HOW MUCH WATER?

About a third of the solo cup or a cup or so per galleon

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A big misunderstanding a lot of beginning growers have is that over watering does not mean giving your plant too much water in a single watering (excepting new seedlings in red cups etc.) but rather over watering is watering your plant too often and not giving it a chance to dry out and the roots to breathe. As long as your soil mixture is good quality and has has good drainage you're set.

You want a healthy amount of runoff when you water to ensure you are washing out old built up nutrient salts. There's no real set rule  but its pretty easy to know when the soils been thoroughly wetted and theres a good bit of water in your collection tray.

Another important thing to remember when watering is you want to water your plants slowly and if possible with a shower head type watering can or wand etc. The point is you the water to moisten the soil through capillary action and not a gravity based draining. If you keep track you will notice that it takes more water to get runoff if you slowly water the plant, i.e water a bit wait 20-30 seconds water a bit more etc than if you just go quickly because the water will force channels through the soil and not evenly moisten it.
 
Here is a picture illustrating the capillary action vs gravity action im talking about
 
http://soft-matter.seas.harvard.edu/images/1/13/Capillary.gif
 
As for when you need to water your plants again after the last time that is easiest to do by getting a feeling for how heavy your pot is after watering and then wait until it dries out and feel it again and it will be significantly lighter and you will be able to feel when you need to water it. Also you can feel down 1-2 knuckles deep in the soil and if its still dry you can water it but i much prefer the picking it up method but i dont scrog so that could be a concern if you do run a scrog setup.
 
It is also not that bad to let your plant get a bit thirsty as that encourages a deeper root growth in search of water, so waiting until you see a slight drooping start isnt harmful to your plant as long as its not under really hot temps (85-90+f).

 

No problem, i didnt notice until after posting that you had it tagged as organic, the bit about washing about nutrient salts wouldnt be valid there in a supersoil grow i think (never grown completely organically but thats the plan for my second tent i am setting up today) but the rest about watering via a capillary action and feeling the weight of the pot to know when to water etc would be the same with a supersoil grow.
 
Are you growing in an organic supersoil where all you give it is water or just in an organic soil like happy frog and giving it organic nutes and compost tea?
Also i edited in a link to my original post with a picture showing what i meant about capillary vs gravity watering.

 

Yeah Its a great choice for soil, ocean forest will get you through 3-5 weeks of vegging before you need to start adding anything as long as you transplant it 2-4 times throughout its life to give it new soil and a larger root mass, but once you hit flowering you are going to want nutrients of some kind unless you make your own organic supersoil, a lot of which use happy frog or ocean forest as a base.

There is a line of nutrients you could look into called ph perfect from the company advanced nutrients, i haven't used it or any other AN products but other people seem to with good results and its point is that you don't have to PH the water you mix with the nutes, it phs and buffers it for you so you would just need the two part ph perfect bloom, as the ocean forest could last you through veg easily nutewise. It wouldn't be organic though, but that's not really that abd of a thing.

Currently about 30$ on amazon for the 2 part bloom ph perfect, you don't NEED nutes for the run but they will definitely benefit your yield significantly.

If you are determined to do a no nute run i would suggest a lot of transplants. Contrary to what i see posted a lot transplanting is not bad for your plant and if you do it properly does not stress it at all and actually creates a huge burst of new growth every time you do. I think most peoples problems is transplanting too early when the rootball hasn't consolidated enough in the cup/pot because they're impatient etc.

I like to go rooted clones put into redcups to 1.5 gal to 3 gal to 5 gal pots and then flower it out, but however you decide to do it you will want to do a transplant that  doubles the pots size right before flipping, the roots will grow into it and give it a nice source of nutrients to help out the flowering.

 

Yeah if you are height limited larger containers arent really an option so many transplanting is out and its either get some nutes or have a lower yield now and use the money from not buying nutes towards making your own supersoil.
 
I would say buy the nutes and still make the supersoil, because it will cost a decent bit of money to make the soil and then a month or two for it to get ready. The value of the individual amounts of each thing you add to the soil isnt that big but they're all sold in like 10-20$ packages minimum size for the humus, the castings, the bone or blood feather meals  soft rock phosphates etc whatever you're putting in it on top of the cost of the bags of soil, itd be ncie if you could just buy by exactly the amount you need for that batch of soil so it can end up costing a good bit to get supersoil going but you end up saving in the long run on nutrients and time spent phing water which is why im going to start a batch of soil once it gets warmer..

 

Yeah he is talking about an organic supersoil and there are a lot of different recipes people come up with, i think oen of the more popular is from a guy named subcool i think its called subcool supersoil anyways. They only require you to water them, no phing etc. but theyre not really that cheap to get going.
 
If youre interested this is a recipe i foundf posted by subcool, but like i said it would be pretty expensive to get it going.
 
6 Bags Roots soil or equivalent high quality supped up grow soil
25 pounds Pure Worm Castings
½ cup Azomite trace minerals
2/3 Cup Sweet Lime IE Dolomite
1 Kilo Bone meal / IE 5 Pounds
1 Kilo Blood meal ( I use a bit more bone than Blood in this recipe)
1 Kilo Bat Guano bloom formula preferably Fruit bats
3/4 cup Epson Salts
 
 
Now it is expensive but that will make enough soil for a metric fuckton of pot growing, but you're still probably better off just getting ph perfect for veg and for bloom until you're ready to start the supersoil. Or you could get a 40-50$ ph pen on amazon a bvottle of some 7.0 calibrating solution and a quart of some botanicare pure blend pro bloom nutes for around the cost of both ph perfects, id honestly go with the pen + nutes.

 

Thats getting out of my area of knowledge a bit now, but im pretty sure most of it keeps well.
 
The meals, guano, epsom salt, dolomite and the azomite would  be long term storable. The castings probably keep fairly well or you will be using the entirety of the bags you buy anyways as it requires quite a bit.
 
Dont just hop on that recipe for supersoil though, i know subsool has made at least 2-3 different variations of his original recipe and im not sure what that is and some people ahve come up with completely different mixes that work great, just look under the organic section in here.

 

No if you build the soil correctly its water from seed to harvest from what i understand, though you can add stuff if you want.