Grow Mediums Kindsoil introduction thread

[Kindsoil]

i hear what your saying and this is why i don't get into discussions on boards everyone has their own opions and choices. i know what experiences we've had with growers in soil using something like advanced nutrients PH down, general hydro ph down VS growers using citric acid crystals.

I grow mainly organic, but the "Earth Juice Cyrstals" thing is misleading. Acid is Acid and no mater how you package it, organic or not, the end results are the same.

I think most gardeners need to have a better under standing of what an acid or alkaline substance is. Here is a short excerpt from Wikipedia on acid as we are concerned with it:

" An Arrhenius acid is a substance that, when added to water, increases the concentration of H+ ions in the water.[2][3] Note that chemists often write H+(aq) and refer to thehydrogen ion when describing acid-base reactions but the free hydrogen nucleus, a proton, does not exist alone in water, it exists as the hydronium ion, H3O+. Thus, an Arrhenius acid can also be described as a substance that increases the concentration of hydronium ions when added to water. Examples include molecular substances such as HCl and acetic acid."


I use whatever i have available, lemon juice, standard ph down some left over GH PH Down ( refuse to buy any GH products since their take over by Monsanto ).

And what is in GH brand PH Down??

food grade Phosphoric acid.......... EJ ph down is nothing more than a gimmick IMO.

 

[Kindsoil]

i hear what your saying and this is why i don't get into discussions on boards everyone has their own opions and choices. i know what experiences we've had with growers in soil using something like advanced nutrients PH down, general hydro ph down VS growers using citric acid crystals.

and i deal with hundreds of growers soley growing one way never using chemicals, teas feeds or anything.. just plain water and the largest issues i run into are generally with guys using liquid PH adjusters or having a high water PH. now some issues may be they are clearly improperly using the acids, but i go on house visits see water properly adjust with liquid acids and continually see issues .. dry leaves sometimes they are more brittle, over long periods of growth they begin to slightly burn. when they make the change to citric acid crystals they no longer have the issues. On the flip side like you say i have seen growers with Zero issues using liquid acids .. I've seen growers using RO water and liquid acids with massive slow growth.. everything can very depending on so many things in the media and water.

 

[Anthropolis]

I might be the winner in one aspect lol, my deepwater well is 8.3 yikes! But that's mostly just the millenia of being in limestone and sulphur, playing tricks with the ions. My well goes down to the second aquifer, below the main water table, so it's really old water. After charcoal filtering capturing a bit of the hardness, it's about 7.8.

Normally with my organic soil, the soil zone can handle that okay during the life of an autoflower. I did have a cascading pH collapse in my photoperiods this round, which obviously go much longer. The soil proved unable to regulate the 7.8~ish water after about 100 days.

So I've got my Earth Juice up and down now, I know acid is acid and base is base, but I went with them anyways. I'm assuming (possibly incorrectly) that the soil life would have a better marriage with a natural up and down. I need that soil life alive!

 

[Kindsoil]

I will say what i was told a while back by someone who had more experience running organic than i had, i was told then that depending on the amounts of phosphoric acid used it can cause the micro life to go dormant. a lot of that micro life converts your amendments to become available for your plants, if they are being effected by the phosphoric acid % that would in return cause slower growth and improper uptake. acids are clearly acids but there are much stronger acids that won't weakean as much as other and theres acids that are so weak they not only don't effect us .. i guess you could say "physically" but they also wouldn't reside as long as other stronger acids. and being that phosphoric acids (still safe) but are slightly stronger than citric acids wouldn't that have any difference in the way they work or how they may effect the plants rooting systems?
the reason i ask this is because have you ever spilled acid on your hands and tried to wash it off? slimey .. hard to get off.. why wouldn't that have the same effect to your rooting system? it could build up over time if not flushed off properly. i can pick citric acid up in my hand put water on it and it doesn't make my hand anywhere near as slimey when i try getting it off.

 

[Anthropolis]

All good points! I think the main one to try and stay away from is baking soda, aka sodium bicarbonate. When exposed to acids, even in slightly acid soils, water, and aqueous solutions, some of it will attempt to breakdown and capture the (acidic) Hydrogen ions to make the balance that nature is all about. When broken, it releases pure Na (sodium) which is just generally really bad for plants that didn't evolve the ability to handle salt. Like mangroves and salt marsh grass. My chemistry is rusty but I think this is correct for baking soda breaking:
NaHCO3 + (H+) --> Na + H2O + CO2

 

[Ozone69]

Dang there are some big brains in here. :smoking:

I've tried and still have both the GH chem PH up/down and the Earth Juice crystals. I can't say difference plant wise, but I did feel like the crystals were a little easier to not over shoot my target with when I was adjusting buckets of water. In the big picture for me, though, the crystals are in line price wise with the other options to make it kind of a "why not use them" type issue.

 

[Margahooja]

Very interesting threads going here. Good luck to you Kindsoil. I'm going to shut my grow down in a couple weeks for the summer. When I get ready to start up again I'm going to try your product. A fellow Michigander myself, I currently use a Michigan soil called Potters Gold and for Nutrients I use General Organics line up. I've had pretty good luck with this combination, but I'm very interested in your product.

 

[Kindsoil]

All good points! I think the main one to try and stay away from is baking soda, aka sodium bicarbonate. When exposed to acids, even in slightly acid soils, water, and aqueous solutions, some of it will attempt to breakdown and capture the (acidic) Hydrogen ions to make the balance that nature is all about. When broken, it releases pure Na (sodium) which is just generally really bad for plants that didn't evolve the ability to handle salt. Like mangroves and salt marsh grass. My chemistry is rusty but I think this is correct for baking soda breaking:
NaHCO3 + (H+) --> Na + H2O + CO2

yep... i try explaining the hydrogen ion build ups to people .. its like a eagle flew over their heads .. its really hard to get people to understand the basic stuff thats going on in the soil you cannot see.

 

[Kindsoil]

Very interesting threads going here. Good luck to you Kindsoil. I'm going to shut my grow down in a couple weeks for the summer. When I get ready to start up again I'm going to try your product. A fellow Michigander myself, I currently use a Michigan soil called Potters Gold and for Nutrients I use General Organics line up. I've had pretty good luck with this combination, but I'm very interested in your product.

Yep I’m familiar with potters gold.. and general organics. I ran that line when it first came out. I was on the fence about it... their original product grow micro bloom is some of the best and simplest lines IMOP. The general organics when I ran it I didn't get vigorous growth but that was literally the first month it came out. I remember then they were catching a lot of shit because they weren't getting OMRI certification and everyone thought they were selling inorganic nutes.. But OMRI is kind of a weird thing.. In order to be certified they take a percentage of your yearly sales to keep the OMRI stamp. And they really get you if you’re an established business for certification costs. If you’re a young new business with ZERO sales they aren't as harsh but its still very expensive just to get certified and really expensive to keep it.

 

[Eyes on Fire]

YUP! about the fux farms soils Ive actually ran a cpl bags of the OF and HF and I suspected no buffering or LIME characteristics and your graph shows exactly that since that was often my position Lime it, re mix it and let it work for a cpl weeks and use as normal.easy!!

I was curious if you have one of those nifty graphs on your lime characteristics in your balanced mix?its no wonder they always had issues,an overly hot soil with quite literally extremely low of ZERO buffering characteristic of the soil,especially since most true living organics growers such as myself ,do not PH anything...EVER lol. my soil works fine every time. and i wanted to say Thanks also for letting me have this chance to try your wares. excited.If it is going to help me cut donw on any feeding or flower boosting which I really dont need,but like to stay a little invloved but with my MS I tend to be pretty darn hands off in all my grows mostly at any rate.