Indoor Head Start

[Nematode]

Its It's still June, probably too early to judge production. BTW, I will be trying some dwarfs in 2017 after seeing what yours are doing. Thanks for sharing.

[clkeiper]

Thanks. I just strung a house with a row of cukes and a row of toms. I am kind of winging it. I am worried about keeping up with the pruning and dropping the strings already, but I suppose as soon as I get a bit of experience it won't seem so imposing. My hangers are attached to S hooks so I can reach them without a ladder.

[PureHarvest]

Sucker removal takes about 2 times a week for me. Once a week is doable but it takes me over an hour to do all of my plants if I wait. But I am trellis clipping them to the strings while I sucker too.
You will only have to lower every few weeks. Last year I think I did 3-4 lowering all season. It could have been more if the season went longer or I had them under cover.

[Nematode]

The manual is interesting. I would stay with their method. I think the media they recommend holds more water than coir, and if irrigated to runoff every day could be too wet for the tomato roots, causing problems. My clue for this is the recommended 30-50% of field capacity recommendation for moisture in the bag. If irrigated to runoff every day that would be 100%.

[Ricky Shaw]

You hear of people flushing, or attempting flushing. I'm not sure how advantageous it is, except in a rescue situation. Would enough of the salts and heavy matter run off to really matter is the question.

Anyway, with all this plus 90 heat and the plants taking more fluid. I've cut the ChemGrow back to 1600ppm EC uS/cm or 1100ppm Truncheon and will monitor closely.

[PureHarvest]

I just realized my problem. I'm such a buffoon.
Ricky, it's something you pointed out and we talked about last winter.
The conversion chart from Hanna to Truncheon.
I follow the Chemgro directions for the second stage and can't get my EC what the instructions say it should be (1,500 ppm). So I bump up all the ingredients by 25%
I then get in the upper 1,300s and call it close enough, fearing I will overdo it.
Well, I was overdoing it!
My Hanna at 1350 is 1890 on truncheon. Duh.
My plants never tip burned but definitely hooked the new growth and had other issues like leaf roll and some different patches of color green or bleachy white or pale yellow near the midrib.
Watered with plain water yesterday.
Mixed up a new tank today following the instructions.
Ppm is 1150 which is 1610 on truncheon.
This would be right considering the EC of my water plus ph up.
No wonder my plants last year looked so great compared to this year.
I didn't have a meter and just followed the directions.
Onward we roll. Looking forward to the next month to getting back on track.
If the plants were older they could have probably handled the higher EC but they are not mature yet.
Thankful they were not killed.

[Nematode]

Glad you are back on track.
I hated trying to figure ppm on my meter, found it had an EC setting and have used that ever since.

[PureHarvest]

I have the option of EC on my meter.
The chemgro instructions say that mhos should be 2.0 for the rate I am using.
But if I recall, my EC was showing around 1.5 at 1150 ppm on my Hanna.
Isn't mhos the same as EC? Or no?
That is why I shied away from using the EC readout, because it was lower than what I expected.

[Nematode]

Something fishy with the meter?
I am reading 2.9 ec with .3 source water (2.6 ec nutrients) at something pretty close to akmarks formula.

[Nematode]

EC is a useful tool, but your plants will tell you what they need if you listen.

[PureHarvest]

My meter was new this spring and I calibrated it last time and barley had to adjust it.
I will check the readouts when I mix my next tank this week. I am going from memory and could be off a bit.

[Ricky Shaw]

Distilled water is very handy as a quick meter check, it has zero dissolved solids. Also the optics get coated and cloudy, and readings bounce. A toothbrush and soapy water will do wonders if they do.

[Nematode]

What exactly is your mix?
Grams/liter or oz/gallon however you are mixing it.

[PureHarvest]

I have cleaning solution and have used it recently before the last calibration I did.

I just mixed 20 ounces of chemgro, 20 ounces calnitrate, and 10 ounces of mgso4 into 250 gallons of water.

Lastly, I added 40 grams of potassium hydroxide to get the pH to 6.2 (from 5)

I run a 500 gph pump to circulate the contents of the tank to dissolve/mix each ingredient before adding the next. I then let all 3 mix for another 30 minutes before adding the potassium hydroxide. I then let all that mix for another 15-20 minutes before final reading.

[Ricky Shaw]

Same products PH uses and mature dose for 55gals of mix:

5.5 oz ChemGro
5.5 oz Cal
2.75 oz Mag

Source water EC uS/cm 100 + ChemGro/Cal/Mag EC uS/cm 1900

Total EC uS/cm = 2000