Blue labs soil PH pen questions

[Jburner8011]

Hello all. So I purchased another PH pen. A blue labs pen. This one will read the Ph of your soil as well as nutrient solutions so it says. So I soaked the probe in KCL solution for 24 hrs as per the instructions. It seems to be working well. Got readings off of my water quickly and accurately. (I know the PH of my tap water just from checking it so many times). But when I took it outside to check the PH of my soil, that’s when things got a little confusing. The instructions that I found said to are a hole with the plastic probe and then put the meter down into it to get a reading. I made 3 holes around the fabric pot like it said and then took 3 readings per plant to get an average for each. So on the first plant I got some seriously low readings. Like in the 4s! Then I read that the soil should be moistened first so that it can get a reading. Makes sense. So I just poured a small amount off water into the holes I made and then took another set of readings. The second time I got 6.6, 5.6, and 6.7 two readings in range for soil. And one low one. The other two plants gave sillier results. Like 2 out of 3 readings were in an acceptable range and then one wonky one. Just curious why 3 readings would give such different Ph s? I’m using water out of my tap, that I leave out for a couple of days to gas off the chlorine. After some further reading , it says to use distilled water in order to get an accurate reading. Then, in the very same instructions, it also says not to use distilled or deionized water as it will cause the meter to fail. So which is it? Either way the water that I’ve been using is always in an acceptable range. And by just looking at the flowers I would say they are a couple more weeks away from being finished. One strain looks about done with nice big buds all over. The other strain has barely started to flower, and I’d be surprised if they will have enough time to finish before the weather changes. So I’m just gonna keep doing what I’ve been doing and try not to freak out over the weird readings that I got from the pen. But it would be nice to know whether I’m operating it correctly or not? So should I use tap water to get an accurate reading or distilled water? Not sure how to proceed.

 

[Jburner8011]

The difference in flowering times is probably just because of the different strains. The reason I wanted to check the ph was because the plants that are finishing early looked so crazy. Yellowing leaves falling off and shriveling up. But the flowers look amazing so I think the plants just getting whatever nutrients are left in the soil. I had the same thing happen one time indoors where the leaves were yellowing and falling off . That time it turned out my PH was way off. This time I think it’s just because they are almost done.

 

[Talonxracer]

You use distilled water to water the soil.

But do not use the meter to test the ph of plain distilled or RO water, you will burn out the element in the probe.