Acidic soil, flushing? Desperate for help!!

Hey guys, first grow in 10 years or so. My how things have changed. So i have been having major issues, Everything from n deficiency, phos, potash, cal and mag. Found out was overwatering. Recently did a soil ph slurrry test and it is showing 5.8 and that's about 2 inches into 5 gal pot. So I'm thinking my ph is way off possibly due to my initial use of fox farm fake organics and distilled water leaching all the alkilinity out of my soil. I have very limited room and a thick trellis so flushing with 15 gallons of water ph to 7 seems impossible to achieve. Any tips? In desperate need of help. Scott Ostrander from ocg, is a great guy but when he found out I was in a non legal state he stopped responding. Any advice is appreciated. Should I water with 7.5 for a few runs or what should I do? I just did a full watering with hygrozyme to eat the dead roots from overwatering. Also bud growth has come to a screeching halt on all but the most recently transplanted plants. I'll post pics below, thanks
T

I'm no expert, you should get more detailed and better responses but I'll start with asking what soil you started with? If it is soiless(mostly peat or coco), you're actually growing hydroponically(with forgiveness), ph should be 5.5-6.0. Seems to me they're hungry, with maybe a few micronutrient issues, but mostly they've just run out of food.

Started with fox farm ocean forest soil in 5 gallon smart pots. I know ideally they'd be 6.5 I've been ph my water and food between 6.4 and 6.6 for a month now. Had an issue where it wasn't calibrated for a week or so but I fixed it and some of the plants never showed issues, which made it most confusing. I've been feeding very aggressively and it's like they just aren't absorbing anything. Which is what lead me to do a slurry test. My stupid soil ph test meter said every single soil was 7.0 which I knew was absolutely not true. The overwatering i believe is at the root of the entire issue and i think i unfortunately may have spread some rot from the worst plant to the rest of them. Yesterday did a heavy watering with heavily diluted green cure and hygrozyme to eat any dead roots(they're tan colored not super dark brown but getting there) I think the main problem all stems from me overwatering and not just doing a flush when things started going off the rails. I've got literally every product and two or three of my plants this entire time have been pretty healthy, the others look god awful. None of them should be nute def at all considering what I've been feeding them. I think unfortunately adding the nutes only made things more acidic unfortunately. Also I know I'll have to reload the microbial life now since it's acidic and I used a fungicide but I had no choice and I'm already prepared to do so. Thanks

A few things come to mind. How are you testing your water/nute PH meter or drops? I saw where you said something about calibration so guessing meter. Do you have access to color changing drops. Cross check to see if what the meter is telling you against what the drops say. I had an el cheapo meter once, it calibrated great but it also gave bad readings that did not match up to what was actually going on and the drops confirmed it was way off. If your PH was off enough that plant wasn't taking in nutrients that may explain why its starting to suffer. How heavy of a feeding were you giving and were you getting a decent amount of runoff prior to this? Buildup of salt will cause issues too, effectively make the plant not want to take up anything but water leaving nutrients behind. Buildup of some nutrients cause cause lockout as well. If you have a ppm/ec meter you can check your runoff to get an idea of how much buildup you may have, it may surprise you.

TAG27 said:

Hey guys, first grow in 10 years or so. My how things have changed. So i have been having major issues, Everything from n deficiency, phos, potash, cal and mag. Found out was overwatering. Recently did a soil ph slurrry test and it is showing 5.8 and that's about 2 inches into 5 gal pot. So I'm thinking my ph is way off possibly due to my initial use of fox farm fake organics and distilled water leaching all the alkilinity out of my soil. I have very limited room and a thick trellis so flushing with 15 gallons of water ph to 7 seems impossible to achieve. Any tips? In desperate need of help. Scott Ostrander from ocg, is a great guy but when he found out I was in a non legal state he stopped responding. Any advice is appreciated. Should I water with 7.5 for a few runs or what should I do? I just did a full watering with hygrozyme to eat the dead roots from overwatering. Also bud growth has come to a screeching halt on all but the most recently transplanted plants. I'll post pics below, thanks
T

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Your in soil and the PH u mention is well within soils buffering effects. Your problem lies elsewhere.

From the pics it may look like ur a few weeks into flower. If so then it was probably a N issue of some sort.

Anytime your ph gets low like that Just use plain tap (mine is around 8 ). That will use up excess nutrients and raise your soil ph after a few waterings.

Lucky Luke said:

Your in soil and the PH u mention is well within soils buffering effects. Your problem lies elsewhere.

From the pics it may look like ur a few weeks into flower. If so then it was probably a N issue of some sort.

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Well I only did a slurry test and took the soil from 2 inches deep, I was assuming the ph could be much lower near the bottom. However I am fairly certain I do have the beginning of root rot forming from overwater and a couple bad hot days. Ive begun treating that already with fungicide and hygrozyme/cannazyme. In reference to your point I though calcium couldn't absorb under 6.2? You sound knowledgeable so I'm not doubting you just looking for clarification.
Thanks for your response

pacodelahoya said:

A few things come to mind. How are you testing your water/nute PH meter or drops? I saw where you said something about calibration so guessing meter. Do you have access to color changing drops. Cross check to see if what the meter is telling you against what the drops say. I had an el cheapo meter once, it calibrated great but it also gave bad readings that did not match up to what was actually going on and the drops confirmed it was way off. If your PH was off enough that plant wasn't taking in nutrients that may explain why its starting to suffer. How heavy of a feeding were you giving and were you getting a decent amount of runoff prior to this? Buildup of salt will cause issues too, effectively make the plant not want to take up anything but water leaving nutrients behind. Buildup of some nutrients cause cause lockout as well. If you have a ppm/ec meter you can check your runoff to get an idea of how much buildup you may have, it may surprise you.

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When i did the slurry test the ppm was 90, which seems oddly low. Im super confused how that could be other than possibly because I just killed all life in there with the hygro and fungicide. But if the salts are built up im assuming it would most likely be at the bottom so a runoff test might be more accurate. If it is high would you recommend a flush? Im scared to do that considering my main issue started with overwatering.

Wattzzup said:

Anytime your ph gets low like that Just use plain tap (mine is around 8 ). That will use up excess nutrients and raise your soil ph after a few waterings.

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Thanks man im going to try this first as it's the least intrusive option, also the tap water will add some alkalinity back into the soil as well.

You cannot change soils pH with tap water, tap water is low ppm who cares about its pH it's not really an acid or alkali in the sense your thinking but a weak buffer that does nothing.

Now if you badly overfertilize you may have acid problems.

Ignore waters pH, we only set it in hydro to stop nutrients forming insoluble compounds and compounds the plant cannot uptake.

Find out the waters ppm not its pH, that's what's important.

Tetrahedral said:

You cannot change soils pH with tap water, tap water is low ppm who cares about its pH it's not really an acid or alkali in the sense your thinking but a weak buffer that does nothing.

Now if you badly overfertilize you may have acid problems.

Ignore waters pH, we only set it in hydro to stop nutrients forming insoluble compounds and compounds the plant cannot uptake.

Find out the waters ppm not its pH, that's what's important.

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What does ppm have to do with tap water. Lmfao

anyway you can change the ph with tap because the tap is over 8 sooooo....

Anyway nice of you to provide a solution for him only complain about others.

Wattzzup said:

What does ppm have to do with tap water. Lmfao

anyway you can change the ph with tap because the tap is over 8 sooooo....

Anyway nice of you to provide a solution for him only complain about others.

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Ummmm if you take tap water with 20ppm and it tests over ph9 then that's very weak and will have no effect on soil and just add a small tiny amount to the lime buffer.

If you take tap water that's 800ppm but tests at ph6.5 that's going to fuck your soil after repeated waterings.

Do you not know this? Your not a soil grower I take it, suggesting I'm going to alter soil pH with high pH low ppm water is idiotical. Please learn something before clicking the haha emoji, it's very annoying when some low down idiot keeps being wrong and bullying others.

Tetrahedral said:

Ummmm if you take tap water with 20ppm and it tests over ph9 then that's very weak and will have no effect on soil and just add a small tiny amount to the lime buffer.

If you take tap water that's 800ppm but tests at ph6.5 that's going to fuck your soil after repeated waterings.

Do you not know this? Your not a soil grower I take it, suggesting I'm going to alter soil pH with high pH low ppm water is idiotical. Please learn something before clicking the haha emoji, it's very annoying when some low down idiot keeps being wrong and bullying others.

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Well a lot of soil growers do this. Maybe you should do some research. You’re talking about ppms making the soil more acidic and I’m talking about raising the ph of the soil with high ph waterings. There’s guys on here doing 9 ph waterings to offset it.

Wattzzup said:

Well a lot of soil growers do this. Maybe you should do some research. You’re talking about ppms making the soil more acidic and I’m talking about raising the ph of the soil with high ph waterings. There’s guys on here doing 9 ph waterings to offset it.

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This site is full of no hopers like you though, ppm is the pH in water as pure water is neutral.

pH is not a scale of ppm, raising ppm dosent have to alter pH. Therefore if you have low ppm water with high pH it's action on changing soil pH is not much even nothing. But a high ppm low pH water can fuck your soil making it highly alkaline after repeated waterings but the pH was 6.5.

Soil is a massive resovoirs of buffers, how does water overpower that when it's a small amount of carbonate sulphate shit.

I'm going to ignore you from now on, glad I got the chance to say stop posting hahas on every fucking comment.

So I did a flush with 3 gallons of water and the ppm in the runoff was 2000, ph was 5.9. So I'm assuming my salt buildup is what is fucking me? Should I keep flushing until my ppms come down? We're coming up on week 6 and almost no bud growth in 1.5 weeks on some of the ladies, others have just been stunted. My tap water comes out at 7.8 and ppm is 150. Alkalinity is 40 ppm. So I've switched from distilled to tap because I believe if I'm not mistaken I need to add alkalinity and flush the bad salts. Thoughts? Also guys there's more than one way to skin a cat maybe be kinder to each other.
Thanks
T

TAG27 said:

So I did a flush with 3 gallons of water and the ppm in the runoff was 2000, ph was 5.9. So I'm assuming my salt buildup is what is fucking me? Should I keep flushing until my ppms come down? We're coming up on week 6 and almost no bud growth in 1.5 weeks on some of the ladies, others have just been stunted. My tap water comes out at 7.8 and ppm is 150. Alkalinity is 40 ppm. So I've switched from distilled to tap because I believe if I'm not mistaken I need to add alkalinity and flush the bad salts. Thoughts? Also guys there's more than one way to skin a cat maybe be kinder to each other.
Thanks
T

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Your not going to tell anything in runoff and on analysis soil holds a lot of things that 2000ppm coming out isn't bad.

Your trying to fix problems and creating more, soil water ferts nothing else is needed and the only monitoring you need is to measure the ferts in a cap or measuring cup.

If the plant stopped growing it's because you flushed everything out and possibly overwatered too.

TAG27 said:

Well I only did a slurry test and took the soil from 2 inches deep, I was assuming the ph could be much lower near the bottom. However I am fairly certain I do have the beginning of root rot forming from overwater and a couple bad hot days. Ive begun treating that already with fungicide and hygrozyme/cannazyme. In reference to your point I though calcium couldn't absorb under 6.2? You sound knowledgeable so I'm not doubting you just looking for clarification.
Thanks for your response

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Your seeing problems that are not there. Soil and Hydro are two different ball games. Soil Buffers much more than hydro or a soilless media.
Go back to basics on the next round. KISS principal. Keep It Simple Stoner. Chasing things down a rabbit hole is never going to work as well as doing things simply

I'm not seeing problems that aren't there I already admitted that I was overwatering. Is that enough to stop all absorption? I won't flush anymore but they were fed plenty upon plenty of nutes. I think I just was already fucked at that point from the overwatering issue.

TAG27 said:

I'm not seeing problems that aren't there I already admitted that I was overwatering. Is that enough to stop all absorption? I won't flush anymore but they were fed plenty upon plenty of nutes. I think I just was already fucked at that point from the overwatering issue.

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If you step step back a bit then you will see that you cannot over water. People use Sips and dutch buckets, Hempys and even float plants on a body of water. The problem that people associate with over watering is actually not enough O2 in the root zone. This why majority of soil growers use perlite in their soil mix, it traps air.
Over watering though of cause can leach (flush) the nutrients in the soil away and also make it harder for the plant to buffer and manage its root zones PH

Tetrahedral said:

Your not going to tell anything in runoff and on analysis soil holds a lot of things that 2000ppm coming out isn't bad.

Your trying to fix problems and creating more, soil water ferts nothing else is needed and the only monitoring you need is to measure the ferts in a cap or measuring cup.

If the plant stopped growing it's because you flushed everything out and possibly overwatered too.

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I didn't do a flush until today dude, and I was feeding at 1200 ppm organic food up until things just kept progressing worse and worse. I think I have root rot and feeding until the cows come home isn't gonna help me. Anyhow, I only flushed the absolute worst looking ones and I have a feeling it couldn't hurt worse than they already were. I've already adjusted watering schedule and volume. I'm nearly week 6 so Idk if I can salvage the season for some of the plants but they're gonna finish one way or the next I guess.