so I've been having trouble with the ph of my soil, I am using fox farms ocean forest and my plant has been showing signs of ph imbalance and a mag deficiency. I flushed the other day with RO water and tested the soils ph and it read at 6.0 with a liquid test, and about 6.3-6.5 with the soil ph tester, I re-tested the soil yesterday to see if the results I got were at all accurate and the soil tester dropped to 5.5-5.8, should I add some dolomite lime. or can I raise the ph of my feed water. this situation is really stressing me out because she's starting to look like shit, torqued leaves and small brown spots. not to mention we've been having some strange ass weather around here lately, temps are running in the 80's and my house is getting hot which is making the temps in my cabinet run in between the low 80's to the highest yesterday 91f. any advice guys?
FF OF soil is pretty acidic and should always cut with perilite/vermiculite. You can add ph up to the feed water to raise the ph you want to get to around 7.5. The temps are a little bit high if you could you might want to look into some form of cooling( even a cheap homemade swamp cooler would help).
I have a small grow area I think its something like 20"x24"x23" do you think I could use a pc fan to make a swamp cooler, and would it raise the humidity in my grow space, this would be a plus considering I'm running 30%-38% RH
I would give her a good flush with water at least 8.0 until your runoff reads about 7.0 then give her a good feed with water at about 7.0 your soil will go a bit more acidic and should read about 6.8 the next day which is ideal - this worked for me with my abused northern light - too late in flower to make her grow much but she is alive with some dank little buds, if only i had acted sooner.....
I was thinking about buying some dolomite lime, I've heard adding that to your soil will help raise the ph, any thoughts?
Dolomite lime takes some time work, it does help keep your PH up though it is better used as a preventative than a cure. I would buy the lime and do the flush and if you transplant this one mix some of the lime in first (or for when you plant a new one). Quick acting lime or hydrated lime is a fast working lime, follow the directions for indoor plants when dissolving that in the water. I have not used hydrated lime myself but as for the quick acting lime mix 1 tablespoon per gallon of water. It takes about 24 hours to take work. However if you are in your final planter it may simply be easier to just test your runoff after every watering and feeding. If you keep up with it you only need little corrections and it is fairly easy to manage.
thanks for the advice, she's in her final pot so I guess I'll go with what you suggested, I'm considering giving this plant a couple weeks to improve and if it still looks like crap I'm just going to start over, but really thanks for your help man
You should be able to do that but with such a small area you'll have to watch out for moisture on the light. Those temps are just not gonna work for you man you gotta lower em, 96F can outright kill cannabis and approaching 90F is gonna possibly turn your girl into a hermaphrodite.
so when giving nutes should I raise the ph of the feed water to 8.0 all the time because the soil is more acidic?
Not after the initial flush. Once you have your PH leveled out you only have to maintain it at 6.8 so if you make your feed water 7.0-7.5 even if your soil slowly goes acidic you will be adjusting it slightly higher each time you water. Just watch your run off every watering and feeding and adjust the next watering appropriately.
Just adding a bit of thought for you, FF ocean forest is supposed to be in the ideal ph range for cannabis from the get go. I am using straight FFOF soil no additives i dont seem to have many problems with my watering schedule, or water retention. do you have ph up and down? if you dont you should get some, i got some some off amazon pretty cheap and it comes with a test kit as well. The ideal ph range for cannabis is 6.4-6.8 roughly, the soil should be slightly acidic just below 7. if you have ph up and down you can adjust the water w/ and w/out nutes to keep the water in that range. if your soil ph is high you can make a more acidic water mix to help bring it down, and vice versa, it works with in days to notice it get back to that ideal range. like the others said its a good idea to check your ph every watering. as a matter of fact that is exactly what i just had to do with my plants, the soil was a bit alkali (higher then 7) mine was actually right at 7 so i made my water like 6.3-6.4 to help bring it back down and i swear it jumped 2 inches in four days. if you want to see pics check my journal in my sig. not trying to discredit the others helping you they have the same thoughts going on but i wanted to give you some ideas to help prevent ph fluxuations.
I've heard other people going through the same problem as me with ffof, the bag says it has a ph of 7 but this was not the case with mine, don't know why all I know is it happened, but they seem to be doing much better and has started to flower much faster since I corrected the problem. and I also made a small swamp cooler and it works great although the weather is starting to get cooler so I don't know how much longer I'll need it, the weather in Minnesota has been crazy this year, normally we should have or should be close to seeing our first snow and just a few days ago the temps were in the 80's, global warming man... WE DIDN'T LISTEN!
yea i hear you bro im east coast it should be coolder here too but were still 75 avg. and im glad to hear thing are looking better. with the soil im sure that it happens, but if you know what to look for, we as blades can prevent it, i guess thats the learning i keep hearing about cause now its like second nature.
