Anytime a wrench gets thrown into something that has been taught and understood for years is going to turn the tables. I like it. Watch and learn as they say. 
First Grow In Over 20 Years! Northern Lights Under 600W LED
- Thread starter Homer Simpson
- Start date
It really was a conversation starter and I knew it would be which is why I gave it a thread of its own!
In terms of your experiment, I believe the pH of standing water will rise over time as the surface of the water reacts with the air. Bubbling water (because it has more surface area) should rise faster. I haven't got a bubbler but this is what I've read. So you could do your experiment with two glasses set to the same pH: one of plain water and one of nutes and water. Report back!
I will be going with the no pH adjusting method and see if my plants care. I'm going to skip the runoff test but I will be slurry testing once in a while to see what's happening.
I'm glad I got folks thinking about it, as it made my head spin when I was having the conversation!
- Thread starter
- #863
No problemo buddy! I never felt you were not listening to me and feel like you are always understanding and helpful.
Anytime a wrench gets thrown into something that has been taught and understood for years is going to turn the tables. I like it. Watch and learn as they say.
Yes, I love it when someone comes in and upsets the apple cart.
- Thread starter
- #864
More of a hornet's nest than a conversation starter but I really liked it!!
I did cover the container so it won't be exposed to a lot of air. I already did a test with nutes and water and it did go from 6.5 back up to 7.2 pH over a few days.
- Thread starter
- #866
No problem with insinuating run-off meant nothing even if you didn't because that is the consensus. I just am going to monitor it to see if there is any relationship to it and soil pH because if so it is a lot simpler to check. And yes feeding the plant the right pH may help absorption despite what Shed's expert says but I want to try and see if it is necessary because if it isn't it just eliminates kind of a pain of a step.
parnelli
Well-Known Member
I have seen that a soil slurry with distilled H2O is the way to check pH I've been using rainwater at 7.0pH and using litmus paper to pH test. I'd be very interested in what you conclude about runoff pH. W/O reading all 44 pages of ur journal, how r u checking pH?
- Thread starter
- #868
Glad you concur with the soil slurry and distilled water test. I hear litmus paper isn’t the best for testing for the narrow range we want to be in. I originally had a cheap piece of junk digital pH meter I bought for my brewing hobby but it was very inaccurate and caused me to use water that was way too acidic so I bought this one.
A lot of people on the site use it and I think it is a great unit.
Until recently I have been adjusting my nutrient water with acid to between 6.0 pH and 6.5 pH as is recommended for coco but Shed dropped a bombshell yesterday that adjusting your feed water doesn’t do anything. You might want to check out his threat here; Do we need to pH adjust our nutrient solutions?. So everyone is kind of digesting this paradigm shifting revelation today I think. You might want to read that before you buy a meter because you might not really need one.
MrSauga is using rainwater and seems to be having awfully good results with it. The consensus out here also is that runoff doesn’t tell you anything so don’t all excited about my results but I can’t help thinking that since the soil and the nutrients and the runoff water are so intimately combined that there has to be some relationship. Anyway good luck and thanks for stopping by.
parnelli
Well-Known Member
So I'm a homebrewer too but I never went so far as to check water pH - I was most concerned with the specific gravity - you've said it all; "Here’s to alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems."
- Thread starter
- #870
Yes, I also use a hydrometer to find the specific gravity of my mash but when I make a grain mash like for corn whiskey when I cook the mash to convert the starch to sugars the enzymes like certain pH values so I use it for that. Cheers.
- Thread starter
- #871
First the good news before I get to my pH woes; my curing from my first harvest is going pretty well as I am getting my bud in the 60 to 65% relative humidity range.
I have some preliminary results from my pH tests which have unfortunately not really clarified the issues for me. The first test that went according to plans was my pH test on my water where I took my tap water I use for my plants which is around 7.6 pH and I know from online from my city website that the water is 93 mg/L alkalinity and I adjusted this sample down to 6.0 pH.
After about 16 hours the pH of the sample raised up to 6.5 pH so as expected the alkalinity worked as a buffer to counteract the effect of the acid I used to lower the pH. This result in conjunction with a test I did earlier using my tap water and the I nutes I use, which lower the pH to 6.5 but a few days later was back up to 7.2, tells me that there really isn’t a lot of point in adjusting my pH of my feedwater because the alkalinity in the water raises the pH back up to the range before adjustments in very short order.
But my slurry tests were pretty surprising. I really can’t go that much by this generation because I really screwed it up and made lots of changes being my first grow but a slurry test of this soil using distilled water that started out at 6.9 pH after 16 hours was lowered by the soil to 6.5 pH. Maybe that will lower a lot more over time but because my runoff from this plant is 6.0 pH or lower I really assumed this soil would be significantly lower than 6.5 and even lower than 6.0. That was quite a shock to find that this soil isn’t very acidic and makes me wonder then what is making my runoff water so acidic unless that number drops a lot over the next few days.
I also did a slurry test on new soil with distilled water at 6.9 pH and after 16 hours surprisingly that had dropped to 5.9 pH. That means that my soil over time which I assumed was becoming much more acidic is actually becoming more basic. So I assume that’s why my old soil is at 6.5 pH.
And my second generation soil which I have been feeding since the start without adding acid to lower the pH but just adding my nutes which lowers the feedwater to 6.5 that slurry test also came out at 6.5 pH so that soil in relation to the new soil is also becoming more basic.
I’m sure this is totally confusing to everyone but me because I am running the experiments and probably not explaining them that well but this pH thing is pretty hard to nail down and know where you stand. Also my having a bad pH meter in the beginning I really don’t know what I was feeding my plant for the first couple months so that is another monkeywrench thrown in.
In conclusion the results I see are leading me to believe that over time the pH of my soil is increasing not decreasing as I thought, because my runoff pH is so low, so perhaps I should either start adjusting down the pH of my feedwater or because of Shed’s new info that doesn’t do anything maybe I should switch to a water with a lower alkalinity? Classic case of the more I learn the more I realize I don’t know, LOL. But the paradox is; if my soil pH is rising because of the alkalinity of my tap water then why does my runoff come out at 6.1 pH if the soil is 6.5 pH and I am watering at 6.5 pH? If in a few days all my slurry tests still show my pH soil raises over time I think I will start lowering the pH of my water again. I don’t expect anyone to make sense of what I am saying, lol….
I have some preliminary results from my pH tests which have unfortunately not really clarified the issues for me. The first test that went according to plans was my pH test on my water where I took my tap water I use for my plants which is around 7.6 pH and I know from online from my city website that the water is 93 mg/L alkalinity and I adjusted this sample down to 6.0 pH.
After about 16 hours the pH of the sample raised up to 6.5 pH so as expected the alkalinity worked as a buffer to counteract the effect of the acid I used to lower the pH. This result in conjunction with a test I did earlier using my tap water and the I nutes I use, which lower the pH to 6.5 but a few days later was back up to 7.2, tells me that there really isn’t a lot of point in adjusting my pH of my feedwater because the alkalinity in the water raises the pH back up to the range before adjustments in very short order.
But my slurry tests were pretty surprising. I really can’t go that much by this generation because I really screwed it up and made lots of changes being my first grow but a slurry test of this soil using distilled water that started out at 6.9 pH after 16 hours was lowered by the soil to 6.5 pH. Maybe that will lower a lot more over time but because my runoff from this plant is 6.0 pH or lower I really assumed this soil would be significantly lower than 6.5 and even lower than 6.0. That was quite a shock to find that this soil isn’t very acidic and makes me wonder then what is making my runoff water so acidic unless that number drops a lot over the next few days.
I also did a slurry test on new soil with distilled water at 6.9 pH and after 16 hours surprisingly that had dropped to 5.9 pH. That means that my soil over time which I assumed was becoming much more acidic is actually becoming more basic. So I assume that’s why my old soil is at 6.5 pH.
And my second generation soil which I have been feeding since the start without adding acid to lower the pH but just adding my nutes which lowers the feedwater to 6.5 that slurry test also came out at 6.5 pH so that soil in relation to the new soil is also becoming more basic.
I’m sure this is totally confusing to everyone but me because I am running the experiments and probably not explaining them that well but this pH thing is pretty hard to nail down and know where you stand. Also my having a bad pH meter in the beginning I really don’t know what I was feeding my plant for the first couple months so that is another monkeywrench thrown in.
In conclusion the results I see are leading me to believe that over time the pH of my soil is increasing not decreasing as I thought, because my runoff pH is so low, so perhaps I should either start adjusting down the pH of my feedwater or because of Shed’s new info that doesn’t do anything maybe I should switch to a water with a lower alkalinity? Classic case of the more I learn the more I realize I don’t know, LOL. But the paradox is; if my soil pH is rising because of the alkalinity of my tap water then why does my runoff come out at 6.1 pH if the soil is 6.5 pH and I am watering at 6.5 pH? If in a few days all my slurry tests still show my pH soil raises over time I think I will start lowering the pH of my water again. I don’t expect anyone to make sense of what I am saying, lol….
The soil is buffered to 5.9 but the alkalinity of the water over time is raising that. 6.5 is perfectly fine for soil pH but if it goes much higher then it might be time to buffer the soil with amendments. And I have no idea what nutrient runoff pH means or whether it's even worth testing!
- Thread starter
- #873
I agree with your thinking and if you think 6.5 pH is fine for soil I may just continue on as long as it doesn't get over that.
6.5 is fine for soil.
- Thread starter
- #875
Great! Thanks for the verification Pennywise.
- Thread starter
- #876
I found this paragraph in an article from a link from someone in the hornet's net thread and after reading it I think I am going to continue that myself, not adjusting ph of nute water.
"To compare the effect of water pH or alkalinity on the ability to raise pH (or neutralize acid) in a medium, 50 ppm alkalinity (which is a low alkalinity) would be similar to having a water with pH 11 (i.e. an extremely high pH). A water with a pH of 8.0 would have the same effect on substrate pH as an alkalinity concentration of only 0.05 ppm (i.e., almost nothing)."
It's effect on soil ph compared to alkalinity is so minuscule it seems pointless to bother plus my adjusted samples seem to just go back up from alkalinity also. So I think pH is settled for now for me.
I know that ProMix buffers their product down under 6 since it's considered soil-less, and since I have low alkaline water it will just be the nitrogen that will affect the pH of my medium. Oh, something I forgot to mention that someone posted about ProMix a while back. New bags are dry and have the buffers mixed in, but they don't start buffering until they've been wet for a while. So I'm going to slurry test after an an hour and then after a 24 hours and see what the difference is.
- Thread starter
- #878
I may be wishing I had low alkaline water too soon. I will just have to keep testing my soil and see. Thanks for the tip; I may be switching to Promix once my coco is gone.
In coco you need to pH every time. In soil, no longer?
- Thread starter
- #880
This is my second of three planned stages of harvest. It has been 10 weeks and four days into budding and one week since my last harvest.
I’m seeing some pretty good Amber on most of them. For the last third which actually is smaller than a third I might wait a couple weeks till they go totally Amber to see what they are like as sleep aid meds.
The leftovers are looking pretty sparse.
To update the saga of my pH dramedy today I rechecked all my tests and the only significant change is the slurry from my oldest plants that I am harvesting is now up to 6.8 pH from 6.5 pH yesterday which seems pretty high for growing medium. I may have to look into getting some lower alkaline water but before I do go to the hassle or expense I am thinking of just using my whole next crop as a guinea pig and continue using straight water with no pH adjustment. They seem pretty happy except for a few dying lower leaves. I am hoping my first crop was screwed up because I over acidified because of my bad meter and I am hoping that maybe not doing that again, my next generation will be all right in that the pH of the soil won’t climb too high from the alkalinity of my water before they are finished.
So I’m going to try the easiest route first which is to do absolutely nothing different but I admit this pH saga has been pretty interesting to me. I love a good mystery and it certainly is that. I could probably write a couple thousand words on the subject but I will spare everyone.
I’m seeing some pretty good Amber on most of them. For the last third which actually is smaller than a third I might wait a couple weeks till they go totally Amber to see what they are like as sleep aid meds.
The leftovers are looking pretty sparse.
To update the saga of my pH dramedy today I rechecked all my tests and the only significant change is the slurry from my oldest plants that I am harvesting is now up to 6.8 pH from 6.5 pH yesterday which seems pretty high for growing medium. I may have to look into getting some lower alkaline water but before I do go to the hassle or expense I am thinking of just using my whole next crop as a guinea pig and continue using straight water with no pH adjustment. They seem pretty happy except for a few dying lower leaves. I am hoping my first crop was screwed up because I over acidified because of my bad meter and I am hoping that maybe not doing that again, my next generation will be all right in that the pH of the soil won’t climb too high from the alkalinity of my water before they are finished.
So I’m going to try the easiest route first which is to do absolutely nothing different but I admit this pH saga has been pretty interesting to me. I love a good mystery and it certainly is that. I could probably write a couple thousand words on the subject but I will spare everyone.