Problems with leaves, organic

You are really sure about that salt build up? How could it got there? You know i really want to know what i did wrong and i want to understand it so i can learn from it. The water comes from a little roof without real mold or anything, but it is in a barrel for a long time.. bad idea?

and the dolomite lime should bring the ph up, isnt my ph already way too high?

northern007 said:

flush your plants for 2 days with ph tested 6 water with a ppm of 50 using a acid (phosphoric acid 20 %) as your in flower stage. then ph test your feed the second before you put it in. make sure you wash out all that salt build up. what we mean by salt build up is not in so much the container but the medium your using as undisolved salts burn roots and on the other redissolve and over nute your plants. dont use rain water am guessing you got it out of a water butt connected to some sought of roof that washed all the mold and fungus spores off the roof down the pipe into the butt cooked for a few hours then straight into your setup hate to be a party killer

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I solely use rainwater, from my mossing, fungus infested roof. The only issue is a bit of algae growth on the top of my medium. I must say your advice is shakey at best.

Ztiwef said:

Btw, i looked up some info on the water here and its supposed to be between ph 7,5 and 8 average, the local water-company says the hardness is around 8,4 ºdH (?), what should be around average.


..i didn't say my plants/soil are having a ph of 8? Only that the tapwater is that, not the run-off. Also i know that they should have a other PH, but i have been told that the organic nutrients bring down the PH too, and since the soil is in a 80 x 80 cm container with 300 liters of soil that the buffer should have been sufficient.. What should i do then?

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If your municiple water is above 7.5 ph and the ppms are above 200. There is a good chance it is very high in calcium and other minerals. If you have a good supply of rainwater I would use just that. If not you could do a 50/50 mix of the two too soften your tap water a bit. And the runoff ph actually tells your very little when it comes to medium ph. The only acurate way to know your soils ph is to test the soil itself.

Okey i think im going to try the 50/50 mix then, still a good idea to use the dolomite? And lets say the soil is 10 cuft in total, i should use around 10 tablespoons? any idea how i can measure the ph of the soil?

Actually i have this ph-meter (the left)
http://i.ebayimg.com/23/!BfPoVnQ!2k~$%28KGrHqMOKkMErzMq6ju8BL!dnldpO!~~_3.JPG

It makes me a bit insecure to be honest, especially since the opinion of northern007..

Ztiwef said:

and the dolomite lime should bring the ph up, isnt my ph already way too high?

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Dolomite Lime has a pH of 7.0, it will also bring the pH down. It buffers the soil from extremes.

300 liters is a bit much, and no matter the amount, if there are no buffers in the soil (lime for example), there will be no buffering.

Wet

dolomite is the right way to go about it then go for it the time it takes that to work your plants will be dead. dolomite is a buffer and so is your medium as it gives you time to react if such a case happeneds. you cant keep putting dolomite on your soil every time your ph goes out and by the sounds of it it does. using a ph of 6 water using phosphoric acid to flush your system turns your medium to ph of 6 hopefully. next as your using phosphoric acid to ph your water the salt of it ie phosphates get sucked up by the plant during flowering as your making fat bud if it were vegging you'd use nitric acid as the salts ie nitrates produce nitrogen which the plants uses to grow during vegging.

rainwater is ok to use but do you want to risk your say 10 plants on the hunch that it aint got dissolved salt from pollution or lead additives from rolling down roofs or algae or moid and fungus spores like cowboylogic said he uses it all the time yes but do we all live in your area you have to think of many factors with rainwater not just that its there and wet

I know what you mean of course, only before i started to use it i was like i have to try something. I live at the edge of a city, the water only rolls down a little PVC roof but i dont know about the pollution indeed, thats why i chose the tapwater as a first option. So you would say use the tap water? and then ph-down with the phosphoric acid? No dolomite at all?



more info:

i payed some more time with my ph-meter and tested it in cola too, it said the cola at roomtemprature was 2,6 what sounds pretty reasonable as it should be 2,5 according to information i found. Afterwards i tried the rainwater too and it said 6,3/4.. (it should be 6 for normal rainwater?) tapwater was 7,7

great now depending on the concentration of the phosphoric acid normally in grow shops its 20% you only need about 3 or 4 drops in about 5 gallons or so to bring it to right ph test it after each drop shake it up aswell. once your medium is flushed the ph will be about the same as your flush water plus you will flush your solids out at the same time plus make phosphates at the same time now when you feed your babys go half strength as your in flowering for the first 2 days then a bit higher the next day and so on. not full strentgth as you will over nute em. before all that make sure your feed is for hard water areas. i say that as there is excess calcium and magnesium in hard water so on top of your nute you will have nute burn which looks like burn spots

use the tap water but MAKE SURE your nute is for hard water areas and wash on the flush every 1 to 2 weeks you should flush as a norm

Well, let us know when someone gives you an answer that you like since you don't seem to want to hear the correct ones.

The phosphoric acid sounds good.

Adding pH'ed water is not going to do anything for your soil pH other than a temporary shift.

If you want to fix it, add the lime. If not, don't and you can play around with all this other weird shit.

The rainwater pH is fine.

Wet

Okey i will add the lime, i'm now taking a sample to determine the ph of the soil, i took 3 sample's out of the bottom and added ph water 7, is this the right way?

And about the lime, i like the idea but have been reading here and further to mix it in the soil. Only now i should just dissolve it in my rainwater?


im just following what others say, i cant really judge about what i should do when i have only a little experience and not familiar with this hehe, also a bit desperate because it looks badddd!




edit:
I have taken soil samples, put this in ph'd 7 water for 30 minutes, measured the ph again, and it said that the ph was 6,2-6,3. Was this a correct measure?

Wetdog said:

Well, let us know when someone gives you an answer that you like since you don't seem to want to hear the correct ones.

The phosphoric acid sounds good.

Adding pH'ed water is not going to do anything for your soil pH other than a temporary shift.

If you want to fix it, add the lime. If not, don't and you can play around with all this other weird shit.

The rainwater pH is fine.

Wet

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I agree Wetdog. I think we should leave this one to the 'Pros' Good luck.

Okee, so according to a schedule i saw the potassium gets locked out at a ph lower then 6,5. So i can expect that my soil ph is too low to let potassium be absorbed, since my flowering nutrients contain potassium, is this right?

Today i bought some garden lime but i dont know if its the right one, the box says it contains carbonic magnesium lime with dolomite extract.
54% acid-combining value and 15,7% Mg0.

It was the only one with dolomite in it, and also the only one in powder form, it looks somewhat beige/sandy. Is this something i can use? And how should i use this?

Today i prepared a mixture of 50/50 rainwater/tapwater, 1 ml of flower nutrients per liter and ph'd this down till 6,5/6,6 with some lemon juice.

Going on the right track?