Crack Mack Update - The Importance Of pH

Hello Everyone,

Things have been coming along pretty good with the Crack Mack cannabis plant.

I had a mishap along the way with pH, so today we're going to talk about how important that is.

Strain:	Crack Mack
Dominance:	Sativa
Nutrients used:	MaxiBloom 5-15-14
Phenotype traits:	Intense Fruity Aroma
Lineage:	Green Crack/Big Mack Superstar/Miracle Mack.
Current growing stage:	Flowering.
Current plant age:	112-TOTAL/42 Days-FLOWER
Sex:	Photoperiod/Auto recessive
Location:	Syracuse New York

The pH level in my soil recently went down to 4.5, which is way too low for cannabis. I started having all kinds of yellowing foliage and it became extreme when using Maxibloom nutrient feed, because I did not know that the product will lower the pH and was not checking my pH after adding the Maxibloom.

This was a huge mistake and I was lucky to have caught it early because it is all corrected now.

Let's see what I've done to fix the problem.

I decided to upgrade my testing gear and get this meter for my water tub, while also implementing use of a soil meter I already had but hadn't been using.

The city water is not the best for cannabis and this is one of the reasons why. The pH is very high from the tap, and I know of a couple gardens that got damaged pretty badly this year from garden hose watering.

Watering the cannabis with a 8.1 would create serious issues with nutrient uptake through the root system, so I need to get this down to a range that is good. I'm aiming for a 6.

Utilizing this pH down solution and this handy pipette, the numbers on that meter will start to go down as I inject the solution into the water.

Like we can see here in this gif that I made to show how it's done.

I continued to add pH down until getting a 6 on the meter.

Prior to watering the soil is reading 5.5, and this will go up some during the watering and back down a little after absorption, but slowly the baseline number becomes a little higher every day.

The issue is slowly correcting and the plant is within a safe range.

Let's see how happy the plant is looking after taking this corrective measure.

We can see what's crackalackin' with this Crack Mack, she's doing her thing.

I can't stress enough how important pH is for growing cannabis. It's a good idea for anyone growing plants in general to get pH testing kits to get a read on things, and if the range is not good for the plant(s) in question, ensure to pH the water to the correct range.

I was motivated to write about pH by @rachaeldwatson, who has been learning to grow cannabis and sharing her journey with us. I hope this post helps a bit with pH for you @rachaeldwatson!