New growers: get a cheap pH pen before anything else

Solid advice and i won't argue the core of it, pH matters. But i'd push back slightly on the $15-20 range for beginners. Those budget pens drift fast and need calibrating constantly, and if a new grower doesn't know that, they end up trusting bad readings and wondering why they're still having problems. I've seen it play out a dozen times on here.

Spent a bit more and get something that holds calibration reliably. Apera and BlueLab both have entry options that aren't crazy expensive. It's the kind of tool where spending $40-50 once is way better than fighting a $15 pen for a season and losing trust in the whole process.

Also the storage solution thing is worth mentioning. A dry probe is a dead probe eventually. Keep the tip wet and your pen will actually last.

The pH advice is solid, no argument there. But i'd actually push back on checking runoff being essential for everyone right out of the gate. If you're in a quality amended soil and not overwatering, you can go a long time without runoff telling you much useful. New growers already have a lot going on mentally and runoff numbers can send people chasing problems that aren't there yet.

What helped me early on was just nailing the water going in, consistently, every time. That one habit alone covers most of the common beginner pH issues. Runoff monitoring is worth learning but it's maybe step two, not step one.

The pen quality point from the reply above is fair though. A drifty pen that you don't know is drifty is worse than no pen at all, because at least with no pen you know you're flying blind.