strange ph issues with soil and tap water

Hi i have done quite a few grows and never really had the chance to let one flourish, I would never call myself a master but definitely experienced. I have had issues with soil ph before, and I simply bought a soil tester and gave my plant more acidic or alkaline water until it corrected. This never changes! I feed a decent acidi water of 5-5.5 ph goes down a little in the soil but then goes back up !

I am a bit baffled. My soil PH is so alkaline (8.5!). I also am getting very weirdly acidic PH from my tap water in UK, Brighton its coming out the tap almost perfect for weed! I am starting to feel like I am losing my mind, I have never seen tap water so acidic or my soil so alkeline and it makes no sense obviously! If the water is acidic then the soil is acidic right?

So i did not use good soil at first but I have had just fine experiences with normal compost potting soil from the super market/gardening store many times. I know its not the best I am not trying to re invent the wheel with my grows, it works fine for me before I have grown massive plants that are healthy with crappy cheap compost.

Anyway I have tried to repost the plant, its still giving 8.5 ph ! I have two soil testers and both giving similar readings.

I am trying to give it an acidic blend in the water, so its about 5 - 5.5ph.
I just tried to give it a bit of an acid bath to lower the ph of the soil newly potted soil. I might try more but now I am over watering the crap outa my plant!

i am just pissed its one of the first chance I had to do it right and I already messed it up it was looking great for ages, really strong. Now its a over watered sad looking mess in super alkaline soil.

any advice would be valued!

Beneficial bacteria may possibly be able to help get you across the finish line my guy. I use recharge and it's been working great. https://www.realgrowers.com/

I would be more concerned about the acidic tap water corroding your pipes or leeching heavy metals into your drinking water...

What is the reason behind wanting to decrease the soil pH? Are your plants showing symptoms? Or do you just want it to be in the "right" pH range?

I had to attempt lowering soil ph in my veggie garden and sulpher is typically the solution for that but it takes weeks minimum for microbes to break it down. Put in a few weeks ago so jury still out on results. I usually have the opposite problem with inconsistent potting mix ph too low right out of the bag. Dolomite lime is the cure for that but again takes time. El cheapo inexpensive soil ph probes aren’t known for their accuracy. The soil needs to be thoroughly dreched with temp of water same temp as the the pot before immediately sampling with the probe, and even then its a roll of dice how accurate the reading is. Have you tried flushing the pot with phed water and measuring runoff ph?A better test of the media (at least from fox farms cust service) is equal parts of soil and distilled water mixed up and left for 24 hrs then use a known accurate ph pen. This saved my last crop that was literally dying before my eyes and was able to reverse it in time. Maybe you could use store bought drinking water for life support while sorting out ph issues

I’m sorry if I didn’t catch it, but are these pH numbers what you’re putting in or runoff?
I’m assuming it’s too late to amend your soil to balance out the pH and transplant, and correcting your water with pH solutions isn’t working?

YossiPacNW said:

I’m sorry if I didn’t catch it, but are these pH numbers what you’re putting in or runoff?
I’m assuming it’s too late to amend your soil to balance out the pH and transplant, and correcting your water with pH solutions isn’t working?

Click to expand...

Never mind. @Fishmon said it all

Did everyone miss that he said soil tester. How about a slurry test @jdom84

I had a pH issue at the beginning of my last run. I knew the mix had plenty of nutes in it, but the plants were locked out from getting any of it due to extremely low pH (4.0). Fortunately, the mix I use is really open and basically made up of inert stuff, so it was pretty easy to leach it with pH-adjusted water until the runoff was in line with where it needed to be to allow the plants to start up taking the nutes. After that, I just kept the incoming water pH'd to ~6.5 and the plants recovered nicely a few weeks later.
Don't let anyone discourage you from doing slurry and/or runoff tests. I use the drops. I never used a pH meter, but I've read enough to know that they are either really cheap and inaccurate...or, they are very expensive and people don't know how to use them. The drops are foolproof.