Soil runoff

I been growing a while but pH problems are new to me, destroying my lovely green garden and quick. No screwing around so i bought a trident pH/ec meter, calibration fluid and pH up and down.

I know i probably did it wrong but i did it anyway. Flushed a plant with pH 7.3 and it came out 5.8!

Whats wrong here and how do i fix it by pH'ing my water in future? Thanks and peace!

Try using organic soil and ferts. The chemical stuff can be a pita...Never had a ph issue in my raised garden beds.

add lime to your soil to help keep your pH near 7.

Hydrated lime to water to help in your current case.

Eggshells and oystershells also work as well.

All the above will add calcium to your soil, the lime will also add magnesium.

I do lime and started a month ago, watered it in at first and now mix garden lime with soil, powdered first. Have pH up and down as well. I will have to work at this slowly i think. I can pH the soil bit by bit by giving the right pH water i.e. if the runoff is 6 watering at 8 should bring it up a little. I flushed heavily last night but still runoff was low, i will not flush again this grow i don't think but hopefully this helped as ruoff increased after the flush, not by much but a few points.

I think my runoff was low because of built up ferts in the soil, the plant was only just in the soil and i already fertilized as was growing strong and seemed to take it, biobizz organic bloom and grow with added epsom salts to ec the water to 200ppm, hopefully the plant is getting all the calcium from the garden lime and a small bit of mag to go with the 200ppm epsom salts i been giving it.

Seems like i have a lot to learn here, any more input or info on pH'ing the soil would be appreciated. Thanks

What kind of dirt are we talking about my jolly'ol mateRegular old dirt or what

Kingrow1 said:

I do lime and started a month ago, watered it in at first and now mix garden lime with soil, powdered first. Have pH up and down as well. I will have to work at this slowly i think. I can pH the soil bit by bit by giving the right pH water i.e. if the runoff is 6 watering at 8 should bring it up a little. I flushed heavily last night but still runoff was low, i will not flush again this grow i don't think but hopefully this helped as ruoff increased after the flush, not by much but a few points.

I think my runoff was low because of built up ferts in the soil, the plant was only just in the soil and i already fertilized as was growing strong and seemed to take it, biobizz organic bloom and grow with added epsom salts to ec the water to 200ppm, hopefully the plant is getting all the calcium from the garden lime and a small bit of mag to go with the 200ppm epsom salts i been giving it.

Seems like i have a lot to learn here, any more input or info on pH'ing the soil would be appreciated. Thanks

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Hey Kingrow, haven't bumped into you in awhile!

Tthe first thing most experienced growers would suggest is not to chase the PH. I had people tell me to do exactly what you are doing, adding a far too alkaline solution to your too acidic medium and trying to "balance" it, however some other people chimed in and suggest an alternative.

The alternative would be to introduce the correct (desired) PH into the soil as a flush until the runoff PH is the same as the solution coming in. Remember, I had these same issues in the thread of mine you followed towards the end. If you put in 7.3 (too high) in and got 5.8 out I would say you're probably right, you had a major salt buildup there. If that's where you left off perhaps you didn't flush the medium thoroughly enough.

I would probably flush that mofo until I got my desired PH and then let it dry out completely. Given you've added lime once it dries it would hopefully raise up to 7.0 and eliminate your salt buildup and PH problem.

What is the PPM of your water runoff? I measure mine by collecting the runoff and filtering through a coffee filter, then using my tds meter on the runoff solution.

Spot on Shwagbag, i am getting the same advice and you have just confirmed it, don't chase pH. I did a little with the 7.3 but this should be ok for the plant i am thinking?

I see what you mean about the salt buildup affecting the pH and not the soil, this is exactly what i experienced i think, the plants with the low pH had had a good fertilize for the past two three weeks.

So what do you recomend, stick to one pH the whole grow or adjust little by little as you go? I am still getting the hang of this but am really starting to understand the principles. I just did it with little advice to see what i made of the pH and ec.

GhettoGrower - I use westlands soil, the seedling and the flowering, probably one of the better soil in my country. It dose contain peat but they do a peat free version, i have been a bit hesitant to try the no peat version even though i should.

Kingrow1 said:

Spot on Shwagbag, i am getting the same advice and you have just confirmed it, don't chase pH. I did a little with the 7.3 but this should be ok for the plant i am thinking?

I see what you mean about the salt buildup affecting the pH and not the soil, this is exactly what i experienced i think, the plants with the low pH had had a good fertilize for the past two three weeks.

So what do you recomend, stick to one pH the whole grow or adjust little by little as you go? I am still getting the hang of this but am really starting to understand the principles. I just did it with little advice to see what i made of the pH and ec.

GhettoGrower - I use westlands soil, the seedling and the flowering, probably one of the better soil in my country. It dose contain peat but they do a peat free version, i have been a bit hesitant to try the no peat version even though i should.

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Some people gradually drop PH towards 6.0 during aggressive flowering, I personally prefer to try to keep it around 6.5. As you recall, I've had PH issues in the past and I prefer to not flirt with dropping under 6.0 for fear of lockouts.

Whenever I had PH issues I flushed until the PH was exactly what I was putting in. It took a lot of water, a rule that was recommended to me was 3 x the capacity of the growing container. I hope they straighten out quickly for you, good luck. The lime should also help to buffer the soil and keep it from dropping to low on you too, lime is one of my garden's favorite amendments!

Lime is also one of my gardens favorite amendments. In the future, add it to your mix before use. It works slow in the first place, mixed in, and if used as a top dressing, it really takes some time.

Just don't keep adding it, unless you under applied in the first place.

All I've used is peat based mixes for well over 30 years, and lime is essential for that medium.

Wet

Wet is totally right.... right on man

One tip.....when you flush to correct PH, you continue to flush until your PH comes out the same as you're pouring in. So, if you want 6.5, you flush with 6.5, til the runoff is 6.5, which tells you your soil is clean. When i flush, I also check my PPM, to make sure that's where I want it, as well(i flush down to around 100 PPM, not including the water PPM).

I also agree, lime is a good idea, as well.

jawbrodt said:

One tip.....when you flush to correct PH, you continue to flush until your PH comes out the same as you're pouring in. So, if you want 6.5, you flush with 6.5, til the runoff is 6.5, which tells you your soil is clean. When i flush, I also check my PPM, to make sure that's where I want it, as well(i flush down to around 100 PPM, not including the water PPM).

I also agree, lime is a good idea, as well.

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Yep, track the ppm of your runoff. I collect it, run it through a coffee filter and meter it.

As wet said lime does take time to work, after using the large granules I switched to fast acting lime (smaller granules) and now I have powdered lime which mixes in with your nutes and voila they meter right out at 7. Gooooood sheeeeeit. If you buy the powder, be careful when mixing it makes a nasty effin mess if you're not careful.

Hope they're coming along Kingrow!

Ok i am picking this up quick, done a few pH flushes now and getting the hang of it. Although not perfectly as you described i had a veg plant read pH 5.9 runoff tonight and ppm 1700! By the way the ppm of runoff of some of my plants is blowing me away. Anyway i knew not to chase my ppm so i pH'd at 7.1 (i know this isn't 6.5 as i want but it is getting closer as i am still hesitant.) So i flushed and read runoff, it went to like 6.1 and ppm stayed the same. At this part i wanted to change my mind but i put my trust in you guys and flushed again. Runoff pH came out at 6.3 and ppm dropped to 1200. One more time i thought so i flushed again, pH came out at 6.6 and runoff went all the way down to 700.

This is what you guys are saying and i seen the results. I know i didn't pH what i wanted the soil at but thought i would take it a small bit higher as i am a pH noob. This is good though and i can raise it again at the next watering. My thinking is that i am just starting this and if i did this from seed my soil pH wouldn't be so low in the first place. I am actually doing this with my seedlings and all the purple of the stems and leaf stalks is dissapearing fast, no twisting or cupping of the leaves either. Been giving seedlings pH7 water.

It is early days to tell just how effective and right i will get this but am certain i have gone in the right direction. I have been adding garden lime which i have been powdering and finding that i need to up the doses mixed in with the soil too. Some of the older plants do not have lime in but i watered the powdered version in with some water as best i could.

These pH problems seemed quite recent but when i think back to other years i remember the purple stems and stalks and wonder wether i didn't have pH problems all along. So what do you think guys, on the right track? If in future my pH drops i would know to water in some more lime or add more to the soil right?

Wetdog said:

Lime is also one of my gardens favorite amendments. In the future, add it to your mix before use. It works slow in the first place, mixed in, and if used as a top dressing, it really takes some time.

Just don't keep adding it, unless you under applied in the first place.

All I've used is peat based mixes for well over 30 years, and lime is essential for that medium.

Wet

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I agree with wet.......!

To get an accurate read on soil or soiless just add enough distilled water til you get some runoff, don't water fast as it will simply go over the edges and down insides of the pot w/o mixing. Let this settle a few minutes and then check your Ph and ppm levels, compare to the distilled start point. If you are far out of range for soil (5.8-6.3) you will have a stunted plant or possibly a dying one. Don't despai,r the already mentioned flush is a great idea even if all this is spot on! A typical 3 gallon pot needs 8-10 gallons to flush it well imo this varies with soil density, type and water used.

Yer i'm getting there, just worried about flushing too much water as i always hated flushing. Next time i do a plant i will get it closer to what is suggested.

Kingrow1 said:

Yer i'm getting there, just worried about flushing too much water as i always hated flushing. Next time i do a plant i will get it closer to what is suggested.

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Flushing sucks! But usually good results follow. I would just PH adjust your solution for water next time right where you want it and get a fair amount of runoff so you can meter it. Hopefully you will be in your range of both PPM and PH and can resume feeding soon.

Ok guys i understand the pH bit pretty much and should be good on that. Now what about the ppm's? If i flush with pH'd water i am not adding ferts or ppm's (parts per million of fertilizer) to the soil, technically i should be decreasing the ppm's with the flush?

Dose the ppm's in the runoff mean that the soil is also the same i.e. i get 1800ppm in my runoff so i can assume my soil contains 1800ppm of ferts in it?

If this is correct and i flushed down to 1000ppm because the plant should be around 1000ppm i wouldn't add ferts to the soil at this particular ocassion? If i did i would be taking the ppm level of the soil back up past 1000ppm?

Alternatively if i had 1800ppm in the runoff and i wanted 1000ppm so i flushed but found after the flush that my runoff was lower at 500 would i add ferts to the soil at 500ppm to bring it back up to 1000ppm? This would make my runoff 1000ppm 500 in the soil already and 500 i added?

OR

Would it be more like i flushed with 0ppm water and got 1000ppm runoff so i could assume my soil had a higher soil ppm of say 2000ppm? This would make it similar to the pH where i water at pH6.5 and runoff is 5.5 so soil pH would be pH4.5?

Sorry if i sound confusing but i think you will know what i am getting at. Thanks

You flush with no nutes just ph corrected water then test the run off to see where your ph is at and check the ppms
In it to see how much salt build is coming out

So what comes out of the soil is the same ppm as whats in the soil? So i have 1000 runoff and thats all i want so i leave it there and don't add any nutes?