yellow leaves all over, top, middle & bottom

[bubba red]

I have a water softener in line with my water, I have been filling a pool to allow metals and other stuff to fall to precipitate to the bottom while i pump from the top. I was taking buckets from the top but since i have been having trouble i went to just syphening. I am having major problems with my smaller plants up stairs in my green house ( super purple stems and leaves lots of dying dead leaves ) while trying to fix this i bought a PH test kit for my water. To my surprise the water was 8.0. I bought some PH down from the hydro store , general hydroponics brand, and PH'd my whole pool at 6.5 and watered. It turned green the next day and i didn't think much of it and watered again. I then watered again 2 days later and before i went upstars to water the sick plants i checked the PH and it was 8.5! I just wasted half a bottle of PH down!

Somehow this algea is eating my acid and craping alkaline material or something. My water is 6.9 out of the tap, but a few days in the sun and it is around 8.0.

I figured not to keep giving my big nice plants this crappy 8.0 PH water but after giving it properly Phd water i am starting to see lots of trouble now with my big plants!??? So i started giving it water Phd at 7.0 lately thinking it was a drastic jump in PH but seen no improvement. Also i stupidly adjusting my PH before adding fertilizer for one feed. My fertilizer already brings my 8.0 water to 6 so i am wondering how much it went down when i added fertilizer to 6.5!

I know and have heard PH fluctuation is bad, what is the best thing i can do for my plants.

I will try to put some pics up later.
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[LlamaSchool]

Well it's good you now know to pH after (or before and after) adding acidic nutrients. That could be a big problem.

pH fluctuation is not a huge deal I don't think but you don't want any sudden jumps. In fact, slowly moving your pH slightly up and down can help the plant access a wider range of nutrients. If you feel like stuff is really screwed up I would just flush a lot with properly pH'ed water.

 

[dcdlux]

different nutrient are absorbed at different ph's so slight ph fluctuation is not always bad. i like to keep mine on the low side to just below ideal , this way it inhibits growth of a lot of bad shit growing 6.6-7

check this guide out it might help you
its about diagnosing yellow leaves
http://www.marijuana-seeds.net/Thanks-ThankYou.htm

 

[lysol]

How big is your pool? the water is going to drift back towards its starting PH, buffers do not hold the PH forever

One thing to do is figure out a soil mix so that you can water at higher PHs. Here in Florida I talked to some local gardeners / nurseries and found they mix in a lot of carbon rich woody material for their acidic properties ( tap water is over 9PH ), if that pool is like 10,000 gallons that is probably your only option

or take buckets and PH a few gallons at a time a few hours to a day before you water

 

[bubba red]

Well i think I should flush then. How much water do i flush a 100 gallon container with?

Also i have a few in the ground, can they be flushed without over watering?

My pool is about 3' deep and 8' accross so it is pretty good size for my needs.

 

[lysol]

The plant is in the pool? I don't understand, you flush the plant not your rez ( when using soil ). Outdoors plants can be overwatered ( its been raining here nonstop and the lady at the local nursery says it kills her plants too even tho shes in the ground not containers ) yeah people who say you cant overwater outdoors are just lucky. It depends on your water table, soil consistency and volume

Lets see some pics!

 

[bubba red]

I use my pool to treat the water because i have a softener. My plants are in smart pots and I have two in the ground.

I just flushed my big plant in my 100 gallon smart pot with about 30 gallons of water Ph adjusted at 6.5, i used about 20 gallons on the plants in the ground and 20 gallons for plant in a 64 gallon smart pot. Hopefully i will see some improvement.

Also my soil is primarily foxfarm and happy frog mix with some super soil, organic compost, worm castings, chicken manure and other amendments such as kelp meal, green sand and gypsum.

 

[oldog]

My best grow was my first one.
Miracle grow bag soil and MG powder fert from the home improvement store.
Produced an excellent product that we are still talking about.
If anything I have run into problems by becoming ' nervous nelly'.
I think that we sometimes try too hard and fuss over our plants too much.
Remember the cardinal rule of all our long gone old gardening aunties:
Dont over water, dont over fertilize. ie dont kill them with love.
Find something else to do while they are growing.(like posting shit here ) )
Cheers !

 

[bubba red]

Lots of people tell me not to worry. I have been growing for the past 10 years now and i know when my plant is telling me something is wrong. For example when i pick off 50 dead leaves at 6am and by 12 noon there is another dozen or more dead leaves to pick. What kind of healthy plant sheds leaves from the bottom to top at such a exponential rate? Now i don't know how someone could tell me not to worry.

Just battled it out with a hard rain. Broken branches plants toppling sideways the works. I just shook the shit out of them to avoid mold but with this much rain I know i will be seeing some soon. As soon as it clears up i will get some pics posted.

 

[crippled1]

Why would you not want to use R/O water? It seems like you could avoid having to go to so much trouble fussing around with your tap water.
It sounds like a huge PITA.

 

[bubba red]

I am in the country about 30 minutes from town and I am on a well not tap. My water is hard, my landlord had a softener already installed before i moved in. I need about 60-75 gallons of water every two days for my garden. RO is expensive to meet my needs and i don't have the money right now. Also my plants have seemed to do pretty well with my water so far. I have a good sized 8.5 foot monster 7 feet wide that appeared to be the picture of health untill i started giving it water that was properly PH'd. Same as the rest. This doesn't make sense to me. I guess it could be the fluctuation and my miss feed that one time, but after the flush it seems to have slowed the appearance of new yellow leafs, but it is hard to tell this early.

I was thinking about flushing with store bought RO water if my problems persist. But then i need to invest in more bottles. I am only about 3-4 weeks from harvest so i don't want to mess things up now.

 

[lysol]

Ro = reverse osmis, a process of softening water,

there is no difference between water you soften yourself and water you buy

 

[Uncle Jesse]

ok in my opinion Soft water thats been softened by salt is bad for plants great for inside piping of your house, water heaters, washing anything and bathing in but bad for for drinking and bad for plants. just my 2 cents.....peace and good luck

 

[bubba red]

The water i buy is Uv filtered, activated carbon filtered, reserse osmosis treated, post carbon filtered, and micron filtered. This is the water i drink and cook with. It is expensive and about a hour and a half round trip to refill when i have to. It is much different then the water i pump from the ground and then gets ran through the softener filled with softening salt.

I have heard using a softener is not good, however i was hoping the swimming pool will help treat my water. Like i said before everything was doing great until i realized my PH was high and started adjusting my water.

My friend says I should get a TDS meter when i can afford it.

 

[Xero000]

Ro = reverse osmis, a process of softening water,

there is no difference between water you soften yourself and water you buy

Reverse osmosis filtration is not at all the same as softening water. While softening is relatively effective neutralizing (hard) ions it is not very effective at removing the impurities.

Softening typically uses negatively charged salts to attract only the positively charged ions of elements like calcium & iron. RO forces the water through a very fine filter that does not discriminate based on ionic charge.

RO & softening do some similar things but the end products are very different.

 

[crippled1]

Couldn't you just tap into the water system before the water softener?
Well water should work well although it could be very hard.
Have you ever checked to see what ph and ppm it is?

 

[BUDOGHI]

If your ph is running high you probably don't need the gypsum.

 

[BUDOGHI]

I like crip ones idea pull the water before the softener then ideally a reverse osmosis system.

 

[lysol]

RO & softening do some similar things but the end products are very different.

Ok I heard that RO units utilize sodium which ends up in your final water, dunno.. guess i read wrong

 

[Ziggaro]

NO! RO systems do not use sodium. It is easier to remove impurities bound to sodium from soft water than removing impurities from very hard water, but almost all impurities are filtered through a semi-permeable plastic membrane by process of osmosis. Its just that very hard water, without being softened, can cause a membrane to prematurely fail. BTW I think very hard water is something like over 150 ppm of CaCo3

RO water is not expensive at all compared to what our plants are worth.. I'm going to be undertaking the expense here shortly and I'd guarantee it will pack itself back in spades after the 1st harvest.
200 dollars for an RO system, 20 dollars or so every 6 months for the pre/post carbon filters, and then 60 bucks or so every few years for the membrane... thats less than an ounce would cost around here to operate this thing for well over a year including the start up cost