First seed in the dirt. My water options are hard from the tap, about 300 TDS, purchased spring, or purchased distilled. I started with distilled and waiting now for seedlings. When I get to the point where I’ll start feeding, do I need to adjust pH after I’ve mixed the nutes in water, or just start with pH water? I’m in soil shooting for 6-6.5.
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Yes, you adjust the Ph after you mix the nutes because adding nutes will automatically bring down the Ph.
Aim for 6.5, not 6.0. Anywhere between 6.3 and 6.8 is good.
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You always want to pH your water. Even when giving just plain water, you want to pH it. @raustin is correct, 6.5 is a good number to shoot for
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Without beating a dead horse listen to the first two people who responded haha seriously they’re both straight on.
On a side note if you are using soil with good nutrients in it already you will not need to feed your seedling any nutrients for quite a while. Just make sure your misting with pH water. Good luck and enjoy growing! I’m relatively new to Growing but I just dropped my first-ever ilgm seed the other day! So congrats and enjoy. We aren’t too far off. 
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Your tap water @ 300 PPMs will be just fine. Mine is @ 350 PPM and my girls do just fine in it. Depending if your water supply has chlorine in it, you need to let it sit in a open container with no lid on it at least 24 hrs to let the chlorine evaporate before giving it to your plants. I use one gallon water jugs with no lids.
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No, its part of the final PPM measurement, either going in or coming out.
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Always ph after adding nutrients and as stated ppm are total so tap water plus nutrients equals total ppm being feed
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@Rugar89 @Countryboyjvd1971 I understand the ppm of tap water will always be part of the total, but if I’m try to attain a specific ppm from my nutes, shouldn’t the beginning ppm of the water be subtracted?
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I’m getting ahead of myself as my seeds have yet to show signs of germination after 72 hrs in the dirt.
In that case yes if you trying to maintain 1500 and starting ppm is 300 you would need to ad 1200 ppm to mix
But do tou know exactly what those 300 ppm are ? @Nod
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Nod sweetie, distilled h20 can cause deficiency’s in your soil ie, calcium. Although its ph is 6.5 i only use for dropping seeds, my humidifer ect. Spring has higher ph but by time youre adding nutes the nutrs will bring down the ph.
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@Laurap actually brings a giid point up about distilled water and ro aater fir that matter both have no nutrients valve
I use ro myself because i know exactly what my plants get but with just ro the olants will definitely show signs of deficiencies
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@Countryboyjvd1971 No, not exactly. All I can know with a tds meter is that they, the dissolved solids, are there. It should stand to reason that if my ppm out matches my ppm in, the flush was successful as I’ll never get below 300ppm if that’s what I’m putting in, correct?
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Yes, because these are autos I chose soil with no added nutes and distilled water and plugged the seeds right into the soil in 5gal fiber sacks. I plan to feed with Fox farms trio and cal-mag. Everything I’ve read says not to start feeding until after the plants have depleted the nutrients in the soil. When that occurs is another question.
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Yes exactly you would never be able to get below the 300 ppm @Nod
Just ph water for the first week or two
Normally you want to start feeding hwen plants gets around 4-5 nodes
With distilled water or ro water you may need to start feeding earlier
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