I have grown two crops successfully using only tap water and Miracle Grow with no soil amendments besides perlite. But, in the interest of being better at this, I was wondering whether you all recommend getting a pH tester and adjusting my watering so that it is perfect. I should mention that my newly sprouting seeds are in a 1/2 soil 1/4 perlite 1/4 sphagnum moss. These measurements are approximate. Sometimes if it ain't broke... don't fix it. But I am thinking that having well adjusted pH might lead to a bigger harvest.
yea PH is important as if its off it can cause certain nutes to be locked out at different ranges & will show in many different ways like twisted growth, def's etc
what kind of lighting did you use with the miracle grow and tap water? and how much did you yield per plant? just wondering because i'm doing that right now. thanks!
I guess it couldn't hurt. I will go out and get a pH tester today. Right now, they are under 150w cfl's (about 12 of them), but eventually they will be put under 400w MH or HPS lamps.
imho, just get some narrow band strips for now. Meters are expensive and require a good deal of maintenance, and even when that is done there are plenty of reports of them reading incorrectly in so doing causing the destruction of entire crops. They are probably useful if one has to do a dozen or more pH tests one after the other, but because they should be calibrated and tested so often its rarely worth the hassle, imo, especially since a good tester is $200 and a 100 narrow range pH test strips are less than $10.
before spending on a ph meter, i would spend on some better soil and nutrients, you can do better doing that than trying to ph the water w/ mediocre soil.
What kind of soil/nutrients do you recommend? I was under the impression that for nutes the only thing that really matters is the N-P-K. Also, my soil does have sphagnum moss and perlite it already, what other amendments would you suggest?
fox farm soil for the win. although i didnt have any problems when i used miracle grow organic, i did notice a very large change when i switched to fox farm.