Why Testing Your pH and EC Is as Important as They Say It Is

Hydroponic media, such as expanded clay, does not contain nutrient for your plants. When you use expanded clay and water alone. you should get a pH reading of about 7. This is perfect for nutrient intake, except in this scenario, your system doesn’t have any.

We must then supplement our water with nutrient to replace what we have lost by using hydroponic media instead of soil. However, when we do this, the water’s pH is likely to change, and our plants are no longer able to intake the same level of nutrient as they could previously.

When we check the EC of our system, we are checking to see how much nutrient is available for our plants to intake. A low reading indicates that more nutrient is needed; a high reading indicates you have added too much.

If your EC reading does come back either high or low, it is important to then inspect your plant for a deficiency. For example, if your EC reading is low and you can see that the edges of your leaves are dying, you might want to up your dosage of magnesium.

Your EC reading will change as your plants intake the nutrient in the water. We like to check the EC level of all our systems daily, so we know exactly when we need to add more nutrient to the water.

When we check the pH of our system, we are checking to see how much nutrient our plants are getting. For example, a low pH means your plants are unable to intake iron; a high pH indicates your plants are not getting enough calcium.

The process here is generally to adjust your system for an EC of 1.8 to 2.1 and then add a product to adjust the pH (We use pH up and down from Hygen) to between 5.5 and 7.0. The pH and EC you need will vary depending on the plant you are trying to grow, so make sure you do some research about your crop before deciding what is best for your system.

Hopefully, this newsletter has cleared things up for some of you but if you need more information, keep an eye out on our Facebook and Instagram pages as we plan to upload an EC and pH calibration tutorial in the coming weeks.