Me and PH just dont like each other...could use help
- Thread starter drolove
- Start date
Lime, either dolomite or calcitic (garden).
Or, you can keep playing these convoluted pH games with the same results you have now.
Your call.
Wet
drolove
Well-Known Member
man i wonder how i keep killing these meters...i bought one cause i thought the other one was wrong and i was right. now they both show the same thing so i guess i broke them both just as bad lol. what would you suggest doing for checking soil PH from here than? buy a new meter? just do the runoff test? and thanks for the help man!!
drolove
Well-Known Member
ya ill start using this for now on thanks
Alexander Supertramp
Well-Known Member
What he said.....
And stop reading runoff pH, tells you nothing useful about the mediums pH. And put the Rapid tester in a drawer and forget it, they are inherently inaccurate. Your chasing 2 false numbers in vain. How do your plants look and how is their growth? That will tell you more about your mediums pH than anything.......
drolove
Well-Known Member
really...come on now how am i going to know wether to adjust up or down and by how much by just looking?
Maybe if I type real slow .....?
You get the lime ... you add the lime ...... the lime buffers your soil to the proper pH range.
You put your meters and pH up/down back in the box or garbage and forget about fucking with the pH.
How simple can you get? My meter hasn't been out of the box in over 9 months.
Wet
drolove
Well-Known Member
lol...so i just add lime and its going to bring it to 7? or is it going to help bring the soil to what ever the water PH is?
cues
Well-Known Member
The chemical tests aren't expensive. Mine was £4 and does 200 tests if I use it as per the instructions (3 drops and a vial full of solution). However, I use it at 1/3 amount (1 drop per 1/3 vial of solution. Cost is about £2 a year doing almost daily tests. Running on that theory, my pH meter would have to last over 20 years to be cheaper.
Forget about 'guessing' pH by looking at the plant. You might as well shut your eyes when watering and hope for the best. Remember that nutrients are locked out by both high pH and low pH. If you are sat there trying to work out which deficiencies you have and what is caused by what for the sake of £2 a year, you are already onto a loser.
Also, adding lime is not a guessing game. It's called the 'Lime Buffering Capacity' (LBC). Look it up and work out how much you need.
Forget about 'guessing' pH by looking at the plant. You might as well shut your eyes when watering and hope for the best. Remember that nutrients are locked out by both high pH and low pH. If you are sat there trying to work out which deficiencies you have and what is caused by what for the sake of £2 a year, you are already onto a loser.
Also, adding lime is not a guessing game. It's called the 'Lime Buffering Capacity' (LBC). Look it up and work out how much you need.
drolove
Well-Known Member
haha ya im not playing a guessing game with PH like stated a couple posts up, i know better than that. thanks for the rest of the great info here! i think i might be able to figure this all out now
drolove
Well-Known Member
ya np man. cool ill keep that in mind. i was thinking about going to jungle juice next
You've got it backwards. It will bring the water to the soils pH. Water has at best a temporary effect on the soils pH. That's why you want to get the soils pH right and not worry about the pH of the water or nutes.
Lime will bring it into the proper range, somewhere between 6.4+- to 7.0+-. Usually closer to 6.8 or so, but anywhere in that range will work just fine.
Do you think farmers pH thousands of gallons of irrigation water? Or, get the soils pH right and let it do the pHing?
My garden isn't all that large and it still takes 100 gallons or more to do a complete watering. It gets done straight from the hose. All my plants get straight tap water. IIRC the pH is 7.2 or so.
Some of the teas I apply have a pH of upper 4's to low 5's and when I apply ProTekt, it is well over 10. No ill effects from either extreme, the soil buffers them up or down to the mid 6's.
Try it and see. A 40lb bag only cost ~$4 at Lowes, plenty cheap for such a simple solution.
Wet
Tiberium
Member
+++ rep Wet!
I also have the same issue and I am using the 40 lb bag you're talking about in my soil, I had ph going in at 7 and coming out at upper to mid 4's , I flushed first with r/o ph'd water and it worked temporarily but the ph dropped back into the upper 4's within 8 days. I top dressed the soil in my pots with a decent amount of lime and it yanked the ph up to 6.5+ on all my plants run off but its been about 5 days and im seeing the ph of my run off dropping slowly again. Do I simply add more lime?
drolove
Well-Known Member
cool thanks wet! that helped a lot. does it matter the amount of lime you use or will it always buffer to that range as long as you use enough of it?
"As long as you use enough of it"
I guess you could over apply lime, but I've grown stuff (not mj), in pure crushed limestone, so .......
You can certainly UNDER apply it. It works by contact or close proximity, so you do need 'enough'.
*I* use 2tbl/gallon of mix (ex:6tbl in a 3 gal container), or 1cup/cf of mix. It's best added to the mix before use, but a top dress will work also, just a bit slower.
Only ONE application is needed for a grow cycle, if you use enough. It's ground up rock and will last a long time. I add more when I recycle the soil, but that's about it.
HTH
Wet
I guess you could over apply lime, but I've grown stuff (not mj), in pure crushed limestone, so .......
You can certainly UNDER apply it. It works by contact or close proximity, so you do need 'enough'.
*I* use 2tbl/gallon of mix (ex:6tbl in a 3 gal container), or 1cup/cf of mix. It's best added to the mix before use, but a top dress will work also, just a bit slower.
Only ONE application is needed for a grow cycle, if you use enough. It's ground up rock and will last a long time. I add more when I recycle the soil, but that's about it.
HTH
Wet
Tiberium
Member
I am using the entire AN line right now and I've noticed that when I mix them at bottle strength it will lower the ph of my water from 7 to 5.3 and then I have to ph up it back around 6.8, Im assuming that AN nutes are pretty darn acidic. If I keep having to correct my ph with lime is there a point when it becomes too much? (knowing that my only choice is to use a top dressing) I am using 15 gallon pots filled with Atami hydro mix B'Cuzz and the plants were transplanted from Fox Farms Ocean Forest. They are in their fourth week of veg and are 32-39 inches tall underneath 1K MH's
Tiberium
Member
I wanna say each plant got around that much, I just added it by the handful into each pot and water until the run off came out around 6.5+, that was 5 days ago and I have documented the run off after each watering and it is starting to drop slightly from 6.5 to around an average of 6.2 from each plant. I have fed them 2 mL of GMB and B-52 after raising the ph and Ive been alternating each feeding with nutes or plain water to gradually work my strength back up and I notice on my first two feedings with nutes that the ph was coming out consistent and the last feeding is when I noticed the drop. My plants were showing yellow spots on the leaves after a week of run off coming out around the upper 4's ever since I corrected the ph with the lime my oneplant that was locked up had completely come out of it and is now growing about an inch and a half a day. I am kinda taking this as it comes......