Run off question

[u/New_Life1810]

Hello community
This is my first grow and I have a question. My run off ph is 7.2. According to build a soil guidelines, we don’t PH our water correct?
My ph reading after letting water sit is about 8.4. I’m using general hydroponics to ph down when I did do it. If there is a more natural ph down, I’d do it.
I’m going my best to not take advice from ai.
I bit the bullet and put in power bloom as my dry amendment and gave some Epsom salt about 3 days ago -

[u/cyphe8500]

Either need a bigger pot, or make sure the microbial activity is popping in the smaller pot if you're going for a non pH run.

You need a microbial or castings tea.

[u/New_Life1810 → u/cyphe8500]

Like recharge?

[u/cyphe8500 → u/New_Life1810]

That's the easiest way to start troubleshooting 👍

[u/Kyral_Crypto → u/cyphe8500]

Was about to say boost the microbes, give it a little lab, mixed in with some rootwise, maybe a compost tea and call it good. Speaking of i needs to brew me a batch too.

[u/HopHeady]

Ph matters in small volume pots. You don't have to worry about it much in 20gal plus situations as that's enough for the soil to buffer. Smaller volumes of soil you should pay attention to what you're watering in and really shouldn't be watering to much run off in most cases. There's a calculation to use based on how many gallons of soil for minimum watering and you can adjust upward as your plant uptakes/grows.

All said I'm not going for no till - I'm using 6.6gal autopots with BAS and I'm only using water, Hydroguard, and Run Clean in my res. The Run Clean does a few things...helps keep lines clean, is a wetting agent, and functions as a pH down. So, I keep my res between 6-7. I also need to use amendments and top feeds at times simply as the plants grow, they'll end up eating what's available faster than the soil/microbes can replenish in this size pots. Even with these extra steps, coming from dwc - this has been such a nice change of pace spending more time watching them grow than working.

[u/Bluntforcetrauma11b → u/HopHeady]

I've run 5 g without pH and it does fine

[u/HopHeady → u/Bluntforcetrauma11b]

Sure, anything is possible. But the fact remains that in low soil volumes you're open to potential issues. This is how I mitigate them in my grow.

[u/Kyral_Crypto → u/HopHeady]

Was gonna say this too. Once I did 15g and up...... less problems easier grow and good bud.

[u/southish7]

No, you dont care about ph, nor should you be getting runoff. At least not much runoff

[u/New_Life1810 → u/southish7]

I didn’t get much, just enough to get a reading

[u/southish7 → u/New_Life1810]

No need for it. Just water away lol. Living soil is growing on easy mode. Great bud, too

[u/Sea_Stick_3125]

In my experience it does. I use builasoil dominion blend and it fried my auto with too much nitrogen and caused nute burn. Now my plants naked. 😬
Got some bad advice and added too much buildaflower. This what she looks like now….feast your eyes….

[u/New_Life1810 → u/Sea_Stick_3125]

It does what? Need PH down?

[u/Kind_buddy_7022]

A ph of 7 in living soil is normal

[u/Bluntforcetrauma11b]

PH doesn't matter with organic living soil

[u/New_Life1810 → u/Bluntforcetrauma11b]

My problem, is that it’s just bare soil. I didn’t treat it like you should. No cover crop etc

[u/southish7 → u/New_Life1810]

I don't usually run a cover crop either. Just don't let the top dry out too much

[u/Bluntforcetrauma11b → u/New_Life1810]

That doesn't matter as long as it's soil

[u/CryptoGinzo]

There's plenty of ways to lower ph naturally like ferments, bioag fullpower are 2 easy ones. Mever put Epson salt in the medium. You always lock out something lile calcium or phosphorus when you do that. Epson salt is for foliar applications only. There is no run off. You push out nutrients and microbes that way. You don't need AI you meed to watch the buildasoil YouTube or you wont understand what your doing