PH Nightmare with Earth Juice -- Need Your Help

[VolcanoVapin]

So, I switched from a hydro setup using GH to Earth Juice, trying to transition to organics in a soilless medium (promix with extra perlite), and so far it's a total nightmare.

The first feeding of Earth Juice I gave was about 8 ml of Grow, 5 ml of Bloom, and 5 ml of Catalyst.... I did not bubble the nutrient solution before hand... I just mixed and fed them. This seemed to work okay, but some old growth was starting to go yellow after giving them plain water 4 days later, so I decided they needed more nitrogen, and when it came time to give the plants a 2nd feeding, I went with a normal dosage of 15 ml Grow, 5 ml Bloom, and 5 ml Catalyst...

Well, that royally fucked up a few of the plants. It appears that it most heavily affected the plants in direct light, as the plants more on the outer edges still look pretty green and healthy... The plants in direct light, however, all have very light green/yellow/pale leaves from the medium to tops of the plants.

I know that this isn't nitrogen toxicity... There's no leaf curl or burned tips., just fucked up looking discolored new growth. I'm assuming this is a PH issue, due to adding extra EJ Grow. I think the solution I fed them must have been way too acidic.

The plants needed to be watered again, so I just gave them plain tap water for now, but what should I do to go about correcting this? I am not used to using nutrients that aren't PH buffered, and I REALLY don't like it so far. I've never had such problems with hydro nutrients.

Does bubbling your mix with a pump & air stone in a bucket really help level out the PH that much? I didn't try this at first, because it seemed like way too much of a hassle.

Is it okay to just use lower doses of the EJ Grow without bubbling like I did the first time to try to avoid these PH problems? Will brewing my own tea by bubbling allow me to use the normal 1 tbsp (15 ml) of EJ Grow without having such horrible PH problems?

Any help you guys can offer is much appreciated, because right now I feel like I just wasted $100 on these gallons of EJ :[

 

[cannarado]

Do you use a pH meter? What is your pH?

 

[VolcanoVapin]

I don't use a PH meter. I've always done well without one when using GH in passive hydro hand watered applications... (think hempy buckets or just plain soilless mediums in pots)

I originally used the Lucas formula, but eventually decided that it didn't provide enough nitrogen for vigorous vegetative growth and added the Grow bottle to use the full 3-part Flora series. I roughly followed the Useless Formula (available all over online) that seems to work well for a lot of people using the GH Flora 3 part and I never had any PH issues.

I had 0 growth problems when using GH... My reason for switching to Earth Juice was to try to improve flavor & smell by going with organics.

I'm just assuming PH is the issue, because the new growth has gone very light yellowish-green.... which I know isn't what over fertilization looks like.

 

[cannarado]

Not to preach but you should check pH regardless of your setup. Things can change. Go grab some drops and check pH real quick. That will be a good place to start. Incorrect pH will cause nutes to start locking out.

 

[Whippleschnitz]

As has already been mentioned, if you suspect ph then you should test it to make sure that is what the problem is. How old are the plants and what size and what stage of growth are they? I have had to manage ph levels with Earth Juice Bloom before but not the Grow. The bloom does have a low ph and bubbling it with air for 24 hours will help in more ways than just ph. It gives the micro beasties time to grow and colonize in your tea. Promix is mostly peat moss IIRC and that naturally has a low ph and can benefit from the addition of garden lime as a soil amendment. Remember, you are switching growing mediums and nutrients and you will have to make some adjustments compared to your hydro methods.

 

[snkrhd23]

yeh i feel you should be checking ph. but a lot of ppl do not but those ppl also do not use many bottled nutes. you r using them. imo its important to check the ph of the runoff water as well

 

[grnmountainboy]

try checking the ph of your soil and the ph of your nutes, they might be different which could be causing the problems.

 

[BiGGinZ]

Whats your water source? If not R/O the PH could already be an issue there. So you're going to need a ph tester kit, pen, etc. Yes always bubble your mixes for 24 hours before hand. You're adding Oxygen to the water for your roots when you feed it to them.

BiGGinZ

 

[Buddy Hemphill]

EJ will bottom out your ph.

Bubbling it will fix your problem. Just monitor it and after a few feedings you will have a good idea of how long it takes.

Your plants will like it bubbled up to (for me) 6.3 better than if you add a ton of 'down' to get where you want to be.


I actually use EJ catalyst as my ph down because of how low it drops ph.

 

[crom]

It's strange I am giving the EJ line a run and ran into similar issues with yellowing. Especially in bloom. I think that EJ gives a low base formula so you have to go get one of their new "Elements" line, which is kinda cool because you can get individual N,P,K,Cal/mg is together though. Either way my EJ drops my pH into the 4s and below always! I use pH up after bubbling for 24 hours because the pH hasn't gone up enough. I'm going to look into their bloom boosters as well, because like I said I feel the P is low in their bloom nutes, IME thus far. I used PBP Bloom soil to supplement for a PK boost. Eh it's all a learning experience. I enjoy foliar feeding with EJ though in veg. The thing I can't understand is why EJ says that you don't have to adjust the pH of their nutes?? How so?

 

[motherlode]

most liquid organic lines will bottom out your ph

Im using PBP atm and I noticed that the bloom formula is way more acidic then the grow

are you using RO water? this seems to make it worse from what I have seen

 

[crom]

Sup ML? I just wondered if EJ expects us to dump a 4.0pH nute solution in our medium? Is there some magic I'm missing that the medium and nutes stabilize or something lol. I'm just confused really by EJ saying you don't have to pH. That would be fine if it was like 6.0pH or something. What do you recommend ML for using the EJ nutes with the recommended tap water source?

 

[neal boudreau]

ya dude check the ph

 

[VolcanoVapin]

I already gave up on the EJ Grow/Bloom. I wanted to give it a try since I heard Chemdog uses it and I saw various reviews saying the bud they got out of EJ was stronger smelling/better tasting than other nutrients they tried.... but fuck it. My plants looked nice and healthy with GH and it was easy as hell to use. Once you know the ratios well, you can adjust them easily without ever needing to check PH... at least in passive drain-to-waste hydro...

I like using the Catalyst though. I use 5 ml of it along with my GH nutes and so far, so good. I think at least the molasses in the Catalyst will help improve the quality a bit, and I'm not really into additives for the most part.

 

[motherlode]

Sup ML? I just wondered if EJ expects us to dump a 4.0pH nute solution in our medium? Is there some magic I'm missing that the medium and nutes stabilize or something lol. I'm just confused really by EJ saying you don't have to pH. That would be fine if it was like 6.0pH or something. What do you recommend ML for using the EJ nutes with the recommended tap water source?

shit man - I tried pura vida and it would drop my ph down to 4.0 and they (2 phone calls - 2 diff techs) insisted you shouldnt PH it - but I was in coco, not dirt

so I gave the pura vida to my kid to use outside with his hard ass well water - worked out ok w/o ph'ing

I couldnt bring myself to do that on my indoor coco grow

 

[Blaze]

Organics in hydro/soil-less seems to be problematic for a lot of folks. IMHO organics tend to work a bit better with soil as the medium (though I've not done organics in soil-less personally). Organic nutrients tend to be more variable and complex in their nutrient content - unlike hydro nutrients which are usually just the pure elements and very exact and consistant. They also tend to be on the acidic side - especially teas. In a soil grow the soil and the soil biology act as a pH buffer and keep it right where the plant wants it, so with out that buffer your plants are very sensitive. It doesn't help that organics nutrients usually do not read well on pH and EC meters either and the numbers you get can often be incorrect. Organics are imprecise by nature - which is why you often need the soil, the plant, and the soil biology to fine tune it for you. Anyway, that's just my two cents. Hope this doesn't discourage you from trying organics - they can work well, but there is a bit more of a learning curve at times.

 

[crom]

Thanks for that post^^Blaze! My dilemma is I either keep trying with EJ to get results I am happy with(dial it in) in a soilless mix, switch to soil/mix and use EJ, OR scrap EJ and move on to the PBP line. I wanted to stray from chemical nutes and work as organic as I could while still maintaining results like potency and flavor. Yield isn't my issue. So which route would you take Blaze? Farmers? I'm waiting on my hydro store to call me and tell me that they have my Growonix RO in so I can take crappy tap water out of the equation,aerated and distilled or not.

When I moved from my last zip code to my current zip code my water quality changed a lot. That's an interesting variable to dial in, so screw that I'm going RO, hopefully today! But yeah that pH crap EJ says doesn't make sense for all the applications listed on their bottles/bags. Just like Blaze said, soil is THE buffer for that claim so why not say in soil your good in hydro F no lol

 

[Blaze]

I've had good results with the PBP in past years. It was always very consistent, never got a bad or off batch once, which is pretty rare in my experience. I've seen a few people run it in hydro and claimed to have good results, but I only ever ran it in soil myself. Also I believe that the PBP is more geared towards hydro/soil-less applications than the EJ products. I think the EJ line is definitely geared more towards soil applications. However I always hear a lot of people complain about lower yield when growing in soil indoors.....

 

[justiceman]

Blaze is on it for sure. Those acidic EJ nutes won't do to well with promix indeed. It doesn't have enough PH buffering. If you want to work with them I think you should either ammend your promix with some worm castings and maybe some other organic goodies like humus, kelp meal etc. Or you should switch to using a quality soil.

Also you can wake up the microbes in the EJ nutes by aerating them for 24-48 hours. Somewhere between those hours depending on your brewer the PH rises because of the bacterial slime. A good rule of thumb is to have a pump that can push the amount of liters your solution will be hence a 10gal brew should have a pump that pushes roughly 38liters for premium dissolved oxygen.

This is also a link to their site witch has all the feeding charts. The top three are the ones you'd probably be interested in.
Feeding Charts

 

[crom]

Thanks justiceman! Yeah I read Blazes response to the PBP question on the way to the hydro store lol. I'm done with EJ for now. I also like that the PBP is one bottle for grow and one bottle for bloom. EJ has you dumping and mixing up all these strange concoctions that end up sucking lol. I think that they probably have some good stuff to add to my nute regimen, but the whole line wasn't for me.

So is anyone using the Hydroplex and liking it? No deficiency issues using it as a booster?