pH for soil grow?

With a soil grow I'm running into two schools of thought as far as pH of water, nute mix, and/or teas. Any liquid essentially.

The first is that liquids should be at 6.0 to 6.5 with 6.2 as ideal and that it's very important.

The second is that soil grows have an incredible ability to buffer pH and not to worry about the pH of liquids.

Which one do you follow?

Here's my test results:

pH Readings:

R/O - 6.3
Scrubbed tap water - 7.7 *
Straight tap water - 8.1
Purified water store - 6.5
Distilled - 6.0

TDS readings

R/O - 0
Scrubbed tap - 230 *
Straight tap - 230
Water store - 0
Distilled - 0

*This is thru my 2 stage RV water filter system.

Organic usually you don't have to worry about ph. Watering in nuts you do. Don't use ro in my opinion

The second,tap about 7.2 and 200 ppm.Add dry nutes some EWC and don't bother checking pH

TedeBoy said:

With a soil grow I'm running into two schools of thought as far as pH of water, nute mix, and/or teas. Any liquid essentially.

The first is that liquids should be at 6.0 to 6.5 with 6.2 as ideal and that it's very important.

The second is that soil grows have an incredible ability to buffer pH and not to worry about the pH of liquids.

Which one do you follow?

Here's my test results:

pH Readings:

R/O - 6.3
Scrubbed tap water - 7.7 *
Straight tap water - 8.1
Purified water store - 6.5
Distilled - 6.0

TDS readings

R/O - 0
Scrubbed tap - 230 *
Straight tap - 230
Water store - 0
Distilled - 0

*This is thru my 2 stage RV water filter system.

Click to expand...

pH measurement of RO or distilled water is irrelevant and often misleading.

Both have a pH of 7 by definition

Once exposed to air, the pH will fall from co2 absorption creating carbonic acid

It's irrelevant because its contribution to the overall pH (H+ to OH- ratio) in a nute mix is negligible

I think it's important to note that you should know what your soils made of and know where it naturally wants to try to balance at. If you have soil that is trying to get down to 5.5 all the time and you water at 6.2 or lower and think your soil will buffer your wrong. Same with a soil that fights for say 7.0 and you water at 6.4 thinking your soils gonna buffer it down to a nice 6.0 before you feed again its not. You need to know the direction of the drift and make sure when you mix your nutrients you are on the right side of the drift for your soil or you will have to ph. If your soil is fighting for 7, and you want 6.2, you should try watering at 6. If you mix your stuff and it's 6.0 stock but your soil drifts down to 5.5 naturally and you just water with that you will have issues soon

I dont ph in biobizz all mix with there veg and bloom and never had any issue i aint saying its irrelevant but its less of a problem so i wouldn't worry about it too much