I have heard a lot of different things about watering plants. I am a little confused. Should I water through and wait a few days and let them dry up good and then water through again? Or should I just get the top of the soil moist?
I water every other day roughly, I use a moisture meter, it’s actually a four in one meter, see the section on meter’s but then, once every week or couple of weeks, I drench it completely and two or three times a week, I spray foliar spray on the entire plant or plants, that is for Vegetation phase, flowering is slightly trickier spraying can ruin your crop if done too often, but you can water the same schedule, just not directly on the flowers, misting is good to a point but after the buds form it can cause mold or mildew
I go through a complete wet to nearly dry schedule, monitoring the moisture content with a meter. The water is ph adjusted after nutrients are added to 6.5. At some predetermined point it might be a good idea to flush with ph 7.0 water and monitor the outflow until the ph is around 6.3 then return to your regular schedule. Particularly if you see nutrient issues.
I’ve had this question, too. My soil stays very moist for a week if I water to runoff, but the plants want nutrients more often than that.
I came to the conclusion that my pots are a little too big for my plants: if they matched, the plants would drink faster. So until my plants grow into their pots, I only water to runoff if I need to check pH issues.
I’d love to know what the pros think.
I actually use coco for this reason… soil in friends grows always seemed to retain lots of water and led to infrequent feeding… I find with coco they really need to be fed every day unless rinsed right through for run off checks… easiest way to gauge in a pot though is to just lift them up if they are light then they are hungry if they are heavy they are not… but that’s assuming your using pots
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POW! 100% 
@Deer1 It depends! At the very young stage all sprouts need are foliar spray, (if you foliar spray, keep the hot lights off of them or they will burn!)
Then for the next couple of weeks just water them a little as they dry out.
Once they have a couple sets of leaves you can give them more water but once they get into a large 3 or 5 gallon pot (or whatever) you should water them slowly until they runoff and then not water again until they are dry.
I use the lift test to determine when they need more water. For me it’s the easiest.
Lift them when you first transplant before you water and feel the weight and then water them to runoff and lift them again…
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