Well some of you already know but I'm about to attempt another grow, so far I've got some scotts premium topsoil, some perlite , blood meal , and bone meal. I intend on mixing it all together for the permanent pots. As for the seeds, soon as they sprout their going directly into the plain scotts top soil, after they reach around their second set of leaves I'll transplant to the mixed soil. Im using 8 48" flouros at 40 watts each and 3050 lumnes. The permanent pots will be 3 gallon pots, I think I'm just going to grow 3, maybe 4. I bought some foam board shit with the reflective side to build the box out of, the box has to be around 1.5' and up to 7' long. not sure how tall to build it or anything all advice is really appreciated. The foam stuff and different things I bought is pictured below, If you notice in the pic its two different kinds of soil, I accidentally grabbed a bag of time release soil, I'm takin it back tomorrow. Got 2 sheets of this its 4x8
Check those soil products carefully, make sure they don't say anything about "continuous feeding", "time released", "added nutrients", or anything else that would indicate that ferts have been added. If so don't use. Also I would recommend against using bone meal, that can raise your pH. For height you probably could get away with 3 feet but I would recommend no less than 4.
Okay, well the perlite does have added ferts but the total npk is like .04 .01 .06, So I figured I would be okay using that since I was doing this after the transplant, the potting soil has no added ferts, and I just put the germed seeds in like 5 minutes ago, but anyways, I read somewhere the bone meal will help root development, I don't know how to check ph and don't really know where to start and I'm really not wanting to deal with it but maybe it couldve been a problem before, Idk.
If you aren't going to monitor your ph, i'd buy a bag of Dolomite Lime. Its pretty cheap stuff found at most big box stores.
Would this basically guarantee me that My ph will be alright? If not is there just a really basic and easy way to check the ph? What would be the best thing to do? I'm wanting to do this grow right all the way to the end, checking ph sounds more right, lol, anyways thanks for everyones help.
Dolomite lime will raise your pH, so it will work well if your pH is low but would be bad to add if your pH is fine or is high. You need a pH meter (there are cheap ones on eBay and such) and then you need to check your pH and keep it in the proper range (truly 6.4-6.8 for MJ, but in reality you will be fine as long as you keep it between 6.0 and 7.0).
I would reccomend that you at least get a ph test kit at walmart(the fish section)..bout 6 bucks i believe.So you can test your waterings.I believe you can flush and test the runoff also to get an idea of where your plants are.Its easy.Just three drops