Can anyone help?

[SmokingWings]

First time grower if im using foxfarm ocean forest soil do i have to adjust the ph when using fox farm grow big????

You might not have to adjust the pH. You are the one who has to test the pH of your city or well water for the first several times you plan on using it. All the advice on whether to adjust pH means nothing until you know what the actual pH is when you fill the bucket or jug.

So what is the pH of your water as it comes out the tap?

 

[Grandma Weedstein]

I just notice this thread was originally posted nearly a year ago by a user who hasn’t been active on the site in months.

Looks like we all lose this argument, LoL

 

[Emilya Green]

I just notice this thread was originally posted nearly a year ago by a user who hasn’t been active on the site in months.

Looks like we all lose this argument, LoL

good catch Grandma... nothing at all wrong with your old eyes!

 

[VetSmoke85]

We've been had

 

[Weaselcracker]

To be fair it was bumped by someone else with a different question. But yeah.. I want my money back.

 

[zeroday]

I would PH it, always. I am also not an expert grower. As @Emilya has stated, some folks will say you don't need to PH adjust. I tried it over 2 grows, and had shit results without PH balancing. I'm sure that is because I am not an expert grower... So I choose to PH balance always.

 

[Weaselcracker]

I wonder what the discrepancy is. Because as I said- I grew two clones from veg to harvest in sunshine mix - one fed and watered at 10-11 ph and the other at about 3.6, which is just where my acidic nutes would take it to if I didn’t adjust.

And they were both totally fine. Not that they didn’t have minor leaf issues from me struggling with my feeding mix at the time- but they were the same leaf issues that the other ‘ph adjusted’ plants had. And overall they were just regular healthy plants.

That was the end of my ph adjusting days. Why give myself extra work for nothing? But each to their own and if it helps in some situations or some mediums. or if it just makes people feel more comfortable then that’s great too.

 

[zeroday]

I wonder what the discrepancy is.

The only discrepencies I can think of are the skill of the grower, the medium and adds to it, and the skill of the grower.

I'm not saying you absolutely have to PH, I'm just guessing based on my own personal experience, and the amount of new growers that show up here with PH issues. I do not doubt that more experienced folks have luck without PHing. IMHO, I think new growers like me should PH, until enough experience has been learned to not PH.

Again, just my opinion. That and a nickel will get you nothing.

 

[Weaselcracker]

I don’t like to, but I have to disagree with you here Zeroday, because even if I had amazing growing skills (I do not), there is no skill that could grow a cannabis plant well in a medium that was at a pH of 11 or of 3.6.

Anyway I know exactly why the plants did fine- because I did multiple slurry tests. If I take a bit of my sunshine mix in a container and add the PH 11 water, or the PH 3 water, or whatever PH I want to add, it quickly adjusts to an acceptable range of around 6- give or take. That’s because it is buffered with dolomite lime.

It’s an easy test to do if you have a pH meter, and faster than it took to type this out.

Having said all that, I’m not trying to convince anyone to stop PH’ing their water if that’s what they want to do. And no need to point out that -situations vary.

Edit. Oh wait @zeroday I didn’t see what you said about the medium as a possibility.
Sorry. Yes some mediums absolutely will need pH adjustment. Those are mediums such as coco - basically anything that is not pH buffered. You’re unlikely to meet a soil mix which isn’t buffered. Though I suppose some might have a bad ph level, but generally it’s not rocket science to add some lime to the mix.

 

[zeroday]

@Weaselcracker

So many different variables (RO water, tap water, type of medium, Soil/Coco/Hydro, amendments, organic nutes, vegan nutes, chem nutes, grow space environmentals, etc).

For the new grower, I just feel the easy answer is, follow the true and tried to get going. Once comfy, start branching out and doing groovy shit, which we all know is vast.

 

[Enjoil]

I would think it depends on how much organic crap was added to the soil mix for microbes to really get out of control ,
I am working with coco soil using microbes and homemade ferts to feed those microbes so they feed my girls

To be honest heavy flower will tell the story , this is my very first run , these microbes came from three trees , under some mushrooms lol, this is an none bubble tea , the bubbles are microbes farting , its gases from them , after one day you have millions

Ewwww! What is it? Microbes farting? What do you do with it? Lol

 

[013]

Hey where’smylighter,

Welcome to 420. You dredged up a year old post but no worries....the new similar threads feature uses keyword indexing so this happens a lot lately - it’s all good.

Runoff contains chemical salts from nutes and fine sediments from the grow media, so runoff is not a reliable indicator of what’s happening in the bucket. To test your soils true ph - you need a slurry test with distilled water. Ok here’s what happens often - new growers read somewhere to check runoff, they check the runoff and go OMG and then start jacking with ph inputs trying to get a better / higher / lower ph number coming out in the runoff. Don’t chase that rabbit - it leads nowhere good, worry about your ph inputs not the runoff.

 

[Grandma Weedstein]

The main reason I objected to the idea of “having” to adjust pH is because sometimes people starting out in any type of gardening can get overwhelmed with the stuff they “have to do” and get discouraged.

No offense to anyone, but some of the folks just starting out post photos of seedlings growing in pure goatshit in a container with no drainage, in a closet with no ventilation, 10 feet below a single incandescent lightbulb.

Maybe that’s a slight exaggeration but you get my drift. Sorting through all those problems is going to be frustrating enough, so pHing water may seem overwhelming — especially when you haven’t even figured out how often to water and how much, etc.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Having to PH everything sucks. PH’ing everything when you don’t have to -sucks too, but is curable.

 

[Weaselcracker]

By the way - not talking anyone down. That’s coming from me who religiously PH’d everything in Sunshine Mix for over four years before finding out that I don’t have to! And I haven’t done the PH thing since- for a couple years now.

 

[Grandma Weedstein]

By the way - not talking anyone down. That’s coming from me who religiously PH’d everything in Sunshine Mix for over four years before finding out that I don’t have to! And I haven’t done the PH thing since- for a couple years now.

Yeah, me either — I’m not talking shit about people who decide to do it, just feel compelled to mention there are those of us who seem to do fine without it.

 

[Enjoil]

I always check the ph and the ppm of all my solutions.... it’s a good idea... in coco.

 

[SmokingWings]

Welcome to 420. You dredged up a year old post but no worries....the new similar threads feature uses keyword indexing so this happens a lot lately - it’s all good.
<cut>

And now if someone stumbles on this thread while researching a similar question there are now some very valid ideas that they can think about.

My earlier point was that if the original poster wanted to know if they should adjust the pH of their water after adding a Fox Farm liquid nutrient then they really need to know the pH of the water to begin with.

I am one of those who also does not bother to check pH every time. Did that several years ago and once I felt sure that it would stay in the 6.1 to 6.4 range I stopped checking. That is the water out of the tap. Rain water has a bit more of a range but I have not bothered to check rain or melted snow in 3 years now.

 

[Emilya Green]

And now if someone stumbles on this thread while researching a similar question there are now some very valid ideas that they can think about.

My earlier point was that if the original poster wanted to know if they should adjust the pH of their water after adding a Fox Farm liquid nutrient then they really need to know the pH of the water to begin with.

I am one of those who also does not bother to check pH every time. Did that several years ago and once I felt sure that it would stay in the 6.1 to 6.4 range I stopped checking. That is the water out of the tap. Rain water has a bit more of a range but I have not bothered to check rain or melted snow in 3 years now.

There are two problems... first, not everyone's tap water works this neatly. Second, to properly use nutes in soil you should do feed/water/feed/water.... and although adding nutes to your tap water might get it in range or close to it, the tap water by itself is way out of range. Adding that to your container without adjustment totally turns off the feeding cycle for that part of the watering cycle... the nutes stored in the soil will be totally out of the need range and they will not be available to the plant. This means that without pH adjusting, you are actually only providing nutrients to the plant for half of its blooming period.

 

[Grandma Weedstein]

There are two problems... first, not everyone's tap water works this neatly. Second, to properly use nutes in soil you should do feed/water/feed/water.... and although adding nutes to your tap water might get it in range or close to it, the tap water by itself is way out of range. Adding that to your container without adjustment totally turns off the feeding cycle for that part of the watering cycle... the nutes stored in the soil will be totally out of the need range and they will not be available to the plant. This means that without pH adjusting, you are actually only providing nutrients to the plant for half of its blooming period.

You mentioned chelated nutes earlier — does all this apply to organic nutrients too? That’s all I use.