The OrigF/clred
Member
i'd mentioned this issue in another thread, and it's gotten worse so i figured i'd throw it out in the open
i'm watching my bud's growing (& trying to learn at the same time)
he transplanted his plants into 5 gal buckets adding FoxFarm's Happy Frog soil and had low pH readings since.
1st, soil was heavy with wood chips, and i suspect that's a contributing factor to the low pH issue that he's had since day one
he's added a ton of fast acting lime (pennington brand) and thought he'd gotten it to an acceptable level (approx 6.4), reading it over 4 days.
Then, lLast week, over a 3-4 day period, a number of leaves (both lower and mid-level leaves with one or two at top , (plant is a sativa at 60 days flowering, and looks like maybe 4-5 weeks more).
I helped him do some research reading everyone's sick plant guides and it looked like calcium deficiency. He's been running RO'd water, and using foxfarm liquid nutes (GroBig, Tiger Bloom & Big Bloom). Found that calcium locks out below 6.4 pH so we check pH and found it at 5.5. Luckily, he aerates his water pretty heavily (36-48 hours) and according to his sources, oxygenated water helps "buffer" pH issues, so assuming that is correct, that would help explain how they've survived low pH up to now
One plant had a high number of leaves turning yellow and actually dropped about 17 larges leaves overnite. This was the one plant he hadn't transplanted, and when we scraped away some of the top layer of soil, found heavy mass of roots maybe 1/4" below the surface, so i assume that plant is root bound.
on the leaves, approx 30% just looked like they "bleached" yellow, a pale green first, then pale yellow, but the bleaching was even across the whole leaf, ie no green veins, no brown spots at edges etc,, like i said just an even pale pale green turning to yellow, evenly across the leaf. I'd post pix but am afraid to, ie the metadata on images, etc).
The rest of the leaves, turn brown/yellow at the edges, with brown spots, one spot at each serrated tooth.
Even thought that plant had a heavy covering of lime on top, today, he added about half of a 10 oz paper cup of the fast acting lime across the top of the worst plant, wet it, waited 10 minutes for the lime to soften / dissolve or whatever, then gave the plant enough fresh water (pH 7.09) to give him some run-off. Run-off showed 5.89 pH). So he gave it some more water, thinking the run off was just the water at the bottom of the pot from yesterday;s feed. 2nd run-off still showed 5.88 pH.
I actually took some of the lime, and to test that it was raising the pH, measured some fresh filtered water, pH was 6.46, and with about 8 oz in a paper cup, added two heavy table spoons of the lime, and it did raise the pH to 7.56
so the question: WHAT CAN CAUSE SOIL TO KEEP DROPPING IT'S PH?
My bud is thinking to flush it tomorrow with real high pH water, some along the lines of 8.0
again, any experience, suggestions on this are appreciated
tks in advance
i'm watching my bud's growing (& trying to learn at the same time)
he transplanted his plants into 5 gal buckets adding FoxFarm's Happy Frog soil and had low pH readings since.
1st, soil was heavy with wood chips, and i suspect that's a contributing factor to the low pH issue that he's had since day one
he's added a ton of fast acting lime (pennington brand) and thought he'd gotten it to an acceptable level (approx 6.4), reading it over 4 days.
Then, lLast week, over a 3-4 day period, a number of leaves (both lower and mid-level leaves with one or two at top , (plant is a sativa at 60 days flowering, and looks like maybe 4-5 weeks more).
I helped him do some research reading everyone's sick plant guides and it looked like calcium deficiency. He's been running RO'd water, and using foxfarm liquid nutes (GroBig, Tiger Bloom & Big Bloom). Found that calcium locks out below 6.4 pH so we check pH and found it at 5.5. Luckily, he aerates his water pretty heavily (36-48 hours) and according to his sources, oxygenated water helps "buffer" pH issues, so assuming that is correct, that would help explain how they've survived low pH up to now
One plant had a high number of leaves turning yellow and actually dropped about 17 larges leaves overnite. This was the one plant he hadn't transplanted, and when we scraped away some of the top layer of soil, found heavy mass of roots maybe 1/4" below the surface, so i assume that plant is root bound.
on the leaves, approx 30% just looked like they "bleached" yellow, a pale green first, then pale yellow, but the bleaching was even across the whole leaf, ie no green veins, no brown spots at edges etc,, like i said just an even pale pale green turning to yellow, evenly across the leaf. I'd post pix but am afraid to, ie the metadata on images, etc).
The rest of the leaves, turn brown/yellow at the edges, with brown spots, one spot at each serrated tooth.
Even thought that plant had a heavy covering of lime on top, today, he added about half of a 10 oz paper cup of the fast acting lime across the top of the worst plant, wet it, waited 10 minutes for the lime to soften / dissolve or whatever, then gave the plant enough fresh water (pH 7.09) to give him some run-off. Run-off showed 5.89 pH). So he gave it some more water, thinking the run off was just the water at the bottom of the pot from yesterday;s feed. 2nd run-off still showed 5.88 pH.
I actually took some of the lime, and to test that it was raising the pH, measured some fresh filtered water, pH was 6.46, and with about 8 oz in a paper cup, added two heavy table spoons of the lime, and it did raise the pH to 7.56
so the question: WHAT CAN CAUSE SOIL TO KEEP DROPPING IT'S PH?
My bud is thinking to flush it tomorrow with real high pH water, some along the lines of 8.0
again, any experience, suggestions on this are appreciated
tks in advance
