MIMedGrower said:

Bet you dont have enough chlorine to matter either. The plants actually use some.


I bubbled buckets of water and phed when i was new. Dropped both and my plants stayed healthier. Noticed right away. The acid was building up in the soil and eventually dropping my ph.

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MIMedGrower said:

Bet you dont have enough chlorine to matter either. The plants actually use some.


I bubbled buckets of water and phed when i was new. Dropped both and my plants stayed healthier. Noticed right away. The acid was building up in the soil and eventually dropping my ph.

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Fangthane said:

I'm not sure whether I have chlorine or chloramine. When I fill up a gallon jug with tap water, I can put my nose right up to the opening and it definitely smells vaguely like a swimming pool. Couple of drops of Prime and I don't smell anything. I wasn't really worried about the plants themselves; I was more concerned with preserving whatever microbial life may be floating around my soil.

My plants mostly start getting kinda ugly part-way through flower. I'm wondering if maybe all the extra P I've been giving them when I use a metric shit-ton of pH Down may be contributing to the issues I tend to have later in the plants' lives. Kinda hoping this no-pH thing works out for me. It's my water's high pH starting point that always made me think twice when I wanted to stop adjusting it.

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Jimster said:

Promix has buffers built into it, which will try to offset the tendency for fertilizers to lower the Ph. I grow in Promix and I really can't say that I've ever had a Ph problem.... and you are correct in most new growers stumble on Ph and overfeeding. Most tap water is close to neutral in Ph, and shouldn't cause issues and can actually benefit the plants by supplying magnesium and other minerals. The key is "most" tap water, not all. If your Ph is excessively high in your water, you can either filter it (RO), distill it, or lower the Ph. I add wood ashes to help the buffering even more, but that isn't a necessity, just some minor nutrients and buffering to keep Ph in the correct zone (which it does on it's own for the most part). With my use of Promix, I only feed every two weeks on average, so I don't use a ton of nutrients to lower my Ph too much. Using a lot of nutrients will lower your Ph more than the occasional feeding. A lot depends on your method of growing.

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BudBogart said:

I grow in soil. I use about 300 gallons of water every time I water the plants. I couldn’t possibly amend that much water. What I do is build the soil and test the slurry ph of the soil made with my water. I amend the soil, not the water, until I am satisfied. Once the soil has been built to work with my water I don’t have to worry about it anymore.

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jkpaw said:

Who has an opinion on RealLemon (or RealLime) concentrate? Wondering if it might be a little more predictable/stable than fresh lemons? Plus I always have some in my fridge.

BTW, last season I was trying fully organic soil for the first time and decided not to lower the pH -- since my city's water report indicated acceptable alkalinity levels, even though the tap is about 9. When my healthy seedlings graduated from distilled water I watered them from my small pond (which also is about pH 9 -- maybe because of the natural rain here, and/or from the fact that I frequently top it off from the tap). Anyway, those seedlings crinkled up pretty severely overnight, but recovered after a flush and switch back to pH'd water. Do people agree this crinkling was a pretty sure sign that my high pH is unacceptable, regardless of the alkalinity report?

Aqua Man, thanks for explaining something a few pages back that I never knew about why organic growers might want to use citric acid instead of phosphoric: that phosphoric is harder on the micro-nutrients. Last season I used Botanicare's pH down (phosphoric) because I thought it would be more stable than lemon juice, but maybe it undermined some of my good work brewing compost teas, etc.

Preparing for this season, after reading this thread, I'm thinking of switching back to peat instead of coir for 1/3 of my soil -- plus 1/3 compost (homemade in hot pile), and 1/3 perlite. I always water from the pond, as it's a great holding pool for de-chlorination -- plus it has thriving plant/fish life and muck. But is it possible to overdo pond water? Last season I think I might have overfed occasionally, but that was likely from the compost teas (thinking they were weaker than they actually were). How often would you use compost teas in 7-gallon fabric pots? After two days of bubbling, my tea still has high pH, so I suppose I'll still need to add lemon juice or RealLemon (but I'll skip phosphoric this time around).

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Beachwalker said:

My tap water is 8.9 & I'm not going to grow happy plants with that pH

I'm not sure why you don't want to adjust your pH? If it was already said I missed it, but I am curious? btw I use citric acid as a natural way to adjust my pH down

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Aqua Man said:

I totally agree that ph is high but the soil will buffer it .. for how long and to what ph depends on what's in the soil.

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Beachwalker said:

Not so much as you'd think, I had my soil in the low fives and even the high fours not too far into flower maybe two-and-a-half - 3 months along. I add Dolomite now but yeah ffof doesn't buffer as much as you'd think, and I suspect Growers who don't pH either make their own soil and do it very well or have tap water that's very accommodating or perhaps both, but that's just my opinion

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Aqua Man said:

Depending on form of nutrients they can raise or lower your soil ph. So yes it's absolutely likely that the nutrients you added would have lowered the ph. But that may lead me to question how well your soil is built.

I'm a hydro grower so I will leave to the soil guys but ph is both soil and hydro can fluctuate a bit as nutrients are added and consumed.

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CTAZ13 said:

Not well at all! LOL I am completely new and totally ignorant. Which is why I came here was to learn. I just threw some seeds in some basic soil with some basic organic ferts. Didn't really know what kind of ratios to use or anything else. Been just trying to not over feed like everyone says newbies do! LOL Think I under fed. I have no clue what I am doing so just trying to do a little learning.

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Aqua Man said:

@Beachwalker is a soil guy he can give you a good run down on soil builds and practices

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CTAZ13 said:

Not well at all! LOL I am completely new and totally ignorant. Which is why I came here was to learn. I just threw some seeds in some basic soil with some basic organic ferts. Didn't really know what kind of ratios to use or anything else. Been just trying to not over feed like everyone says newbies do! LOL Think I under fed. I have no clue what I am doing so just trying to do a little learning.

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Aqua Man said:

I would start a thread listing everything about your grow and asking all your questions. Since this one is about PH I think you will get alot more help by starting your own. Maybe call it "new soil grower looking for help" that should get the dirt guys in there to answer all your questions

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CTAZ13 said:

I tried that and got pretty attacked! Turns out 6 of 6 plants from seed given me were males. I was told they were female and just in case look for long pointe thing at base of leaves and it was a female if it had a ball it was a male. Told to use magnifying glass. I was like hell I can see that easy. They were 3/16" by a few weeks, Every image I looked at on net looked the same Single. Was just informed females have two not one. Was also told that they can change due to stress so I dont know if I caused that or what. But you can see them starting to wither. And once they start to wither like that the whole flower looking part shifts to having bunch of round seed looking pods in it were it started as looking like just a bunch of super fine hair like leaves all grouped together. Either way I was given a specific book to read so got to go do some homework. I was just hoping to save the crop. I am mostly self taught in everything just cause I find society a bit to bitter and angry for my taste.

Thanks for taking your time kind sir!

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CTAZ13 said:

I appreciate your time. yes I have red good things about pro mix. NO one has it around here at all. SO guess I will have to order online. Gonna take me some saving up I am a poor boy!

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