How important is water PH????

Bamstone

Well-Known Member
My usual long answer:

pH is probably the number one cause of problems to the newer grower but they often don't know it. After using most tap water for six or seven weeks the soil will lock in a pH that is roughly the same as the water. If you've added lime to the soil or otherwise stabilized it with some form of calcium or calcium/magnesium agent you are sunk at this point and there is no good solution, flushing or otherwise, except to start over properly. Your plants will yellow prematurely from nute lockout, which many people mistake as the normal course of flowering, but it's not. Only the large fans should turn yellow in flowering, all the new growth should be green and healthy up until the end.

So...

You MUST check the pH of your water (after adding nutes if adding any) and adjust to around 6.0 - 6.5 if necessary. Tap water is almost always 7.0 or above sometimes in the 8's. Bottled water is usually in the same range.

Get a digital tester ($50 or so), not strips, they are a pain and too subjective to be accurate. Use a pH adjusting agent made for plants not pools, use something like Earth Juice Natural Down (down because that's the direction you almost always need to go with tap water) and not lime juice or vinegar because they are not stable after a few hours. Some ferts will take your pH down to where you need it without adding anything else - Tiger Bloom does this with my tap water.

Hope this helps. I learned it the hard way.
 

Bamstone

Well-Known Member
Personal opinion is that any old tap water will germ seeds fine. Be nice to use water with no chlorine, but honestly I've used fresh tap on occasion and the seeds always germ fine. I would be more inclined to blame the seeds vs the water. Be sure to use a little heat too - I soak a paper towel, fold in the seeds and then put them in a baggie and set it on the cable box with a little towel over them to block the light. I'm not at 100% germ rate, but pretty darn close. I think the PH up and down chemicals might do more damage to the seed that having the PH a little off, the seed just needs to sense moisture, you don't have to worry about PH lockout at this point.

For a soil grow I prefer using lemon juice as the acid and baking soda for the PH up. Just seems more natural to me than bottled chemicals. Hydro is a different bird - I would only use PH up and down sold for that purpose as lemon juice can muck up a res.
I think the question was how important the pH of the water was to growing. You can germinate in tap water just fine, and you can grow in it just fine for while, but not if it's in the 7+ range.

Lemon juice is not stable for more than a few hours... Earth Juice Natural Down is great stuff and WILL NOT harm your plants when used properly.
 

Bamstone

Well-Known Member
Is it normal for a plant to do fine thru 4-6 weeks of 7.6, but then start showing possible pH issues after a while? I mean, it vegs fine at 7.6, but flowering veg is yellowing too early.
Bottom line, can reducing pH to 6.5 before watering hurt a plant, assuming tap is a pH 7.6?
Yes! What you describe is exactly waht happens. pH Adjust from the beginning to avoid the problem
 
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