OUTDOOR GROWERS: TO pH BALANCE WATER OR SOIL (OR BOTH?) I've been reading this debate about why outdoor growers should not add pH UP/DOWN to their water after you add nutes... you should focus on the soil being pH balanced instead. MY SITUATION & 3 QUESTIONS I'm growing my first harvest in my backyard (Gorilla Glue #4 and Blue Dreams flowering beautifully right now). Everyday I fill a 5 gallon bucket with 4 gallons (so it doesn't spill) of tap water from my hose and this water is not 6.5 pH. I then add my nutes, which throws off ph more. At this point, I typically have to add about 300ml of pH UP to get it to 6.5... which is not a couple drops per gallon... it's quite a bit if pH UP. 1) Is 300 ml an alarming amount of pH UP for 4 gallons of water? 2) Do you agree outdoor growers don't need to pH balance your water after adding nutes? This makes no sense to me. 3) This process takes a long time and I'm trying to find a better method to always have ph balanced water with nutes added ready to water my plants. Does anyone have a suggestion to speed up this process so it isn't so manual measuring / balancing everyday? Any equipment people typically get to have a reservoir of pre-mixed and pH balanced water? If pre-mixed/balanced -- won't it go stale quickly? Very curious how people speed up this process... it takes a good 30-40 minutes everyday to load bucket, add nutes, balance pH, then water them all... and repeat several times. Thanks in advance for your thoughts everyone! I'm always learning!
A good balanced soil with a high organic component will resist changes in PH on it's own with no need to constantly screw with the PH.. There is no real wrong way of dealing with it but I've learned after several years of growing not to overthink it so much.. I gave up the Fox Farms soils and bottled nutes and lugging buckets of solutions around the yard after the first grow.. My soil mix is dead simple and cheap being just this.. And the best part it's water only All 20 or so bags of that used Fox Farms Ocean Forest soil Promix peat compressed 2 cf bale = Lowes Perlite 2 cf bags = home depot Composted Chicken manure = Lowes EcoScraps compost = home depot Alfalfa in the 50 pound sack of horse chow pellets = feed and tack store or rabbit-guinea pig chow from a pet store will do Garden lime = lowes or HD .. AKA.. PH up Garden sulfur = same.. AKA.. PH down.. After about 3 years of 4 cycles a year my constant flood of 8.5 PH water did start to show some effects of PH change so that is when I added some elemental sulfur to pull the soil PH back down.. EWC (earth worm castings) = hydro store http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/1116550-easy-organic-soil-mix-beginners.html/page-1 Here is ITGs soil thread that I loosely based my mix from but you don't need that complex a mix.. This was the last bag of horse chow.. It's not pure alfalfa being about 20% oat but it seems to work just as well May 29th June 1st set out day for the summer clones set Aug 14th Water only.. City hose water full of chlorine at that.. Hope that helps HTH.. BNW
Bassnwood, your answer is awesome!! I seriously appreciate the time you out into educating me!! I'm going to print this and definitely give it a try next round. So.. how do you know how many parts of each ingredient you list to mix in to get it right? Do you pH test the soil and add organic pH up/down until it's right, then plant clones? Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk