Watering practices in organic soil

Interesting question. As I am currently embarking on my very first soil grow I can only draw on general plant growing experience. That would be keep it evenly moist, but not saturated. Personally I use rainwater whenever available (and in England it's normally available 😁). I can't think of a reason to ph rainwater, but I'm willing to learn. I try to always let it come up to temperature, so as to not shock the plants. I shouldn't think it a good idea to water until run off, as that would simply wash the soils nutrients away. Just my tuppence worth !

Yer man, what Top loader said, you dont want run off, that washes the good shit out. If the soil is too wet, you get root rot, if its too dry the will air prune lol.

Im new to the organics thing, but I water what i consider to be very little. Just enough to wet the soil. The water will disperse around the soil and itllleave it evenly moist

Just dont get run off, and if the pots are light, water them

Posted by: @greentomato

Just wanted to ask all the organic soil growers out there what their watering practices are? 

Depending what you mean by organic grower ?

Bottle food, dry food in the soil mix or full living soil ?

Also watering practices are based on the quality of the soil and pot size compared to the canopy size.

do you ph your water? Do you water to run off? Do you discard run off? Always keep your soil moist? Etc...

With bottle food it's a good idea to have run off and ph the water when you feed the plants.

With a good soil mix you add a small amont of garden lime and don't need any run off ( some grower don't add lime)

Full living soil should stay damp or you going to kill all the good bacteria from what I understand ( never grown in full living soil) don't need any run off, ph or lime.

Imo easy way is a light soil with perlite and add dry food, garden lime and you water till harvest.

Use 20-30ltr pots 

@jacks_farm

just talking about people who grow in water only soil. Wether that’s a super soil or amended soil or whatever it be. 

And yeah it’ll be different for everyone so if people state what’s in their pots, size then how they water to just compare notes basically.

like I water to a little bit of run off so I know the pot is saturated, the fabric pot wicks it back up, I water again in about 3 days when the pot feels light or the plants look like they need it. 

Started to ph water recently after some issues and the fact my soil was alkaline and I have no buffers in there. Was under the assumption soil buffers ph and was told “don’t worry about ph when in soil just add water” but this is a blanket statement and not true as I’ve learnt the hard way. 

same goes for run off in soil, some people let the plant suck it up others drain and discard because of some reason that I can’t quite remember but something about exudates?

The light soil route with dry food and water is how I do, question as to why the 20L and bigger pots, here this one quite a bit and would like to learn why?

@macky

interesting, so you’re going with little and often when it comes to watering? Was thinking about this before with some sort of drip irrigation system. Can imagine it would be good for a living soil grow. Not sure if it would be beneficial for a lightly amended potting soil grow.

cheers for the input!

@toploader

I’ve been trying to catch a bit of rain water and use that but then you even get conflicting views on using rainwater in an indoor grow.

it’s so great having access to a vast amount of info but sometimes hard to separate the facts from fiction!

good luck on your first soil grow man

@greentomato yes I know what you mean. I can see if you are growing in coco there could be other considerations,  however to my mind, with a plant growing in soil I can see no reason not to use rainwater. That said, I'm here to be educated ! 😁

@greentomato yo man, good thread to start! I'm new to growing and have started out organic so will follow with interest. Only into my second grow now but will share my experiences so far for what it's worth. I've got a diary if you want to get see the size of grow I'm doing. 

I've been using BioBizz bottled nutes in their pre-amended all-mix soil (not an ad, just the first organic set up I came across). I dial back to about 2/3 the recommended strength and up it if needed. In regards to run off, Toploader said it, I look to keep the soil moist without drowning the roots... If you water by hand, the bigger the pot the better as it'll act as a 'reservoir' between waterings without having to over saturate. For me it's 24 ltr fabric pots that get watered once a day, about 30 minutes after lights on. The girls have a chance to wake up, get themselves together - then it's time for breakfast. My water comes from the tap- I try to keep a 25ltr bucket full next to the tent so the water is ambient temp and loses it's chlorine, if I'm in a rush a few drops of Vitamin C do the trick. I don't bother with pH, the soil seems to do that. Once a week I'll water without any nutes, not sure why, just a chance to let them have a drink rather than a feed I suppose. I get you on the bro science... we all have our own way of doing things and some get firmly entrenched in what they do. I'm probably doing it all wrong but bugger me, my first crop didn't die and tasted better than anything I'd had before! Win! Always willing to learn new methods... bring it on!

Hope this was useful in finding out what others do!   Ohhhhh... and I'm seriously lazy so I've been thinking about a passive drip system. May well move onto that in the future when I change to a Sohum style living soil and don't have to have organic nutes in the water. 

TLDR:

Pot size:24ltr fabric 

ph:No

Run-off: No

EC: No

Keep moist: Yes

Frequency: 1 to 2ltr jug of water/nutes once every 24hrs (more or less depending on how dry/light the soil is)

Timing: 30 mins after lights on

Posted by: @greentomato

@jacks_farm

same goes for run off in soil, some people let the plant suck it up others drain and discard because of some reason that I can’t quite remember but something about exudates?

Often growers will overfeed (bottle nutes) there plants and this can burn the root mass, the run off helps to reduce the ec level in the root mass 

with a good soil mix(water only) you don't want to lose the food in the soil mix so you don't want any run off.

The light soil route with dry food and water is how I do, question as to why the 20L and bigger pots, here this one quite a bit and would like to learn why?

The plants can grow a larger rootmass and the soil can hold a lot more food without burning the rootmass, you can water less often, just seems to give me improved result.