PH issues/ Questions

Hi rollitup forum posters, this is my first post on this website because I think I successfully annoyed my last forum with enough questions haha. Looking forward to seeing the responses I get on here! But yes I have lots of questions pertaining soil and its relation with pH. I've done a few grows but only one has gotten smokable material out of it. The first grow was my best and the only smokable bud I've gotten and another fell victim to bud rot. The other two grows I've done however were doing super great right up until it went into flower. At that time both of my plants started losing all their leaves and turned into nutrient depleted super fluffy non sticky flower :( The first time it happened I had no idea what went wrong. I figured it was because I didn't pH my water which is around 7.5-8.5 and very hard. But then I did another grow of the same strain and pH'ed my water out every time to what I thought was around 6.0 but then at the same time the plant lost all its leaves right before flower again. After checking the runoff on that plant I noticed my soil had turned extremely acidic around in the 4 range. I tried flushing a remedying but it only helped a little since it was probably too far gone by then.

So there's a little recap, I figured I must have been making my water going in too acidic and caused some serious lockout. I just started a new plant today in the same soil i've been using (Fox Farms Ocean Floor) and watered with water around 6.5 ( I test with drops, I have an Apera20 but all those things are shite unless you wanna buy a $300 bluelab) and around 520 ppm's going in (thats with 0 added nutes). After watering I tested the runoff which was at a pH close to 5.0 and ppms were 1361. How is my soil's runoff already at 5.0, so close to root death, when it should be at 6.0. Should I practice watering in at a higher pH like 7 for a while to make the soil become more basic? Any tips on how to avoid making soil become too acidic would be greatly appreciated, I really wanna jump this hurdle.

Top dressing with 1 or 2 TBL of dolomite lime per gallon of soil will often fix a ffof soil with low PH.

Kushash said:

Top dressing with 2 or 3 TBL of dolomite lime per gallon of soil will often fix a ffof soil with low PH.

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I tried using some hydrated lime last grow and that didn't even seem to budge to soils pH but like I said maybe that's because it was too far gone or is there a difference between hydrated lime and dolomite lime, is there a brand you would recommend?

Goose1324 said:

I tried using some hydrated lime last grow and that didn't even seem to budge to soils pH but like I said maybe that's because it was too far gone or is there a difference between hydrated lime and dolomite lime, is there a brand you would recommend?

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Dolomite is said to be easier to work with. I use espoma garden lime which is dolomite. I've never used hydrated lime. I find that if a plant I'm growing in soil has a low soil PH problem, the plant will show improvement in less than a week after top dressing with dolomite.

Dude, its your water, 500ppm water to start with is going to make managing what you will be actually feeding your plants. (NPK and micro nutrients ratios), a living nightmare once you start a feeding schedule! Oh sure if you have a real water analysis done you can work around that, but why would you want to make that much work for yourself. Get a cheap RO system or one of them PUR pitchers, so you can control everything relating to your waters pH and what nutrients your plants will get... Also, because you starting with VERY HARD WATER, you should let it sit out for at least 3 days, so when you actually check your waters initial pH you will get an accurate pH reading.

piratebug said:

Dude, its your water, 500ppm water to start with is going to make managing what you will be actually feeding your plants. (NPK and micro nutrients ratios), a living nightmare once you start a feeding schedule! Oh sure if you have a real water analysis done you can work around that, but why would you want to make that much work for yourself. Get a cheap RO system or one of them PUR pitchers, so you can control everything relating to your waters pH and what nutrients your plants will get... Also, because you starting with VERY HARD WATER, you should let it sit out for at least 3 days, so when you actually check your waters initial pH you will get an accurate pH reading.

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getting an RO filter installed on Wednesday so hopefully that should help huh! I was reading tho that sometimes watering with just plain Ro water could like "dehydrate" your plant since its void of nutes. Should I add like cal-mag every watering and check to feed with other nutes every other waternig?