how important is pHing water outdoors?

[wh1t3w1dow1]

my plants are about 40 days old from seed and growing healthy with no noticeable deficiencies or problems as far as i can tell except for some minor pest damage which i'm working on.

i've been watering with my well water from day one which has about 300ppms and a ph of 8.0 and all my plants are in FFOF. is my soil acting as a buffer for pH or are my plants just "tolerating" it and i'm risking deficiencies appearing later in my grow and a decreased yield?

anyone else with alkaline hard water not do anything? i only have 8 plants so it wouldn't be a big deal to buy a bottle of pH down but if i can get away with not doing it i'd rather not have to pH everytime i water. i plan on using earth juice products once i start feeding as well and apparently those can bring down pH quite a bit.

 

[Oakhills]

The soil should buffer the ph of the water. You can add some peat moss to lower the ph of the soil (till the peat in to a depth of 6 inches) to counteract the water ph the next time you transplant if you like.

 

[wh1t3w1dow1]

The soil should buffer the ph of the water. You can add some peat moss to lower the ph of the soil (till the peat in to a depth of 6 inches) to counteract the water ph the next time you transplant if you like.

thanks man. how much peat moss do you think would be a good ratio/percentage to add to my final pots? (i'm probably going to transplant into straight FFOF again for their final transplant into 20gal smart pots)

also should i add anything else to balance out the peat moss a little, like worm castings and extra perlite or is it probably not a big deal?

 

[FoothillFarming]

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[corky1968]

It would not hurt to drop the pH to 7.

Just to be on the safe side.

Nutrients are more available with a neutral or slightly acidic pH.

 

[EastBayGrower]

yeah i would definitely say its less of an issue than with indoors, mainly because the larger the soil container the easier it is for the microbes to adjust and compensate for bad ph'd water (like the 8.5+ ph we have in Bay area), I personally have grown without ph'ing (and actually adding pro-tekt which raised it more) outdoors, but NOW prefer to ph my tap water to ~6 before feeding, just to make everything more available to the plant, no reason to make the microbes work harder when i can throw a tbls of citric acid in a 50gal and boom.. 6.5ph...

i bet you might not actually get any deficiencies or issues from the un'ph'd water you just wont get the yields and peak production imo, they do say that some stress brings out increases terpine profiles so who fucking knows LOL ... im rambling now... too high..

 

[stinky]

What about chlorine? Does that not effect the plants? I would love to just spray down the soil with my garden hose but I don't even want to drink that tap water. I love my plants like I love myself..... wait that sounded wrong.

 

[blue_tick]

if you have microbes you don't want chlorine. it will kill the goodies you need. let sit for 24 hrs before use with air stone


peace

 

[Noonin NorCal]

they have charcoal filters for your hose, that take out salts/chlorine and what not.

 

[Slipnot]

Well if you look chlorine it is in the list of 16 essetial elements for plant growth there fore i would not even worry about water filters unless your growing in Hydro and want to tghten your ppm levels etc
Contrary to popular belief tap water minerals are deemed useless to plants there in to large of molecule state for plant to absorb if a person relied on the most abundant mineral in tap water calcium to feed there plants one would soon see major def

 

[idiit]

well water. no chlorine. chlorine does kill microbes as does salt based ferts.


I use a wide range ph test kit available at pet stores or internet for outdoor fish ponds.


what you think is 8 ph might not be 8 ph i you are using the typical narrow range ph test kits.


I would adjust down after using the wide range ph test kit. I use white vinegar. 6.5 is optimum imo.


water ph is top of the list imo and important to get it right.

 

[Easy7]

Chlorine is an element. Fish emulsions have chlorine and there is no way it's sterile. It's just one of many things you don't want too much if and to get out of balance. Same with ph, you don't want to head into one direction for too long.