Here is a picture of the water tests from my local company. I live in Eugene, OR, there are so many people growing here it isn't even funny. I feel like the water can't be terrible for that reason. Maybe everyone who grows here knows it has some reputation for being a pain? I have never heard that so far. I don't know where I am going with that part so much however... I might just have to talk to some locals about how or what they do to treat their water. Obviously any time I use any ACT or nutrient teas, or even just molasses water, the PH will drop, probably down into the 5's. How long does that drop last in either the teas or the soil? Would that balance out any drifts if my watering is high and the teas low?
I am kind of overwhelmed atm now, because I never realized water had to be so complicated... I figured as long as the solutions I was watering with be it plain water, molasses water, or ACT were adjusted with a small amount of PH solution (be it up or down) it would just take out my OCD worry about organic soil not actually being as good at balancing PH/nutrients as people say. I almost feel like maybe I should toss out the idea of adjusting anything and just see if it end up hurting my plants later in the grow, or 3 grows from now. It would be easy enough to test the soil before I put another round of plants in it again though, and add a little of whatever is clever to bump it back where it should be. Or top dress before flower or whatever to try to keep it proper if it can't even handle one round of plants.
Do people commonly get phosphorus toxicity using phosphoric acid/regular old PH down to drop their plain watering in soil? It seems like such a miniscule amount added. I have never read about anyone using organic living soil who rely on the microlife to make their soil worth anything at all flushing their medium with an acid. We are not even supposed to water till runoff... Nor flush in flower. If one had to flush their soil with acid to reset PH I would assume the whole point of living organic soil and maintaining a micoherd/life between uses would be lost.
Organic living soil growers mention again and again that the micro life are the responsible parties in delivering nutrients to the plant, so I felt as long as the PH of the water or tea wasn't something that would hurt them, that they would take care of the rest as far as letting the plant feed on what it wants/needs. I could see deficiencies happening if the soil PH became so high or low that they could no longer survive, but when a good soil is supposed to take care of that anyway how would this happen? When most organic soil growers are never bothering to check their PH and say most people don't have to, wouldn't organic growing posts be riddled with people's PH problems? I was concerned only because of a few people mentioning issues with PH similar to mine that they checked of course as my OP mentions.
OK so that is 100 questions... and all over the place... can you tell I'm overwhelmed? I felt like I was just trying to "play it safe" in case my high PH water was hurting my microbes or would hurt the plants. The soil drift is a secondary concern because if I can't use amendments to reset it, then there is no point in me even keeping the soil to use again. I may as well just use bottles and feed the plant directly or go hydro.