it’s exceeding 10ppm arsenic and a uncomfortably high level of lead. Over the last few days I’ve been freaking out at him to change the fertilizer. Omro even says it’s a runoff contamination hazard. I sent him the results on it and then sent him the results of mega crop.
Significantly better. Only 0.02ppm arsenic. 5x less than the 0.10ppm limit allowed in drinking water and it has no lead or Mercury in it!
Now he’s wanting to find a way to switch away from Papa’s 
as it’s shit both figuratively and literally.
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I’m OK with that. I grow legally. 
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Very interesting. Could you describe the analysis in more detail. Did you send a sample of the fertilizer directly to them? Or, were you able to find this report somewhere on interwebs? Thanks.
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Good enough for me😅 I just know some people get touchy about their anonymity
I found the report online
Without sending it in that’s the only thing online outside of the omri warning about what’s in it. Not a single ingredient list for nutrient levels. Just a 5-10-2 npk
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Thanks. Analysis for the megacrop?
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Does anyone remember how soil behaves in a humid room? It’s seemingly drying faster than usual today. Once I got the humidity to 50% the topsoil looks more dry. Closer to a week after the first water. I did a lift test and the weight didn’t change that much tbh. I keep my scale in there now to weigh the pot now. If they get a bit bigger before the next watering I’ll be able to see them when they droop for water. Making note of how long it took to get there and watering the day before that point on average and also if that does happen I’ll weigh it too. It’s always good to have a baseline stay accurate.
Anyways my question was about vpd and it’s effect on root development and perspiration as well as it’s effect on soil if at all.
On a side note the small pot I have next to the grow is just soil alone as a baseline. I took out only the large wood chips and left everything else in the soil. It’s drying out with no plants in it pretty fast. Yesterday it was dry 2" down already and the night before I had added a good amount of water to the mix before letting it settle to get a baseline for how long the small pot took to dry on its own. Any seedlings in that pot would be in arid conditions if I still hadn’t watered. I’m expecting by the day’s end it’ll be all as dry as dirt looking. It seems to be a good choice for a micro grow. I’ll wait a little longer and report back with the results of how the soil behaves without all the larger chips while retaining anything smaller than 19mm in diameter.
So far so good and I have high hopes for this version of my soil. Those chips retain so much f***ing water. I have them in a wide dish bowl and they’re all still wet. Not even famp yet. They’re in open air with good circulation and no real reduction in water. I’m almost positive it was the larger chips as a whole. The smaller chips I can’t tell if they’re wood, peat, biochar, or something else. No lie I thought they were biochar until I broke open enough of them out of due diligence to find them not all black and charcoal like if you break it. Some break like woodchips, but are stained black and feeling like they’re already breaking down. Like a firm sponge.
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Here’s some more pics. I saw the soil on top was all compacted, so I gently scraped it all loose.
I weighed the pot and I’m at 2486g now. I should have weighed it immediately after I watered, but I blanked on that.
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The humidity is stuck at 50% as hard as I try to increase it. I get it to 55% and then it drops. I’m on tank 2 now. Apparently my house is very dry. Upside is I’m near the range I want to be in and on the low end of humidity that they want. Let’s see what the lights off does on there with the humidifier now. It shouldn’t drop to 30% or lower at night or while I sleep anymore. I really need to get a digital hygrometer with a min/max for both. My analog one is also slow to show the Rh and temperature both. It’s about 30 minutes before it’s adjusted to the room temp and about 5 minutes for a humidity change. At least one part of it works fast😅
Still looks wet to me. Umm… I’ve noticed that it doesn’t work that way with watering. I’ve never been able to keep a specific schedule so to speak. Some days they drink more some days less. I’m sure it’s partly a temp/humidity and partly a plant thing. best test same as @Esrgood4u said… stick your finger in there. If the top 2 inches are dry then water it. Screw lifting the pot besides the obvious, If you barely go to lift it and it flies across the room… it’s safe to say it needs water. lol
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I’m giving a good dose of LITFA while I stabilize humidity. I just went in and realized my fan was off at night. I fixed that. The room is staying around 50% humidity. I would prefer higher, but so far that’s not happening. Either way the leaves are looking good to me in response to the increased humidity. The last 2 days. I’m convinced the low humidity was helping to stunt the plants. I see leaf growth within the day now. The topsoil is too fine I think. It clumps up when watered into a smooth compressed layer.
I’m ordering my 3 gallon fabric pots, Perlite,
and mycorrhizae tomorrow. I decided to skip the nursery bags for now. With the water retaining so much I’m getting bti again. I’m not taking chances. Plus the mosquito bits work like a mulch later too. I saw my best results after I put a layer on top last grow. I’ll see if I can’t get any vermicompost from the worm bin at home too.
I dig out the weights listed on the bags of “topsoil” and "potting soil"
Since my container is just shy of 1 gallon at 0.91 gallons I did some math. The topsoil bags say 40lbs and the potting soil says 24lbs. Both say they’re 1 cubic feet of soil. I asked Google to do some extra math I didn’t feel like doing and got 4.8656596711lbs per 0.91 gallon for the topsoil and 2.9193958027 per 0.91 Gallon or the potting soil. I added it at a 3:1 ratio. To get that was much easier from there larger number times 3 and add it to the smaller number and divide by 4 to get 4.379093704lbs for the soil in the container from the soil mix alone.
I was bored, so I thought I’d do something.
It’s telling me I still have to wait even longer before I water again. Those are wet weights posted on the bag.
I’m sure I screwed up as I’m tired. Either way the topsoil is still damp, but I did water 22 hours ago and it’s drying much faster now than it previously had. The other seedlings I’ll be planting when the stuff comes in should have a much easier time if I’m not the unluckiest person alive😅
Either way my weight of the pot is about 5lbs when I thought it needed to be watered. I weighed the pot through the day and each hour it lost about 0.2g in weight. My OCD is telling me there’s some level of math I can do to help myself without drying the soil to dirt first. Worst case scenario I measuring and weigh the small pot when it’s fully dry and weigh the wood chips when they dry too and do some math from there, but TBH I’ll wait until the cilantro shows underwatering symptoms. So far they seem to be the most prone to issues with nutrients in the soil when it’s dry.