Transplanted both plants to a 5 gallon 5 days ago! They both got watered and I just checked the soil PH and it’s sitting at 5.8. My reader also shows the soil as wet for the bigger one and normal for the smaller one. Last feed was on Sunday morning. Probably wait another day or two to feed again.
Current photos of my girls. Transplant shock or normal process? The smaller plant I may have just burned the leaves when I brought them in for the night and they were next to a heat vent in the house.
So they’ve been doing pretty good! Although yesterday, the soil PH was 8 when I tested them so I did PH down when I watered them and it brought it down but it dropped it to like 5.4. Of course I don’t have PH up right now so I looked up other ways to fix the PH and saw I could mix some baking soda and feed that and it’ll bring it up so that’s what I did this morning.
I tested the PH about an hour ago and they were both down to 4.8. I’m hoping it will go up by tomorrow morning because after further research I saw that their is usually a temporary drop in PH with baking soda and then it goes back up.
My PH up won’t get here until Saturday but if the current PH doesn’t rise tomorrow do you have any suggestions?
I believe it was Wednesday this past week that I checked them and the soil PH was basically perfect, bigger plant was 6.2 and the smaller was 5.8. I did some fimming and topping and then checked the soil PH again on Sunday morning and they were up to 8 and 7 something so I adjusted the feed that morning with the PH down which lowered them both to 5.4 and then after the baking soda this morning, this afternoon it was at 4.8. The last two days have also been very cloudy so not a whole lot of sun.
I think the tester is okay but who knows for sure.
That explains the crazy pH swings. Those devices are not capable of providing any useful pH reading. @Oldguy can advise you on a pH probe that will provide useful readings.
Edit: @GrowerB this means that you don’t know what your pH is. Best not to chase pH until you acquire a pH probe.
Not to butt in here…You will get soil pH by using a liquid pH probe and make a soil slurry to the the reading. I do have soil pH probe but they are very expensive (~$200) and most don’t use them. They just use their liquid pH probes in soil slurry.
I agree with @Oldguy recommendations. If on a budget the Apera 20 is a good choice. Spending more can result in a device that requires less frequent calibration. I really like my BlueLab devices. They are on the high end $$$. I also have an Extech ph/EC/ppm meter. It has been rock solid. This one is a bit expensive as well.
Edit: @GrowerB Regardless which pH probe you purchase, be sure to purchase the storage solution that is recommended for that specific probe. If not stored properly, the glass membrane fails and you will need to replace either the probe tip or the entire device.
Thank you for the recommendations! Shit is expensive no doubt lol! Like I said with the one I currently have, as far as I know it hasn’t been an issue so I’m going to give it a day and see what it reads. This month I was way over budget on other things so can’t afford to splurge on those at this very moment so gotta hope the one I got is functioning properly
I will update if it fluctuates in a good direction and I’ll also sample other plant soils I have to see what the PH reading kicks out!
Edit: @merlin44 I will definitely try to look up a storage solution for the water PH reader that I have! Thanks for that heads up!
I just transplanted both of them to their final 20 gal pot. I’ve been hearing things about using calmag to help with the plant so I picked up some foxfarm calmag but figured I’d get yalls thoughts on it before I start adding anything else to this soil (coco loco).
