What Is Best Soil pH?

Hollatchaboy

Well-Known Member
I've seen some organic gardeners really mess up their micro herd by putting highly acidic feed in their soil. A classic example is heavy doses of molasses to "feed the microbes", which makes sense in theory, except that a molasses feed of 4.0 ph will do more harm than good.
I'm not disagreeing, I just personally don't feel I put anything in the soil that would harm the microbes. I know many others that do though.
 

The3rdMan

Well-Known Member
Do you know what your input ph is?
Yes, I have a soil pH meter; 6.2 - 6.5 range is where I want to be.

My pH has been higher, near 7.0. To rectify, I made some soil with a neutral pH and combine with either Happy Frog or Ocean Forest to get the desired pH.

I started flower 2 weeks ago and was seeing pH issues. So, I bought some Ocean Forest and blended with some neutral soil and was simple to adjust it to 6.4. After, repotted plants and they seem to be doing well. I'll continue to utilize this technique if it works out.

Happy can range from 5.5-6.5 and Ocean 6.3-6.8 and I have seen Ocean down below 6.0. If you use these soils, you need to know the pH because some adjustment may be needed before you stat using the dirt.
 
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The3rdMan

Well-Known Member
I've seen some organic gardeners really mess up their micro herd by putting highly acidic feed in their soil. A classic example is heavy doses of molasses to "feed the microbes", which makes sense in theory, except that a molasses feed of 4.0 ph will do more harm than good.
What do you consider heavy dose?
 

PJ Diaz

Well-Known Member
Yes, I have a soil pH meter; 6.2 - 6.5 range is where I want to be.
By input ph I meant the ph of the liquid (feed, water, whatever) you are adding to the soil
Around 160 but I run it thru a hose filter to remove chlorine, heavy metals, fluoride, sediments, rust, and other contaminants.
160ppm isn't bad, but depending on exactly what the 160 consists of, it could be considered hard water, which would be naturally high in ph.
What do you consider heavy dose?
Over a a Tbsp/gal will quickly throw you below range, but it also depends on your water and nute profile (if using salt nutes).
No I think it is pretty good as far as Cal Mag and ppm.
You think so?
 

The3rdMan

Well-Known Member
By input ph I meant the ph of the liquid (feed, water, whatever) you are adding to the soil
My tap water runs around 8.5.

I pH the water between 6.2 - 6.8, no synthetic ferts. Also, add a little ascorbic acid to neutralize the chlorine in addition to letting it evaporate.
 

PJ Diaz

Well-Known Member
My tap water runs around 8.5.

I pH the water between 6.2 - 6.8, no synthetic ferts. Also, add a little ascorbic acid to neutralize the chlorine in addition to letting it evaporate.
Sounds like a good procedure, but also point out the issues you could get if you didn't ph your tap water. If you put that ph 8.5 tap water in your soil without adjustments for a complete cycle, the micro herd will certainly suffer and struggle to maintain an acceptable soil ph.
 

Nutty sKunK

Well-Known Member
Sounds like a good procedure, but also point out the issues you could get if you didn't ph your tap water. If you put that ph 8.5 tap water in your soil without adjustments for a complete cycle, the micro herd will certainly suffer and struggle to maintain an acceptable soil ph.
Depends on the alkalinity of his water tho… my water is pH 8 / 32ppm so little alkalinity. Meaning it doesn’t take much at all to lower the pH
 

CheGueVapo

Well-Known Member
Im using reverse osmosis water on recycled organic terra-preta soil.
I dilute some BB CalMag with some anorganic nitric- or phosphoric-acid (veg or bloom) at PH 5.5 first before i add organic ingredients.... stone me!
I have these bootles (anorganic PH+/-) since my first steps as a grower 17 years ago and they are great for tweaking the PH, adding the correct ions!
Then I add oxygene-nano-airstones bubbling, wait a few hours for maximum oxygene and the CalMag to dilute for EC 0,2 (100ppm) and pH rising again, because of it, to at about 6... and then I add my organic nutrients.
Finally I adjust it with organic PH+ to 6.1/6.3 (veg or bloom) if neccessary... stone me to death! :D

I dont need it? I agree. Does a dog need to lick his balls?:roll: But then why would he do it? Because he is able to! So why should he not do it? See :)

Oh sure, when I recycle the soil, i check the PH to, usually it got 6.3..... so with enough coffee ground and some other stuff, ill revert it to 5.9.

If somebody tells you you dont neet it on organic.... yeah, if you buy new organic soil each time, sure! But you should keep it balanced when you want to recycle the soil... otherwise it keeps increasing/decreasing from the mineral-salts calcium and magnesium, depending if the drop or rise what you feed, what they need... even if you keep it low with RO-water and only little CalMag.... you need to keep an eye on balancing if you dont want to throw it away!

I use my recycled soil now for 15 cycles at least! I dont think about throwing it away. It is the best soil i ever had! Free from pollutants from tap water and free from heavy metals, cause all my cannabis sucked them out. I never flush the soil or drain a lot to spill out nutrients.....because my soil has high nutrient absorbance capacity and very high ion exchange capacity due to bentonite and zeolithe with the coals.

Flushing phase means to me: Only water with RO-water and some molasse in the last two weeks, to feed the microbes with less then before but starving out the plants with no more extra nutrients at all, so the microbes fight for survival too and dont share nutrients anymore. It works. Theres ready to use products for this kind of effect, called final solution.

BTW Tap water simply contains far too much sodium-chloride.... this is to protect the pipes. Its ok for big organisms with big kidneys, like human or dogs... we can flush it out! Smaller organisms like birds get sick from tap water over long time... the salt accumulates in their body, they cant flush out that mass. Same than in soil. Plants need chloride and sodium only veeeeery little, the higher it rises, the harder they can get to other nutrients, in that salty juice. Lockouts going to follow! You cant recycle your soil with tap water more than a few cycles. It gets salted up quickly.

Living beeings are not meant to drink salty water, thats why i use RO-water at most, secondly because of other contaminants that i want to keep away from the microbes and away from the plant-roots... I need it to enable recycling my soil at ALL.... without it would fill up with sodium-chloride, fill up with cocktail of thousands of toxins and chemicals, all just tiny doses, that are scientifically sooooo unproblematic to humans when drinking :hump: at least "professors say so" to calm the masses, haha, masses that experience more and more "cancer", think about it...whatever these contaminants getting more and more with each watering in the pots, until they become a problem, because some of them contaminants are non-bio-degradable. o_O, yup, they are high toxic non degradable industrial wastes, like tulole and others, thousand of them, human WASTE in the tap water! But dont freak out: Since your country has the highest water standards, right? Haha, everyone believes that! Everyone! "Our water is the safest in the world".... :wall: Dont panic....do thisbongsmilieand relax. Only RO-water preserves that problems over long durations!

... smells and tastes like heaven! Nothing I found elsewhere came close! Balancing the PH is one part of the story!

Edit: Btw dispite this soil beeing ultra strong with a fat nutrient reservoir, still my kitchen herbs all breed from the seeds very well and fast in it and also grow well in it. I dropped "light mix" completely from my list because of this. The terra-preta enhanced "allmix" is good enough for ANYTHING, I just dont need the weak light-mix anymore. My soil is ultra friendly to the unborn seeds and young plants while beeing ultra strong same time..... i still cant get my head around it, WHY is this working. Im fascinated! Must be because the coal and the zeolith and bentonite depositing the nutrients, sucking them out of the water.... still the roots can dock at these dopositions and exchange what they want..... it's a kind of magic! Thank you Yanomami!
 
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Nutty sKunK

Well-Known Member
.

BTW Tap water simply contains far too much sodium-chloride.... this is to protect the pipes. Its ok for big organisms with big kidneys, like human or dogs... we can flush it out! Smaller organisms like birds get sick from tap water over long time... the salt accumulates in their body, they cant flush out that mass. Same than in soil. Plants need chloride and sodium only veeeeery little, the higher it rises, the harder they can get to other nutrients, in that salty juice. Lockouts going to follow! You cant recycle your soil with tap water more than a few cycles. It gets salted up quickly.
See this is something I’m recently stumbling upon.

I saw some white residue build up on my new humidifier in only a few days. This got me thinking. My water is 38ppm out the tap and has no Ca or Mg in it. So the white stuff must be sodium? I’ve got a water report but don’t know if 5ppm of sodium is high or low?

My sulphates (SO4) are around 18ppm also.
 
Im using reverse osmosis water on recycled organic terra-preta soil.
I dilute some BB CalMag with some anorganic nitric- or phosphoric-acid (veg or bloom) at PH 5.5 first before i add organic ingredients.... stone me!
I have these bootles (anorganic PH+/-) since my first steps as a grower 17 years ago and they are great for tweaking the PH, adding the correct ions!
Then I add oxygene-nano-airstones bubbling, wait a few hours for maximum oxygene and the CalMag to dilute for EC 0,2 (100ppm) and pH rising again, because of it, to at about 6... and then I add my organic nutrients.
Finally I adjust it with organic PH+ to 6.1/6.3 (veg or bloom) if neccessary... stone me to death! :D

I dont need it? I agree. Does a dog need to lick his balls?:roll: But then why would he do it? Because he is able to! So why should he not do it? See :)

Oh sure, when I recycle the soil, i check the PH to, usually it got 6.3..... so with enough coffee ground and some other stuff, ill revert it to 5.9.

If somebody tells you you dont neet it on organic.... yeah, if you buy new organic soil each time, sure! But you should keep it balanced when you want to recycle the soil... otherwise it keeps increasing/decreasing from the mineral-salts calcium and magnesium, depending if the drop or rise what you feed, what they need... even if you keep it low with RO-water and only little CalMag.... you need to keep an eye on balancing if you dont want to throw it away!

I use my recycled soil now for 15 cycles at least! I dont think about throwing it away. It is the best soil i ever had! Free from pollutants from tap water and free from heavy metals, cause all my cannabis sucked them out. I never flush the soil or drain a lot to spill out nutrients.....because my soil has high nutrient absorbance capacity and very high ion exchange capacity due to bentonite and zeolithe with the coals.

Flushing phase means to me: Only water with RO-water and some molasse in the last two weeks, to feed the microbes with less then before but starving out the plants with no more extra nutrients at all, so the microbes fight for survival too and dont share nutrients anymore. It works. Theres ready to use products for this kind of effect, called final solution.

BTW Tap water simply contains far too much sodium-chloride.... this is to protect the pipes. Its ok for big organisms with big kidneys, like human or dogs... we can flush it out! Smaller organisms like birds get sick from tap water over long time... the salt accumulates in their body, they cant flush out that mass. Same than in soil. Plants need chloride and sodium only veeeeery little, the higher it rises, the harder they can get to other nutrients, in that salty juice. Lockouts going to follow! You cant recycle your soil with tap water more than a few cycles. It gets salted up quickly.

Living beeings are not meant to drink salty water, thats why i use RO-water at most, secondly because of other contaminants that i want to keep away from the microbes and away from the plant-roots... I need it to enable recycling my soil at ALL.... without it would fill up with sodium-chloride, fill up with cocktail of thousands of toxins and chemicals, all just tiny doses, that are scientifically sooooo unproblematic to humans when drinking :hump: at least "professors say so" to calm the masses, haha, masses that experience more and more "cancer", think about it...whatever these contaminants getting more and more with each watering in the pots, until they become a problem, because some of them contaminants are non-bio-degradable. o_O, yup, they are high toxic non degradable industrial wastes, like tulole and others, thousand of them, human WASTE in the tap water! But dont freak out: Since your country has the highest water standards, right? Haha, everyone believes that! Everyone! "Our water is the safest in the world".... :wall: Dont panic....do thisbongsmilieand relax. Only RO-water preserves that problems over long durations!

... smells and tastes like heaven! Nothing I found elsewhere came close! Balancing the PH is one part of the story!

Edit: Btw dispite this soil beeing ultra strong with a fat nutrient reservoir, still my kitchen herbs all breed from the seeds very well and fast in it and also grow well in it. I dropped "light mix" completely from my list because of this. The terra-preta enhanced "allmix" is good enough for ANYTHING, I just dont need the weak light-mix anymore. My soil is ultra friendly to the unborn seeds and young plants while beeing ultra strong same time..... i still cant get my head around it, WHY is this working. Im fascinated! Must be because the coal and the zeolith and bentonite depositing the nutrients, sucking them out of the water.... still the roots can dock at these dopositions and exchange what they want..... it's a kind of magic! Thank you Yanomami!
wow that just sounds like a lot of work.... you could set a bucket outside and catch the rain water and avoid all of that... or get a 50 gallon barrel and attach it to one of the down spouts from your gutter system. Maybe even use your air stones in the barrel to avoid any algae buildup. However, I personally try to keep things as simple as possible. To each their own and if it works for you keep on doing you...

Good job reusing soil though. Too many people waste money rebuying every time.
 

CheGueVapo

Well-Known Member
With a big city life in a flat with not even a balcony or a garden, you dont catch rain and you dont want to catch this rain next to high ways and industrial-petrochemical-parks, coal-power-plants and a lot of nuclear reactors, that are - say - "over time", good old french high tech... thanks god for civilisation and the sound of the silence about the crap going on only for "consumption" and "growth of economy".... :) One day we stand deep in crap.... up to the tip of our hairs... then we realise first! Damn this conspiracy theories about "pollution" about our biosphere and habitate were "right", who could knew that, let' get into the bunkerworld, breathing filtered air, drinking filtered water and eating only "algaes" and supplements from a stockpile staring at the walls, watching netflix episodes from the past time, maybe having VR.... Wow! Good old apes, still entertaining only counts! Highly intelligent beeing, most intelligent in the universe, at least he believes that! If someone speaks it out loud: Hes the freak, the "alien" :rolleyes: All eyes on CO², thats sooooo important for the future :rolleyes: , still ignoring our style of living destroys this planet, makes life on it impossible over time. Turning it into a dead rock with all kinds of chemicals and nuclear pollution... conducting business making money is more important.... the greed for growth, our solution is to pass the problem on onto the next generation... but theres no solution to this entropic process we didn't control today and lez faire. We cannot undo pollution with technology alone... all technology requires energy. We suck on energy dry increasing the pollution, not reducing it a bit, just passing on more pollution to the next generation, on and on.... more and more cancer, on and on, more and more genetic defects, on and on, extinguishing more and more of the bio-diversity of the planets, rotting out anything, us at last.....why does nobody speak, because we cannot change it, our radical economy is outta control... only this life of the consuments count.... nobody is interested in a future after his life, not his problem. Apes! Guess where it leads to! Extinction of the apes! Not only that, extinction of the hole planet of the apes! Just that! Unavoidable! Pray to SpaceX find hope for our species to loot another planet this style, but it doesn't matter for us here on earth... we're done ;) End is near! And Jesus lives next to Elvis in my cellar btw. smoking bowles with me! They demand only the best weed from me... so I do anything to satisfy them.... step on my blues way shoes, amen!

I've seen a two-headed squirrel... nobody believes me too, im just a dopehead ;)
 
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Well I’m clearly the freak then....

but to answer the original posters questions there is not a perfect soil pH. There are many genetics that have adapted to varying environments and as a result there are varying diets. Just look at the differences and similarities in diets amount humans around the world and then draw a parallel to food for plants.

Also don’t forget the basic questions that lead to knowledge, who, what, when, where, why, and how. What is your soil microbe that you are trying to cater to? do you have live worms or are you using earth worm castings? Do you have a mychorrzial fungi in your soil? Because if you want to go down that rabbit hole you learn that most “negative molds” prefer slightly acid soils, but beneficial myceliums can thrive in slightly alkaline soils. Having a pH of 7.5 is great for mycelium but not good for the negative molds. It’s funny how many people get “root rot” from “overwatering” when they actually have been down PHing their waters to borderline aciditic and as a result of created an environment for non beneficial molds to grow. Asking what trace minerals do you add and azomite rarely comes up on people’s lists of ingredients in their blends, but they have a long list of nutrients from a bottle they added. Well how were those nutrients made for the bottle? many times they are using acids to break down certain elements and then cleaning up their process with other compounds to leave “pure elements” but the cleanup process is never 100%. Then they wonder why is my PH all out of wack for my soil. Maybe I should correct it by adjusting my water

In comparison mycelium breaks down elements in the azomite increasing their bioavailability. Also you can find hundreds and hundreds of scientific research papers on the benefits of mycelium in soils. Or go listen to paul statmets and understand that mycelium predates plants on earth. but people think science is the solution, when the irony is science is understanding nature. Crispr uses nature’s way of repairing genes, but there are people who think that genetic manipulation is the solution to the problems of the world and forget very simple principles. There is a yin and yang to everything. For everything you gain you must lose something. Destruction and creation are the same idea from difference perspectives. So if you ask why you do something and what is the result, what do you learn from it? Do you use neem oil during veg to “protect” your plants from bugs and pests? What is the long term effect of neem oil being used by breeders over multiple generations of breeding? Do the genetics become more resistant to bugs and pests or do they become less resistant? Well if you take a step back and think about it, if the plant is having to work as hard to ward off pests over time it is going to forgot how to fight them off on their own and become less resistant, but reliant upon the neem oil. I’ve heard it’s raining cats and dogs, but ive yet to hear it’s raining neem oil outside...

So where does this leave us, should you focus on trying to understand nature and become a steward of the land, or do you believe humans are smarter than nature, which has billions upon billions of years of experience? Opposite extremities of the same problem. So do we continue down a path that we know will lead in doom because it’s easier or more convenient, or do you challenge the status quo and attempt to turn back the clock of evolution. I know I am a freak and many people are going to come at me for this, but I am a person that believes humans are on a path of devolving and evolving. But that’s my perspective.

but to get back on point of the perfect soil pH, my question is how did different cannabis strains evolve to have different terpene profiles and cannabanoids to begin with? Well the answer lies in the soil makeup of where they were found from many years of nature creating the original landraces. So some weed tastes like mangos, why is that? Maybe it was fed soil with composted mangos for hundreds of years, like in Hawaii? So how can I make my mango strain tastes more like mangos? Should I buy a terp booster in a bottle or should I compost mangos in the soil I am blending? Why are there so many lemon flavored strains? Are lemons acidic or basic? There is no perfect because in reality plants are just as adaptable as humans. What would happen if a plant was breed in a minty soil for years and years?

I understand that in big cities you can’t just setup a rain catch. I also realize that there are many industrial areas that pollute the air and contaminate the water. I should have asked where the poster lives and found out more information before proposing a simple solution that was meant to open the discussion of why are you asking these questions in the first place. By comparison a gallon of distilled water is less than a $1. How much does it cost to maintain your ph formulas and pens or litmus strips?

but I guess the point that I am trying to make is that if we don’t all analyze the consequences to our actions we will end up turning earth into mars and end up with a dead planet that eventually breaks at the magnetic core and then turns into the asteroid belt. Or we could keep amplifying the greenhouse effect and shift earth towards turning into Venus where the atmosphere is so thick and toxic that nothing can survive. But then again even our greatest scientists don’t understand how the universe even works. To propose that all the planets in our solar system are the same planet at different moments in time, sounds crazy to most. That goes against the accepted “theory” of a Big Bang. Even though I disagree with the route CERN is taking to study the Big Bang theory with their particular collider, the irony is that they believe that everything was created from just two particles. So wouldn’t that mean everything that exists within the universe is part of one of those two original particles? Not trying to get off topic, but trying to reiterate that even the “accepted” theories of science aren’t always correct. And that no one else is going to hand you the answer sheet to how you live your life. I just hope that we can find unity in acceptance of others and share our knowledge rather than be naive enough to think that we created an “original idea”.
 

CheGueVapo

Well-Known Member
Well i dont want to buy destilled water everytime, thats why i use a RO-membrane-water-source. Theres only little 15 ppms left in the clean water, most of it tiny doeses of the original minerals of the tap water (calcium,magnesium,sodium,chloride) as it is not perfectly holding back atoms.... but it removes bacterias, bigger atoms like heavy metals, or complex compounds safely out.

Biobizz CalMag is organic-bound calcium, and BB recommends when using RO-water to always add it. I just break them up with a little nitric-acid or phosphoric-acid. This does not harm the microbes or turns an organic grow into an mineral.... it's just to make this tiny dose of Cal/mag instantly accessible to the roots when feeding.

A grow does not automatically stay magically in the right ph zone, its dependand on the ingredients and the feedings, the fact that microbes can help plant-rootsto access minerals even at high pH doesn't mean that this is the right spot for fast and effective growth on organic.

Optimul pH for cannabis reaches from 5.9 in vegetion to 6.4 in flowering. This is true for organic, too.

It works higher, i agree. Still its not optimum for good development just because the bad fungus cannot life at higher soil pH.... they cannot life in lower soil pHs either, because there is already microbes, the good ones, which you should promote, with molasses and oxygene. Oxygene is is the most ignored important thing in the root zone at all!

All the grower needs to take care is to get enough oxyegene into the root-zone, especially in the moment of watering with drain, because that moment the roots stand in high water. That moment root-rotting happens if the oxygene in the given water is LOW.... because then the anaerobic microbes take over the lead and the roots suffocate because they cannot breathe.

find unity in acceptance
is it ok to look for perfection if i already find that unity in acceptance.... :peace: bro.... it's just my 50cents.
 
Well I just feel like I got shot in the face 9 times... no worries I’ll survive...

Why do you use molasses? If you give a kid sugar they get a quick energy boost, but eventually they crash.... what is molasses and how is it made? Should I be composting a sugar beet or sugar cane in my soil?

I believe I said if it works for you keep on doing it. And beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. But you might want to read a couple soil composition books if you are truly trying to find perfection.

so you are going to say that 100% all the time every genetic makeup of cannabis is going to have the best results from a 5.9 veg and 6.4 flower? Or are you saying that for your particular configuration of elements, soil, genetics, lights, etc. that’s where you had the best results?

who wins the race the tortoise or the hare?
 

Tangerine_

Well-Known Member
Yes, I have a soil pH meter; 6.2 - 6.5 range is where I want to be.

My pH has been higher, near 7.0. To rectify, I made some soil with a neutral pH and combine with either Happy Frog or Ocean Forest to get the desired pH.

I started flower 2 weeks ago and was seeing pH issues. So, I bought some Ocean Forest and blended with some neutral soil and was simple to adjust it to 6.4. After, repotted plants and they seem to be doing well. I'll continue to utilize this technique if it works out.

Happy can range from 5.5-6.5 and Ocean 6.3-6.8 and I have seen Ocean down below 6.0. If you use these soils, you need to know the pH because some adjustment may be needed before you stat using the dirt.
I think the low pH you're seeing in those bagged soils is because the liming agents haven't been activated yet. It always comes back up to the 6.5 range for me after a few waterings.
 
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