What is the best way to find out the ph of the soil?
Yeah, what you said. Terms seem OK to me. You just have to know the pH of whatever you're putting in, and measure it again when it runs out the bottom of the pot, and compare the readings. How far your pH moves suggests how acidic or alkaline your soil may be. But, how far your pH swings is also influenced by the EC ("ppm's") of your water/nutrient solution.

Here's a post about that from recent. And, I'd really try to get that medium dried out, including running temps on the high side and fans blowing both across the top of the medium, and gently through the foliage. Lowering the ambient humidity with a dehuey would help, too.


Quote Originally Posted by DreadedHermie
Let's see some pics of the problem. 7.6 won't kill anything, but it has messed with nute uptake for me in the past.

What is the EC and source of the flush water?

If it's real 'soft' water, it only needs to come in contact with a very small amount of acidic soil to drop its pH to almost that of the soil.

If you're using RO or distilled, with no buffers, you can pH it [sorta ] to 7.6, run it through a 6.4 pH pot, and have it come out at almost 6.5 (just for example).

OTOH, a stiff nute solution might go in at 7.6 and come through a 6.4 pH pot at 7.5 (again, made up example, please pass the 'pH-Up' to set this up ) especially if the medium's inert / not-well-buffered.

Hope this is making sense. 'Softer' water's gonna swing hard. One DROP of acid will dump the pH on a bathtub fulla distilled. Sorta.

What I'm getting at is I'd rather flush more thoroughly with water closer to the target value, than less thoroughly with water PH'ed to move the pH all at once. I've run in the low 5's (5.2-5.5) in soil without problems, so I wouldn't rush trying to get the pH up. :rastasmoke: