Dr. Bruce Bugbee method: NASA technique on Mars etc.

Yeah, I have the big bags of lime and gypsum, and used less than 50g of each . Maybe I should ship 100g of each with every fertilizer order . Bugbee method starter pack...

Chopshop697 said:

Yeah, I have the big bags of lime and gypsum, and used less than 50g of each . Maybe I should ship 100g of each with every fertilizer order . Bugbee method starter pack...

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Heck I would pay you to send 20g of dol and 5 of gyp lettermail at this point if you were in canada . White powder in an envelope might look a little sketchy tho, and I need it faster than USPS can handle

How much water go you guys use? If you have a 1L pot thats bone dry do you add 1L of water?

Did Bugbee say: aim for 20% runoff or something? Yes 1 litre for a 1 litre pot sounds pretty reasonable to saturate and get plenty (might be a bit much) runoff.

I've got mine automated in flower: 5 gallon pots are getting 3 litres per day (spread over 3 waterings). But just 2 litres every 2 days seemd like it was fine for veg.

Holy balls! Anybody else having pH issues with the Bugbee Peat formula? I'm measuring pH of leachate after feeding a 1.3EC, 5.9pH solution. I wait 40 minutes after feed, drop 50ml of RO water through the pot, and my pH coming out the bottom is 4.7. Granted, this is the first feed after transplanting into the Peat-lite, but that's pretty damn low. I really don't want to cook these plants during this transplant. Looking to whip up a 10g Dolomite lime slurry in a hurry to top dress the pot, maybe a few neutral flushes? pH up and tap water? Not sure how to proceed. Don't want to give up on the peat just yet, but I'm a bit worried that I'm gonna fry my babies.

**EDIT** Umm, post #10, @JonCreighton says using Home Depot peat is a bad idea. I can now attest that this is a fact. HD peat is probably soaked in battery acid before shipping. If I play my cards right, I can get some coco bricks, rinse and buffer them, mix in my perlite (and vermiculite fwiw,) and re-transplant my babies before the roots start screaming. FML. Live and learn.

The dolomite is meant to raise that. Some that you buy is designed to be slow release. I'm assuming bugbee premakes his mix or he uses fine powder that quickly changes the pH. Without dolomite the peat mix is 4.5 with it it's meant to be 5.5. personally my water from the tap is 8, but when I feed it through without dolomite it reads 4.5

I am using pure Canadian uncompressed peat (I live in Canada) and my numbers seem to like up with bugbees. I am wondering if your peat was like a 2 or something stupid

That's what I suspect. The craptastic Home Depot "peat" was probably really low. I did some small scale tests before mixing up the whole batch, and it landed in the mid 5s, which I thought would work. But I used the "shake small slurry, strain, and measure" method instead of the "water a pot to saturation, let it sit, and then dribble a bit of RO through" method to measure the ph. I don't think any amount of lime will save this, but I have 18 hours before I can get a load of coco. Maybe someone will come along and say definitively "just top dress with X grams of lime per liter of peat. It'll be fine."
But 4.7....

Chopshop697 said:

That's what I suspect. The craptastic Home Depot "peat" was probably really low. I did some small scale tests before mixing up the whole batch, and it landed in the mid 5s, which I thought would work. But I used the "shake small slurry, strain, and measure" method instead of the "water a pot to saturation, let it sit, and then dribble a bit of RO through" method to measure the ph. I don't think any amount of lime will save this, but I have 18 hours before I can get a load of coco. Maybe someone will come along and say definitively "just top dress with X grams of lime per liter of peat. It'll be fine."
But 4.7....

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My method for measuring is wack. I pour in tap water, collect the runoff, coffee filter, add colour pH test shake and look.


The pH of my water drops from an 8.5 to an 8 when it's sat for a few hours so something that's in it is breaking down. There is no new air getting in so it isn't co2

Chopshop697 said:

That's what I suspect. The craptastic Home Depot "peat" was probably really low. I did some small scale tests before mixing up the whole batch, and it landed in the mid 5s, which I thought would work. But I used the "shake small slurry, strain, and measure" method instead of the "water a pot to saturation, let it sit, and then dribble a bit of RO through" method to measure the ph. I don't think any amount of lime will save this, but I have 18 hours before I can get a load of coco. Maybe someone will come along and say definitively "just top dress with X grams of lime per liter of peat. It'll be fine."
But 4.7....

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iv ran baking soda thru potted plants as a way to rasie the ph. i think it was bakin g soda just google raising ph of potted plants and see if thats what comes up. im pretty sure it was baking soda...

i tried using ph up products in the feed. basic ph up (potassium bicard) and potassium silicate. they did not seems to rasie the medium for any amount of time just a slighly higher runoff intially.

I just got my fertilizer today (yay) and when I add it to my water to 1.3ec the pH is around a 5-5.5 (down from , is that normal for running 20-10-20. When I run this though my mixture without dolomitic limestone it is coming out as a 4-4.9

F2GD said:

I just got my fertilizer today (yay) and when I add it to my water to 1.3ec the pH is around a 5-5.5 (down from , is that normal for running 20-10-20. When I run this though my mixture without dolomitic limestone it is coming out as a 4-4.9

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do you have soft water ?
limestone isnt solvable in water it's useless to try

5.0-5.5 is not so bad, with a bit of mixing does it climb ?

kingromano said:

do you have soft water ?
limestone isnt solvable in water it's useless to try

5.0-5.5 is not so bad, with a bit of mixing does it climb ?

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I dont have any limestone to add so that is my mixture of 50 peat, 50 vermiculite, and some gypsum (Mixture pH is 4.5 rn). Canadian tire is not doing any inperson orders and you cant order it from them online. I am trying to get some from other stores. It does not climb over time. My tapwater has an EC of 0.14.

The emoji replaced that my tap water is usually 8 when its sat for 30 minutes (Fresh its 8.5)

F2GD said:

I dont have any limestone to add so that is my mixture of 50 peat, 50 vermiculite, and some gypsum (Mixture pH is 4.5 rn). Canadian tire is not doing any inperson orders and you cant order it from them online. I am trying to get some from other stores. It does not climb over time. My tapwater has an EC of 0.14.

The emoji replaced that my tap water is usually 8 when its sat for 30 minutes (Fresh its 8.5)

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i think you go wrong way with the limestone

0.14mS out of the tap is soft water. most nutrients are formulated for hard water (0.4-0.5mS).

bugbee's method is recirculative hydroponic. you need to get the calcium diluted in the soltution, not in the medium.
what you need to use with your soft water is a soft water formulation

for exemple ghe floraseries "soft water".. ionic soft water

personnaly i work with pure RO and my favorite line is "dutch pro hydro/coco RO/SO"
i mix it around 2.2mS with RO and diretly get ph 5.8

soft water nutrient lines contains more calcium/magnesium and also they are formulated to not bring the ph down

kingromano said:

i think you go wrong way with the limestone

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Limestone increases soil pH and stabilizes it. That's why it is used on lawns. As for soft water nutrients I will probably add some micronutrients to my water however as I already have 2kg of 20-10-20 that is what I am going to use. If it was just calcium and magnesium that was missing I would add cal/mag or epsom salts. 2.2 sounds way too high, idk how you are growing in that. 1.7 is the MAX for bloom

i use rockwool i feed between 2.0 to 2.5 depending on stage
my ph is always very stable or climbing a little bit, if i see it climb quickly i kniw i need to increase the feed from 0.1 points of EC

i discussed many times about this but if growers need to feed low EC in hydro its because they have salts accumulation in their medium.
so to counteract high runoff ec they feed lower EC.

its a crutch

i feed at higher EC because each feed gets a large runoff .. and i feed every hour so nutrients never accumulate

its a bit similar with bugbees method. pots filled with perlite/peat, top fed several times a day to runoff, recovering the runoff in a second reservoir to mix it again with the main reservoir.

you're in hydro bro
all nutrition is provided by fertigation

mixing calcar in your medium is not what you want

dolomite lime is what is diluted in tap water in hard water areas, some people in there would kill to have soft water, way better

i know because i use RO

so ... don't mix calcar in your medium
get a proper soft water nutrition

Ok, I'm going to chill on the leachate pH, keep the peat, feed at the right levels to runoff, and see how it goes...

kingromano said:

you're in hydro bro
all nutrition is provided by fertigation

mixing calcar in your medium is not what you want

dolomite lime is what is diluted in tap water in hard water areas, some people in there would kill to have soft water, way better

i know because i use RO

so ... don't mix calcar in your medium
get a proper soft water nutrition

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I am planning on adding Cal-mag + micros to my water up to 0.4ec then raise that to 1.3 with my fert. This way it is equivalent to hard tap water. Also by adding this I am diluting the acidic fertiliser I am using which will raise the pH to around 6.2 by my math, with the soil being at 5.5 this should make the mixture of the 2 be in the optimal range

if i may
i dont like calmag at all. bring no buffering at all from my experience,

its a headache to mix.
tell you one thing, everytime you will need to add 2ml of A and 2ml of B you will also need to add 0.5mL of calmag .. plus micros ??

i use recirculation in nft

you dont need to pay attention to the ph of the soil, after a few waterings it will be the same as your feed

its hydro, not soil. you feed several times a day, thats how you get crazy growth rate, impossible to achieve in soil

do you a favor, keep it simple and buy real fertilizer for soft water .. not calmag bulshi