Sphagnum peat moss alone has a pH around 4.0, so I don’t think I’d really call it a buffer. It’s most often used in gardening to decrease soil pH for acidic soil loving plants (blueberry plants, for example).
Also, depending on your methods you may not have or want runoff. No-till containers, for example, should not have much, if any, runoff. The idea is to keep your soil consistently moist, so you water smaller quantities more frequently.
I’m right there with ya. My tap water comes out around 7.9-8.1 pH and isn’t particularly hard, but it’s not soft water. I’ve tried a couple times to avoid adjusting water pH in small containers (3-5 gal) and larger 20 gal containers. In each case, the plants quickly remind me that I need to give the water pH some attention–especially in new containers. I don’t pH to an exact number each watering…I shoot for water that’s between 6.0-7.0 with an overall average around 6.5.
My lead/chlorine filtered tap water comes out 7.5-7.8ish. With my additives in promix, promix hp cc, or promix cc40 I can go an entire grow veg through flower without pHing and not have any deficiencies I can’t address with adding or removing small amounts of whatever the plants are saying to do.
Guess I was just trying to show you don’t HAVE to pH your water if you take the right preventative steps to make it so, I’ve watched it happen for years worth of grows now because I did the research on how to make it happen
It can be done. In the past most meters didn’t work half the time anyway. Hard water it was hard on the ph meter. I would use the pool stuff. One of my grows a year ago I didn’t use a meter at all. In my opinion I thought they look pretty good. When I started messing up as when I did start ph on my next run. And still using the same topping of the soil I ran into problems. Advanced nutrients have some good stuff. You really have to go by what your plants look like. My rh of water was around 7.5. It doesn’t take much to bring it down. Would I recommend is now no. Not with leds lights. Hps I would try again. I also was using Fish fertilizers like Alaskan fish fertilizer and Neptune
Agreed, as long as you know and take the preventative steps. If you don’t take the right steps beforehand, you’ll take twice as many steps to fix it later.
Or maybe you’re one of the lucky ones with the sweet spot water and don’t need the steps.
My tap water is around 9.0-10.0 PH. The best way I found to bring it down to 5.6-6 is I use a zero water pitcher to filter the water. It is a 5 stage filter system and you can get them at walmart for 35$. You can usually run about 20 gallons thru the filter before you have to change it. The cost of each filter buying at bulk is about 12$. I usually store the water I am going to use in old Arizona tea 1 gallon containers. I have about 15 of them filled up now and usually I have 3-4 empty ones sitting on the counter to be filled up through the day.
When they say shit like that they’re assuming good water quality. If your taps coming out at 6.5-7.5 you’re good just add water. It’s not like you’re mixing a bunch of nutes with organics, just the occasional top dressing and compost tea.
My tap water sits between 7.3 - 7.6 and for my last few grows I always pH’d it down to 6.5ish but this time around I haven’t bothered and I can’t say I see a difference.
I’m still in veg for another week but I was thinking of adjusting it during flower. I figure that’s where it matters the most but I dont really know if it will make a difference.
I’m using organic soil in 5G pots. So far everything looks very healthy
You must have some really bad water to clog up a filter with 20 gals of water. My zero filters last 6 months roughly with about 15 gals a week going through it.
Depends on how much sulphur or other acidic things is in your soil to correct the balance, but with 5 gal pots there is not much soil to keep that adjustment going a long time so I would be careful, even in my 10 gal pots I still pH my water just for peace of mind.
You wont really notice bad ph in veg unless it’s way high or low. However, for flowering… you wont get big buds regardless of organic soil. And I grow organic.
I haven’t ph’d my water in many , many years . Pretty much since I tossed the bottled nutes and went with a pre mixed soil. My well water is also usually in the 6.3-6.5 range the few times I have checked .
My thoughts on needing to ph water or not is do whatever floats your boat
Your well water is in the near perfect range for ph tho…I was not ph’ing my water for 2 years then local water works had an algae outbreak and the water out the tap is at 8. fucken 5 sometimes…grr.
Perhaps maybe we need to rephrase the information: If possible test the ph of your water source so you know what you are working with. That way if issues arise you know your ph is good or bad and that’s one possible source of trouble you can eliminate.
My rainwater comes in at 7.0 and super low EC / PPM but it gets algae in it quite quickly so cant use it for my pots. I ended up buying an R.O. setup and using that to water. I add a teaspoon or less of compost or compost tea to make up for lost minerals.
My tap water is so bad that the waste water from the R.O measures at a better PH and EC.
