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Something is Killing my Plants Bugs? Mold?

TanzanianMagic

Well-known member
Veteran
Damn, I wish I had thought of measuring my runoff before I poured it out. Darn, darn.

I will do a runoff test ASAP.

I have a BlueLab combo meter that reads EC but I have never used that feature. I use the pH feature only. I think the meter has an EC5 and EC7 (whatever that means). Should I measure my tap water?

Also, I got these meters free with a purchase. I never used the pH wand but the water meter works OK. I don't use it because it seems like it would fuck up the roots sticking it in the dirt like that. However, I made an exception today.

I will do a real runoff test after dinner. As for the soil slurry test, I'll need to grab a test kit.

Thanks again
You're complicating things.

Soil pH meters are not necessarily reliable and depend on moist soil. You can infer that the pH is too low from the fact that a mobile nutrient is being locked out.

The pH is too low for all the plants. In the future, I'd add a tablespoon of magnesium lime or maerl per gallon of medium, and 20% of worm castings.

The thing to do now is to raise the pH of your feed to over 7.0 for a couple of feeds like 7.5, then to 7.0.

Reduce the nutrient concentration. At the vegging stage and when not all of the medium has been colonized by roots yet, the EC of water plus nutrients should be 1.0 EC max (500PPM on the 500 scale). The lower nutrient concentration does all kinds of good things, including encouraging the plant to feed itself by extending it's root system.

The plants with the undeveloped root system should get some extra phosphorus, which really stimulates root growth.

Watering schedule: you should water the plants slowly and thoroughly, then not water again until the top of the soil is dry before the lights go on in the morning. That takes care of all variables that could affect individual plants, growrooms or seasons.
 
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aqualungs

Active member
Use the Bluelab to test soil pH by doing a slurry test. Take some soil, add distilled water. Mix it around and let it sit for a bit. Then test the pH of the water. It's a better way to test it than those ridiculously unreliable 3 in 1 meters you have there.

And are those pots still that dry or have you watered them good yet?
I concur, test the run off and do a slurry test, throw those meters away lol.

I thought to mention run-off test after my precious message but just made it back and the crew was on too of it I see.

Those plants are big enough that they can handle if you water them thoroughly as there are still dry spots. The whole medium will be saturated after a feeding. Just leave them for 5-7 days after or until they need more.
 

Ringodoggie

Well-known member
I'll have to do the tests tomorrow but just FYI, these plants have never had any nutes or CalMag or anything ever. Just plain water from seed until now. No nutes. Just plain water.

I'll let you know how the tests run, tomorrow.

Again, thanks for the help.
 

Ringodoggie

Well-known member
OK, Yoda(s). LOL You have put me on the path and opened the door. Now, I must walk through the door. LOL

Damn, I can't believe I focked this up. I was way over-using the pH down. I don't know what I was thinking. I was adding 15 drops per gallon. I never used more than 3 or 4 in the past.

My tap water started coming in at 7.8 and 8.0. I calibrated my meters over and over and I used different meters and everything but it was clear the pH was in the 8 range. I just over compensated. Duh.

The runoff test: I took my 7.8 tap water (sitting in jugs for 24 hrs) and pH downed it to 7.0. I poured it through the #1 pot and it came out about 6.1.

The slurry test was worse. I did a 50/50 mix of soil and distilled water, shook it up real well and after sitting for a couple hours, it measured 5.9 pH.

OK, here is the situation. 4 of the plants are in #7 (5 gal) pots and that's is where they plan to stay for life. The other 4 plants are in #1 pots and will soon be transplanted to #7 pots.

All plants are about 15 days from sprouting. None of the plants have ever been fed any nutrients.

The only thing I have in my arsenal is some dolomite lime. I'll toss a couple handfuls in the transplants when I do them. A little too late for the #7 pots.

I'll lay off the pH down for a while and water unaltered at about 7.8pH. Is that too high? pH shock?

Otherwise, flushing and waiting is on the list of treatment.

Thanks again gang for helping me through this. Looking back, it is so obvious. I guess I just needed someone to pinch me. LOL

Thanks again
 
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I Care

Well-known member
I would flush the heck out of them with the shower. If you’re not running off your PH adjusted water every time you water then you’re stacking acid in the soil. There’s obviously enough PH down in there that you’re dealing with like a 5.5 situation which will not be good when they’re dry.

When I flush I just shower the things in shower or tub to the point I start thinking that any more of this will be unreasonable.

If you want to keep this simple, you want to do this as if your soil growing hydro style. It’s just the easiest way that works when you have daily access to your grow space.
 

PadawanWarrior

Well-known member
OK, Yoda(s). LOL You have put me on the path and opened the door. Now, I must walk through the door. LOL

Damn, I can't believe I fucked this up. I was way over-using the pH down. I don't know what I was thinking. I was adding 15 drops per gallon. I never used more than 3 or 4 in the past.

My tap water started coming in at 7.8 and 8.0. I calibrated my meters over and over and I used different meters and everything but it was clear the pH was in the 8 range. I just over compensated. Duh.

The runoff test: I took my 7.8 tap water (sitting in jugs for 24 hrs) and pH downed it to 7.0. I poured it through the #1 pot and it came out about 6.1.

The slurry test was worse. I did a 50/50 mix of soil and distilled water, shook it up real well and after sitting for a couple hours, it measured 5.9 pH.

OK, here is the situation. 4 of the plants are in #7 (5 gal) pots and that's is where they plan to stay for life. The other 4 plants are in #1 pots and will soon be transplanted to #7 pots.

All plants are about 15 days from sprouting. None of the plants have ever been fed any nutrients.

The only thing I have in my arsenal is some dolomite lime. I'll toss a couple handfuls in the transplants when I do them. A little too late for the #7 pots.

I'll lay off the pH down for a while and water unaltered at about 7.8pH. Is that too high? pH shock?

Otherwise, flushing and waiting is on the list of treatment.

Thanks again gang for helping me through this. Looking back, it is so obvious. I guess I just needed someone to pinch me. LOL

Thanks again
130m7w.jpg
 

HempKat

Just A Simple Old Dirt Farmer
Veteran
Well it sounds like you have everything potentially going in the right direction but i just wanted to make some observations. Besed on some of the things you said over the course of all your posts. I will add first though thst I've never worked with autos and so Isome of what I say might be off. The main concern I have about working with autos is that concern you brought up about transplanting. However I noticed at least one person reponding to you said transplanting autos shouldn't be a problem. This does make sense since autos still grow on roughly the same time frame they just don't require that you switch the lights to a different on/off schedule to flower since the auto means they auto flower because they were breed for growing places where the light scheduleis different then what non autos require. other then that, in theory they should behave like any other plant, meaning you start them out in small pots and then transplant to larger pot when it seems like they're becoming root bound (needing waterings daily).

Okay the first concern i had from reading the entire thread is that you're using Fox Farm Happy Frog. I get that you've used that product for a long time and had many successes over the years but unfortunately the quality of thoose prefertalized organic mixes is that they can change over time at the point of manufacturing/packaging. This matches up with that I've seen many people reporting issues working with those Fox Farms soils and i've noticed most of the negative reports were with the Happy Frog in particular. I also have never used those products because those prepackaged prefertalized soils are alot more expensive especially if you have to have them shipped in. You should be able to find cheaper options that work well at your local hardware stores or garden centers.

Another thing is it sounded like you were using additional nutrients almost immediately. I'm guessing you figured that since they were also Fox Farm they should work well with Fox Farm soil which is likely true. There is just one problem though, A product such as Happy Frog already has nutrients in it so for a period of time (first few weeks anyway) you shouldn't need to add much to the soil other then water. Inother words wait until the plant is showing signs it's not getting enough nutrients before you add nutrients from a bottle regardless of who made it (keeping in mind this is with regards to prefertalized soils). Even autos go thru a period of veg and your first sign of needing to add nutrients should be during the veg period and almost always show as a nitrogen deficiency since phosphorous and potassium come more into play during flower. That's why veg ferts are nitrogen rich while flower ferts are more potassium an phosphorous rich. So if you're in the veg stage and feeding just water then you shouldn't need additional nutrients until you see the plant with a light green (almost lime color) rather then a healthy darker green color. which is almost always a clear sign of nitrogen deficiency (or it could be a sign of nitrogen being locked out but if your ph is right that shouldn't be happening). That's when you start adding your veg fert to the waterings. Then when it switches to flower keep on with the veg fert for a week or two thn switch over to your flowering ferts.

Now the thing that caught my attention the most was that you were only ph testing your water before going into the soil. There is nothing wrong with that but it's only half the story. I always test before watering and then test the run off because the ph going in isn't necessarily going to be the ph that exists in the soil. So you really need to test it going in and coming out and adjust according to what the run off reads as. Especially with a prefertalized soil mix because what is in the soil is likely to change the ph of what is going in. Therefore you ph going in might need to be a bit on the high side to have the plant see that 6.5-6.8 ranger recommended for soil because what's in the soil will lower it to that. If you always work with the same soil and the same source of water once you get it right you should be able to get away with not testing the ph as much but i say to keep on testing going in and coming out because things can and do change over time. If you always test then you can get on top of those changes quicker rather then waiting until you see problems.

Another thing I noticed and so did others was the pot size issue. I get that you were concerned about harming the roots during transplant but as long as you do it carefully and not until the plant is showing signs of becoming root bound (needing water daily) then the roots should be virtually unharmed. Healthy roots are a bit hardier then that. In fact many people when they transplant will scorw the rootball with a utility knife to encourage the roots to spread out more. When you start off in a big pot like that, planning for it to be the only pot for the plant's life time it makes watering trickier and if you're not careful you can easily create a nutrient build up in the area of the soil the roots haven't reached yet, such that when they get there they're hit almost immediately with a toxicity issue causing lockout. This can be difficult to navigate because it often looks like a deficiency at first and if you believe the nutrient levels in the soil is fine it can take a while to recognize you have a toxicity issue. When that happens the problem usually gets compunded because it reads first as a deficiency which causes most people to add even more nutrients. You're much better off starting in a small pot at first and the transplant to bigger pots as the plant grows. I realize transplanting can be a hassle and virtually all of us at one time or another try to simplify things by starting off in bigger pots. What has always worked best for me is to start the seedlings in a small pot, then transplant to a medium pot and then just as flowering starts transplant to the pot you want to finish in. it sounds like you were doing just that by one of your posts but then you changed because of your concern over how the autos would react and that's when it sounded like you started to have problems. Now I'm not saying you can't start in the same pot you plan to finish in but it makes life a whole lot tricker because you have to worry about not watering too much in the early stages of growth. I mean if you start in a 5 gallon pot with a seedling and water until yo get run off you can judge watering by the weght of the pot because it will take about a week for that big pot to dry out and at best that means your plant is getting less nutrients then it should whether it's getting it from the soil or an added nutrient. plus since most of that weight in the later part of the week will be in the outer areas of the pot where the roots haven't reached yet the root system will likely be stressed while it waits for the next watering. Starting small and transplanting to big eliminates that.

Another thing is that you were growing multiple strains that were new to you. Being new that means you were not familiar with their needs. Not all strains have the same requirements which is likely why you had that one plant that was doing worse then the others. I understand wanting a variety and I usually grw multiple strains too butif you're not familiar with each plant's needs it complicates diagnosing problems when they occur. I think that played a role in the troubles you had sorting things out.

Yet another issue I noticed was how you reported things in this thread, you revealed bits and pieces of info and there was one piece of info I don't recall seeing (but I might have missed it) which was reporting your humidity levels. The besst thing to do when turning to a thread like this for help is to report as many details as you can such as what lights are used, what stage of growth, what strain, what medium, what fertalizer what is the ph going in and coming out, what temps, what's the ventilation rate, what is the air flow/circulation like, what is the relative humidity, and anything else that might be specific to your grow. The more detail you give in your first post the better your chances that someone might spot the most likely issue sooner. Rather then revealing things here and there over time. Absent of details people will make certain assuptions based on their own experiences, especially if you say something like, "I've been growing this way for years and never had this problem" That implies you are fairly experienced and people will likely assume things like, "If he's been growing for years he knows how to maintain a correctlly dialed in grow room." For a good way into this thread I thought your problem had to do with your environment being off because you kept thinking it was some sort of pests or mold that was your problem. All of which can be virtually eliminated if the temp, humidity and air exchange of your grow space is right. It wasn't until you finally mentioned you only ph tested the water going in that your problems really came into focus. And sure enough, once you started testing your run off lo and behold you were running low on the ph inside the soil for a soil grow. At 6.1ph you had phosphorus, calcium and magnesium locked out and nitrogen and potassium were on the verge of being locked out. All of which would contribute to the signs you were seeing. If I had participatd in this thread from the start one of the first things I would have wanted to know is if you were watering until you had run off and what the ph of the run off was. Had that information been out there sooner someone might have solved your problem sooner saving you much grief and frustration. Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying these things to be harsh or anything, we all make mistakes at times. I'm just trying to point out the things I noticed over the course of this thread that might have prevented people from understanding your problems correcctly sooner.

One final thing one must be careful when seeking help this way. Most everyone that chimes in here means well and is genuinely trying to heip but not all people here are equal in knowledge. some people get led to believe all sorts of crazy things on these forums and as long as their grows work well they're likely to believe the things they tell you are true and correct. Unfortunately that can lead to someone desperately trying everything they are told in an effort to save their grow and sometimes that just ends up making things worse if you try the wrong things. I won't call anyone out but there were a couple of suggestions made that really had me scratching my head and wondering what the hell was that person thinking. There are only a handful of people that respond to these threads, compared to the community as a whole and most of them are pretty good about pinpointing problems and giving good advice. So I would encourage you to keep looking at these help threads to identify for your self who seems to be the more reliable sources. Again I'm not going to name names but you had several good people helping you. Just so you know, the reason I'm not mentioning names of who gave good advice or bad is because people tend to be very sensitive about the quality of the advice they give and i don't want to inadvertantly hurt anyone's feelings by saying their advice was bad or by not including them in whose advice was good. Also I'm just a simple old dirt farmer and while I've had good success and grown some good plants, I'm no expert, een I make mistakes from time to time. Although when it comes to giving advice in these threads, the more info you can give up front the eassier it will be for people to help and the happier everyone will be in the end, you included.
 

Ringodoggie

Well-known member
Thanks for the long write @HempKat and spot on. Since I moved from Ohio to SoCal, my grow space went from about 1400 SF of Hepa filtered, humidified, cooled, perfect air and temps with flowering rooms and veg rooms and cloning rooms and even a tiny lounge with black lights and Dead posters where I could enjoy the fruits of my labor all alone. LOL I lived in the same house for 30 years and wow, I had it dialed in. Never grew an auto before. Always grew from clones. Grew the same strain of Mexi Sativa that I actually brought back from Mexico for about 25 of those years and then finally bought my first commercial seed in about 2003. Barney's Farm LSD. And, I got a freebie of World of Seeds Afghan Indica.

Those 2 were about all I grew for about a decade. LOL Always cloned. I had 1 seed that I grew and cloned and cloned and cloned for almost 10 years...same seed/linage. LOL Buying commercial seeds was still super paranoia for me even in 2003

OK, fast forward to now. I love SoCal but Fuck. No room. My entire condo is 1400 SF. LOL Same as my grow rooms back home. LOL Damn. And, almost no place to grow 12/12. I have 2 tiny grow tents in my Living Room. LOL So, I started growing autos. And, a bunch of different strains. Mostly because of freebies. And, I am growing outside at the same time. Mostly photo period strains outdoors.

Still, it's been a total new learning curve for me. Autos. Different water. Different everything.

And, as for Happy Frog.... I notice about 6 or 8 months ago, the Frog I bought was very different than it has been for all the years I have used it. It was much fluffier and appeared to have more peat. It was not nearly as compact and it had a different smell. I made my own soil for most of my 50 years. I guess I just got caught up in the convenience and bullshit marketing. I have been thinking about changing to another pre-made or going back to making my own.

I did learn some things about autos....

So, you can't transplant autos. Bullshit number 1. LOL I have done both, start in #7 and start in solo cups and transplant twice to get to #7. I didn't have any issues either way.

Auto bullshit number 2.... you can't clone autos. I also cloned my autos and reversed them for pollen. Worked awesome.

Autos are not too bad. It sucks that you have to start from seed every time because you never know what your going to get from a seed. With clones, it's always consistent.

And, yield is generally less with an auto (IME)

Still, I am stuck with what I have until I can buy a house so........ autoflowering it is. LOL

Thanks again for the long write.

One thing you missed on.... I never add nutes to any seedling or clone until they are about 3 weeks old. All these plants we are talking about have never had anything but pH'd water since the beginning. And (like you said) I usually wait until I see a tiny bit of nitrogen need before I start fertilizing. That's usually about week 3 or 4, depending on the strain.

So, here we are.......

The water I plan to use is about a pH 7.8. Do you think that is too high?

I'll keep measuring the runoff.

Everything is wet and I am wondering if I should flush the #1 pots again today or if I should let them dry out first.

I'll post some updated pics later today.

And, again..... thank you
 

HempKat

Just A Simple Old Dirt Farmer
Veteran
The main reason i pass on autos myself is the yield issue, that's typically the Ruderallis in it that gives it the auto quality. The other reason is that Ruderallis tends to be less potent, now I imagine that's been improved upon by crossing it with other strains but my view was why even bother when i could grow non auto strains and not have to worry about it.

As for the water, well normally i would say 7.8 ph is too high but as I said before (at least I think I did) it's not the ph of the water going in that matters, it's the ph coming out. It sounds like, from what you said in one of your more recent posts that when you tested the drainage t was coming out 6.1 ph. So if you put in 6.5 ph water then that means something in the soil is lowering it to 6.1. Still I wouldn'just assume that to mean you need to reduce reduce the 7.8 ph to 6.9 ph (so that the drainage ends up being 6.5 ph). In the end that might be the right thing to do but I would want to test it out if it were me doing it. What you might try if you don't want to risk your plants is filling an empty pot with your soil and water it to drainage and then test that to determine how much if any you need to adjust.

As for the feeding routine I apologize if I did miss something, I have to admit I did kind of skim thru a lot of the earlier posts because I figured after 4 pages of help you had probably got the problem solved. If you are waiting until about a month in before you're adding nutes, that sounds about right for pre-fertalized soil.

As for the Happy Frog, I've seen a lot of people complain about the Fox Farm soil products over the years not just Happy Frog but some of the others too. Although I probably saw more complaints about Happy Frog then the others. Like i said I never tried the soil mixes from Fox Farm, where I live there aren't any grow shops that carry that product close to me and so i would have had to have it shipped and between the price and what the shipping would be it just didn't make sense. I'm not going to tell you that you should stop using it but if you were comfortable making up your own soil mix and that worked well for you I would encourage you to go back to that. I'm a big believer in the old saying, "If it's not broke then don't fix it. Now I have tried Fox Farm nutrients but what i found with them is that they needed a lot more ph adjusting then I would like. I've used other brans like Botanicare Pure Blend Pro that I was much happier with. I'm not saying you should switch to that I'm just saying it was easier for me to work with ph wise. Ultimately each grower has to figure out for themselves what is best for their needs. Just be careful, there are all sorts of products on the market making all sorts of great promises about yields but most of them are just trying to justify really high price points.

As for the really wet pots, I would say let them dry out more, cannabis doesn't really like to be in very wet soil for long periods. Anyway good luck going forward, hopefully you're on the right track now and things will be better from here on out?
 

Ringodoggie

Well-known member
Here are a few updated pics. The one Sour Diesel is still doing poorly. I flushed it really a lot yesterday. The others are not doing too badly. I was planning to take 4 clones from the healthy Sour Diesel and reverse it for pollen but I am not so sure right now.

The SD is the tall stretchy one in the 4th pic. Perfect for clones.
 

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Ringodoggie

Well-known member
Here are some updated pics on the 4 of the strains I crossed. Really just wanted to make sure they were viable seeds as I gave some away and wanted to make sure they were OK before giving them out. They seem to be doing OK in spite of my pH issue. These should be easier to recover since they are still in #1 pots. I'll go to #7 pots in another week or so.

The Sour Apples is flowering already at only 17 days from sprout. LOL The Cookies are a little wilted but I'm pretty sure that's from over watering, not under.
 

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HempKat

Just A Simple Old Dirt Farmer
Veteran
If picture number 4 is the SD that's doing badly then I'd say it doesn't look too bad off and it has a decent chance of getting better. I don't mean to insult you if you already know this but in case you don't, for most of the problems that we see in the plants, the areas that get damaged usually stay damaged so it's the new growth you want to look at to judge if it's getting better. Actually all of the ones in these pics, except for one don't look too bad and should get better if you get things under control and don't have any other issues. The only one that looks iffy to me is the one in picture 5 but even there, you might loose the really bad looking leaves but the rest of the plant has a fair chance of pulling thru if things are under control now.

BTW I meant to say something earlier but I was short on time because i had errands to run. But that's really too bad you lost the grow setup you used to have, the way you described it sounded pretty nice, a real Stoner's cave if you will. :biggrin: It really sucks when circumstances force you to change locations, especially if where you were was a place you've been at a long time and well adapted things to your needs as it sounds like you did. As if that's wasn't bad enough though it's especially tough in a state like California where everything is much more expensive then most of the rest of the country.

I also wanted to say that I get you on working mainly from clones, cloning is the way to go if you have the space for vegging and keeping Moms. Of course from time to time you have to do things from seed but once you find something worth keeping cloning can really simplify things and if you time things right can really help you to maximize the number of indoor grows you can do in a year.
 

Ringodoggie

Well-known member
What do you folks think about using RO water from now on to combat the fact that my tap water is 8.0 pH?

Right now, I am watering with plain water and it is average about 7.9 to 8.0 pH. Runoff is still about 6.5 but rising so I assume the acid issue is waning so I can't keep using pH8 water. However, if I start using pH down again, I will likely revive the acid issue.

I have seen some countertop RO units that are only a few hundred dollars.

This sux. I sit on the biggest aquifier in the world with the best well water and the city fucks it up with chemicals and crap.

Anyone have experience with countertop RO water systems?
 

Ringodoggie

Well-known member
I just used my Bluelab Combo Meter to measure the ppm/EC in my tap water. I have never used this function because I have never had any issues wit water in the past so I am clueless on what it all means. Anything look bad?

EC -0.4
CF - 4
PPM 700 - 250
PPM 500 - 180
Temp - 79F
pH - 8.1
 

Ringodoggie

Well-known member
This seems a little odd....

I am getting ready to cut some clones to reverse and, using my standard method, I took some Happy Frog, right out of a freshly opened bag and filled my 20 oz cloning cups.

I spray the cups with regular water until the cups drain through and then I let them sit in it to absorb it for a while. The pH was 8 going in. I don't usually measure runoff but this time I did and it was 5.5.

This is brand new, just opened Happy Frog.

Should the runoff of new soil be 5.5pH?
 

HempKat

Just A Simple Old Dirt Farmer
Veteran
What do you folks think about using RO water from now on to combat the fact that my tap water is 8.0 pH?

Right now, I am watering with plain water and it is average about 7.9 to 8.0 pH. Runoff is still about 6.5 but rising so I assume the acid issue is waning so I can't keep using pH8 water. However, if I start using pH down again, I will likely revive the acid issue.

I have seen some countertop RO units that are only a few hundred dollars.

This sux. I sit on the biggest aquifier in the world with the best well water and the city fucks it up with chemicals and crap.

Anyone have experience with countertop RO water systems?
I don't have any experience wih RO water so I can't really say for sure if that's a good idea, it might be I know I've seen lots of people on here say they use RO water. I could be wrong but I have a nagging feeling that somewhere aslong the way someone said that if you use RO water you have to do some other things to it. So if you want to go that route (especially if your cheapest option is still a few hundred) then I'd recommend you do your due diligence research wise before you move ahead on it. I could be wrong though there could just as easily be no extra steps you have to take?

Before you go that far though couldn't you try just lowering the ph to say 7.5 or 7.6? Maybe if you just lower it a little it will start at 6.3 but then rise up to 6.5?

Yeh it sucks what the city can do to a water supply to make it safe, fortunately I don't have that problem I have my own well so the only thing in my water is just what's there naturally and whatever I might add to it.
 

HempKat

Just A Simple Old Dirt Farmer
Veteran
I just used my Bluelab Combo Meter to measure the ppm/EC in my tap water. I have never used this function because I have never had any issues wit water in the past so I am clueless on what it all means. Anything look bad?

EC -0.4
CF - 4
PPM 700 - 250
PPM 500 - 180
Temp - 79F
pH - 8.1
Yeah the PH looks bad to me :biggrin: Sorry about the other measurements, i'm like you in that I have now experience with those other measurements. The onlything I would point out is that you have two different parts per million (PPM) measurements so i'm guessing those two measurements are looking at two different things. So if that's th case maybe the manual that came with your Bluelab combo meter might shed some light on what those numbers are telling you.
 

HempKat

Just A Simple Old Dirt Farmer
Veteran
This seems a little odd....

I am getting ready to cut some clones to reverse and, using my standard method, I took some Happy Frog, right out of a freshly opened bag and filled my 20 oz cloning cups.

I spray the cups with regular water until the cups drain through and then I let them sit in it to absorb it for a while. The pH was 8 going in. I don't usually measure runoff but this time I did and it was 5.5.

This is brand new, just opened Happy Frog.

Should the runoff of new soil be 5.5pH?
I would say no, I've never used Happy Frog so I can't say for sure that's wrong but good soil for cannabis which Fox Farms should be since it's sold mainly to cannabis growers should be measuring much closer to the ideal range of 6.3 - 6.8 in my humble opinion. I don't know the specific things they add to it, just that it's supposed to be all organic and organic stuff I would think wouldn't change the ph that much that quickly (right out of the bag.) That suggests to me that the organics in that soil mix is already broken down such that it's immediately available. That's just speculation on my part though. When you add raw orgamics it usually takes more time to influence the middle of the pot that much because itt has to be btoken down a bit at first, at least that's always been my understanding. Does Happy Frog contain any dolomite lime? If not you might want to try adding some of that to the mix since dolomite lime is supposed to buffer the ph in soil to keep it more where you want the ph to be.
 

Ringodoggie

Well-known member
Here are a couple updated pics. I am still fighting but I seem to be winning the fight.

Funny how this is the same problem I had back in the late 60's...... too damn much acid. LOL

I took 4 clones off the Sour Diesel on the front right side and I plan to reverse them for pollen to self the Mother and maybe the 2 Chem Dog's on the left side.

The right side rear is the one that was most affected by the pH issue.
 

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HempKat

Just A Simple Old Dirt Farmer
Veteran
Here are a couple updated pics. I am still fighting but I seem to be winning the fight.

Funny how this is the same problem I had back in the late 60's...... too damn much acid. LOL

I took 4 clones off the Sour Diesel on the front right side and I plan to reverse them for pollen to self the Mother and maybe the 2 Chem Dog's on the left side.

The right side rear is the one that was most affected by the pH issue.
I agree it does seem like you're winning the fight. Hopefully things will just keep improving from here on out.
 
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