Ph Way Too Low In Soil

[purklize]

My plants' soil has a very low pH right now. I ran 10-15 gallons each (they're in 3 gallon pots) of RO water pH'ed up to 9, and the runoff changed from 5.8 to 6.1 or so. (Woohoo!) The pH of the soil itself obviously must be much lower than that of the runoff. I tried dunking one plant that had an especially low pH in a tub of about 10 gallons of pH 10 RO water for 15 minutes, and it dropped the pH down to 8 but the pH of the runoff only went from 5.8 to 6.2. Any thoughts on what I should do? My plants are hurting; one of them is getting seriously damaged. Thanks.

[Sinsemillaplease]

What soil are your plants in?

[purklize]

pics would help, with ro it could be a mag deficiency due to there is 0 ppm in ro. are you catching the first water to drain out of your pots to test? if you catch the tail end of the run off the ph test will be inaccurate.

 

I haven't been giving them calmag, my RO water is 8ppm which I know isn't enough but my general nutrients CNS-17 have magnesium and calcium listed in the ingredients. I don't know if it's sufficient. I've heard it is, and I've heard it isn't. I tried a foliar feed recipe for magnesium sulfate as an experiment and all it did was burn the crap out of my plants.

 

I didn't know you have to test the first water to come out. I've been testing the very last. What will this do to the pH found? Will it be too high, too low? Do you know why this is? Just curious.

 

What soil are your plants in?

 

Happy frog, it's awesome soil and they did great until I stepped in and fed them over and over without bothering to balance the pH. Ouch. >_<

 

I'll get pictures soon.

[purklize]

coco coir

 

?

[purklize]

This is blueberry, she's the worst off. She's the only one I sprayed with magnesium sulfate thinking there was a magnesium or sulfur deficiency (probably 2 weeks ago), a good deal of the burns appeared shortly after that, but some really bad ones + twisting have appeared more recently. The canoeing leaves appeared after I sprayed with soap + neem (I did wash them with RO water an hour later), but I also fertilized (with more pH unbalanced hence very acidic nutes...) around then.

 

 

This is bumming me out... it's my favorite strain. I've decided to keep vegging it longer since it's doing so badly now... the buds would probably awful if I flowered it right now.

 

[rockinlespaul]

Blueberry is a finnicky strain. I keep it light with the nutes on my DJ Shorts BB.

[purklize]

The same plant four weeks ago:

 

[purklize]

Blueberry is a finnicky strain. I keep it light with the nutes on my DJ Shorts BB.

 

I have Dutch Passion Blueberry... I have been feeding it about 200-250ppm at most of CNS-17 3-1-2, using a base of RO water... 4ml/gallon or so. I don't think it can be nute burn... my ppms seem too low if anything (I just got a tds meter, I had no idea my ppms were so low).

[rockinlespaul]

The same plant four weeks ago:

 

 

 

 

DAYUM!

[purklize]

Yeah I don't know what the h3ll happened, it looked so good just a few weeks ago... it went downhill very fast.

[treehugger]

Ph'd RO water is too weak of a medicine, flush the plants with some good old hard well water and your soil will sweeten right up...

 

Did you pre-load your coir with cal/mag before potting. If you don't, you can run into these strange symptoms as the coir absorbs those elements it acidifies the remaining solution.

[purklize]

I didn't use coco coir, the clones came in rockwool cubes. I gave two plants some calmag the other day as an experiment.

 

Unfortunately, no good well water is available to me. My tap water is terrible. The pH is 9.3, 250 ppm and I've heard from growers around here that it will give your plants copper toxicity.

 

Does this look like pH burn or magnesium deficiency then? Thanks for the help.

[purklize]

200 ppm is overkill? Everywhere I go, I read that if I go under 400ppm, I'm underfertilizing. They weren't burning before and I haven't changed the amounts of nutes either. Haven't been watering a lot, I make sure it dries out thoroughly between waterings, but I did dunk last night so that's probably why they're droopy.

[Z71_420]

i've been having problems with happy frog lately too, the first 2 runs all my plants suffered from lockout, this time around i vegged with plain r/o water and cal mag, and flushed before i started budding so far so good, i quit buyin that stuff and got a bale of sunshine mix #4

[Beans]

This is why I stay with bales of promix/sunshine mix

 

I control all nutes from day one

 

honestly

 

i would trim em up and let reveg

 

No consolation but we all have learned by doing at some point

 

I run a blueberry cut in sunshine mix on almost nothing but calmag plus until the flip 12/12

[purklize]

Those mixes have no nutes in them? Interesting... I didn't know that. Thanks.

[Z71_420]

they have some but minimal i think, this is my first attempt with ssm4. but i would just run those plants in the HF soil and go buy promix or ssmix, i think i ran into a prob with too much N which locked out calcium. im no pro but tryin to learn.

[purklize]

I bought some pelletized dolomite and smashed up three tablespoons in a mortar and pestle, then dumped it in a gallon of RO water and shook. Going to feed it to a plant and see if it clears up the pH issues...

[treehugger]

I didn't use coco coir, the clones came in rockwool cubes. I gave two plants some calmag the other day as an experiment.

 

Unfortunately, no good well water is available to me. My tap water is terrible. The pH is 9.3, 250 ppm and I've heard from growers around here that it will give your plants copper toxicity.

 

Does this look like pH burn or magnesium deficiency then? Thanks for the help.

 

Most any bottled spring water would be a good start if you are trying to raise the ph of an un-balanced soil, but dolomite lime is not going to dissolve fast enough to make much difference at this point if the predicate problem is PH. Use ordinary PH up to raise the ph to ~9, but proceed cautiously, one plant at a time, and check the run-off continuously so as to not go to far in the positive ph treatment.

 

As to your last question, i see the Ph as the most likely culprit, followed by root binding, then root aphids. Treat the first, watch for the second, fear the third.

[purklize]

I have them in 3 gallon smartpots (made out of fabric), is this too small? The blueberry (the one that's looking really rough) has been vegging almost 12 weeks. A lot longer than I planned, but the appearance of one or two mites made me delay it by 4 weeks to make sure they were gone, then I had cloning problems, so I waited to make sure I didn't lose my genetics...

 

I can't use my tap sadly, it's not just very hard and very alkaline, but I've heard from growers around here that it induces copper toxicity problems. I've been flushing tons of pH'ed up RO water though, and it seems to be helping a bit. I guess happy frog soil is something you're supposed to mix with dolomite right away. Unfortunately I just potted a bunch of clones in that stuff, sans dolomite, sigh...

[purklize]

Are these root aphids? My computer started on fire a few months ago, and this current one (my wife's) is so infested with viruses that I can't use any search engines. Really hard to do research. I thought before these wingless guys might be fungus gnat nymphs, but now I'm starting to wonder. They love to hide under pots. I found one of my plants with the soil writhing with them, but the population went down a lot after adding tobacco tea and diatomaceous earth.

 

 

I have been battling fungus gnats too. God is this ever getting frustrating - I have tried so hard to be clean, too. Sigh.

[purklize]

Well I did some searching on ICMag and found a big thread on them. I am sure I have them now. A lot of people are saying they're worse than mites:

 

Don't f around, go back to clones/seed, you will not win otherwise.

 

:(

 

This is my first crop ever, I spent a lot of time and money finding my clones and a lot of time and money growing them... and I will have no supply for months longer if I have to start over... this is devastating... plus I would just hate killing all my plants like that, so sad...

 

Is there some system that's somehow immune to these? Some form of hydroponics? Anything that would allow me to continue flowering these and at least get something out of it.

[TajMahal]

do not know about the aphids but I saved a few soil grows from PH problems by watering with a PH opposite of the problem, it does not go away, just have to keep checking run off Ph.

 

It is a pain, but can be saved.

 

There must be some such savior for the aphids.................

[Catfinger]

I've seen plants in a way worse state than those, and they were saved. Definitely do not start over, you may need to nurse them along, but it beats another couple months trying to get back to this point, only to have to wait then on the flower cycle. Clean up whats dead on the plant also, thats not coming back or recovering so get it off the plant and observe the rest of the plant as you work to balance things out.

[purklize]

Well that's good to hear... maybe those people who said to chop are more illegal/commercial growers and are trying to optimize the whole operation, not dying to get something quickly etc...

 

I fed them with nutes pHed to 8 (runoff pH is reasonable with that pH water), + 2ml rosemary oil and a squirt of concentrated dish soap. Bumped up the nutes to around 600ppm as there are a lot of yellowing and dropping leaves (don't know if it's a "real deficiency" or due to root damage), half 3-1-2, half 2-2-3 and a bit of calmag. We'll see if that helps at all... I also smeared a lot of vaseline around the drip trays to try to limit the ability of those bastrds to move from plant to plant, and smeared vaseline at the base of the stems so they can't climb when I'm watering.

 

The four I have in flower actually look much healthier than the blueberry, but I can't take photos right now as the light just turned off. The blueberry seems to be perking up a bit, I have my fingers crossed. Maybe the flushing and dunking did some good.