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).