Is it me or do only a select few only truly understand soil and water pH!!!!

Kingrow1

Kingrow1

Well-Known Member
Where do all these pH myths come from? Why do we worry about pH'ing water and nutrients in soil grows, my plants take anything from pH 5.5 to 8.5 and give a big two fingers up to all them myths!

It takes water a long time to adjust the pH of soil and let alone all them people who believe soil run off is an actual measurement of soil pH.

There are such things as soil cation rates and hydrodgen ions you know for all those who think they know everything about soil pH and water. I dont even know it all but it is a damn site different than a lot of people who profess to explain it all to the new grower.

Can we have a sticky about pH cause it must be one of the biggest myths going, well that and who shot JFK!lol! Some people here seem to want me to treat my soil grow like a damn hydro grow somedays, if i wanted to grow in water i would but i prefer soil thanks, go stick your pH meters where the sun dont shine! Peace:blsmoke:
 
L

lovenest420

Member
Bump, I'd like to hear some professional insight on whether or not you should pH your SOIL (7.0) or your WATER that goes into the soil (7.0)... how bout some ideas king? I've just recently started looking into this stuff.

Peace
 
reverof

reverof

Active Member
For the most part you are right... PH in soil is really not important to most public water sources, but in some cases, there are water sources with water PH 8.0+, as this may be fine for a while it will cause problems eventually if consistant. My tap water PH here is about 7 and is perfect for soil... my RO unit is about 5.5 consistantly great for most hydro especially with added nutes.

Many people don't undertand growing and have little common sense and freak when trying to grow something, or someone once told them hey your PH is horrible you need to fix it, then they over correct and cause more problems...

People need to live by the old saying, if it aint broke dont fix it!
 
brokenturtle3102

brokenturtle3102

Well-Known Member
I am very curious to see what those plants would have looked like if you actually pH'd them. The companies that make pH up and down do not lobby others and make you buy their products. Its the scientists doing the research that shows what nutrients to plant can absorb under certain levels of the pH scale. Also, by knowing the pH of a solution, you can much easily treat a deficiency. For instance, if I have an iron deficiency, I tend to feed the plant a little more acidic nutrients (5.8) and vice versa with others. The response by the plant is much more swift.
 
DrFever

DrFever

New Member
its always good to know what your tap ph is like mine 7.6 once i add my veg nutes it drops to 6.9 - 7.0 perfect :)) but when in flowering i got to add ph up cause when i mix my food it really drops to 5.8 etc

but ph thing is good when cloneing
 
Kingrow1

Kingrow1

Well-Known Member
Well i was led to believe similar, above 8.5 and below 5.5 may shock the roots a little but as for pH well i believe that is determined by the parent material or soil in our cases.

I feed at just above pH8 some days and generally i never get lower than 5.5 at worst and have not a single problem. By pH'ing the water you are basically cancelling out acid and alkali ions with either acid or alkaline.

Its overcomplicated and in most cases unecessary, if your tap water is outside of these ranges i wouldnt recomend drinking it let alone give it to a plant. I have yet to fully understand the whole topic of pH but with all the misinformation it is hard to get to the bottom of it.

Now i was always told that soil and water are two different things when growing in soil, soil pH is determined by acid hydrogen ions which build up and are even added to the soil from the roots as a byproduct of fertilizer uptake. Now because of the soil cation exchange capacity these can be replaced by alkaline ions from calcium and magnesium and one or two other alkaline elements making the soil less acidic and less hydrogen ions will be loosley bound to the soil particles, exchanged by alkaline ions hence the exchange in cation exchange capacity.

Now to add more alkaline ions to the soil to stop it from becoming acidic we use a buffer generally lime which is calcium or sometimes calcium and magnesium both are alkaline and hence will exchange with the acidic hydrogen ions making the soil more alkaline. The excess hydrogen ions seem easily flushed from the soil.

Now i do believe for the reason that water contains very small amounts of alkaline ions such as calcium and magnesium as well as potassium which i believe is also alkaline that it can affect soil pH although this takes a long time and not really of too much concern in a typical soil grow.

Simply put you can add lime to your soil and it will buffer it, low or high pH water has little short term effect.

Anyone else wana chime in with some ideas or knowledge on soil pH or question my method of understanding soil pH is more than welcome, we need to discuss this and stop all the myths from spreading. Peace
 
F

fdd2blk

Well-Known Member
brokenturtle3102 said:
I am very curious to see what those plants would have looked like if you actually pH'd them. The companies that make pH up and down do not lobby others and make you buy their products. Its the scientists doing the research that shows what nutrients to plant can absorb under certain levels of the pH scale. Also, by knowing the pH of a solution, you can much easily treat a deficiency. For instance, if I have an iron deficiency, I tend to feed the plant a little more acidic nutrients (5.8) and vice versa with others. The response by the plant is much more swift.
Click to expand...
you are curious as to what my plants may have looked like if i would have ph'ed them? :?

i LOLed. :)
 
Kingrow1

Kingrow1

Well-Known Member
Manage to make liquid ferts that are self pH'ing for soil, seen them for hydro but dont understand how they manage to do it in soil, maybe some liquid lime or somthing but seems a bit too good to be true.

I would worry more about salt build up from ferts rather than pH'ing water and feeds. Peace
 
F

fdd2blk

Well-Known Member
Kingrow1 said:
Manage to make liquid ferts that are self pH'ing for soil, seen them for hydro but dont understand how they manage to do it in soil, maybe some liquid lime or somthing but seems a bit too good to be true.

I would worry more about salt build up from ferts rather than pH'ing water and feeds. Peace
Click to expand...

i use this and this, ....







nothing more, but well and city water.
 
Kingrow1

Kingrow1

Well-Known Member
I gave up pH'ing my water and get much better results than when i did pH it.

Unless someone can give me the science behind the reason to pH it then i can only go with the science that says dont bother, if you got good soil then that is all you need.

So i reckon dont worry about pH'ing water unless outside of the 5.5 to 8.5 range as i have heard this causes mild stress to roots. Peace
 
Kingrow1

Kingrow1

Well-Known Member
dirtysnowball said:
i dont ph either. theres no need to mess with something thats already ok right?
Click to expand...
So i see a lot of people defy the myth of pH'ing their feed and water, ill agree with the guy who posted before and said knowing your starting water pH is usefull but there were no such things as pH meters all those years ago.

Seriously are we overcomplicating things or getting mixed up with hydro where a plant actually grows in water which hence would be its growing medium and important to keep the right pH? Soil is my growing medium and it holds its pH well with the added dolomite lime, are people suggesting that if i dont add water i will very quickly change the pH of my soil with all that added lime? Peace
 
dirtysnowball

dirtysnowball

Well-Known Member
i've been working on a short but very understandable growing guide. we should sticky that lol.

i'll add a sentence about factless myths. example-"cut off leaves to grow faster" that one always makes me laugh. another one is following nute scheduals lol.

and the worst one is "i justgot this ultra omega awesome super grow mega bloom juice, it makes plants just explode! like whoa crazy! man it only cost me $100!"

i love it here im constantly ROFL
 
Kingrow1

Kingrow1

Well-Known Member
I am weary about grow guides, i seen a lot over the years and none really helped me much, if there are new guides and stickies i would like them to be better than what has gone before and basically definitve in what they say. Peace

P.s. Fdd get some more pics up on your thread because those plants look awsome, kinda put on a lot of height since the last pics i seen. Peace
 
M

Mr.Grønn

New Member
Kingrow1 said:
Well i was led to believe similar, above 8.5 and below 5.5 may shock the roots a little but as for pH well i believe that is determined by the parent material or soil in our cases.

I feed at just above pH8 some days and generally i never get lower than 5.5 at worst and have not a single problem. By pH'ing the water you are basically cancelling out acid and alkali ions with either acid or alkaline.

Its overcomplicated and in most cases unecessary, if your tap water is outside of these ranges i wouldnt recomend drinking it let alone give it to a plant. I have yet to fully understand the whole topic of pH but with all the misinformation it is hard to get to the bottom of it.

Now i was always told that soil and water are two different things when growing in soil, soil pH is determined by acid hydrogen ions which build up and are even added to the soil from the roots as a byproduct of fertilizer uptake. Now because of the soil cation exchange capacity these can be replaced by alkaline ions from calcium and magnesium and one or two other alkaline elements making the soil less acidic and less hydrogen ions will be loosley bound to the soil particles, exchanged by alkaline ions hence the exchange in cation exchange capacity.

Now to add more alkaline ions to the soil to stop it from becoming acidic we use a buffer generally lime which is calcium or sometimes calcium and magnesium both are alkaline and hence will exchange with the acidic hydrogen ions making the soil more alkaline. The excess hydrogen ions seem easily flushed from the soil.

Now i do believe for the reason that water contains very small amounts of alkaline ions such as calcium and magnesium as well as potassium which i believe is also alkaline that it can affect soil pH although this takes a long time and not really of too much concern in a typical soil grow.

Simply put you can add lime to your soil and it will buffer it, low or high pH water has little short term effect.

Anyone else wana chime in with some ideas or knowledge on soil pH or question my method of understanding soil pH is more than welcome, we need to discuss this and stop all the myths from spreading. Peace
Click to expand...
It's a tough subject to understand, I don't think I ever will understand it.

But you seem to have similar "understanding" as me, that it's the plant roots - in reacton to the soil and liquid nutrients - that are what really dictate the PH of your growing medium. The water-PH has little effect, in comparison (and this is why they say PH doesn't matter in compost).

Of course PH matters, it's just that we don't have to think about it, if using correct compost and nutrients.

Take a look at your "grow"-bottle, and see how much of your Nitrogen is in ammoniacal vs Nitrate form.
If mostly ammoniacal Nitrogen, your medium will get more acidic.
If mostly Nitrage Nitrogen, then it will get more alkaline.

So the PH of your grow-medium is set mostly by the compost and whatever liquid organics you choose to feed it. IMHO.

Source:
"
When ammoniacal nitrogen is taken up by roots, the plant can secrete an acidic H+ into the soil solution. The more H+ contained in the root media, the lower the media pH.

Urea is easily converted into ammonium in the substrate and therefore can be thought of as another source of acidic nitrogen.

In contrast, uptake of nitrate nitrogen increases substrate-pH because basic OH- or HCO3- are secreted by plant roots into the root media. Since OH- and HCO3- are bases, nitrate uptake therefore can cause the media-pH to increase.
"
 
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