Question About Nutrients

[BuDGooDE]

Let's talk about nutrient solution pH with organics for a few, shall we? Most if not all liquid organic fertilizers are made by dissolving the source material in a heavy organic acid(ie vinegar, fulvic acid). From here there is a split in how organics are finished. Some are simply packaged as is, some are buffered to a more neutral pH, some are digest with micro-organisms then buffered, or the reverese. If your nutrients are not buffered(they drop the pH of your solution significantly when you add it) you may want to keep reading.

A prime example of a microbe digested unbuffered nutrient is Hurculean Harvest from NFTG. The acids are still present in the bottle and go into your medium when you feed. We find that feeding nutrients like this tend to lead to the pH of the medium drifting even lower as the remaining organic acids go to work on the medium. So as we begin to feed heavily, we want to pH the nutrient solution just a bit higher than usual as the organic reactions are slower to occur and the medium will drift toward acid. Often our heaviest feeding with organics is pH right at 7, sometimes up to 7.3. 8 hours later we find the pH of the medium to be sitting nicely around 6.5.

Sorry for the rant.

Yep, my water starts out at 7 - 7.5 and goes down to 5.9 or there abouts when nutes are added. :-)

 

[xboxjoe]

Yep, my water starts out at 7 - 7.5 and goes down to 5.9 or there abouts when nutes are added. :)

hi all again I ph the water after I added the bio vega, and there wasn't much difference in the ph, are you saying it will drop over time once put in the soil?
I also ph the run off at the bottom of the pots and that's still around 6. where I live the water is around 8 so I will do a test and add the bio vega to standard water and I will see if the ph drops over a few days

 

[BuDGooDE]

hi all again I ph the water after I added the bio vega, and there wasn't much difference in the ph, are you saying it will drop over time once put in the soil?
I also ph the run off at the bottom of the pots and that's still around 6. where I live the water is around 8 so I will do a test and add the bio vega to standard water and I will see if the ph drops over a few days

The ph should change straight away when you add nutes. Maybe your nutes dont. Maybe someone with more experience can advise. But as said before yours is not a ph issue but over feeding :-)

 

[xboxjoe]

The ph should change straight away when you add nutes. Maybe your nutes dont. Maybe someone with more experience can advise. But as said before yours is not a ph issue but over feeding :)

I just watered them this morning hopefully they will stop turning yellow
thanx everyone for all the advice

 

[BuDGooDE]

Let's talk about nutrient solution pH with organics for a few, shall we? Most if not all liquid organic fertilizers are made by dissolving the source material in a heavy organic acid(ie vinegar, fulvic acid). From here there is a split in how organics are finished. Some are simply packaged as is, some are buffered to a more neutral pH, some are digest with micro-organisms then buffered, or the reverese. If your nutrients are not buffered(they drop the pH of your solution significantly when you add it) you may want to keep reading.

A prime example of a microbe digested unbuffered nutrient is Hurculean Harvest from NFTG. The acids are still present in the bottle and go into your medium when you feed. We find that feeding nutrients like this tend to lead to the pH of the medium drifting even lower as the remaining organic acids go to work on the medium. So as we begin to feed heavily, we want to pH the nutrient solution just a bit higher than usual as the organic reactions are slower to occur and the medium will drift toward acid. Often our heaviest feeding with organics is pH right at 7, sometimes up to 7.3. 8 hours later we find the pH of the medium to be sitting nicely around 6.5.

Sorry for the rant.

Thanks bro. And everyone loves a good rant from time to time ha ha lol :-)

 

[BuDGooDE]

most multi purpose composts are good to go 4 - 6 weeks. Little ones like that will be fine. They look over fed. I did'nt feed mine until they were big enough to be re-potted, and then i left a couple of weeks for them to uptake nutes from compost first. And then gently does it from there. I increased dosage to just over half and they werent too happy with that. I water every 3 days and feed every other watering. Great saying i learned on here, "Less is more" :) Im not using same nutes as you though, im using Bio Grow and Bio Bloom. I am a week away from switch and have fed last watering 1ml per ltr of Grow and 1 ml per ltr bloom, will carry that on till end 2nd week of flower, flush (just to wash out any excess Nitrogen) and switch to 2ml Bloom to start. Hope thats helpful bro :)

I need to update this slightly and add that the plants will tell you what they want. If your getting deficiencies and your ph is okay, its got to be underfeeding. Ive just since this convo had to increase my dosage :-)

 

[xboxjoe]

hi all its been a week since I posted my problem about lower leaves turning yellow. several people said it was to much nutrients so I just gave the plants ph 6.2 water for the last 7 days and I removed the yellow leaves as I read on other forums they prob wouldn't recover and the plant would concentrate on new growth. my problem now is the lower leaves are starting to turn yellow again any ideas this time??