Vinegar is better than nothing but barely in my experience. Solution treated with pH Down has a more stable pH. If feeding in peat that’s one thing but not in a res. This from running DWC before. The pH swings were nuts. Again from my experience but I welcome hearing from others.
I agree, vinegar looses it's acidity too quick
What kinda nutes are you using, most are pretty acidic to begin with? My guess is you're making the soil pH too low. It looks like they aren't getting enough K, but I'd get the pH in check before trying to add more.
You need to check the soil pH. I would bet it's low. And I looked up that Incredible Bulk stuff and it doesn't sound great to me. I couldn't even find the ingredients, and the NPK ratio is kinda crazy to me.
pH down is phosphoric acid and pH up consists of potassium hydroxide and potassium carbonate. I had to Google pH up I never use it lol. Idk about bicarbonates and what they do to a given media, I thought it was the sodium part that's bad, like salt buildup. What do the bicarbs do?
I'm doing no-till, so if I want to raise the soil pH I add Ca based amendments like oyster shell flour. And if I want to lower it I add more organic materials, or feed with some acidic organic liquid nutes for a bit. Citric acid also works to slowly lower the soil pH and pull out some of the Ca in the soil. It's not the Ca itself that makes the pH rise but the carbonate in the calcium carbonate.
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