How Do I Lower the Ph of My Compost Tea? Can Anyone Help?

Ok now that i got that out the way here is the scenario. For my compost tea i added alot of things. such as fish emulsion, triple super phoshate(grounded up so it could be water soluble), egg shells grounded, potassium(natures nectar), and a few additives, carb load, and all the bennies and fungi's and humic and fulvic acids. Oh yea also Hi-Mag( grounded up so it can be water soluble). After i did all that i checked my ph and it was 6.2. I thought it would be a good idea to add more calcium to my tea so i put in about a cup of hydrated lime.. It shot my ph of my tea up to about 10.0. Any ideas on how to get the ph back down??

Brew another tea. No telling what that hydrated lime did to whatever living organisms might have been there... or what it could ultimately do to the plants. I'd have to advise against using hydrated lime at all. Water solubility isn't particularly a huge deal, and neither is pH.

BTW there are literally TONS of good tea recipes and info around here in this very forum.

Seems like you are overdoing the tea here. The idea isnt to load it with ferts for your plant.. The goal is to accelerate microlife development and innoculatebyour soil with a herd of beneficial microorganisms that will break down the nutrients in your soil and make it available to your plants... Organically!

Just keep it simple.

i suspect you just need to let it bubble longer before tinkering with it...bubbling longer will gradually raise the PH all on its own

Compost does not break down very well under conditions above a pH of 7, so you should have been fine at a 6.2 during decomposition /conditioning/degassing/whatever it is they call it cycle...
If you're going all organic for your grow there's no need to worry too much about PH with teas, adjusting something that naturally buffers itself to near neutral will usually end up making your medium extremely alkaline. you'll save many an angry night.

usually with teas i had thought you bubble it for about 72 hours ...i guess common lore says 20-24 hours
i never checked the ph, but if i felt i had a need to, i would wait till the end really....

PH up = bubble more/potassium bicarbonate
PH down = citric acid/lime juice/vinegar

Nullis said:

Brew another tea. No telling what that hydrated lime did to whatever living organisms might have been there... or what it could ultimately do to the plants. I'd have to advise against using hydrated lime at all. Water solubility isn't particularly a huge deal, and neither is pH.

BTW there are literally TONS of good tea recipes and info around here in this very forum.

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God, yes! Dump that shit.

If that cup of hydrated lime doesn't pretty much instantly toast your plants, that triple phos will.

Do a little research before dumping all that shit into a bucket and calling it a tea. That's a lethal concoction, plain and simple.

Wet

I have been using it on all my girls and they seem to love it.. For everyone that does not know... If you calculate the proportions right with the TSP then you will be fine and dandy. Another thing hyd lime is just extra calcium.. cannabis loves calcium fella's. Do a little research before telling me to brew another tea

I Dont care what u advise pal. Your not the holy bejesus on cannabis growing. I Didnt write this post for you to tell me not to use hydrated lime. I wrote this post to figure out how to use my hydrated lime..

why are you adding all that garbage to your tea, than ask about your tea than tell everyone that answers they are wrong. Lol.
Try this. Water, compost, molasses, humic/fulvic, kelp, brew strain and feed. Forget your PH. The lime should have been in the soil to begin with.

LMAO, i know.. sorry about that.. .

Soil micro life cannot live in an environment where hydrated lime has been used. Use OLNY dolomite lime. Using tea is organic, using organic on synthetic IS pointless.
Hydrated lime is like, growing sour dough bread using freshly shocked pool water. If u don't believe me, use it on one plant and dolomite lime on the other.

Now that the facts are out of the way,

Puting raw egg shells and all that stuff in a tea isn't doing anything But Possibly causing an anaerobic mass of death.

The best teas are simple.

A cup of castings and/or good compost
Tsp-tbs BS molasses
Tbs Maxicrop liquid /dry seaweed (bubble liquid 24hrs to remove chlorine)
Tsp Liquid/dry fish fert (double for veg)
A tsp of an all organic 555 all purpose fert for micro life
Tsp High p guano for flowering
Tsp soft rock phosphate

No eggshells no lime no bs. Bubble with an airstone 24+ hrs(I've seen it done dayyyyss). Strain, shake between applications.

Like someone said, tea is for microlife. It will feed, but only minimally. Its mainly for bacteria and fungus in the soil and tea. Which is the all important part of real organic growing. You never feed plants in organics of any kind. You feed soil. Nothing synthetic or harsh to organics can be used. No. Acceptions. And this includes the water u put into the tea. Keep your eyes on the ingredient and derived from lists, and look for all natural, and 100 percent organic.

I think you'll find luck with simple teas and not using that "pour it on" frame of mind. All a nicely seated fully organic plant needs is a nice tea every week or 2, plenty of water. Richly ammended soil (smartly ammended soil). Nutrient spikes and layers can provide ALL the nutrients a plant needs for growth, ESPECIALLY if your growing clones, and don't have to worry about influencing a plant into one sex or the other.

If you don't have ammedments, earth juice makes great organic grow and bloom ferts that you can add as recommended to a :
30-40% ffof
20-30% coco or peat
20% castings
20% pearlite

Soil mix and brew above tea to add periodically, and maybe throw a top dressing or spike of a nice organic dry fert and high n guano or fish meal/high p guano for veg/flower. Easy does it. Never know till you learn. Can't learn unless you try. Play with it, but easy does it on all those ammendments.

Anyways. Pour that crap out, and bubbble some liquid gold

Big bump.

If my soils ph is at 6.7 -6.8 from adding a touch too much dolomite lime should I adjust my brew down to 6.0 to begin to work my ph to 6.4? Thank you guys.

Stop checking pH altogether..Bubble/aerate then water.

Wow some real passion in this post! Lol. Loved the post. Just gave up on my experiment. Was trying to use an organic tea in a dwc. Pretty sure I had nutrient lock. Started to get little brown spots on the leaves almost like it was not taking in calcium. Seemed to work for a few days but couldn't control the ph.

Hmmmm ! This post said not to ph the tea. In dwc though, isn't the ph in dwc supposed to be 5.6- 6.2. any thoughts? like I said just messing around with this girl. I do realize it's not natural to use organics in dwc

pH doesn't matter....

alkalinity does.

How do I measure akaline levels

waktoo said:

pH doesn't matter....

alkalinity does.

Click to expand...

What I am doing is I have one plant in dwc- general hydropics 3 part system plus cal/mag if course cal/mag first.

The other plant is the same cultivar (Black Domina) also in dwc. This plant is In worm tea and other amendments. I brewed this tea for roughly 48 hrs. Diluted with ph balanced filtered tap water. I just lolli popped both plants. Letting them veg for a few more days and going to flip

beartrapgeorge said:

I Dont care what u advise pal. Your not the holy bejesus on cannabis growing. I Didnt write this post for you to tell me not to use hydrated lime. I wrote this post to figure out how to use my hydrated lime..

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Choosing beggars cannabis editon...lmfao you’re a hack bro. Make sure to load up every tea you make with lime and then throw in two cups of elemental sulfur and two cups of blood meal. Bubble it for two weeks, don’t dilute it. Make sure to add a whole jar of molasses too and a bottle of calmag.