You can see that the readings are a little different. The established plant was watered several times with amended (pH-up) water so I would expect it to be a little higher than the one with new soil.
I guess I expected to see readings in the range of pH 6-7 not quite as high as pH 7 especially for new soil watered once with low pH water.
Do these little meters really work? What’s your experience?
I’ve used these before and I can’t stand them. You need to use them in a very specific manner or they don’t work well, they still won’t work well even if used correctly but I digress. First you need to take a sample from root level, that means digging down a few inches to get it. Second you need to add an equal amount of ro or distilled water. Third you mix the soil and water for 15-20 seconds and let it sit for 20-30 minutes. After letting it sit, stir again and measure with the meter. You may need to let the meter sit for a minute or two to get an approximate ph for your soil. It will never be 100% accurate.
Yeah I had one of these too. Good enough to monitor my lemontree for the time that it was sitting in a less than beneficial spot, but eventually the meter broke, but by then we were moving and now that the lemon tree has a better spot and I’ve gotten better at judging it’s state, I don’t need one any more.
Honestly I’ve NEVER stuck a pH meter in my cannabis pots. Growing organic doesn’t need meters. Can’t say anything about non organic cause that’s not my alley.
I never found it very useful for pH readings, and even for moisture readings you need to take a few readings at different places and wiggle it around a bit to know what’s really up. Light readings were useless for the lemon tree, indoors without added plant lighting it reads almost zero, but it swinged to almost max when held under a quantum board.
You can but it won’t work properly for pH, really, in practice, these meters are only good for keeping an eye on soil moisture, which your finger is almost as good at… But lemon trees are finicky as hell especially when they don’t live in warm enough environments, so for the time I had one it did serve me; wouldn’t serve me for growing pot though.
I have something similar I use for testing moisture but I have a decent one for testing pH of the nutrient mix for watering. Never really had the need to test the soil…
I’ve never had luck with these meters. I believe they’re more suited for actual earth soil instead of the peat/coco comprised “soils”, which isn’t really soil at all, even with the possibility of added compost and EWC. I always hate to be the bearer of bad news but I would toss that meter outside if you have a use for it in the ground, it’s no good for soiless media.
Best advise I can give is to use litmus paper on your runoff and for any ingoing H20, nutrified or plain. It’s always a good idea to know your ingoing pH. Alot of growers use municipal water and more often than not it’s always alkaline due to the carbonates added.
@Habitt offered an excellent technique. I use this method to Guage my soils composition and ratio of material used. Such as sand, silt, clay, compost, humus, wood, ect. Each individual parent material will be lighter or heavier than the other, and form together in layered bands. It makes it much easier to see ratios, especially useful if you make your own substrate. It’s equally useful to get pH and EC readings as well as test for individual Macro nutrients NPK.
Cannabis, like many plants, prefers slightly acidic soil conditions. It tolerates a wide pH range (5.0-7.0) without symptoms of bronzing or interveinal chlorosis (yellowing of top leaves), but pH levels outside of the optimal range of 5.8 – 6.2 will limit growth.
Do I need to pH my water when growing in soil?
For growers using beneficial bacteria and fungi such as those found in compost teas, and in “living” or “super soil”, it’s important to understand that without the right pH, beneficial microbes cannot thrive and multiply. Simply put, pH matters because it directly affects whether or not a plant can use nutrients.
Personally I only PH the water+ Nutrients that I’m feeding, otherwise I don’t do soil slurry tests, Soil PH test or anything els.
What happened to me though is that despite giving my plant water/nutes in the 5.8-6.4 range, my last runoff test came back 6.6. Which suggests the soil is even higher than 6.6 and I didn’t understand how that could be.
I’ve realized that I probably shouldn’t be pH adjusting my input water at all. My input water is 5.8 which is on the low side, so I’ve been adding pH up to get it in the 6.2-6.4 range. But I think what’s happening is that the “pH up” stuff may build up in the soil and turning the soil alkaline.
I was hoping this device might give me some insight into my soil pH but apparently not.
Can’t agree more. I will add that it’s even a more reliable information that sampling the soil, run off give you also the action of the PH buffer in your soil and the consistance of the KH of your initial water. If you don’t kill both in thinking that regulating PH in soil is like regulating PH in hydro, of course ^^
Those meters are only good to test the moisture of the soil. Better practice is the pH your water and nutrients before watering plants. A inexpensive way to check pH are the test strips, they will get you close.
I too found that meter is only good to check moisture levels at best. What can you expect for ten or twenty bucks. The best way to not have PH issues are what all have said PH water keeping it in those ranges so the plant can get at the nutrients just stay in that range, but does No have to be exactly the same every time just in that acceptable range. I use the papers ones and could have gotten a thousand strips for what I paid for that stupid useless meter. Don’t feel bad, I think that everyone thats ever grown weed has 1.
