Raising PH of Peat Moss based soils

Sativa Kid

Sativa Kid

Member
In my experience peat based soils are off the charts acidic. If you don't amend your soil to raise the Ph a whole lot you will never get good natural feeding on a consistent basis. I reuse my soil and found it takes a couple grows in a natural peat based soil to get the soil just right. I freeze or sun bake my soil in black garbage bags occasionally to kill bugs in the soil. I also rinse it in batches with dolomite tea sometimes. My soil has 30% perlite and 70% peat based soil. And every recharge I add per 5 gallons of soil. 1/3 cup of Gaja Green 2-8-4 Power Bloom, 1/4 cup bone meal, 1/4 cup of dolomite lime. And I water with very light fish emulsion in veg and light Banana Peel Tea in Flower. This gives me huge sweet buds.
 
619KGB

619KGB

PICK YOUR OWN
Oyster shells are a great way to increase ph and add calcium to the soil and buffer hard water. They also kill snails and slugs. I do a 50/50 mix of peat and coco. This helps with cal mag issues.
 
treefarmercharlie

treefarmercharlie

🍆
Admin
Sativa Kid said:
I use natural Cal Mag
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There's nothing wrong with using regular CalMag especially in the tiny amounts that is needed. The problem with using oyster shells is that calcium isn't easily available to the plants and it needs to be broken down to be available which takes a lot of time in soil. The only way I know to break it down quickly is by altering the pH. For that reason, CalMag is the one thing I add to my water that isn't totally natural. When I had a salt water reef tank, we used oyster shells and coral skeletons to supply calcium back into the tank for the corals to use to grow, but we had to put that all into a calcium reactor which injected CO2 into the water in the reactor and that broke the calcium down to make it available.
 
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