whats wrong here?

masp84 said:

If I water at 7 and it comes out at 6.2 how come this technique doesn't work? it should give you an aprox measure. I'd like to know more about that if you don't mind elaborating

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The water does not have nearly enough time to buffer to the mediums pH just passing through it. Reading runoff pH is one of the biggest myths in these forums. Just dosent work that way. And chasing it will most likely cause more harm than good......

watchhowIdoit said:

The water does not have nearly enough time to buffer to the mediums pH just passing through it. Reading runoff pH is one of the biggest myths in these forums. Just dosent work that way. And chasing it will most likely cause more harm than good......

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I agree on that, I just said the same thing 2 post ago. My point if you're feeding higher It should rise the PH over time as it breakdowns on the soil, meanwhile I told him to Folliar feed. He's not that far.. just 0.3 points

Just because the feed/water has been pHed to a higher number does not mean it will raise to mediums pH. Adding woodash is the fastest way to raise soil pH. But be very careful as a little goes a long ways. Lime is an option but still takes considerable time to buffer pH, something most container grows underway do not have. Worm castings are a dirt baggers best friend. Get them in the mix, 25% or so, from the onset of the grow and you shouldnt have to worry about pH at all. Dolomite from the start is a good ideal also....

What happens to water when you add nutes, the pH generally lowers. Same thing happens when water is passed through a container, it picks up unused salts and the pH lowers. Does not mean the medium has a low pH.

watchhowIdoit said:

Just because the feed/water has been pHed to a higher number does not mean it will raise to mediums pH. Adding woodash is the fastest way to raise soil pH. But be very careful as a little goes a long ways. Lime is an option but still takes considerable time to buffer pH, something most container grows underway do not have. Worm castings are a dirt baggers best friend. Get them in the mix, 25% or so, from the onset of the grow and you shouldnt have to worry about pH at all. Dolomite from the start is a good ideal also....

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Great info mate +Rep

I agree with everything in this thread. I don't usually bother fighting the "runoff" test myth and I'm glad someone else did. Why do poeple buy liquid ph meters, but REFUSE to buy a soil ph meter? They are about the same price and if you are growing in soil you kind of need both. One for the mixing of nutrients, one for testing the ph of your soil.

The reality that I've found is that in the short period that my plants are in their soil homes I really can't change the soil ph as much as I might like. If the ph of the medium is dropping and I'm using higher ph water to try to fix it I'm kind of doing nothing positive. I have water in my medium that's too high of ph and soil that's too low. You do what you can in the middle of the grow, but the very important thing is that NEXT grow you know you need prepare your medium to buffer ph better by adding lime or woodash (up or down, depending on what the problem was the last time) to the mix to get it right for the next one.

I have found that generally any reaction is likely to be an overreaction and the key is to use a little bit of info from every grow towards the NEXT grow. If you run the same strain as last time and last time you had a cal/mag problem mid way through flowering, you should consider adding Cal Mag through the entire grow to stave that off and keep the plants healthy and happy until the end. Same goes for any nutrient deficiency, PH problem, temperature problem, etc. Make sure you stay ahead of the problem on the next one.

Eventually you end up like a lot of the growers on here who have been doing it for years and have their system. I know exactly what goes in my soil mix now (took me 3 or 4 grows to get what I feel is "right") after years of growing hydro and getting that system down. I know how much to feed my plants and when based on previous grows and I often refer to my old journals for reference.

For this current grow I wanted to know things like "how big should they be when I flower" and "does this strain require heavy nutrients or light"? I went back to my old grow journals where I grew this strain and I flowered them a little bigger than last time and I've been feeding them heavily based upon what happened last time and so far so good.

So for anyone who reads this thread and would like to learn something here it goes. The problem was nutrient lockout due to low Ph. So the flushing the plants and spraying with calmag solved the problem in a couple days. However I was growing In 5 gallon pots and flushing with 3 times the pot size wasn't needed. I found it didn't raise the ph and more then if I did it with 5-7 gallons. What seemed to work was to flush the soil until the water coming out did not look so deep yellow (like piss). The Ph only went up a little. At first we flushed with ph water of 6.8 but after hours and hours of getting no where with raising the ph we decided to use straight tap water and flush less. It gave the same results and took 1/3 of the time. We went threw hundreds of gallons of water 12 hours and a lot of beers but in the end this is what worked for me and thanks to everyone for your help you save my ass and my plants!
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Good work man, that's generally all it takes. Just run through plenty of ph adjusted water and you've done all that you can do. Sounds like you had some buildup in your soil. Going back to basics man, get the junk out that you put in and let the plant do it's thing on ph adjusted water for a couple of days. Plants like nothing more than a fresh start.

cannofbliss said:

dont know how you water your plant but if you just water it a little bit with nutes and often you will most likely over the course of time muck up your pH and have toxic soil by your 4th week of flowering...

But if you feed and water it with your water/nute solution, till it pours well out of the bottom... then wait till dry and the soil is light again then simply rinse and repeat... in other words when you do your feeding just feed it like you would normally with not too strong concentration of nutes and not too little concentration...

you should just end up using a higher volume of your mix or water... say when you normally feed your plant you feed it with 1 gallon of water/nute mix...

now instead of only 1 gallon give it 2 gallons with the same % of nutes and same ppm...

Yeah most of it will end up being wasted and you will go through your nutes slightly faster when it ends up running off... this way you are giving the plant the same good concentration as a % of nutrient mix... plus you are also clearing out the fertiliser salts that are left behind which the plant doesnt use anyways which has built up since last feeding ya dig

so try to if you want to water and feed it until it saturates the soil and run off is quite apparent every time you... and you shouldnt get a buildup or even lock out your nutrients to your plants ever again...

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This is some of the best advice posted in this thread yet. Thank you Cann.