How much can I compensate for low PH in my soil?

didn't get an answer in general so.. I've searced around with no answers. I'm in week5-6 of flowering on my first grow and experiencing some problems I believe to be from acidic soil. I've used dolomite lime but I think it is working too slowly. I want to raise the Ph as quickly as I can. My question is, how high can I adjust the PH in my nutes/water? Meaning, if my runoff is ~5.5 can I adjust my water/nutes to say 7.5 or maybe even 8.0 to correct this? My plants have drastically slowed bud production in the last few weeks and I want to fix this asap. I've been putting in close to neutral solutions but was wondering if would be beneficial to jack it up a bit more to compensate. Thanks, any help is always appreciated!

dont go too high or quickly or you will burn your plants

in my experience overcompensating for ph by over adjusting the water or nutes causes more problems than it solves. i don't know your particular situation but i'm basically in the same boat with my soil ph. in my case it's my water supply. it just doesn't have a good reaction with my soil. it comes out the tap at 7 and turns the runoff to around 5 just like yours. jacking with the water is only going to cause major swings when what you want to do is even it out. you will likely need to start using lime in your soil going forward and it will buffer it so it doesn't swing so bad when you put the crummy water on it. as far as what to do with the existing plants, i'm not much help. there are a couple of ways to top dress the soil with lime but i'm completely unfamiliar with how those methods work or how long they take to work. if you are in the financial situation to do so you could try bottled or ro water, or some kind or water filtration.

If your soil pH is too high, adjust your solution to 6.3 each time you water/feed. If your soil pH is too low, adjust to 6.9 instead. Everytime you water, check the runoff of the pH, and it should slowly creep back to normal. DO NOT adjust to below 6.0 or above 7.2 unless you want more problems.

A tablespoon of dolomite lime per gallon soil and you probably wont have these low ph in late flower problems

noober doober said:

I want to raise the Ph as quickly as I can.

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Fast changes in pH can cause worse problems than the problem you are trying to solve. Speed is the enemy in this case. What damage you have already exists. Don't compound it with a rapid pH change. You want to be careful when adjusting your pH, doing this over a week or slightly longer is the best idea, to fast of a change will cause shock to the plant.

Thanks for all the responses, I'll keep doing what I'm doing (adjusting to 6.9) and there is already dolomite lime in there. Actually, looks like I'm just starting to see positive response from them today : ) I'll post pics when done, thanks again. *edit*, I have another Q. So, being so underdeveloped at this point (I'll take a pic if someone needs to see) am I just stuck with an underdeveloped crop or will extra time flowering re-coop some of the lost size?

I'm noticing that they look better in the pics then real life. I'm wondering then if all the pics I see of plants in similar stages are also having that effect? What do you guys think? I believe tomorrow is day 42

i can definately see a mg def which makes sense with your acid issue. the very same thing happens to me. mg is the first def to show. you definately want to correct the ph, but take it easy. otherwise they look real nice for this stage in the grow. you definately have enough green left where you shouldn't have too many issues with lost leaves and whatnot from this.

^^^ Yeah what they said, I know super helpful right? I just wanted to ask if you knew what strain you have? They look VERY familiar! =)

brownbearclan said:

^^^ Yeah what they said, I know super helpful right? I just wanted to ask if you knew what strain you have? They look VERY familiar! =)

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there are 4 plants, 3 big bangs and the one closest to the camera on the left is IPOT (sativa dominant).