Diary White Rhino & Friends. Fall 2021 Grow.

[exploziv]

Basically soil is most probably over the runoff ph by about the same as the difference between thee ph in and ph out. That puts your compost at about ph 9. And if you look at a soil ph/nutrient availability chart you will find exacly what your deffs mean. But it doesn't even matter, you have to drop the ph first, adding nutes to a soil that can't feed plants will do nothing. I mean.. you need to flush it well cause once you lower ph you might find yourself at the other end, burning them from the stored nutes that become available.as the ph drops. Keep in mind ph is a logaritmic scale, so ph 8 is 10 times more base than ph 7, and that puts ph 9 at 100 times more base than ph 7. A fast swing to 5.8 might make them even worse, so I'd say go bya max of 1.5 ph points down with each flush. Leave them to dry a bit between flushes. And don't forget to sustain them with foliars in the meantime. Keep in mind my plants would have looked much worse if I didn't catch my problems in time to apply foliars. So really, thats a priority for you if you want to save them.
Hopes for the best. Keep us posted!

 

[zif]

Totally agree with exploziv that foliar feeding is crucial as you correct the (how much too high?) pH.

I wonder, does the pH of runoff from any remaining fresh / unused compost also read very high? Where's the excessive alkalinity coming from?

 

[exploziv]

Don't try that much to figure that out man, if you check my thread I am using a premium soilless mix thats supposedly buffered at 6.3 ph with cacl2 which I watered with a maximum of ph 7-7.3 and after I seen some deffs and a friend instructed me to do same things as I am now spreading here in this thread.. I found my ph to probably be over 8. I can't explain that.. been told that it may be the some crappy calcium from the water supply that is playing games on me, but dunno, it's very odd. I did catch the deffs much earlier than our friend here so I kinda almost totally saved them in the 2 weeks I've been battling with those issues, I mean new growth is perfect, they still have the older afected leaves that won't fix. But found no logical explanation for the high ph. Sometimes you just need to stop thinking about "Why?" and do something to fix it. I can understand how in lack of an logical explanation someone might delay taking measures to fix it, and stay baffled by it, but I'd rather fix the plants as fast as possible. And my friend that was guideing me through this surely helped me go fully confident at the issues! Hope it makes sense. I am kinda high. But I do think our friend might as well need the "push" to try saving the plants, so this is why I am posting. And even repeating stuff I said before.

 

[aliceklar]

Thanks again all! These kids are such a handfull....
The C6 plant that I washed clean and put into 100% perlite on 31st Oct might give some clues... it is looking a little better, but not substantially better than the others - like it has not taken on an amazing new life since the repot compared to plants in more compost-rich mixes. Which makes me think that the problem is in the tap water (which I know is hard/high pH, with lots of dissolved calcium carbonate). I'll try testing some of the old batch of compost vs the new, and compare runoffs etc. Have given everything a foliar feed.

Will try flushing a test bunch with more strongly pHd water tomorrow.

Another MMxWR F2 popped its head up today. Interesting - I planted 5 MMxJ F1s, they all came up in a few days. I planted 10 MMxWR F2s, one came up in 48 hours, another took nearly a week, and the rest...?? Maybe this is F2 variability in germ time, or some are just not viable??

 

[aliceklar]

Basically soil is most probably over the runoff ph by about the same as the difference between thee ph in and ph out. .... you need to flush it well cause once you lower ph you might find yourself at the other end, burning them from the stored nutes that become available.as the ph drops. Keep in mind ph is a logaritmic scale, so ph 8 is 10 times more base than ph 7, and that puts ph 9 at 100 times more base than ph 7. A fast swing to 5.8 might make them even worse, so I'd say go bya max of 1.5 ph points down with each flush. Leave them to dry a bit between flushes. And don't forget to sustain them with foliars in the meantime.

kk. Will give this a go & let you know!

 

[aliceklar]

Spent the weekend messing around with pH. I think the pen (cheap-ass POS that it is) is working fine, and the weird tap water readings are making more sense. Straight from the tap, pH is about 6.5->6.7 - and it rises to c7.7 if left out for several hours. I thought this was a glitch to start with, but I repeated the test twice and got the same results. I've tried warming a sample to room temperature first but this made no difference.

Here's the pH change over c18 hours comparing three samples:

1. tap water (blue),
2. tap water with 0.1g citric acid to 1.5litres (yellow), and
3. a sample of rainwater (red).

The rainwater stayed pretty much around 7. The batch with citric acid started off at c.6, and slowly went up to c7.4 I carefully measured out citric acid into 0.1g portions so I could be more accurate about this than guesstimating how much of a teaspoon I was using.. The big rise in pH happened when the samples were left overnight.



Testing a batch now with 0.2g citric acid/1.5 litres water.

Have been reading how dissolved CO2 in standing tap water can off-gas over 24 hours and result in a change in pH. Maybe thats whats happening here? Apparently this can really fuck things up for fish-keepers. The final stable readings were not far off the water company's reported average pH of 7.5.

Tried flushing one of the heavy-compost mix plants yesterday with the 0.1g citric acid mix.

8/10 of the MMxWR F2s now up.

AKMMWR F1s now have 3 males showing, and lots of stretch. Had to raise the lights a bit.

The C6 plant in pure perlite is looking noticeably greener and more perky (leaves presenting more horizontally, less droopy).

Increased light intensity in veg to 70%.

 

[exploziv]

Seems like you're living in calcium land. For me it only goes 6.9 to 7.3 PH.
And I have 125 ppm crap in the water, probably mostly calcium. You must have more.
Good to hear you are making some progress!

 

[aliceklar]

0.2g citric acid/1.5liters tap water takes the initial pH down to 5.35/5.4, and its showing the same gradual rise that I've seen in the other samples. Using this to flush a test batch of plants. Run-off 6.06.

Will keep on taking readings over the next 12 hours to see where it levels out at.

 

[exploziv]

You should always start with water that sits in untopped bottles or reservoir for a day or 2 and never worry about the ph change again. Just corect PH then, mix well, measure PH again and good to go.

 

[aliceklar]

 

[zif]

That pure perlite plant sure leaps out at ya!

You're going to be the local water quality expert before you're done with this grow. ;-)

 

[VerdantGreen]

Probably been asked already.. but do you have access to rain water ? - changing to that solved a lot of problems for me a few years back...

VG

 

[0j4Udcfr8z]

Ha ha. Glad you made it. Welcome to hydroponics which is much more forgiving, as long as you don't add too much liquid feed. The feed doesn't look much does it? But less is more. Half the dose of tomato liquid fertilizer is a safe starting point. Some people say a quarter. But I found half liquid tomato feed is ok. I use so much of it I'm glad it's cheap. I would even use half specialist liquid feeds designed for marijuana, now I know this. Optionally replace the other half of feed with liquid seaweed as this is almost pure minerals and virtually no N.P.K. This is just the start of it. I am now looking into why some plants are growing out like hemp, and others look more like proper weed. Is there a great difference with cannabis seeds? My latest batch of seeds was an eye opener. A sample seed is growing much better than the designated seeds I bought. It is also already flowering, heavily. There could be a lot of things going on here? I was about to buy my seeds more cheaply. Now not so sure? I may have to go back to my preferred specialist breeder. Not those bloody cowboys, (not copying packaging) but maybe selling inbred hemp which doesn't flower properly or produce much THC. Could CBD seeds get mixed with THC seeds, or could plants become inbred? Who knows? If I win seeds here at TRH_seeds GIVEAWAY that would be a benefit. Best wishes with it.

 

[0j4Udcfr8z]

Maybe it's time to go for single-seeds packs. Lots of outlets sell them this way. It is a great benefit to see which single-seed plants perform better, than investing everything into one pack.

 

[aliceklar]

Probably been asked already.. but do you have access to rain water ? - changing to that solved a lot of problems for me a few years back...
VG

Currently, not reliably. Need to install a water-butt & diverter. Next project!

 

[PCBuds]

I was curious about the difference between my water right out of the tap, and my tap water after being degassed.

This is my water straight from the tap.

​

​


This is my degassed tap water.

​

​

... the weird tap water readings are making more sense. Straight from the tap, pH is about 6.5->6.7 - and it rises to c7.7 if left out for several hours...

My PH rises as well, but not as much as your tap water.

Have been reading how dissolved CO2 in standing tap water can off-gas over 24 hours and result in a change in pH. Maybe thats whats happening here?

Distilled and RO water do the opposite and absorb CO2 from the air and change their PH.
The PH goes from 7.0 to 5.8 after distilled water becomes saturated with CO2.

 

[aliceklar]

The batch of 0.2g citric acid/1.5 litres tap water from this morning started at 5.35 and 10 hours later is up to 7.13. I hope its flattened out now, but whatever, its not going to bring the water below 7, which was the idea. What would a good target pH be? 6.8? 6.5? lower? Am holding some in glass demijohns to check once its done its weird out of the tap pH leap magic trick. Looking at this positively, this will be strong selection pressure for plants that can survive some abuse

 

[PCBuds]

They say 5.8 for Hydroponics and 6.5 for soil.

My grow is kind of transitional, so I aim for something in the middle.

My runoff is always higher than the input solution, so I aim for 5.8 as an input PH.
I figure the plant can drift through the PH range and I shouldn't have any lockouts.

 

[Lester Beans]

Hydro you want to start ph at 5.8. optimal conditions pH rises and EC/ppm drops. Let pH come up to 6.2 and readjust to 5.8. Only top res off with phd plain water during week then completely change res out weekly.

 

[aliceklar]

[No message]