Help Soil PH Water Run Off is 4.9-5.0 After Much Flushing, Now What?

OpTikPhiber

OpTikPhiber

Well-Known Member
Hey all, YAPHQ, Yet another PH question here. :mrgreen:

I discovered last night just making your feeding water 7.0 does not keep PH in check! After much much flushing with tap water 7.4ph my run off water is still around 5.0ph. So I am going to buy a bag of lime today.

Question is, can I put some lime powder in my water to add lime to the soil to get this ph neutralized a little better? I imagine the answer is yes.

But next question...Should I go ahead and do this tonight even though the soil is very wet from flushing last night or do I leave everything for 3 days and water with lime mix after soil is dry?

From now on I will be mixing some lime in with my soil. It says it has 1% lime on the bag, obviously that has not proven to be enough. Honestly I didn't realize how bad the soil can get even if you are leveling out your water!! Just goes to show...still learning bongsmilie

:peace::peace:Thanks for the help.
 
POLARIS01

POLARIS01

Active Member
is there anything going on with your plants? if not leave them alone. you sould keep your water at 6.5 ph. i just saying if you messing with your runoff you will be running in circles
 
OpTikPhiber

OpTikPhiber

Well-Known Member
POLARIS01 said:
is there anything going on with your plants? if not leave them alone. you sould keep your water at 6.5 ph. i just saying if you messing with your runoff you will be running in circles
Click to expand...
Isn't measuring the run off a good practice? Cause the runoff is like 4.9-5.0.

I bought the Lime pellets they sold at Home Depot and am going to try resolving a little in the next batch of water.
 
L

luden9219

Member
OpTikPhiber said:
Isn't measuring the run off a good practice? Cause the runoff is like 4.9-5.0.

I bought the Lime pellets they sold at Home Depot and am going to try resolving a little in the next batch of water.
Click to expand...

im just started ph'ing my runoff. ive been getting brown spots and sort of a rust colored leaf ends. its starting at the botton and seems to be working up.

neways, trying to narrow the suspects i ph'ed the runoff started at 5.1 and after flushing with 6.8 water its up to 6 after about 3-4 gals.

do your plants have any signs of stress? let us know if the lime helps.
 
OpTikPhiber

OpTikPhiber

Well-Known Member
luden9219 said:
im just started ph'ing my runoff. ive been getting brown spots and sort of a rust colored leaf ends. its starting at the botton and seems to be working up.

neways, trying to narrow the suspects i ph'ed the runoff started at 5.1 and after flushing with 6.8 water its up to 6 after about 3-4 gals.

do your plants have any signs of stress? let us know if the lime helps.
Click to expand...
Exact same as you just described! I have almost always developed this problem with the exact same setup, same dirt (no nuts in it) and Fox Farm Trio. Like you said trying to narrow this thing down I finally tested the runoff.

I have a sea of very small plants in small containers, so I think I have a problem built up pretty badly. Because I ran A LOT of tap water through the plants that was 7.4 and could only get the run off ph to budge up like 1-2 tenths! Thus my frustrations.

I am also considering next batch using half of the prescribed nutrients. Also speaking of nutes; I noticed after mixing Fox Farm up it moves my water to about 5.0ph. I have even thought about trying the local nursery for their pro mix, but maybe this lime is just what the doctor ordered. Going to try mixing that into my soil moving fwd first though.

I've got no hydro store anywhere near me so I have stuck to Lowe's and Home Depot for soil and been using a seed starter mix that has no nutes in it and feeding FF, which be enough. Just keep geting lockup I think now.
 
L

luden9219

Member
OpTikPhiber said:
Exact same as you just described! I have almost always developed this problem with the exact same setup, same dirt (no nuts in it) and Fox Farm Trio. Like you said trying to narrow this thing down I finally tested the runoff.

I have a sea of very small plants in small containers, so I think I have a problem built up pretty badly. Because I ran A LOT of tap water through the plants that was 7.4 and could only get the run off ph to budge up like 1-2 tenths! Thus my frustrations.

I am also considering next batch using half of the prescribed nutrients. Also speaking of nutes; I noticed after mixing Fox Farm up it moves my water to about 5.0ph. I have even thought about trying the local nursery for their pro mix, but maybe this lime is just what the doctor ordered. Going to try mixing that into my soil moving fwd first though.

I've got no hydro store anywhere near me so I have stuck to Lowe's and Home Depot for soil and been using a seed starter mix that has no nutes in it and feeding FF, which be enough. Just keep geting lockup I think now.
Click to expand...
well lets team up and tackle this. Im in the 3rd week of flower...what about you. Since I posted earlier the "desease" as spred up to the next level of the fan leaves. Ive been cutting them off, so far 3 leaves, once they got so crispy that there was no chance for revival.

I dont have but 10 big fan leaves, 2 are 30%-40% deaseased and 2 now are showing little signs of desease.

Im going to flush some more in the morning with another 4 gals of spring water.

My tap water Ph'ed at 8.4!!!! After adding big bloom and tiger bloom and ph up/down, I usually feed and 6.2-6.5. But im not going to use tap anymore.

I do have a local hydro store, i kinda want to pluck a leaf and bring it up there. I know they know why they are open, and its not for growing toms.
 
probo24

probo24

Well-Known Member
I just went through a PH problem
FoxFarms OF and GB/BB/TB
Very low runoff 5.1-5.6
I talked to the hydro guy
he said lime helps over time, but i was 2 weeks into flowering and it probably wouldn't help as fast as i needed.
I ended up (after buying a digital ph meter) flushing with tap water.
After 2 flushes with 7.4 tap water, and the correct ph for Tiger Bloom, my runoff
has been testing from 6.1 to 6.5 for the last 4 weeks.
I also stopped using R.O. water. The other filtering they do where i got my water filtered pretty much everything from the water. Some of which was benificial to plants.
I just leave my tap water out for 2 days.
I still use filtered ro water for germination.
 
OpTikPhiber

OpTikPhiber

Well-Known Member
Well I have two gallons of "lime juice" sitting overnight. Turns out the lime pellets dissolved easily in warm water. I put about two fat teaspoons in each gallon with warm water and shook it up, it is pretty murky and "sandy" water.

It would be cool if someone would chime in if this is a good idea or not to feed this to my plants??!? :) :) Tomorrow I will have some dry plants sooooo.....hmmmm. :)
 
L

luden9219

Member
probo24 said:
I just went through a PH problem
FoxFarms OF and GB/BB/TB
Very low runoff 5.1-5.6
I talked to the hydro guy
he said lime helps over time, but i was 2 weeks into flowering and it probably wouldn't help as fast as i needed.
I ended up (after buying a digital ph meter) flushing with tap water.
After 2 flushes with 7.4 tap water, and the correct ph for Tiger Bloom, my runoff
has been testing from 6.1 to 6.5 for the last 4 weeks.
I also stopped using R.O. water. The other filtering they do where i got my water filtered pretty much everything from the water. Some of which was benificial to plants.
I just leave my tap water out for 2 days.
I still use filtered ro water for germination.
Click to expand...

did you have any problem with the leaves kinda spotting, turning a rusty-like color. It seems like its starting on the bottom and moving up.

Thanks for any input you can add

QUOTE=OpTikPhiber;3189626]Well I have two gallons of "lime juice" sitting overnight. Turns out the lime pellets dissolved easily in warm water. I put about two fat teaspoons in each gallon with warm water and shook it up, it is pretty murky and "sandy" water.

It would be cool if someone would chime in if this is a good idea or not to feed this to my plants??!? :) :) Tomorrow I will have some dry plants sooooo.....hmmmm. :)[/QUOTE]

From what Ive read on here lime might be the solution with the ph. Also after another hour of research maybe the ph is causing a lockout of something causing the leaves to go to crap. Maybe manganese(sp?) i dunno?
 
J

Jamaican Mon'

Well-Known Member
I have the same problem, only mine has progressed alot further. One plant started late stage of veg. and the other two started around flowering. I pretty much have been studying for a few weeks and narrowed it down to a Nitrogen and K. diff. The leaves are dying and drying up curling up, like they are starving for water. Some leaves are dying do to yellowing which i think is because of nitrogen lack of. My run off got low like in the 5's and was able to bring it up to low 6's but the more i flush the lower it goes. flushing with RO and tap, or rain. How can we correct this problem and can real acidic soil lock out N P K. I am no longer feeding much as to being 6 weeks into flowering, as the buds do look good, the reason why im not freaking out i have pretty much lost all my big fan leaves and the little ones are starting to go as well.

Thanks be listening...
 
probo24

probo24

Well-Known Member
luden9219 said:
did you have any problem with the leaves kinda spotting, turning a rusty-like color. It seems like its starting on the bottom and moving up.

Thanks for any input you can add

My leaves started turning from green, to light green, to yellow. All the while the affected leaves were spotted with brown colored spots.
Started from the bottom, moving slowly up.
I cought it before i lost too many leaves. I did have quite a few that spotted up.
Once the PH problems were corrected, the affected leaves still died, but very slowly.
Even 4 weeks later i still have leaves that were affected, anywhere from the tip, to half or more of a leaf brown.
The worst leaves browned up, died, and fell off. The leaves that still have some green toward the stem, i did not, nor will i remove.
Although the overall size of the plant, i'm convinced was stunted by the ph problem. The buds, thankfully haven't been as affected.
Flowering under 250w hps
I'll still pull better than 1.5 oz dried once i harvest.

I included some pics. You can see some of the lower leaf tips/blades are brown.
These leafs have gotten no worse in 4 weeks.
The other discoloration is light bleaching from the lamp.
Problems as stated started in week 2 of 12/12.
Pictures taken at 46 days female. Which is day 51 of 12/12
Click to expand...
 

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OpTikPhiber

OpTikPhiber

Well-Known Member
luden9219 said:
did you have any problem with the leaves kinda spotting, turning a rusty-like color. It seems like its starting on the bottom and moving up.
From what Ive read on here lime might be the solution with the ph. Also after another hour of research maybe the ph is causing a lockout of something causing the leaves to go to crap. Maybe manganese(sp?) i dunno?
Click to expand...
Some have worse "rust" than others, the rust starts near the tips. The tips will then start to die while the leaf is turning yellow. I would say mine are defiantly "locked". One other symptom to be noted if you look at the underside of the leaves the steams on the sun leaves are turning purple. Purple is always a bad color at 3-4 weeks! I do know purple = locked.

I just PH tested my "lime juice"; It needs to be diluted, it is at 9.0ph. I'll get to this later tonight...
 
OpTikPhiber

OpTikPhiber

Well-Known Member
Oh just saw your photos probo24! Yeap, mine are identical! (Just smaller plants, lol) I didn't see your pics when I posted before. Your's look nice besides this prob ;) :)

Anyway I had to dilute that lime water down a LOT. If there is a next time I would start with 1/4 of a 1 teaspoon. (not 2 heaping teaspoons) I finally got the water to about 7.5-8.0 with the lime diluted in it and was ready to feed it to my plants.

Plants had really dry soil and leaves were noticeably perky today so the super-flush the other day obviously helped. But the plants are really lacking in a needed dark green color. And I had a lot of yellow leaves with purple stems again to pick off again, with more damage to the others. So I am hopeing the first sign of recovery with this lime is the color returning to my plants somewhat. My runoff water from this "experiment" was about 6.5, so that was a plus I suppose (vs 5.0ph a few days ago).


https://www.rollitup.org/members/jamaican-mon--73896.htmlJamaican Mon' - Be careful I thought I had a nitrogen or magnesium deficiency too, well we probably do, but the plant is locking out the nutes. Thus we are getting more of a buildup than usual. So more feeding is kinda what got me into my situation.
 
probo24

probo24

Well-Known Member
After i flushed (the 2nd time) and started getting runoff ph up over 6.1
The next watering i did feed some Grow Big (1/4t/gallon)for the N boost.

I also fed Big Bloom 3T/gallon the first feeding. That's kind of heavey ferts for
what i usually feed.
Only fed N once. Then I cut BB back to 2-2 1/2T/gallon and Tiger Bloom 1-2t/gallon.
Big Bloom every watering, Tiger Bloom, every other.

I noticed the problem getting better as
soon as the runoff was correct. Nice dark green new growth.

I posted pics of the problem earlier on. You can really see the brown spots in those pics.
I don't know how to put a kink to the post, but it's called:
help my sick chick w/pics
Peace
 
L

luden9219

Member
Yup I got purple leaf stems too.....I was just going to post it but I actually read all the inbetween posts and saw that you addressed that already.

Ok so Ill add some lime in the morning.......im going to flush a little more and re-test the ph. If all is stable in the 6-6.5 area should I feed? I noticed on the FF feeding scedule it says to add GB for weeks 3-4 of flowering, or 4-5...whatever.

The rust is spreding quikly and I havent really noticed any improvement at all thru the plant. Infact i suppose it looks just as bad but I didnt test ph today....i wanted the soil to dry up a little.

Looks like we are making headway to a solution!!!
 
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