Nutrient Meter

Why do I need a nutrient meter?

Using a nutrient meter is the best way to accurately feed your plants the nutrients that they need. By accurately providing your plants with what they need, you'll notice faster and healthier growth. You also will reduce the risk of your crop failing due to having the wrong nutrient mix, which is the most common reason for failure in hydroponics! Pair it with our hydroponic nutrients for herbs and leafy greens to keep your mix exactly right. Not sure what reading to aim for? Check the ideal EC for each plant in our plant nutrient chart.

You'll find that as you test the EC (electrical conductivity) of your nutrient solution, over time you will learn a lot about how your plant consumes water and nutrients. For example in hot and dry conditions, plants typically consume more water than nutrients (as a percentage), which means the nutrient concentration will go up, as there's less water but a similar amount of nutrients! This is an issue because when the nutrient concentration is too high, it will actually suck water out through the roots of the plant (through osmosis) in order to balance out salinity levels. On the other hand, in cool conditions a plant may rapidly consume nutrients, but not water, resulting in a lower nutrient concentration in the water. Of course this is an issue as the plants won't have enough nutrients to grow!

Measuring EC is really easy once you're all set up, all you need to do to get an accurate reading is:

1. Rinse the electrode on the EC meter
2. Turn the meter on
3. Immerse the meter electrode in the solution you want to test
4. Stir gently and wait 30 seconds for the reading to stabilise.
5. After reading, clean the electrode and turn off the meter. Always replace the protective cap after use.

Included in this package are:

• EC meter
• Instructions
• Batteries (LR44 1.5V) included

Specifications

• Measurement range: 0-2000 ppm
• Accuracy: +/- 2%
• Power supply: LR44 1.5V
• Operating Temperature: 0-80 Degrees C

Hydroponic nutrients can sound complicated at first, but once you learn a few basic principles you can grow like a pro in your own home. Hydroponics is easy to learn, hard to master and super rewarding.

We've put together some really simple educational material to ease you into your hydroponic growing journey:

• To get started in your hydroponic learning journey, read our blog post on what nutrients plants need to grow. If you follow the blog series that it's a part of then you should get a really good idea of how everything works.
• When you buy a smart garden from gathera, it comes with instructions on how to use the nutrients, with rule of thumb guidelines on how much nutrients your plant needs. If you want to get the most out of your nutrients, we recommend getting a nutrient meter which can tell you exactly how much nutrient there is in the water - optimising your plant's growth.
• To figure out how much nutrient your plant needs, you can check out our plant nutrient requirement page which can tell you the pH, and nutrient concentraton required by most plants.
• Finally - when you start getting good, you'll want to use a pH meter and pH adjusters to optimise the pH of the nutrient solution. Having the right pH will let you access ALL of the minerals in the nutrients properly, optimising growth.

It's hard to fail with the combination of nutrients, rockwool and grow lights that we offer, but you'll notice that with each additional bit of knowledge you can get higher and higher yields - helping you get the most out of your smart garden!