Medical Hydroponics Marijuana pH & Nutrients
I had to conduct an unintended experiment with pH and hydroponics nutrients in my medical marijuana garden... 
Medical hydroponics marijuana growers have intense discussions about pH, mainly because the pH of your root zone and hydroponics nutrients water make a big difference in your marijuana’s health and productivity.
Unless your hydroponics nutrients water is in a narrow pH range (5.5-6.3), your plants’ roots have a hard time taking in all the essential elements your plants need.
This limitation has been so frustrating for some growers that they’ve abandoned hydroponics in favor of soil. But soil pH and composition also influences essential element availability, even if you’re using the so-called "supersoil" custom built for marijuana.
Circumstances recently forced me to solve pH problems and test claims made by Advanced Nutrients, the manufacturer of the new hydroponics nutrients system that they claim eliminates the need to monitor and adjust pH.
The problems started with me being unable to get Advanced Nutrients base nutrients because the shops I bought from had sold out and were waiting for backorder.
I had some fresh General Hydroponics 3-part base. That type of nutrients was what I’d been using before I switched to Advanced Nutrients several years ago. I substituted the GH and waited for the backorder to arrive.
I was also dealing with much more frustrating problem, directly involving pH. For the life of me, I couldn’t get consistent pH readings for my reverse osmosis water.
In both cases, I forced myself to see the problems as an opportunity to test nutrients and procedures- it helped me find something positive in circumstances that otherwise made me frustrated and were sure to cost me extra time and affect the yield and quality of my medical marijuana crops.
Trying to fix this problem, I purchased replacement BlueLab pH probes, a new BlueLab combo meter, a BlueLab stick meter, a Hanna stick pH Meter and an Oakton stick pH meter, along with fresh pH calibration fluids, meter cleaning fluid, and pH Up and Down fluids. This set me back nearly $700.
I meticulously cleaned and calibrated my meters over and over. And yet when I’d put them in the same reverse osmosis water I always used, they’d give me different readings. One was 7.0, another was 6.3, another was 7.3. I'd leave the meters in the water, stir the water, and watch the readings change, wondering what the hell was going on.
I contacted the pH meter manufacturers. They said reverse osmosis water didn’t have enough minerals in it for my meters to work properly. Or, sometimes there are "acceptable" pH .2 differences between meters.
One manufacturer's rep advised to mix my base nutrients first, add a little cal-mag as a buffer, and then meter pH. Using the GH 3-part, regular mixing instructions, or the mixing tactics suggested to me by the meter manufacturers, I saw different pH readings than what I'd gotten before, but the readings still were more than .2 variant between meters. Parts per million were also variable.
I just could not get the confidence that my hydroponics nutrients pH was in the 5.5-6.3 sweet spot. And what really matters most -more than numbers and ranges- was how my medical marijuana plants were doing. Not well. They had sulfur, phosphorus, and iron deficiencies.
Then I got hold of Advanced Nutrients Connoisseur base nutrients, did a flush, and replaced the GH 3-part with Connoisseur. Using the same meters and mixing methods as before, my pH and ppm variations decreased, but I still saw pH variations I could not remediate, no matter how many times I cleaned and calibrated my meters.
I had to start using analog pH "metering," which consists of adding a couple of drops of special liquid to your nutrients water, then reading the color of the water on a pH chart to determine approximate pH.
My plants’ health improved as compared to when I was using GH 3-part base. I could tell the Connoisseur was a more consistent and better-manufactured product. But I was still seeing sulfur deficiencies (yellowing that starts at the base of newer leaves). I had to add Epsom salts to my feed program.
Two weeks later, I procured sample bottles of pH Perfect® Connoisseur base nutrients. Advanced Nutrients says their pH Perfect® base nutrients contain buffers and other materials that adjust water to the pH sweet spot. This was my first experience with their new system.
Using the pH Perfect® form of Connoisseur, my pH metering problems went away completely and immediately, with my four meters showing consistent readings of 5.9-6.1 after I’d added Connoisseur and several other Advanced Nutrients formulas (Big Bud, B-52, Rhino Skin, Bud Factor X, Bud Candy) from their Bigger Yields Flowering System®.
Instead of bouncing all over the place and showing outrageously unpredictable pH numbers, using the Perfect Connoisseur the meters went directly to 5.9-6.1 and stayed there. Obviously the nutrient buffers were superior.
Of course, beyond numbers on pH meters, what really counts is how your medical marijuana plants look and grow. This is where your dedication to perfection comes into play.
For example when people tell me they're getting decent yields using "only soil and water," or using hydroponics nutrients not designed for marijuana, they seem to believe that this somehow negates the fact that when you use ultra-premium hydroponics products, you get ultra-premium results.
Yes it's true that even if we're not giving our marijuana plants the very best grow room conditions or nutrients, we can still get decent yields. That's why I describe the performance of hydroponics nutrients, supplies and growing techniques as either “not good enough; barely good enough; above average; the very best.”
If you use "not good enough" hydroponics nutrients, you'll likely have serious crop problems if not total failure.
You can have pH problems, or use a "barely good enough" hydroponics nutrients product, and yet you still get your crop to finish.
Using an above average base nutrients product, you may grow "pretty good buds." Nothing spectacular, but enough to get you high.
But to truly max out what your medical marijuana plants can do for you, provide your plants a constant pH sweet spot, premium hydroponics nutrients, and optimum grow room conditions. That gives you the highest level of plant health, bud quality, and harvest weight.
Performance based on the relative quality of inputs... you see it when differences in gasoline affect your car's performance. Some gasolines have impurities, the wrong octane-additive blend, are stale, etc. Yet, your car will still start and run. Obviously though, only the highest quality gasoline gives you the best gas mileage, fastest acceleration, and least engine wear.
With what I experienced concerning pH, nutrients and plant performance, and based on careful attention to detail with strains I am intimately familiar with growing, I personally verified that pH Perfect® base nutrients are “the very best” base nutrients on the market. Their superiority includes the highest levels of ease of use, manufacturing quality control, pH buffering consistency, harvest weight, and THC percentages.
This was not just for one crop cycle either, and the results have been persistent and positive as I've gotten used to using the new products.
I invite you to try something new the next time you're experiencing problems with pH or nutrients in your medical marijuana garden, or when you run out of your current supply of hydroponics base nutrients. Get yourself a trial supply of pH Perfect® base nutrients and compare their performance to the base nutrients you used before. I'm sure you'll see the improvements I saw when I did the same change and comparison.
