Will be starting my 3rd grow. (I have only had my hands in soil 2 other times in my life) I have been horrible with my PH it is normally around 5.1-5.3 (soil in 5gl bucket) I have been reading and want to make sure I am doing this correctly. these are the steps I think are correct add nutes (if needed) PH water to 6.5 using PH up and down ONLY test runoff (lets say its 5.0) So my PH would be 5.7 roughly correct? half way between starting PH and runoff PH Now that I have a 5.7 ph I get 5 gallons of 6.5 ph water and flush the plant until the PH runoff is back to 6.5 Not sure if that is correct so far. After that would I redo the nutes and rewater the plant again? or do I leave the plant be and renute it next time? I have ADHD really bad so unfortunately I need my hand held because things don't click quickly for me. If I am all messed up could you please give me step by step on what to do?
Hey there buddy, ph the water going in to 6.5 or so you over thinking this and all that business of raising the ph by flushing (am i reading this right?) is wrong my man, water in proper ph bit of run off and you should be ok, don't overwater
Hey there buddy, ph the water going in to 6.5 or so you over thinking this and all that business of raising the ph by flushing (am i reading this right?) is wrong my man, water in proper ph bit of run off and you should be ok, don't overwater
It does matter, but it doesn't matter unless it matters. Less is more. Soil has nutes in it so don't use nutes until you have a plant with roots that actually reach throughout the soil. Messing around too much with seedlings and young plants is an easy way to kill them, as is too much water or too strong nutrients. When you add your nutes, often the pH will be reasonable. Some nutes this is not the case, but even if it isn't perfect the soil will help you out, it's not as important as hydro. When you test your runoff it will often be lower than what you put it, because the soil tends to get more acidic as the plant grows. The best way to maintain your soil is not to overfeed it or overwater it, and when you do water make sure you get a bit of runoff most of the time. It's like a little mini flush. If your runoff is too low, discard it and add a little more water (with or without nutes) and get more runoff, rather than trying to force a change with pH up/down. Soil pH fluctuates at different times, because of temperature and wetness and what the plant is doing, so you can't control it completely. As long as the runoff is between about pH5.8-6.8 and the plant is healthy, leave it. If the pH is always low and the plant develops symptoms you can act quickly and flush, learn and move on. If you constantly battle to control pH and constantly fail you're blocking yourself. On flushing, I typically put the pot in the bath, flush it with regular water first, then I finish off with a run through of some nutes with calmag, then put it back and wait for it to recover. I know the pH of the water and the nutes is roughly okay because I have tested it before and I know t works fine, so I don't worry about the pH of the input unless there's a specific reason. If I bother to test the runoff then as long as it goes up and is at least a low 6 I'm happy enough. After a few days it usually looks like the new growth is healthy, but after all that it doesn't need watering for a while. So worry less about it. Plants grow if they have light and some water (not too much water), so interfere with them less and take back some control. Good luck!