I started my recent grow with Ocean forest im on week 3 right now never checked ph or added anything except water not sure what the ph of the water is but everything appears to be going great. I'll be starting nutes maybe next week or the week after. I'm a new grower tho so I don't have much to compare to lol.
The soil you bought comes with a ph from 6,3 to 6,8. Tap water is around 7ph or higher, not a huge difference so your substrate has kept an optimal ph for your feeding but the more you water the more your soil will adjust to the ph of your water. You can grow with an alkaline soil but the results are gonna be underwhelming in comparison, your nutes might adjust the ph for you, most organics tend to lower the ph, or even non organics with some kind of acid added, but if you dont know I highly recommend you buy a liquid ph test like the one from
General Hydroponics (if you dont wanna spend money in a ph device), if your nutes are not lowering the ph of the water enough your yield will most likely suffer. Also when you are adding some other components like lets say silica, the ph skyrockets so you might wanna adjust when giving silica suplements to your plants.
EDIT: Likewise after mixing nutes you can end up with a ph too low, even tho thats rare but can happen depending on what youre using, going lower than 5,5 is not only bad for your nutrient uptake and roots, but can also poison your plant. Alumina can come with the soil as its part of many additives like diatomaceuos earth, its harmless in the soil and can even act as a buffer for nutes but when the ph drops below 5,5 it becomes water soluble and can poison your plants if you regularly use
diatomaceous earth. If you cant afford to buy a ph up and ph down liquid, you can temporarily use lemon to lower your ph, adding drops til the desired ph is reached (many ph up liquids are citric acid anyway, but its absorved too quickly giving more acidity to the plant so its not my favorite) and a tiny pinch of sodium bicarbonate if you wanna make it higher. Dont buy citric acid ph down, check the ingredients,
General Hydroponics has the best one IMO with a mix of phosphoric acid, ammonium dihydrogenorthophosphate and citric acid. Those first 2 are more stable in your substrate mantaining the ph. Just use a couple drops, mix well, let it rest and measure it, once you get used to it you will know how many drops per gallon you need to get what you want.
