New Grower Trapper's Scrimmage Grow (Semi-Micro)

[Trapper]

There may be places like that somewhere in the UK but I'm in the arse end of nowhere!

Damn us Americans...always assuming everyone has the same stuff we have...so self-absorbed

 

[bad dragon bzzz]

A quick note to re-re-re-re-re-re-iterate that the cheap, 2 prong soil ph meters are not only extremely unreliable but will take years off your life due to stress.

A couple posts ago (prior page) I was beside myself with anxiety because:

A: I had just wake & baked a huge bowl of Romulan x White Widow
B: My soil appeared to be testing at 4.9-5.1 ph when the day before, it was at 6.4-6.5 ph

I freaked, I was searching for answers, I contemplated soaking it with down.

Cut to this evening...

I suddenly remember that whilst generally doting about my grow cab and making sure everything was organized,
I knocked a bottle of Tiger Bloom down into the grow area and it hit my aforementioned, cheapo soil ph meter.
Now as I understand it, these meters measure current traveling between the two prongs in the soil. If the two
prongs are closer together than they should be, the reading is going to be WILDLY inaccurate.

I looked at it and it was visibly nonparallel. I bent it back and low and behold....6.3-6.5 ph.

These things are worse than unreliable, they are sadistically misleading. Some times you just have to learn
by getting your butt handed to you in person. I went in figuring, "I have a budget and this is one of the things
that I can skimp on and still get by" It isn't. If I had trusted that meter enough to make chemical changes,
I'd be much worse off because of it.

Thanks Stick, for being patient with me and pointing me to a workable solution (huh? huh? double entendre?)

budget ph pens/soil probes/leds/and probably most budget grow equipment gets a bad rep.
I do see a lot of grow pics on the intrerweb and quiet often spot a pot with a soil probe sticking out.i do believe that they are not meant to be kept in the pot.should be wiped clean after each use.
im not defending budget equipment,but please read and follow any instructions that come with them.
the way I see it is you bent it,but blame the equipment.
if I tried to draw a straight line with a bent ruler,is it the rulers fault or my fault ?

 

[Trapper]

budget ph pens/soil probes/leds/and probably most budget grow equipment gets a bad rep.
I do see a lot of grow pics on the intrerweb and quiet often spot a pot with a soil probe sticking out.i do believe that they are not meant to be kept in the pot.should be wiped clean after each use.
im not defending budget equipment,but please read and follow any instructions that come with them.
the way I see it is you bent it,but blame the equipment.
if I tried to draw a straight line with a bent ruler,is it the rulers fault or my fault ?

That's one view....another would be that it shouldn't be designed in a manner that it can give false readings at all. Most rulers stay straight. It's a matter of producing a product that either works or observably fails. With metering instruments, consistent, repeatable results are of tantamount importance. A meter that doesn't provide that is a failure as it relates to the reality of Scientific Method.
Even if it was my fault, the fact that it can be so easily knocked out of calibration means it can not be trusted at all and the number it's giving must be able to be trusted.

If it were offered with a way to calibrate it, that would be a different matter.

Oh, and BTW, I wasn't leaving it in the soil and was wiping the probes with the provided green scrubby patch as well as a rag.

 

[StickMan]

That's one view....another would be that it shouldn't be designed in a manner that it can give false readings at all. Most rulers stay straight. It's a matter of producing a product that either works or observably fails. With metering instruments, consistent, repeatable results are of tantamount importance. A meter that doesn't provide that is a failure as it relates to the reality of Scientific Method.
Even if it was my fault, the fact that it can be so easily knocked out of calibration means it can not be trusted at all and the number it's giving must be able to be trusted.

If it were offered with a way to calibrate it, that would be a different matter.

That is the correct view Trap IHMO.

 

[Eyes on Fire]

I myself have used several budget Meters from Single use to light meter triple uses n such.they are all wrong.I think I got a fair reading once or twice n then all bets are off.soil n sediments get built within the electrode spacer and gives false readings.I use one for a basic light meter n thats all.Ive spread em apart,closer together,as is,everything.imho I wouldnt trust them on any grow to be honest.I know some have zero choice but ill never in my life buy one again.they have given me so many false reading over the years its stressful.LOL!

 

[AndyBotwin]

budget ph pens/soil probes/leds/and probably most budget grow equipment gets a bad rep.
I do see a lot of grow pics on the intrerweb and quiet often spot a pot with a soil probe sticking out.i do believe that they are not meant to be kept in the pot.should be wiped clean after each use.
im not defending budget equipment,but please read and follow any instructions that come with them.
the way I see it is you bent it,but blame the equipment.
if I tried to draw a straight line with a bent ruler,is it the rulers fault or my fault ?

Archie, I'm all for saving a buck and my grow is definitely not made up of top dollar components. But cheapo soil pH meters are absolutely not reliable and I know of no serious growers who would argue that. I tried two of them with my first grow and had major issues due to my misguided trust in the readings they gave me. It certainly had nothing to do with my incompetence or not being able to read instructions. They simply aren't designed for the type of precision that we need when growing high-quality cannabis. If you are looking to see if your outdoor plants are closer to a 4 or an 8 when you're amending the soil, they might be OK. But when the difference between 5.8 and 6.2 can seriously affect your yield, it is foolish to rely on something that simply isn't made to have that sort of precision. You are far better off testing runoff with a pH pen, even if it's a cheap one. At least the cheap pH pens can be calibrated before each use to ensure that they are momentarily correct, but you can't do that with soil probes. Bottom line is that if you can't afford the $50 to get a good probe like the Accurate 8, just do without - plenty of great soil growers never use a soil probe and do just fine. This is not a matter of 'you must pay a lot of money for this or don't bother growing'.

 

[Trapper]

Archie, I'm all for saving a buck and my grow is definitely not made up of top dollar components. But cheapo soil pH meters are absolutely not reliable and I know of no serious growers who would argue that. I tried two of them with my first grow and had major issues due to my misguided trust in the readings they gave me. It certainly had nothing to do with my incompetence or not being able to read instructions. They simply aren't designed for the type of precision that we need when growing high-quality cannabis. If you are looking to see if your outdoor plants are closer to a 4 or an 8 when you're amending the soil, they might be OK. But when the difference between 5.8 and 6.2 can seriously affect your yield, it is foolish to rely on something that simply isn't made to have that sort of precision. You are far better off testing runoff with a pH pen, even if it's a cheap one. At least the cheap pH pens can be calibrated before each use to ensure that they are momentarily correct, but you can't do that with soil probes. Bottom line is that if you can't afford the $50 to get a good probe like the Accurate 8, just do without - plenty of great soil growers never use a soil probe and do just fine. This is not a matter of 'you must pay a lot of money for this or don't bother growing'.

Succinctly put and completely on point, way more so than my response...Thank you, Andy. Certainly not a "get the best or don't bother" scenario at all.
Just the wrong tool for the job...

 

[bad dragon bzzz]

the point I was tryng make was how accurate would the very best of soil meters be if one leg was bent ? or how accurate would the very best of ph pens be if it was never calibrated or mis treated ?
as i said i wasn't defending budget equipment.I just don't get why the probe was getting the blame.when it had clearly been bent out of shape.

 

[fweedom]

I completely agree with Andy, a few grows back i thought id buy one...instead of dropping $50 on the accurate 8 meter which has good reviews from experienced growers on here i tried buying a cheap one from like lowes or something and i literally used it once and then knew it wasn't accurate and i haven't used one since. Much better off testing runoff with a pen like he said. Good choice of letting things be instead of messing with your soil PH due to an off reading :thumbs:

 

[Trapper]

the point I was tryng make was how accurate would the very best of soil meters be if one leg was bent ? or how accurate would the very best of ph pens be if it was never calibrated or mis treated ?
as i said i wasn't defending budget equipment.I just don't get why the probe was getting the blame.when it had clearly been bent out of shape.

Well, in truth it wasn't very obvious. I don't know why I framed it that way. I meant to say that "due to my understanding of how the equipment worked, I came to the conclusion that it might be the case that it had been bent....and that the readings I was assuming were accurate might be the result of something other than the soil conditions" At that point I examined what might have caused said damage and could only think of the one occurrence of the bloom nutes bottle coming down in the general vicinity of the ph meter. My point then would be, if something so innocuous could potentially, drastically endanger my endeavor then I personally feel it would be foolhardy to continue trusting it to a task it isn't appropriate for.