Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathmattx
Science and Medicine have used litmus and chem pH tests for decades with excellent and reliable results. Just takes some patience and training (both of which it seems you have), so that is excellent. As I was reading your posts, etc, the only other issue you may want to get out ahead of is Transpiration and evaporation. You said you live in a very arid climate, is your hydro setup out of doors? Your plants might be prone to excesive transpiration that would certainly require TDS monitoring so you can balance evaporated/transpired H20. I would lastly recomend keping a "log" of all that you do. It will help you learn how adding chemicals, time, temp, etc affect your setup. The idea bening it will get infinitly easier and cheaper as you learn what works, how your plant resond to your water, nutrient, etc, etc. The best log I have found (because i wrote it) can be found at Hydroponica.blogspot.com. Its easy to copy and paste the jpeg or as I say I can e-mail it. |
Yes the plants are outside. The temp right now is not bad, we have had a couple of days that have reached 85-88 degrees but for the most part it is about 77-82 degrees right now. That wont last long, by late May and early June it will be over 100 every day. It is not a problem right now but when the temp rises I will need to do something to keep the temperature of the
nutrients down. I am not exactly sure what you mean by transpiration but I am guessing that as the water evaporates the concentration of nutrients will rise and unfortunately at this time I have no way of testing this but as I said before I do plan on getting the meters in a couple of months. Another issue that might be of concern, this town is notoriously known for its bad water, especially iron as it turned the river red before they built the dam and created the lake. We do have a water softener, but I am not sure if it leaves traces of salt in the water so I am using the water from the 3 filter drinking water faucet. I can only get about 4 gallons at a time from it though then I need to wait for the tank to fill up again (about 45min) and on Tuesday the 30 strawberry plants I ordered should be here, when I get them transplanted into the Hydro system I made for them I will need about 40 gallons. All together I should have 32 strawberry's 7 pepper's and 3 Herbs. I have built a frame for a shade cloth to cover the strawberry to keep the birds away as well as keep them cooler when it gets hot, I don't know how long they will last when the temp gets over 105 degrees because I have never tried to grow them in Arizona before but when I lived in Calif they did ok all summer with days over 100 but it gets a lot hotter here. I can post some pictures when I get the strawberry's planted. I like the Idea of keeping a log, I have done that before many years ago with some other plants but didn't think of it this time.