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Appropriate water pH for pro-mix
- Thread starter skylined
- Start date
greenisgold
Member
Optimum ph in promix is 5.6 to 6.2 You should adjust nutrient solution ph to about 5.8 to 6 after everything is added. This ph seems low but is necessary to make iron, manganese, zinc, copper, boron, and phosphorus available to the plant. At higher ph, these become less avail. to the plant.
skylined
Member
Thanks for the response. I am now using spring water which has pH of exactly 7. This is also so I won't be feeding heavy metals to the plants from the goddamn polluted tap water. When I add nutrients, does it make the pH go up or down? Also, since the nutes make the water a different color, it makes it impossible to use my pH measuring solution to figure it out. How should I proceed in this case?
Peace,
~Skylined
Peace,
~Skylined
greenisgold
Member
You will have to get a digital ph pen. Some of my nutes increase ph and some decrease. Hanna checker is cheap and worth every penny. 7 ph will be fine for a while, but later on you will have problems.
Blackvelvet
Member
Excellent. Your exactly right. K+greenisgold said:
You are exactly wrong. If you adjust your ferts to an arbitrary value and your medium's ph is way out, then you are not correcting the problem.
If your soil is 8.5, your ferts at 6 will bring it down to 7.25 and that's still too high. You need your ferts to be lower, like 5, to balance out your medium to 6.25.
See how that works? BV sure doesn't.
You can only figure what your nute solution should be when you discover the natural ph of your soil and understand how nute ph affects it.
Blackvelvet never grew a plant so he has no idea that theories don't always work out in the real world. That's why they are called theories. That is the difference between academic knowledge and applied knowledge. That's just one of the things you can learn by actually growing a plant, instead of just being a know it all poser.
Oh yeah, Blackvelvet is also a NARC! Enjoy!
If your soil is 8.5, your ferts at 6 will bring it down to 7.25 and that's still too high. You need your ferts to be lower, like 5, to balance out your medium to 6.25.
See how that works? BV sure doesn't.
You can only figure what your nute solution should be when you discover the natural ph of your soil and understand how nute ph affects it.
Blackvelvet never grew a plant so he has no idea that theories don't always work out in the real world. That's why they are called theories. That is the difference between academic knowledge and applied knowledge. That's just one of the things you can learn by actually growing a plant, instead of just being a know it all poser.
Oh yeah, Blackvelvet is also a NARC! Enjoy!
skylined said:
The proper answer to this question is it depends on what the ph is of your soil and it fluctuates constantly because of microbial action, additives, plant nute uptake, etc.
Flush with 7 ph distilled water. Read the ph value of the runoff. This value shows soil ph and tells you how far up or down to adjust your nute solution to counter the soil ph and bring it back into proper range.
I know that BV never grew a plant and I know that my plants get deficiencies from 6 ph and lower, and I also know that they are greenest and happiest at PH 6.5.
So you can take the advice of an actual grower or you can take the erroneous advice of a self inflated confused poser Narc.
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greenisgold
Member
Wo, wo, wo. so are you telling me that "soiless as in promix" ph should be 6.5? Please advise because I have grown a whole lot of weed in my day using soil, but this is my first promix grow. I have read that for soiless it should be what I stated?
Thanks.
PS. Please don't take out your frustrations on me because of BV.
Peace
Thanks.
PS. Please don't take out your frustrations on me because of BV.
Peace
Sorry if it looked like I was frustrated at you, I saw how it looked after I posted.
Soiless is a vague term that I still haven't got a full handle on.
What is the diff between your soil, and promix? I don't know. Is my coco soil or soiless?
I grow in straight coco with some BioBizz dry mix and kelp added, 6.5 works for me. Promix is just peat, perlite, vermiculite, lime and a wetting agent. Peat is acidic, lime is alkaline, the lime balancing the peat. This is why it is called a buffer.
When I used lime in my mix, I needed ph down to counteract. Coco is much closer to neutral than peat based mixes. Now with no lime, I need PH up to counter the natural tendency for ph to fall., due to microbial action among other factors
With my own experience, plus research, I am happy to keep my plants at 6.5. Calcium and others start locking out at 6.0. and to reinforce the point, my meter was .9 points out of calibration because I got lazy, and I checked when my moms started showing defs. When I calibrated and measure runoff, it was 5.8 and my plants were starting to look like shit. Now, with the meter calibrated, and the ph climbing slowly back up to 6.5, the recovery is instantly noticeable.
Here is a soil/soiless chart (all the charts available for soil/soiless all say the same thing) that shows phosphorus, calcium and magnesium and molybdenum all start locking before 6.0. Sulphur and Nitrogen are just about to lock. This info matches my experiences with lockout due to low (5.8) ph, showing both P and Cal defs. At 6.5, everything is available :
Peace.
Soiless is a vague term that I still haven't got a full handle on.
What is the diff between your soil, and promix? I don't know. Is my coco soil or soiless?
I grow in straight coco with some BioBizz dry mix and kelp added, 6.5 works for me. Promix is just peat, perlite, vermiculite, lime and a wetting agent. Peat is acidic, lime is alkaline, the lime balancing the peat. This is why it is called a buffer.
When I used lime in my mix, I needed ph down to counteract. Coco is much closer to neutral than peat based mixes. Now with no lime, I need PH up to counter the natural tendency for ph to fall., due to microbial action among other factors
With my own experience, plus research, I am happy to keep my plants at 6.5. Calcium and others start locking out at 6.0. and to reinforce the point, my meter was .9 points out of calibration because I got lazy, and I checked when my moms started showing defs. When I calibrated and measure runoff, it was 5.8 and my plants were starting to look like shit. Now, with the meter calibrated, and the ph climbing slowly back up to 6.5, the recovery is instantly noticeable.
Here is a soil/soiless chart (all the charts available for soil/soiless all say the same thing) that shows phosphorus, calcium and magnesium and molybdenum all start locking before 6.0. Sulphur and Nitrogen are just about to lock. This info matches my experiences with lockout due to low (5.8) ph, showing both P and Cal defs. At 6.5, everything is available :
Peace.
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greenisgold
Member
Thanks much for your in-depth post, it's much appreciated! I went back through the boards and read up on a whole bunch of threads regarding soiless and ph. There def. seems to be a lot of people stating values all over the place. gets
to be kind of confusing if ya know what I mean. Here's one of those posts. It has some good info. in it. http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=70811&page=1&pp=15&highlight=soilless+PH I'm about a month into veg and I have been adjusting ph to around 6.2. Plants look good and healthy so far. I think I will raise it just a tad to 6.4. Nothern farmer has a killer grows with that ph and promix.
Peace
to be kind of confusing if ya know what I mean. Here's one of those posts. It has some good info. in it. http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=70811&page=1&pp=15&highlight=soilless+PH I'm about a month into veg and I have been adjusting ph to around 6.2. Plants look good and healthy so far. I think I will raise it just a tad to 6.4. Nothern farmer has a killer grows with that ph and promix.
Peace
Blackvelvet
Member
You had it perfect the first time.greenisgold said:
You see, growing pot is a lot like fucking a chick. You actually have to do it to know what it is like. All your college theories just don't make up for practical experience, sad to say.
Perhaps one day you will experience one or the other......
Green, if someone tells you to use battery acid, stump remover or pepsi and chicken legs on your plants, run far, far away from that poser.
Perhaps one day you will experience one or the other......
Green, if someone tells you to use battery acid, stump remover or pepsi and chicken legs on your plants, run far, far away from that poser.
G
Guest
i like to try to keep my ph around the 5.8-6.3 mark. anywhere in between that is acceptable for me. i don't have an electronic ph meter. i've only ever used the gh dropper kit where you fill the vial half way and put 3 drops of the solution in there. i've never used a ph meter and have always had great success. i do believe that testing the ph of your water prior to watering is one of the most important parts when it comes to growing. keep the ph in a respectable range throughout and the plants will love you for it.
JackOneill
Member
I am not one to take colleges very seriously or many people who go to them cause literacy in college students is very down and most kids just get pushed through and get a piece of paper that says they know whatever is they learned when half the time that is not the case. I know much more street wise people that are way more intelligient than half the college kids coming out of our schools these days. Our country is fucked up!!!! WE pay for sub-par schooling while the rest of the known western world gets their school totally covered and it is top notch. New World ORder at work for sure. Bastards!!!!
I asked a question in a thread that got no action. I see this thread discussion is right along the same lines. I asked...
"I am using Bio Canna Bio Terra Plus as a medium. It is composed of a mix of peat mosses, tree bark and coco. It also has very little organics mixed in that are supposed to last about a week or so. This is how it comes out of the bag.
I was told to use a pH of 6.5 and treat it like soil. When the organic supplements are depleted, the medium is now as if it were inert such as just peat moss or coco. With those mediums you would use a pH of around 5.8 and it would be like hydro. So, when I start using the bottled ferts after the first week should I drop the pH to 5.8 and treat it like hydro?
I pose the question because I don't think it should be treated like soil if there are no organics in it. If they are depleted after the first week then this medium should be treated like coco or RW. What are all your thoughts. I feel like what I am thinking makes perfect sense but I don't want to screw anything up. Anybody with similar experience?"
Basically, when using a medium like pro-mix for example and you add some blood meal and bone meal to it for discussions sake. You would use a pH recommended for soil because of the organics within. After a while you notice that the plants are hungry and you need to go to bottled ferts. All the organic ferts are used up and now you just have plain pro mix. So now that you are feeding bottled ferts to plain pro mix, what is the proper pH now. Should it now be what would be used for hydro, say around 5.8. I say yes but have yet to experiment. What say you.
"I am using Bio Canna Bio Terra Plus as a medium. It is composed of a mix of peat mosses, tree bark and coco. It also has very little organics mixed in that are supposed to last about a week or so. This is how it comes out of the bag.
I was told to use a pH of 6.5 and treat it like soil. When the organic supplements are depleted, the medium is now as if it were inert such as just peat moss or coco. With those mediums you would use a pH of around 5.8 and it would be like hydro. So, when I start using the bottled ferts after the first week should I drop the pH to 5.8 and treat it like hydro?
I pose the question because I don't think it should be treated like soil if there are no organics in it. If they are depleted after the first week then this medium should be treated like coco or RW. What are all your thoughts. I feel like what I am thinking makes perfect sense but I don't want to screw anything up. Anybody with similar experience?"
Basically, when using a medium like pro-mix for example and you add some blood meal and bone meal to it for discussions sake. You would use a pH recommended for soil because of the organics within. After a while you notice that the plants are hungry and you need to go to bottled ferts. All the organic ferts are used up and now you just have plain pro mix. So now that you are feeding bottled ferts to plain pro mix, what is the proper pH now. Should it now be what would be used for hydro, say around 5.8. I say yes but have yet to experiment. What say you.
greenisgold
Member
Dr Dog said:
That's the thing. I've been growing for f-ing years now. I'm not a great grower, but I'm pretty damn good (check my gal). This is my first pro-mix grow and like stated before, there is a lot of conflicting threads on the optimal ph in regards to solless. For soil grows I kept PH at 6.5 and everything, for the most part, worked out great. I stated that northern farmer, who uses peter's of all ferts, I use to use it as well thanks to uncle ben, grows in promix and his ph going in is 6.4, but he never really checks run-off. Once in a while he would have problems later on and maybe it was because of to high a ph? Heck I don't know. And that is just one grower.
That thread I posted has some pretty good reading. mynameisstich always recommends 5.8-6-2 for soiless, give or take a .1. So I'm sticking to 6.3.
Anyone else, and thanks for the post.
greenisgold
Member
Thanks krome, and I have seen many a post regarding your incredible BH grows. It too was one of my best grows, but it was too much of a trippy high for me to keep growing.krome said:
richyrich said:
Well now I can answer my own question after locking out my plants at 5.8. I use BioCanna Bio Terra Plus. It is a blend of peat moss, tree bark and coco. It is soiless. I had to go back to 6.5 and now wait for them to recover. So, some of you may want to reconsider what has been said regarding pH. Nobody had an answer for me so I found out myself the hard way.
