Softened water question

[fannatic]

Hello farmers,

I have made several attempts to grow cannabis in my house, some of them quite successful, others not so much.... but I constantly run into the same problem over and over again: The plants are doing great for 2-3 weeks after I plant or transplant them, and afterwards the growth slows down and, well, nothing really helps but to transplant again. For many months I thought that this was because the plant used up all the nutrients in the soil and new soil gives them more nutes and allows more growth.

I tried many different fertilizers, 1-1-1 formula, or "perfect" formulas with N boost for veg stage and PK boost for flowering stage. I have also tried adjusting water PH from 5.5, 6, 6.5 to 7, with none of the values giving much better results than before. Actually using a fertilizer almost always gave me worse results than no fertilizer at all, even though sometimes I would use only a fraction of recommended dose, like 10% or so.

I grow in soil, so I also tried different soils, from buying commercial products to creating my own soil using formulas I found online.

Transplanting was always the only thing that REALLY helped if I wanted my plants to continue growing.

A few days ago I realised that there is a water "softener" system in our house which basically.... adds a load of salt into our water to make the water feel "softer". We buy like half a ton of salt for this system every year. We used to have a reverse osmosis filter for drinking water, which we dumped as "unnecessary" 6-7 years ago. So now we drink "salted" water and I also give it to my plants.

I bought a PPM meter from amazon and tested our tap water, which shows anywhere from 400 to 460ppm, no fertilizer added. The same meter shows 130ppm for drinking mineral water bought in a store.

I have a feeling that the salt might be building up in the soil after a few weeks of watering with softened water. Once I transplant, the new soil doesn't contain so much salt until I water it with salted water again for a few weeks...

My questions are:

- Could my problems be related to the added salt in our tap water?
- Would it be useful to add the RO filter back?
- Would it be useful to try to give my plants distilled water for a while? IF yes, then do I need to adjust the PH of distilled water?

I hope this post makes sense.

thanks!

[oldjarhead100]

yes your problems could be related to your water . Out water has a tds between 250 and 450 but they dont soften it , Is there anyway to tap into your system before the water softener ,I dont know about ro water to say anything ,will it remove the salt from your water?I would try watering with ro,filtered,non softened water and see if they bounce back

[Rwise]

I agree it could well be a salt build up, the RO system should strip all out, check its stats. Distilled water will be clean, but the bottled drinking water may be better as it has some minerals added back to it like cal/mag, again check with who bottled it. Also check with your water provider to see what they have in it and its intended PH, mine runs 7.0 PH,,,,

[Tersky]

I just bought an ro system from amazon for a little over $100. Its portable and easy to install but it takes like 15-20 min to fill a gallon container with fresh water. It's slow but it works. getting a ppm of 14 from 170 tap water. Yeah 15 min for a gallon seems like a long time but i was filling a gallon container and letting it sit out for 3 days to let the chlorine evaporate. Now, im not trying to sell the product but its like $80-100 cheaper than the other RO systems which is why i got it along with ease of install.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GDGTKRY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Now be careful cause you may need an adapter (which you can get from manufacture on request) depending on where you plan to install it tho the included one fits most kitchen faucets.