Can use some help understanding my water: pH and TDS

[giannid]

So I'm going to be attempting my first grow. Trying to germinate some seeds with spring water now. I purchased a cheap electronic PH tester from Amazon and have come to the conclusion it is junk and returned it. Definitely don't want to spend money on a good one as I'm an occasional grower and they seem to high maintenance fro me anyways. I ended up getting a general Hydroponics PH control kit that has PH up and down, along with the drops to check for PH. I did some testing of my water with it and it's definitely not the most accurate way to test.

So at my home I have regular well water, softened well water and RO water we use to drink. I heard the softened water is definitely a no go so I haven't even tested it. My RO water tested out about 6.5. The unsoftened water was at 7 to 8 but after adding 20 drops of ph down to 2 quarts of water, it brought the ph down to about 6.5.

TDS I tested on the RO water was 24 and the unsoftened water was at 350. I also tested spring water and it was around 250.

I really want to use the regular unsoftened water for my plants as the RO is slow and hard to get in the area I'm growing. I realize I need to PH the water after I use nutrients but I won't be using nutes for most of my veg cycle as I'm growing in a combination of FFOF, FFHF, Manure, and perlite blend which will give the plants plenty of nutrients to start. We'll have a lot of snow here for the winter so I'm sure I can bring that in and melt it down in buckets for water. Rain water is going to be harder to collect as the gutters dump into pipework into the ground and prefer to not mess with it in the winter months.

Is it going to be OK to use my well water for watering by adjusting PH or do I have way too much TDS in the water? Maybe use a blend of snow melt and well water?

 

[TheFertilizer]

Hey I'd recommend checking out posts from @bobrown14 in this thread

Building a Better Soil - Demonstrations & Discussions of Organic Soil Recipes

I've seen him explain several times around here why hard water will eventually degrade the buffering capabilities of your soil, but I don't really remember the specifics. To cut to the chase though, he's a strong advocate for RO water when water-quality is in question.

You're going to find a huge division on this subject in terms of opinion. What I can tell you from personal experience is that I've tried the drops, cheap pens and using organic soil without any PH'ing needed. I thought it was hard to match the color for the drops properly, but if you get the hang of it, they're actually pretty accurate if not precise. The pens just need to be re-calibrated often with PH solution fluid, and otherwise I think their maintenance needs are overblown. Meanwhile, organic soil you can just pour water in without worrying about it. Seems convenient on the surface, but the key to that is you need to have a very healthy living soil for the microbes to do the pH buffering for you; it's kind of a "sinks or floats" thing there.

I think mixing rainwater and snow melt might also be a viable solution for you, but I think that over time using your hard-water on the soil will prevent you from being able to recycle it too many times. The bicarbonates in hard water have some kind of effect on the calcium ratio in the soil, which effects its cation exchange capacity. I can't really explain it as well as bob could, but long story short, that water will degrade your soil's quality over time.

You might also want to browse this thread...

Adjusting your pH when growing in soil damaging your plants!

 

[giannid]

I'm going to have a handful of plants going. I might try the straight well water in one plant and see how it reacts instead of jeopardizing the entire grow. I'm sure i'll know pretty quick if the water is no good for the plant.

 

[TheFertilizer]

I'm going to have a handful of plants going. I might try the straight well water in one plant and see how it reacts instead of jeopardizing the entire grow. I'm sure i'll know pretty quick if the water is no good for the plant.

I should have been more clear. It's really only going to effect subsequent reuse of the soil. You probably won't notice dramatic problems in the first run. Maybe some issues with calicum uptake as you near the end of flower.

 

[giannid]

Well that doesn't bother me. I'm not growing much so I can start with new soil every grow if I have to. That's cheap and I enjoy making it. I'm still going to guinea pig one plant to make sure the well water doesn't make it die. My wife still claims that the well water at my house killed her fish. Lol

 

[TheFertilizer]

Well that doesn't bother me. I'm not growing much so I can start with new soil every grow if I have to. That's cheap and I enjoy making it. I'm still going to guinea pig one plant to make sure the well water doesn't make it die. My wife still claims that the well water at my house killed her fish. Lol

Yeah I would say don't worry too much about it then. I would just keep it in mind if you start seeing nutrient uptake issues related to calcium. Your plants might actually do better on it, it's unpredictable since every strain's needs are different.

I'm a little concerned with how you'd plan to collect snow/rain water though. I don't really want to cause unnecessary fear since I really don't know the first thing about the subject, but I would be worried that snow could hold pathogens ( I know they warn it can contain giardia around here ), and that the run-off collected from your gutter could carry who knows what out of your gutter (anything on your roof shingles and in the gutter themselves, etc). I'm not sure those sources would be better than your well water to be honest. A rain catch or boiling and filtering the snow melt would be safest practice but probably a pain in the butt.