# ph problem/emergency



## lumpcore (Jan 14, 2012)

just fed my plants - one is three weeks into flower and the the other three are vegging till they are bigger. when i tested their ph after just giving them plain water, they were all in the 6.2 - 6.4 range. once i nute them, they plummet to 4 or lower. and the one in flower doesn't look too good. these are in soil, btw. If i get some ph up or whatever it's called, will that make the soil ph to high after awhile?


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## 4u2sm0ke (Jan 14, 2012)

No it wont..go get some PH up and down..Allways  PH adjust water and feedings to the proper level...My PH drops when mixing nutrients  and needs to be braught up...I bubble my mixes for a few days as Im adjusting..after I get it to 6.5(Im soil too)...then I give to me girls.....May I sugest some cal/mag when ya get the PH bottles...Im thinking your girl is needing some...hope this helps

take care and be safe:bolt::bong:


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## lumpcore (Jan 14, 2012)

okay, thanks - i almost dropped my coffee when i saw the 3.8 reading.


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## stevetberry (Jan 14, 2012)

I am hydro but I would think that you should flush with ph'd water until you get a runoff of 6.5 and then feed them.  JMO.


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## 4u2sm0ke (Jan 14, 2012)

I dont bother with run off myself..I just make sure everything going in is Ballanced:aok:


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## Wetdog (Jan 14, 2012)

Dolomite Lime FTW

I haven't checked runoff OR what's going in for a couple of years now. No need.

Wet


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## lumpcore (Jan 14, 2012)

my local hydro store is closed till monday. should i just let them be till then? i did add garden lime to the soil, and i added some more this morning, but after testing them again, the ph is still super low. should i foliar feed them? i have epsom salts, black strap molasses and a variety of earth juice products - meta k, catalyst, hygrozyme - will any of these help bring the ph up without adding to the problem?


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## ozzydiodude (Jan 14, 2012)

IMO desolving some of the gardem lime in water would be your best way to go.


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## Hushpuppy (Jan 16, 2012)

I agree with Ozzy, disolving the lime in water or putting it on top and watering it in good should help. I suspect that you have too much nitrogen as certain chemicals like nitrogen will make the soil very acidic which lowers PH. the lime is alkaline so it will ballance the acidity of the N. Your soil may be a little hot. I wouldn't add any moalsses as that is also acidic and is a food for the microbes and will supercharge them to work to break down more chems in the soil and complicate the issue. Try to keep your water going in more alkaline so that it will offset the acidity. If I had a PH issue in my soil(I am in hydro) I would continue to test runoff until the ph wasn't an issue anymore, then just check perodically to make sure it is staying good. As the soil guys said, if you start out with PH ballanced water and you know that your soil is ballanced then you will not have to test the runoff as much if any. JMO


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## lumpcore (Jan 16, 2012)

i've been doing the dissolved garden lime in water thing now since saturday, and it looks like the ph is creeping up a little, but it's still poisonously low - the plant in flower actually looks like it's in pain.


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## lumpcore (Jan 16, 2012)

it sounds like i shouldn't feed them till the ph comes up...?


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## Hushpuppy (Jan 16, 2012)

Yeah I wouldn't feed them again until the ph comes up. It will not help to have extra nutes in the soil if the PH is that far off as the plants can't absorb it. How much are you feeding them? Are the leaves turning or burning?


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## ozzydiodude (Jan 16, 2012)

:yeahthat:


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## lumpcore (Jan 17, 2012)

They are turning. and the stems are dark purple. and curving downward (on the one in flower. the cheeses in veg just don't look happy)

I'm following this schedule for earth juice, which i found in the indoor section of this site:

FINAL EARTH JUICE SCHEDULE:

----------Cat-----------Micro---------Grow---------Bloom--------Hi-Brix--------Hygrozyme

1veg------5ml----------5ml------------5ml
2veg------5ml---------5ml------------5ml
3veg------5ml---------5ml-------------5ml----------------------5ml-------------2.5ml
4veg------7.5ml--------5ml------------7.5ml----------------------5ml-------------2.5ml
5flwr------10ml---------5ml------------7.5ml---------5ml-----------5ml-------------2.5ml
6flwr------10ml---------5ml------------10ml--------10ml-----------5ml-------------5.0ml
7flwr------10ml---------5ml------------10ml--------10ml-----------10ml------------5.0ml
8flwr------5.0ml--------5ml------------10ml---------15ml----------10ml------------7.5 ml
9flwr------5.0ml--------5ml------------10+ml--------20ml----------10ml------------5ml
10flwr------------------5ml------------10+ml------20-25ml---------10ml------------2.5ml
11flwr------------------5ml------------------------20ml------------10ml
12flwr-------------FLUSH


Repeat week 3 for veg or 10 for flower extension

the plant in flower just got the week 7 feeding and the 3 in veg are getting the week three (until  early feb). i did up the amount of grow, because they were yellowing. 

i've been having cold issues in the grow space, which is why this got so bad, by the time the temps were fixed and the plants still hadn't gotten better, two weeks passed and that's when i finally looked at the ph.

when the ph does finally go up (it's going really really slowly - is there any way to speed it up - making the trip to the hydro store today) will the sudden availability of all the nutes left in the soil burn the plants?


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## lumpcore (Jan 17, 2012)

strangely, my camera is making this poor girl look better than she does in person. The first photo is just before flower, when all was good. the next three are from this morning - sorry the light is so bad.


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## The Hemp Goddess (Jan 17, 2012)

Do not be a slave to a nutrient schedule.  NO one schedule is right for every strain.  Feed your plants what they need, not what some bottle says they need.  Nute schedules should only be used as guidelines.

Your grow space being too cold is also going to cause problems.  If you are getting purple and shouldn't be, your plants are suffering.

You keep talking about your pH being off, but I am not understanding where you are checking it and what you are using to check it?  Are you actually checking the soil?  If you are using one of those little soil pH probes, they are useless--well worse than useless.


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## ozzydiodude (Jan 17, 2012)

From looking at those pics IMO I would go ahead and FLUSH the soil with plain wate PH'ed to 6.5. to 7.0. Use at least 3 times the ammount of water as you buckets are if they are 5 gal then use 15 gal od the PH'ed water it looks like to me their is lock out of the nutes going on So IMO FLUSHING is you best bet


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## lumpcore (Jan 17, 2012)

Its one of the fat soil probes - i can't find the specific one on line - i got it years ago. It isn't one of the long thin cheap ones. I'm going out today to get one of the run off testing kits.


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## Classic (Jan 17, 2012)

lumpcore said:
			
		

> FINAL EARTH JUICE SCHEDULE:
> 
> i've been having cold issues in the grow space, which is why this got so bad, by the time the temps were fixed and the plants still hadn't gotten better, two weeks passed and that's when i finally looked at the ph.


I've been using Earth Juice for 6 months or so.  Mix it up a couple of days ahead of time and aerate.  If it's warm enough, the pH will rise.  I've noticed that the pH is below 4 when first mixed but I've had it go as high as 8 after a couple of day. 

FWIW, my current grow looks similar to yours.  I've been flowering for 10 wks now so some yellowing is to be expected but it's worse than it should be.  Buds aren't huge either.

My grow is in an outdoor shed so I pretty much live with the temps.  I run lights at night and hope for the best in the day time.  We haven't had any real cold weather but temps are lower than I'd like.  I'm pretty sure EJ isn't my problem as I always premix and adjust if needed on the pH.


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## HemperFi (Jan 17, 2012)

Well, take this for what it's worth, but I do not believe you should flush -- I believe you have been way over watering, your roots are swelled up like fingers in a hot tub and they are unable to absorbe the nutes. 

I wouldn't do anything with that plant until the soil was almost dry -- then feed it regular flower nutes... JMO

Good luck


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## Hushpuppy (Jan 17, 2012)

Since cold temperatures was mentioned, I am about sure that the cold temps(if they were below 60 degrees f for at least a week or more) are the culprit to the issue. I don't know why but Nitrogen gets locked out when they get and stay cold. Did the yellowing start from the centers of the leaves and move out to the edges of the leaves? I lost 2 plants that had suffered too much cold and that is how they looked and did. However, being in hydro it was easier for me to get the PH straight, but never could get the plants to recover. Yours are farther along, so I think if you can get the ph right you can keep them going to the end. If you can get a good true reading on the ph then we can decide from there if you should flush or not.

I am of the mind-set that you can't drown the roots of a plant by overwatering, but you can suffocate them by not having enough disolved oxygen in the water. If you do decide to flush or if you need to run enough water to determine the PH of the run-off then make sure you aerate the water for at least several hours before pouring it on. I personally believe that if the PH is off that flushing with well aerated and ph'd water should bring you back to level. Then once the PH is straight, you can let them dry out.


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## lumpcore (Jan 17, 2012)

thank you all for your inputs - after a long sh!!ty day of driving in sleet and freezing rain, i have various ph testing stuff. the soil test says its 7.5, the run off test says it's about 7 - so too high. i have been adding the lime, so am not sure if that is the cause or not. effin soil meter. i'm going to build a little fire with that thing.

the yellowing seemed to come on pretty uniformly - the lower parts just faded

I'm definately not watering them too much, they get dry and light-weight before i water again - it was averaging about once a week, once or twice they were drooping a little (before this problem got really obvious). the rh of the space is about 40%. the temp problem was out of whack initially during veg and i fixed it, got a little lax again and that's what i thought was causing the issues - but the temp has been 60ish at night and high 70's during the day - the last time i pulled it up (during veg) the plants turned around within days. 

The earth juice schedule is just a jumping off point - i've never gone fully organic indoors and needed some kind of guide. the guy who posted that did a whole crazy pile of tests, and that was the one he liked the results of best and i decided to give it a try. he did warn that it would have to be individually adjusted - per strain and water source. I noticed at the hydro store that earth juice sells citric acid as ph down for 20 dollars a bottle - my brother is a chef and assures me that is ridiculous. 

Classic mentions earth juice adjusts itself after a few days - i've only been letting it sit for 24 hours.

anyway, when i took the one in flower up for ph testing - things are looking a bit more green

one day, one day, i will grow nice weed.


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## Classic (Jan 17, 2012)

lumpcore said:
			
		

> I noticed at the hydro store that earth juice sells citric acid as ph down for 20 dollars a bottle - my brother is a chef and assures me that is ridiculous.


My hydro store won't even sell EJ pH up or down.  They say they've had way too many complaints about it.



> one day, one day, i will grow nice weed.


I feel your pain.  I've been growing for a year now.  I manage to keep myself supplied but it's nothing that I'd call dank.

I'm glad you posted this thread.  Like I said, I have a very similar problem.  If your pics look better than the actual plants, I suspect our plants look a lot alike.  I'm pretty sure the low temps are my problem.


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## Wetdog (Jan 17, 2012)

Your brother is right, you can get citric acid in the canning section of the grocery store for ~$3.

Wet


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## The Hemp Goddess (Jan 17, 2012)

Food products seem to break down quite fast when used for pH up or down.  Why not just order some pH down (formulated for horticulture) online?  I have no problems with GH's pH down.


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