Ph and what it does for your plants
pH refers to a scale of how alkaline or how acidic a solution is and in this case that solution is your water/soil( depending on your growing medium). It stands for the potential of hydrogen. If you’re interested in a better setup for your growing setup, check out GrowTheHigh’s Setup Articles.
When the value is below 7 it is an acidic mixture and above 7 it is alkaline. Now you may be asking why is this important? This is important because it actually affects the rate in which your plant can absorb nutrients.
For example, cannabis enjoys being at the neutral point of 7. This is where you will find your most consistent growth because all of the nutrients are being gathered at a consistent pace giving the plant ample time to grow healthy.
If you drop below 7 the plant can get some nutrients faster and others will decrease in speed. Cannabis can grow in soil as low as 6 on the ph scale and this does increase the rate at which it gets its nutrients. However, because it is getting an increased rate of nutrients that means it can also get too much of said nutrients.
This can lead to a variety of things such as manganese , aluminum, and iron toxicity which can decrease the yield on your plants. Not only that but calcium, magnesium, and potassium slow down which leads to nutrient deficiencies.
On the flip side of the coin, having higher pH than 7 can lead to a deficiency of phosphoric acid, calcium, magnesium because of their low solubility. It is important for beginners to try to maintain a 7 or as close as possible to grow consistently without worries of damaging your plants.
This doesn’t mean that you need 7.0 perfectly every time but it does increase the consistency at which your plants make it all the way through their cycle. Though given enough practice one could lower the pH temporarily to increase specific nutrient intake and increase the yield of each plant.
In my experience though this was a harder concept to grasp as a beginner. To make a long story short one must just understand that like when raising people, giving a little stress to the organism’s environment can actually make it stronger.
What makes this concept so difficult is that it is very difficult to assess how much stress is on your plants body without seeing a negative reaction. Meaning that sometimes when you stress your plant to the point that it has a problem such as deficiency the plants yield is most likely going to decrease.