Just started the Journal. Post pics for it later.
Do we need to pH adjust our nutrient solutions?
- Thread starter InTheShed
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The pH of the water does not change the pH of the media. The akalinity of the water does and the higher the akalinity the faster the pH rises in the media. In most cases the pH of the media will increase over time.
So let's assume that most growers have a good water supply and their akalinity is considered normal. What other factor(s) can cause the pH to change in the media?
The most common factor would be the basicity or acidity of the fertilizer in use. The effect that a fertilizer has on media pH is dependent on the reactions that take place after the fertilizer has been applied to the crop. This reaction is determined by the nutrients (especially nitrogen) contained in the fertilizer, rather than the pH of the fertilizer solution that you can measure with a pH meter. The potential acidity or basicity should be interpreted as a general tendency of the fertilizer to raise or lower the media pH over time.
Maybe that clears things up a bit Buds.
Elvin
Banned Troll
And as long as that growing medium has buffering abilities the medium will self-adjust to maintain it's pH way more than long enough to last a grow (as long as you water enough that at least 20% comes out the bottom).
Let's put it this way; farmers around here inject anhydrous ammonia into the cropland. The soil adjusts that 11.6 down to where the newly emerging corn plant can use it. No one adds anything after that application other than seed/herbicide/Roundup. If it needed additions like limestone, it would have been added prior to that fertilizer similar to what manufacturers do.
No one worries that the soil won't go down below 7 and do not run around with pH meters after every rain to check the pH of the water in drainage tiles.
FFOF self buffers
HP Promix self buffers
I'm sure that Canna brand does as well and I know my Iowa topsoil/perlite buffers as well too.
So if the water & nutes isn't changing it then what is ?
Well the basicity or the acidity of the fertilizer will change the pH of the media over time. I tried to nail it all down in a small post here:
Do we need to pH adjust our nutrient solutions?
Thanks DC! But please, I don't advise that anyone feed their plants 10g/gallon of MegaCrop :).
www.420magazine.com
I don't understand any of this. I hated Science in school & never paid attention to it.
When you say Fertilizer are you referring to the nutes you add ? This may be what's confusing me.
Sorry Buds, yes you are correct on that. You use Megacrop as your fertilizer. Here's a sample shot of using 2g of MC in 1 gallon of water. It shows the PPM of N and broken down into it's two forms, NO3- and NH4+.
In short NO3 is dominant, which means it has more basicity than acidity. Using this over time will cause you media pH to rise. If the values were reversed it would cause your media pH to drop over time.
So you have to adjust your Nitrates or whatever in your Fertilizer to maintain the correct pH in the soil ?
I'll have to do the journal to see what happens 1st hand. I know I had issues last grow with MC until I started pH-ing. All cleared up after doing so. Coincidence ? I'm not sure. This grow will tell me since 1 plant will be pH'd & the other one wont.
I just can't grasp how you can add things & the original thing not be effected as in the pH. Sounds like witchcraft to me.
I'll have to do the journal to see what happens 1st hand. I know I had issues last grow with MC until I started pH-ing. All cleared up after doing so. Coincidence ? I'm not sure. This grow will tell me since 1 plant will be pH'd & the other one wont.
I just can't grasp how you can add things & the original thing not be effected as in the pH. Sounds like witchcraft to me.
Elvin
Banned Troll
Its ability to buffer runs out eventually because you are not replenishing it as it occurs in nature or like a farmer does each planting season.
However, that takes longer to occur than it takes to grow a crop of weed. Unless you are not watering to run off.
Maybe Mega Crop is one of those that needs pH management but it shouldn't.
No you wouldn't have to adjust it. If the pH in the media kept rising then a grower would look to a fertilizer that may have a lower NO3 and a higher NH4 which would allow the pH to maintain it's correct range for nutrient uptake. If the akalinity of your water was naturally high then a lower NO3 and a higher NH4 would be ideal. In most cases you won't even think about this. The point being the pH of the water (nute solution) does not effect the pH in the media. The basicity or acidity of the fetilizer and the akalinity of the water all affect the pH in the media.
I kind of get what you're saying. But when you adjust the nutrient mix by pH-ing it, aren't you adjusting the Acidity or Alkalinity of the nutes ?
It seems to me that only in the last year have I heard anyone on a grow website say you don't have to pH & you don't have to flush. I can't believe everyone was wrong for over 100 years. I was taught to do both when I started 3.5 years ago.
However, one of my mentors (Emilya) now seems to agree with you guys. Not sure what's changed.
I'm skeptical. AN says their stuff is pH perfect. Is it ... Hell No. Seed Banks say 10 weeks seed to harvest. Is it true ... Hell No. Just so much B.S. out there that it's hard to believe anything from a manufacturer any more. The only way to know for sure is Test it for yourself. I took the pics & mixed the nutes to get started on testing it for myself.
If I get tox or def in 1 & not the other when feeding the same strength nutes & only pH-ing for 1 plant it should tell me something. If both come out fine it also confirms No Need to pH. But if the Non-pH'd plant has problems & the other plant doesn't ... I will say nutes need to be pH'd. Makes perfect sense to me.
Yes you are, but you can adjust the pH to 11.6 as Alvin mentioned but a buffered media is going to bring it back into range.
Guess I need to study soil buffers & what they do to better understand this. Thing is, I don't know which things in the soil are the buffers other than Lime.
Elvin
Banned Troll
Which is why it is pointless to pH in a soiled (or other buffered mediums) grow.
Elvin
Banned Troll
Unless you are making your own soil mixture you do not need to know what does it just that these commercially available growing mediums previously mentioned do it.
Definition: Soil buffering is the ability of the soil to stop nutrient or pH changes by absorption. For soils, it is the capability of absorbing nutrients and also releasing them (cation exchange capacity). Humic acids and clay minerals have good buffer qualities.
Or here is a link to even more
Thanks for the info. I'll check it out. So all these soil buffers do is keep pH in range or do they serve other purposes ?
The definition of soil buffering helped me understand a little more.
However, I am a person who has to test everything for himself to believe in it 100%. But I get the idea of what it's suppose to do. Now to see 1st hand if it does what it's suppose to. Give some others who may have doubts a chance to see what happens too.
syenite
Well-Known Member
Hey Buds! I'm a newbie to all this but like you have been trying to get my head around it.
For example, take any peat-based potting mix, one of the most common products out there. Peat has an average of 4.5 pH, and has a range between 3.7 and 5.2 pH. Without buffering, it would be a very inhospitable medium for many plants. So these soil buffers have a fundamental role to play. As for what other purposes buffers might serve, dolomite lime, for instance, is a source of calcium and magnesium. So this has to be factored into the overall calibration and balancing of the mix, too.
I don't seem to be able to learn things quite as easily as I used to. Cognitive decline sets in as a person ages, plus there was that high-speed head on back in the late '80s. And a little of this, a lot of that ( 
) along the way, you know. However, I have read some of the more recent posts in this thread, and I can honestly say...
I think, after I use my remaining soil once and haul it outside to lighten up the rock and red clay we call ground around here, I'm going to go back to DWC hydroponics. Growing plants in water was idiot-proof (okay, no - but only because the universe keeps producing bigger and better idiots) and easier to understand than managing to successfully find the ground after you've already fallen off the ladder. I think I kind of understand this. But I don't like having to think just to participate in a hobby, lol. Turns out I was far more comfortable with the "everything that happens, happens because YOU did it" kind of thing that is hydroponics.
But it's still an interesting read. Just a lot less painful if I don't feel that I have to understand it. If that makes any sense. Kind of like idly reading a book on first aid, versus trying to figure out how to staunch the flow of blood pumping out of someone's femoral artery to the rhythm of their rapidly diminishing heartbeat.
You have to remember, a lot of stuff got "written into stone" 40+ years ago when a few stoners managed to grow some decent bud and then started telling people how they did it. Which was cool and all, but... well... they weren't brain surgeons (or botanists). Some of the successful grows would have been successful in spite of what they did, not because of it. And some of the things that happened to help, might have been poorly understood in regards to why they worked. If they did something two or three grows in a row, and those were successful, then tried it again and the plants were sh!t, well, it must have been due to something else. Et cetera.
Some of those guys got around to writing books on the subject. Some decent information in them, of course - after all, gardening isn't anything new. Then again... One of those books gets published, and a couple months later, the mothers of 15,000 teenage boys are standing by their medicine cabinets, confused, wondering how they managed to take 28 birth control pills in only 17 days. ("Hey, you've got to encourage those plants to turn into females somehow.")
You can see the same kind of thing (sort of) on these cannabis forums. Not constantly, but once in a while. Someone comes up with an idea, tries it, somehow fails to kill all their plants (lol), posts about it, maybe posts some pictures of their plants and/or harvest... Next thing you know, there are lots of people swearing up and down that whatever the person did, it is absolutely THE way to grow dope. Usually newbies, but not always.
Not everyone is a healthy skeptic. It's partly human nature, probably. They say we came from a relatively small gene pool - and all the other species we were capable of successfully breeding with died out many thousands of years ago, so there has been no infusion of fresh genes in all the time since. Note that I stated "successfully breed with." Quiet down, sheep farmers - and, remember, "Baaa! means NO!!!"
) along the way, you know. However, I have read some of the more recent posts in this thread, and I can honestly say...I think, after I use my remaining soil once and haul it outside to lighten up the rock and red clay we call ground around here, I'm going to go back to DWC hydroponics. Growing plants in water was idiot-proof (okay, no - but only because the universe keeps producing bigger and better idiots) and easier to understand than managing to successfully find the ground after you've already fallen off the ladder. I think I kind of understand this. But I don't like having to think just to participate in a hobby, lol. Turns out I was far more comfortable with the "everything that happens, happens because YOU did it" kind of thing that is hydroponics.
But it's still an interesting read. Just a lot less painful if I don't feel that I have to understand it. If that makes any sense. Kind of like idly reading a book on first aid, versus trying to figure out how to staunch the flow of blood pumping out of someone's femoral artery to the rhythm of their rapidly diminishing heartbeat.
You have to remember, a lot of stuff got "written into stone" 40+ years ago when a few stoners managed to grow some decent bud and then started telling people how they did it. Which was cool and all, but... well... they weren't brain surgeons (or botanists). Some of the successful grows would have been successful in spite of what they did, not because of it. And some of the things that happened to help, might have been poorly understood in regards to why they worked. If they did something two or three grows in a row, and those were successful, then tried it again and the plants were sh!t, well, it must have been due to something else. Et cetera.
Some of those guys got around to writing books on the subject. Some decent information in them, of course - after all, gardening isn't anything new. Then again... One of those books gets published, and a couple months later, the mothers of 15,000 teenage boys are standing by their medicine cabinets, confused, wondering how they managed to take 28 birth control pills in only 17 days. ("Hey, you've got to encourage those plants to turn into females somehow.")
You can see the same kind of thing (sort of) on these cannabis forums. Not constantly, but once in a while. Someone comes up with an idea, tries it, somehow fails to kill all their plants (lol), posts about it, maybe posts some pictures of their plants and/or harvest... Next thing you know, there are lots of people swearing up and down that whatever the person did, it is absolutely THE way to grow dope. Usually newbies, but not always.
Not everyone is a healthy skeptic. It's partly human nature, probably. They say we came from a relatively small gene pool - and all the other species we were capable of successfully breeding with died out many thousands of years ago, so there has been no infusion of fresh genes in all the time since. Note that I stated "successfully breed with." Quiet down, sheep farmers - and, remember, "Baaa! means NO!!!"
Hey, Elvin, thanks. I can never have too many books to read. The Project Gutenberg website has a number of completely free gardening/farming books (along with approximately 62,500 others) available for online reading and downloading, too. I just visited the website to grab a few, but got (semi-)sidetracked when I discovered Roman Farm Management: The Treatises of Cato and Varro by Cato and Varro. Or, to be technically accurate, the second edition of the English translation, from 1912. I'm not sure exactly when the original was published, but one of the authors, Marcus Porcius Cato (the other being Marcus Terentius Varro), lived from 234 BCE to 149 BCE - so I assume it would have been written in Latin, and my skills at reading that are virtually nonexistent. So I am grateful to the dead guy who did the translation to English. This ought to be interesting reading. It is a general treatise on farming, but there is a chapter on preparing the seed bed, and one on improving the soil. I don't see one on how to choose the best soon to be executed criminals, maybe that's in the chapter on soil improvement. Or maybe that kind of thing would have been considered to be such common knowledge back in the good old days that it wouldn't have been written about, IDK. Three skinny criminals if you need to add calcium to the soil, one really fat guy if you primarily need to add nitrogen and acidify it, et cetera.
Aw, come on - they'd have eaten the fish, not used it for fertilizer. <SHRUGS>
Thanks again!
- Thread starter
- #340
That was the bro science of the day. What they failed to mention is they were adding quicklime to make the bodies decay faster
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