Quote Originally Posted by WashougalWonder
I doubt very seriously it was the Fox Farms Ocean Forest. Why did you add dolomite and perlite? That stuff is perfectly balanced.

Most references show PH of most distilled water to be on the acidic side, so I question the reading of 8.0 or that the water is distilled.

You, by adding stuff to the soil, messed with/flushed out the buffers they put in. Dang it, I cannot get it through to you that you are killing with kindness.:hippy:

Seriously, man I just use ffof and RO water, but PH stays in the 6-7 range on the water. I don't water enough to get runoff until late in the flower cycle. The only fertilizer I recommend is a TINY bit of 16-16-16 slow release at the beginning of the flower cycle. (I am experimenting still, but best results are as stated.)

FFOF has enough good stuff in it to get 6 weeks of awesome growth before needing to supplement nutes....if you don't wash them all out.

Just transplant them to fresh soil. My plants in 3 gallon containers, under a 1000, 3-4' tall use about a quart of water a day in flower. If I over water and flush out the buffers and salts, then everything I put in has to be in balance.

By not watering so much it does not wash out the pots, and by not adding more salts (RO water controls that, but it is not distilled), or fertilizers (salts) the balance stays the same, the plant has a great root environment, and the plant stays healthy. The most I have seen as far as nute disorder on FFOF is K, but that could be because of the 16-16-16.

Want to test it? Pick two plants at seedling stage that are similar in growth and size. Just one treat the way I suggest. Do all the fun stuff to the others. This will be a boring plant, until about week 4 in flower.

This actually is what I consider advanced growing, because you have to chill and let them stay pretty dry. Lots of sips of water so it soaks in, not runs through.
I question that distilled water too... got it from the supermarket. But my pH meter was calibrated and it's a good pH meter.

My plants actually look really good. I'm not killing them with kindness. I never water like this. I usually water until I see a few drops come out the bottom and I do it slowly, so that's all that comes out! I let my plants dry out pretty well too.

The majority of my plants are doing excellent, but these fuckin' Sour Diesels are driving me nuts!! They're very sensitive and they were having some sort of problem. The semi-flush actually helped, so I'm glad that I did it.

Now I'll let them dry out and get back to normal. But I wanted to nip this in the bud... I've heard these fuckers will herm pretty easily... so I have been paying extra attention to them.
lampost Reviewed by lampost on . Soil runoff @ pH 5.0!? How did this happen so fast? OK, well I found out what the cause of my problems were. I posted about some curling/canoeing leaves and some brown/rust spots I was starting to see on a few plants. I decided to flush and the initial runoff was pH 5.0! I was using distilled water to flush (pH 8.0) and then switched to pH'd tap water (pH 7.1). Anyway, I flushed the 5 gal container with about 4-5 gal. I ran out of time in the light cycle or I would've flushed more. But I only got the pH of the soil runoff up to about 5.4 Rating: 5