Once you begin to understand that organisms will pull any nutrient off ANY surface, and convert it from one form to another, releasing plant available nutrients, right where the plant needs them, then the whole loading-chemistry-on approach to doing things will be thrown out. Messing with pH is NOT the way to do anything!
I also have made the correlation between how we have similar biological needs and relationships as plants do.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radicle thus endowed [with sensitivity] and having the power of directing the movements of the adjoining parts, acts like the brain of one of the lower animals; the brain being seated within the anterior end of the body, receiving impressions from the sense-organs, and directing the several movements.