So I went to check my ph of my run off and it gave me a color that wasn't listed, but I'm assuming it's too low for my soil grow. What can I do to raise the ph to a good 6.5 or so? Should I buy the ph kit from general hydroponics?
No mate, buy a ph meter. Much more accurate and less than $20.......but if your runoff ph is lower than anything on a test kit that's not great either.
And to raise ph you can buy ph up, although I have only ever added some bicarbonate of soda, and that works for me.
Just because the runoff has a low pH, that doesn't necessarily mean bad things. Does the plant look like it is suffering from something? If the water or nutrient mix you use has a more neutral pH, flushing through some extra with that might be good enough. Once you start adding high pH mixtures to try to balance your soil, you are opening yourself up to a world of pain. Better to use a more neutral solution to wash out some of the acid buildup.
Wondering if anyone can help. I am currently growing blue cheese auto in biobizz light mix, am using the full biobizz organic nutes and additive setup. I use tap water, right out ty tap it's exactly ph 7.1 (Scotland's mineral water) but once left for 24-48 it drops to ph 6.5 then to 6.2-6.3 after a 1-2 hr bubble with air stone. That's perfect for just water days. However the problem is when I feed, once the solution is made up (all organic biobizz) the ph plunges to 4.5-4.8 ???? Surely the soil can't buffer a solution with such a low ph ??? So .... I tested my soil Ph in all 4 pots. 3 out of 4 are ph 6.1 but the 4th pot is ph 5.7 I have tried biobizz and they say that the soil will buffer, BUT ph 4.5 is way to low. I reluctant to add chem ph up but am at a lost end. My plants are most certainly suffering mag lockout. Ideally I want the soil about ph 6.4-6.6 I have just added a small dose of garden like to the top layer of soil to see if I can bring the soil ph up a tad as I think thesolution feed is about right it's just the soil ph that's causing problems with the cal and mag. I also as a last resort added a few grams of the lime to a feed solution and it improved from ph 4.5 up to ph 6.6 surely I can't add lime to all my feeds as I will end up with massive amounts of mag and then serious problems ? I am by no means an expert so any/all advice or info will be appreciated.