pH Meter

Why do I need a pH meter?

You don't always need a pH meter to grow your favourite plants in our indoor gardens, but having the ability to test your water and adjust pH accordingly will help you optimise your plants growth, and give them a boost that you can't get by simply guessing. We recommend getting a pH meter when you start getting serious about your hydroponic growing journey.

Why is it important to know the pH of my water?

Hydroponic nutrients have a range of different nutrients that plants need to grow. All of these nutrients dissolve in water at different pH levels, furthermore many plants have different pH ranges that they grow best in! If you can know your pH then you can optimise what your plants are getting and make sure that they have everything they need to thrive! See the ideal pH for each plant in our plant nutrient chart, and read what nutrients plants need.

Measuring pH 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 pH 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.

What's included

Included in this package are:

• pH meter
• Instructions
• Batteries not included (unfortunately we are not able to send batteries of this type in the mail, so we must sell the product without them).

Specifications

• Measurement range: 0.00-14.00 pH
• Resolution: 0.01 pH
• Accuracy: +/- 0.01 pH with 3-point calibration (+/- 0.1 pH with single-point calibration)
• Power supply: 2x1.5V LR44 Button Cell (not included)
• Operating Temperature: 0-60 Degrees C
• Calibration: Calibration can be done against known pH quantities, calibrating to one point will provide accuracy to 0.1 pH, calibrating to three points will provide accuracy to 0.01 pH

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!