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Elemental sulfur as pH down?

Klompen

Active member
So there's garden sulfur and in some plants it is used to reduce soil pH. What might be the problem with mixing a little bit of it with water to serve as a pH down?
 

AgentPothead

Just this guy, ya know?
They use elemental sulfur in agriculture to lower pH. It seems to work by soil bacteria oxidizing it into sulfuric acid, and that reacts with the carbonates in the soil. It also seems to only really last 1 season unless you are putting obscene amounts down to neutralize all the carbonates. It's recommended for things like blueberries and potatoes that grow in acidic soil
 

Klompen

Active member
I was debating mixing tiny bits of it with water to drop my pH a smidge. I'm planning to do a grow where the lower half of the container is perlite/vermiculite and the top half is a mix that is 1/3 compost/EWC, 1/3 perlite/vermiculite, and 1/3 coco coir. I'm going to feed with organic nutrients, and use bubbled water from a well source. I'm not sure yet what the pH of the water is but because of the nature of my mix a slightly more acidic pH is probably a good idea.
 

AgentPothead

Just this guy, ya know?
As long as it's a living soil with bacterial biome it should be able to break it down into the sulfuric acid. In a hydro/coco setup I would think there isn't enough bacterial community to change it from sulfur to sulfuric acid, which is the form that actually lowers ph. I don't know though honestly, I only ran coco twice but it was all synthetic nutrients.
 

Klompen

Active member
Yeah I'm not sure exactly how the sulfur changes inside the soil system. It clearly gets used quite a lot in large scale agriculture as a suppressant for bad fungus and a pH reducer, but the actual chemistry of that action is unclear to me. The only garden sulfur I can find locally right now is in the form of 40% pure sulfur, 50% gypsum, and 10% other ingredients(copolymers, sulfides, etc). I mean, that's probably a good mix to put in the substrate anyway, but I would really rather have pure ingredients to work with whenever possible. I have a couple months realistically to figure out what my plan of attack is. I still have to get electricity and water to the site and do a bunch of concrete and other work. I sure wish I had something to smoke in the mean time but such is life.

On the plus side, my full spectrum COB chips have arrived so now I'm just waiting on my daylight chips and I can start building my arrays. I'll be running about 600 actual watts of LED for my flower chamber and maybe about 100 or so for my mom chamber. I'm planning to grow my mom plants quickly instead of slowing them down so I can air layer and crank out large clones rapidly. I picked up a massive amount of coir at the pet store recently and I have most of my other ingredients ready to go. This waiting is killin me!
 

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