ph too high. why wont you go down!!!!

goll, my plants soil has been testing at 8.0 on most of the plants(6 of them). now im using bottled water at a ph of 6.0-6.5 when i water.

perhaps im not suppose to test the soil and only the water before, and the runoff?

any help would be great. i have ph downer from earth juice. organic soils and nutes.

luckily the plants dont seem to be suffering at all. but i just want to fix this before they do. is it normal to have fluxuating ph levels every couple days?

thats ok mate dont worry its soil. good growing..

8.0 is way too high for soil. how do you measure it?

asaph said:

8.0 is way too high for soil. how do you measure it?

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soil ph meter. the one with the moisture meter and light on it. got it from home depot. i also have test strips.

Those methods of testing are pretty difficult to get a really good reading from;especially with one of those $7 soil meters (I still have mine). I bought a Hanna Combo meter PH & ppm) that does PH and ppm for 130. If you plan on doing this for a while its one of the most worthwhile investments you can make. As for lowering the ph if you're looking to do it the cheapest way use vinegar. Bakingsoda is the oldschool phup and vinegar the OG phdown. Or of course you could just spend 10 and get both from the hydrostore which is what I'd suggest.

well a good way to do is add lemon with the water to the soil. Then test the water that comes out of the bottom of the soil after you water it.

8.0 is pretty high for soil. youll start getting nute lockout and deficiencies, it happened to me this past week i just corrected it. get a General hydro ph up and down packet, its only like twenty bucks. easy to use to. i only got to put like 3 or 4 drops of the ph down in a gallon of my tap water to reduce the ph from 8 plus to 6.0 to 7.0.. be careful though man sont wait to long, one ur plant leaves start yellowing and the stems start purpleing that is a sign of progressing sulfur deficiency and that is caused by HIGH ph. once the stem has purpled that leaf is dead and it can happen to many very quickly. as long as you correct now though your be fine

You got the opposite problem as me mines way too low and showing lockouts. If your not showing any deficiencies you measurements might not be accurate some say in soil ph dont mean anything but im learning it does. Dolomite lime is good to add to keep the ph around 7, it buffers the soil during the grow.

the big problem isnt necessarily getting the ph to come down to 6.5.

last night I used some water with a ph of like 6.0 on my 8.0 ph plant. and it brought it down to 6.5, but over night its back up to 7.5. again this is testing the soil and
i know its not 100% accurate.

Ill, just get a good ph test kit from my work since i work at an aquarium store. try that when i get home.

ill just test the runoff. and i hear the runoff should be about 2/3 to a whole point lower than what the soil is. so my run off would be best at 5.5?

well luckily, if the soil was 8 pH, then your only locking out micro nutrients, thats why they appear to be ok right now... but when your going for big buds, its a big issue.

what i would do is test the water your adding, and the runoff. if the pH of the soil says 8. then you should flush. theres something in there thats bringing it up. either way, working in petstores, theres pH nuetralizers (which are strong 7s), adding this over time, may help/

Personally, i like aquarium products. pH up and down, safe for fish, and safe for aquarium plants are gonna be safe for herb. ive heard of lemon juice, vinegar/baking soda so regulate pH, but i usually go with aquarium products, and test the pH of the fertilizers i use. that way i know if its up a lil or down a lil, i can just add a lil of a specific fertilizer and get it right.


Also testing the runoff isnt as accurate as a slurry test. get about 1/4 cup of soil, fill it with water. stir, let it sit for an hour or so, then test it.

yeah i've had that level with soil meter. But still it's probably too high, this became a problem in flowering, in veg they were excellent. but then k def and all kinds of micro shit. I imagine your water is very hard too with much salts in it already. And you're using organic nutes? so yeah a couple things you can do -

filter your water, makes them softer, easier to manipulate pH and keep it stable (this would be most helpful)
switch to hydro nutes, they usually buffer pH for hydro pH, in a case of very hard water this can help you but the first method is better

with very hard water, ph up/down are not very helpful, after some hours the water goes back pretty much to what it was.

and yep - slurry test (never heard that name) is the most accurate.