any one else see the run off from there fox farms happy frog, im getting mega cal / mag deficency. is the soil ph weird? or is that normal for happy frog?
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What’s your nute line up? what’s your pH going in? FF for me always seems to need cal-mag from the get go.
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You want to target 6.3 to 6.8. How old is the plant and what and how much nutes have you been giving the plant? It sounds like a salt buildup, which is common with some nute products (particularly the FF Trio.)
I’ve always used HF. It is always 6.5 out of the bag and it stays that way until there is a salt buildup.
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Hey @Kaosfury
Check the chart for soil pH.
At 5.5 in soil you are locked out of most of your nutrients.
Raise your pH to 6.5 and you should be good.
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so would 6.25 ph would be considered ok or too low?
Thats getting too low and will start to cause issues… need to bring it up if you can.
seriously because im having issues?
i just got my ph meter today
my distilled is 7.07 ph
and my runoff is 6.25 ph
and my plants are not happy for last week
Your doing the right thing as far as watering with higher than normal ph water to try and drift it up. Make sure you are giving the plants cal mag and try to get that ph up… I bought some soil from amazon, and when I got it the pH was like six and over time drifted down into the 5.8 range, and it was because the soil was so old things were decomposing and just changing the ph, it was miserable, it caused all kinds of problems with my plants.
With that low of a ph. Calcium gets hard to uptake.
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ok that makes sense yeah cuz i used some old ffof from my basement that i bought last year. imma buy some cal/mag. so that will bring my ph up a bit too?
Absolutely not, the cal mag will only guarantee that you are giving the plant enough calcium, cuz as the pH gets low it’s unable to absorb certain nutrients and calcium is one of them, so you want to make sure you are definitely giving it the calcium because any little bit it absorbs is better than nothing, but you need to bring the ph up so it can absorb more calcium and more nutrients without having to struggle.
The only real way to bring the ph up of a soil is to amend it, but my problem was I had already used the soil and was growing a plant with it, once you’re growing a plant with the soil I’m not a good enough grower yet to have overcome and corrected the issue so my plants just grew like shit and I got a terrible Harvest and I got new soil and moved on and learn that lesson, you’re going to need to wait for somebody else with more experience on correcting those kinds of issues to help you out
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In fact, that whole experience is the reason why I grow Hydro now, and I have never been happier, it’s a little bit more of a pain in the butt but I get to control everything, and I’ve grown some fantastic plants
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Kaosfury, New to the forum and would love to post about soil amendments but, even without a buzz, cannot see how to post a new question or comment. So I’ll respond to this and see where it goes. I like simple and easy. I use SoHum living soils. Its a little pricey up front. But what is it worth to have a soil medium that you don’t do anything but add water germ to harvest? Ph, nutrients, watering all remain balanced throughout the growth cycle. All i focus on is lighting and method. SCROG indoors or fim outdoors, works for both environments.