lets us ( pray ) I mean let us talk about pH

[habeeb]

sometimes I check Ph, sometimes not

I believe I lean more toward curiosity then anything when checking my Ph, as I like to know everything I can about something..

I once tested all my nutes ph, as someone was asking and I didn't know one ingredient , so I got all crazy and pulled out the ph meter and went to town

perfectionism is a bitch to work with.. " quit hitting yourself, quit hitting yourself"

 

[NUG-JUG]

Wow.......
Did the cats in some tucked away spot in Afghanistan growing it for hundreds of years have a ph meter?

Yea those 15 foot tall Mazar I Sharif plants chillin in freezing temps could care less about PH...

 

[Dignan]

Dig, sent you a visitor message, cant do anything until I have fifty... Thanks for the offer, would you be willing to post any (if you have any) pH related additives to this thread?

Since you don't have PMs I'll probably just post my soil mix etc to this thread over the weekend.

 

[blwd67]

thank you

 

[Scrogerman]

the party line here in the organics forum is to add dolomite lime to your soil as a buffer (and for other good reasons), and i agree with it, but given that it will only raise pH and not lower it, this imo makes it all the more important to make sure the water you are using has a pH below 7 - then you know that the pH will sweep from where you put it back up to 7, and passing thorough the optimum absorbtion pH for most nutrients in the process.

but as long as whatever you are doing is working , then thats great

VG

Hey Buddy! Great Advice BTW, is this true of shop & garden centre soils, like Allmix & J A Bowers or John Innes etc that come pre-limed, today im buying some finishing soil, to flower off my Autos that are about 10 days into bloom. Im going for Allmix or the JAB but do i need to ammend with more Lime(Dol) or is there enough in it already? Ive read its bad to Add more if the soil has already been treated with a Lime etc. The Starting PH of the JAB is 5.5-6.0 & its a reduced peat based formula, planrts seem to like it, but ive been wondering about the lime issue lately? Ill get some Canna Citric too
That sounds like a hydroponic inspired formula you use with your soils there man? I know it works great for you & im pretty sure we are in the same catchment area for our high Alk Tap! Mine is Over 8.4, even if my soil was well buffered i still dont fancy feeding this to my plants.
Cheers Mate!

I just wanted to add, that years of old, Grandma & our Ancestors never had water companys throwing all sorts of crap in our drinking water either, Nor were the high counts of Acid Rains from industrilisation messing with rain water. Things are different very different! The local water company has messed with our drinking water in the last 12 months, it used to have a PH of 7.8/9 but now its 8.4+, its never been that high around here ever! They gotta keep them EEC directives happy!

 

[guest2012y]

I just wanted to add, that years of old, Grandma & our Ancestors never had water companys throwing all sorts of crap in our drinking water either, Nor were the high counts of Acid Rains from industrilisation messing with rain water. Things are different very different! The local water company has messed with our drinking water in the last 12 months, it used to have a PH of 7.8/9 but now its 8.4+, its never been that high around here ever! They gotta keep them EEC directives happy!

I often forget about people in Verdant's situation because I don't live where the water is fucked up.
I feel empathy for the people that have a bunch of nit-wits down at the city water facility estimating the amount of water treatments tablets (chlorine) to add to the tank.
"Cleetus put in 500 a days or so ago....so I"ma gonna' put in a bitz more taday"
That must be a bummer,I'm on clean rain and well water.

 

[VerdantGreen]

truth is capt. i could probably use rainwater most of the time, but my plants seem to do great on the citric acid and hard tap water - so who am i to argue ?

VG

 

[guest2012y]

truth is capt. i could probably use rainwater most of the time, but my plants seem to do great on the citric acid and hard tap water - so who am i to argue ?

VG

I've used citric acid for years before I went without. Plants did fine using it...plants doing fine without it.
That's some hard-asss water though.

 

[blwd67]

VG, are you saying your hard water is a bonus and is doing good things? Is there a point, I wonder, where too hard is too much? I mean where nutrient burn or the organic equivilent can occur, or does it just affect your pH even more?

My pH is good but I ave pretty hard water. I look at this as a relatvely good thing as I shouldnt have to add to much in the way of calcium.

 

[DARC MIND]

yea capt. clean water is a big issue, not just tap but our ground water too is know being impacted as well, in a huge way.
http://gaslandthemovie.com/about-the-film
i caught this film on hbo, sundance or pbs. its about the drilling practices (fracking) ther doing for natural gas, effecting our ground water, many americans health and the environment. ive seen a film about the same subject on th drilling practices of oil and its impact but what it looks like is those companies our know using similar methods for natural gas & marketing as a green and sustainable.
some may want to check it out sometime
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/613/index.html

 

[VerdantGreen]

VG, are you saying your hard water is a bonus and is doing good things? Is there a point, I wonder, where too hard is too much? I mean where nutrient burn or the organic equivilent can occur, or does it just affect your pH even more?

My pH is good but I ave pretty hard water. I look at this as a relatvely good thing as I shouldnt have to add to much in the way of calcium.

possibly a benefit of having plenty of cal and mag in the water, ive never seen a def. of either in my grows and i do grow some strains that are supposed to be susceptable, like powerplant. its hard to quantify these things and know for sure, but as i say my plants seem ultra happy the way i do things, and it seems to work for all the new strains i grow - so im not in a hurry to fix something that aint broke

VG

 

[blwd67]

No deficiency and prolonged good results is all the qualification I need
thanks
Good Growin

 

[guest2012y]

When you say top soil do you mean that stuff I buy for my flower beds when I need to build it up a bit? What all kinds of stuff?

I mean natural undisturbed topsoil from the local forest on my property. The things that I do as far as "stuff" I wouldn't recommend here because I push the boundaries with things just to find the tolerance of the plants,soil,and amendments. I fuck shit up on purpose in order to test accepted truths I may have doubts about. I have found balance in organic soil management being skeptical.

 

[SecretGardener]

Ok so this post challenged me to stop assuming and get an actual test of my tap water. I did and here are the results.

They said the water is very soft. My question to ya'll is that I should only need to bubble out the chlorine and thats all? When I make tea's out of it the pH goes down to like 6.8. So basically, unless something goes unbalanced in my soil I shouldn't have to check pH?

Also, in the test it gives the ppm for Sodium. Is that the same thing as TDS or total disolved salts?

 

[Albertine]

Albertine- So you only used it when you effed up with to much silica? The way I understand it is if you are good from the get go (soil mix) you should be relatively good for the durration, provided your water isnt wicked fucked. If, though, I were to choose a nutrient with a very high or low pH then ammending that with an opposite would help? Or is sticking to somewhat acidic solutions and just having dolamite in the mix a better way to go.

I'm the last person here to get advice from. I have problems staying above 6, for reasons that could be unrelated to what I'm using - i.e. root aphids creating a lot of dead decomposing matter that would be more acid, I don't know. I do know it all would be more disastrous if I hadn't been able to get some input from here.

Read about water alkalinity - different that the ph - it is about the mineral content of the water and it's buffering capacity. I believe this to be the reason folks add cal mag, and why Verdant Green gets better results with tap.

http://www.umass.edu/umext/floriculture/fact_sheets/greenhouse_management/waterph.html

 

[blwd67]

Albertine, I will look into that, I was wondering what that little square on my test strip ment. Mine is in the 'Ideal' range. For a hot tub anyway haha

Capt, thanks for the clarification, I have some woods also but I think I'll wait a bit until I start adding it directly to my soil mix. Some in my compost would probably be good though. Also I am the same way; I will fuck things up to just see what can happen and what my parameters are. At this point I dont really know anything so fuckin shit up is probably not cool

 

[Dignan]

Since you don't have PMs I'll probably just post my soil mix etc to this thread over the weekend.

(50%) organic potting soil
(30%) worm castings and/or compost
(20%) perlite

To every 10 gallons of soil i add:

1 C greensand
1 C Peace of Mind 5-5-5
1/2 C kelp meal
1/2 C blood meal
1/2 C bone meal
1/2 C dolomite lime
1/2 C oyster shells
1/2 C gypsum
1/2 C soft rock phosphate

Then molasses, soluble kelp and fish hydrolysate in very light amounts, every watering, except for the first 2 weeks of flowering when I give a couple full strength doses of the fish to encourage some stretching (my plants don't get much veg time).

And a really simple compost tea, not a nutrient tea, at each transplant and then about every 3 weeks. Worm castings, molasses, fish hydrolysate, kelp and yucca powder aerated for 24-36 hours depending on brewing temps.

*Note that I don't think I've ever grown with the same soil mix, fertilizer mixes, watering regimen or compost tea recipes twice, nor do I really measure the "cups" and such. I eyeball them all. To me, for something powdered, a handful is about 1/2 cup. So don't feel like you have to stick to the above soil mix precisely... I switch it up all the time and still have no pH problems.

 

[blwd67]

dude, first off great fuckin pic. Like textbook example of great trees. In twenty years when I am teaching the basic cannabis cultivation course at the local college (believe it, its gonna happen some day) I am going to use that picture. It almost looks like its computer enhanced haha.

But thanks for sharing your mix and nute regime. Like you said, you never use the same exact formula from one grow to the next, but I am looking for ideas and things that work for other people so I can get as much info as possible and create my own personal mix. I have been gardening for a while (not hemp) so I understand the growth (pun intended) each gardener experiences as time goes on.

Good Growin

 

[Dignan]

Thank you.

Half of it is genetics; the other half is staying out of the plants' way.

And you have a huge head start if you're an avid organic gardener. Despite people saying it's way different growing in 3-gallon containers vs. outdoors, the underlying principles are the same and if you can grow great veggies, you can grow great cannabis.

peace-

Dig

 

[SecretGardener]

(50%) organic potting soil
(30%) worm castings and/or compost
(20%) perlite

I made a mix exactly like this and it seemed to hold too much water with the 30% EWC and only 20% perlite. I guess it matters what you use as your "organic potting soil" and how much perlite it has. I'm not criticizing you're mix at all, just learning still and trying to understand if what I experienced with this recipe is normal or did I screw something up