Soil pH

tstick

Well-Known Member
I get that, but plant roots exude acids to make some minerals soluble. The plants themselves can change the pH of the medium, to a point.
But, if the soil pH is way off, the plants will get sick before they can change anything. This is what I experienced on my last run. If I had waited for the plants or the soil to do what I thought they were supposed to do, I would have lost the entire grow.
 

Hollatchaboy

Well-Known Member
But, if the soil pH is way off, the plants will get sick before they can change anything. This is what I experienced on my last run. If I had waited for the plants or the soil to do what I thought they were supposed to do, I would have lost the entire grow.
Do you use bottled nutes?
 

Hollatchaboy

Well-Known Member
I use Fox Farms nutes. I always pH to 6.3. I generally start a new grow with 50% Ocean Forest. My seedlings couldn't take the fungal salad that has developed in my compost over the years. Once established in veg stage though, fungus becomes beneficial, as it is to all plant life..
Fungus should be beneficial at all stages. Cannabis prefers fungally dominant soil.
 
How are you measuring the ph of the soil?
Two Prong probe tester. I stick it up high, then down low and a couple spots and see what's average. It was soil I made with cow manure, compost, peat, perlite and some topsoil. Maybe too much manure not sure. Is what I was thinking.
 
I get that, but plant roots exude acids to make some minerals soluble. The plants themselves can change the pH of the medium, to a point.

When I was growing in l.o.s., I never pH'ed the input water. There's really no need. The soil microbes will adjust to what they, and the plant prefer.

If you're using bottled nutes though, it's a different story.
Yes bottled nutes. Can't recall the name brand at the moment, from a farm supply store in town. They sell FF and a few others.
 
On a side note here, probably for a different thread, but I have a LOT of year old piled chicken manure. If I get some organics to mix with it, how much to use without going too high in N.? I would never try fresh chicken manure. I used 1 yr old chicken manure last summer outdoors with wood chips, peat,perlite and my own top soil and it was pretty nice around 7ph so not quite low as I had hoped but it certainly was not 8.5. Plants did well though.
OR CAN one use 'fresh' chicken manure? Just in moderation?
 

Hollatchaboy

Well-Known Member
Yes bottled nutes. Can't recall the name brand at the moment, from a farm supply store in town. They sell FF and a few others.
Then you need to pH your nutrient solution.

I run dtw coco now. Automated. I pH my nutrient solution, but I never check runoff. If it's good going in,.........

With l.o.s. I never checked pH either, but I always started with an organic putting mix, like ffhf, ffof, or bas 3.0.

Ime, growing in soil is easier with a good, all purpose dry amendment, ewc, and mulch. Especially in a sip.
 

tstick

Well-Known Member
Do you use bottled nutes?
I used Jack's 3-2-1 fertilizer salts and I followed their instructions. Over the years, I have used just about every way of growing that was trending at the time. I have never used bottled nutrients because it's essentially paying extra for them to dissolve the nutrients in water and I can do that myself.
 

1212ham

Well-Known Member
Two Prong probe tester. I stick it up high, then down low and a couple spots and see what's average. It was soil I made with cow manure, compost, peat, perlite and some topsoil. Maybe too much manure not sure. Is what I was thinking.
What brand and model is it? One of the 3 in 1 meters for ph, light and moisture?
 

electricthot12

Active Member
In my experience, Fox Farm soil less mixes can sometimes come with extremely low pH. On my last run, my plants got sick early on and my runoff showed a pH of 4.0. This suggested there was no buffering going on at all, regardless of whatever microbes may have been present. I essentially did end up running so much high-pH'd water through there to bring it into a ~6.5 range that I essentially ended up with a sterile mix. After that, I started a Jack's 3-2-1 regime and never looked back. Everything grew very well after that.
Making my own soil is half the fun. I buy one big bag of Ocean Forest for each grow, for the sterility, to start my seedlings. The rest gets mixed 50-50 with my compost and that fills a 10 gallon grow bag. Then the used Ocean Forest becomes part of my soil. One bag will do 2 grow bags.
 

electricthot12

Active Member
But, if the soil pH is way off, the plants will get sick before they can change anything. This is what I experienced on my last run. If I had waited for the plants or the soil to do what I thought they were supposed to do, I would have lost the entire grow.
High, or low pH inhibits nutrient uptake. Here's a chart I use:
 

Attachments

Hollatchaboy

Well-Known Member
But, if the soil pH is way off, the plants will get sick before they can change anything. This is what I experienced on my last run. If I had waited for the plants or the soil to do what I thought they were supposed to do, I would have lost the entire grow.
Yea, I always had trouble using salts with soil. Imo, salts work best with hydro. Now I'm not saying it can't be done, people do it all the time, it's just the simple fact that they're water soluble, makes them perfect for inert mediums

I like dry amendments with soil. Getting the potting soil as close to nature as possible, made it way easier for me, when using soil.
 

electricthot12

Active Member
Yea, I always had trouble using salts with soil. Imo, salts work best with hydro. Now I'm not saying it can't be done, people do it all the time, it's just the simple fact that they're water soluble, makes them perfect for inert mediums

I like dry amendments with soil. Getting the potting soil as close to nature as possible, made it way easier for me, when using soil.
Salts kill soil microbes. Not good for my compost.
 

electricthot12

Active Member
I'm gonna call BS (bro-science) here, or at least it's debatable... If you dump pure undiluted salts into the soil, sure, but at the rates people use for fertilizing their gardens? Highly unlikely. The biggest risk of adding synthetic nutes to organic soil is probably overfeeding the plants, but that's a risk in sterile mediums too...
I've been trying to understand how long it takes salts to break down in the compost pile.
 

amneziaHaze

Well-Known Member
Salts kill soil microbes. Not good for my compost.
i use masterblend (salt based nute same as jacks) and i added some bacteria to my hydro.one day i had to remove the water because i had too much of them they would force ph to 8 every day....
allsoo i use the same nute for my lemon tree and berries and all of them are growing normally.just mix the salts in water hope you are not droping the dry nutes on the dirt.... it has a mixing order or it will make unusable nutes

what would you like to break down to? salts are almost pure nutrients.you want to breakdown magnesium in to what?
 

weedstoner420

Well-Known Member
I've been trying to understand how long it takes salts to break down in the compost pile.
Depends on what you mean by "break down"... Synthetic ferts are usually water-soluble by design, so they should dissolve as soon as they get wet. If you put a handful of megacrop in your compost pile, it would disappear the next time it rained, vs something like a banana peel which would take significantly longer to "break down" in that sense.

If you mean how long it takes those nutrients to get washed out of the compost pile, that's a much more complicated situation and would be different for different nutrients/chemicals
 
Top