Question about soil's pH and raising it.

Rush56

Member
Hello,

lass then a week ago, i noticed, most noticable on one plant, that there might be nute burn or nute lockout. Brown leaf tips.. I'm in late flowering. So 3 days ago, i just watered with pure water of ph of about 6.8. My mistake, i didn't measure nute solutions, as people say it is not as important in soil grows. I watered a bit more then usually, so that water was dripping out of pot. I left it and after 2 days it didn't look any better, i think even worse.

So yesterday i made a first flush with ph 6.8 water. The runoff on beginning was around 5. I use aquarium kit currently, and becouse it's imposibble to measure soil directly, in my case we should get the numbers even lower, so the pH must of been under 5. I was watering until i used all my water set for it, not much, and last measurement was 6, the last drops dripping out.

So today i made another flush. I added liquid sillicate as ph up, and when doing it with plant i wrote earlier about it's ph, flushing water was around 9-10 ph(about 2tsp of sillicate/10l, but i added extra .5l water becouse it was so high. A little too much, but i said lets see what will come out.. Before flush i also added also some dolomite lime on top layer of soil. Before this grow, i mixed dolomite lime with soil on beginning, to regulate the ph, but it was most likely used out already.
So when i got the first runoff, the measurment of yesterdays 6 was today again around 5, a bit higher still.. Whats the point??? So with high ph'd water, i hardly got it to 5.5-5.8 in the end with same amount of water as yesterday to 6 but much lower water ph, without sillicate.
The plants were in very great shape until now, no deficiencies troughout the grow.

Any opinons, am i doing it right or wrong??

p.s. it was first time using sillicate...

Hope anyone can help me about it, i don't want another fck'd up season right before end...
 
Lime takes time. If you want to move the PH up faster you can add a pinch or so of baking soda to a gallon of water. But plants don't like 'fast'. So just sprinkle a bit more lime on the soil surface and give it time.
 
I don't have time, due to late flowering. Baking soda is supposed to be bad as sodium is toxic for plants already in amout you need to raise ph.. I think sillicate is much better way in this case.. But should i just keep flushing until ph gets above 6?
 
You can use Baking Soda as long as you drain through the bottom of the pot. It's completely soluble in water.
 
Soo.. Anyone? I would really like to get some experienced answers, why would runoff ph be so much lower again next day as it was a day earlier after flushing? Ill see what will happen tonight...
 
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