water question about distilled water

[Nickbone]

Hello everyone.

I have been watering my 3 cayenne plants with my well water that has a ph of 7.0. I have been adjusting it to 6.5 before watering my plants.

One plant is fantastic, the other two are growing very dense, with light green foliage.

I picked up a soil ph meter and found that the ph of the soil in all pots was right near 7.0

Headed on down to the store and picked up some distilled water thinking my well water may be hard and bouncing back up in ph.

I checked the ph of the distilled water and it was 5.5. Do you guys who use distilled water use it "as is" or are you adjusting the ph up a bit first.

Thanks, and happy pepper growing!

 

[Sawyer]

Pure distilled water should have a pH of 7.0, but if it's been sitting on the shelf awhile it can acidify through the absorbtion of atmospheric CO[sub]2[/sub]. You can buffer that by mixing it with some of your well water, or maybe the lower acidity is what you need. I'll leave it to someone who knows more about peppers' preferred pH to comment on that.

 

[harry]

The references I've seen on the preferred pH of Capsicums have been rather inconsistent. The Western Australian Department of Agriculture and Food published an article (PDF) suggesting the optimum soil pH range being 5.5 to 6.5.

Trippa found an interesting chart:

Some very basic explanations (actually from australian organic school gardens website) of the pH and availability of minerals in soil.
Even though its basic it certainly is basically all you need to know.

I found it interesting that there is no room for error once your soil is in starting to get alkaline as the availability drops right off for most nutrients.

I think this and a small container of food grade citirc acid will make (hopefully) my garden start to hum along a little better as my tap water is around 7.2-7.3 pH so coupled with liquid ferts I was probably adding moderately to highly alkaline liquid to my garden at every watering and feeding.

Also interesting to note that a good majority (of mainly liquid ferts) are all in the alkaline range (esp liquid seaweeds with pH nearing 10) Hence I will no longer be adding any liquid seaweed directly to my soil only foliar applications

I will be keeping the feeding to soil amendments (dry all purpose organic ferts) on the whole with a plant health dependent 2-4 weekly feed of all purpose organic fert pH corrected if needed. and Weekly to bi-weekly foliar applications of liquid kelp and fulvic acid.

Soil pH controls how active earthworms and helpful bacteria and fungi are in your soil. They can all work best in a soil pH close to 7.

The pH of your garden soil also controls the amount of different minerals that plants can soak up and use for food. When soil pH is too high or too low, some minerals become stuck to other minerals or to soil particles and plants can't soak them up.

Plants need lots of major minerals and only tiny amounts of others – these are called trace (or minor) elements. In the chart below, plants need large amounts of the first 6 food minerals, and only tiny amounts of the next 6 minerals. The horizontal white bands in the chart show how much of the different foods plants are able to soak up at each pH number.

• In the dark green area of the chart the pH is between 6 and 7.5. Most fruits and vegetables grow well in this pH range because they can soak up all the food minerals in the correct amounts that they need for good health.

• The lighter green area has a pH of 5.5-6. Potatoes, strawberries and blueberries prefer this pH, and most other plants can manage to grow and produce a crop if soil has this pH.

• In the grey areas of the chart, plants may not get enough of the foods they need in large amounts and will get poisonous amounts of some foods they should only have in tiny amounts.

• Very few plants can survive when soil pH is in the brown areas.

 

[Capsicum]

5.5 is just fine!!!!

When growing in soil or potting mix one should never worry about ph. The whole point in growing in soil is to take advantage of the natural buffer action. I have no idea what is causing your plants to do that. Growing in coco or hydro is the only way you would need to worry about ph.

 

[silva83tj]

hmmm the water here i tested for my fish tank tested over 8.0! probably not good for my plants! better start using my water cooler water it test at 7.0 i believe

 

[Nagel]

hmmm the water here i tested for my fish tank tested over 8.0! probably not good for my plants! better start using my water cooler water it test at 7.0 i believe

Probably not good for your fish either, unless you are keeping a reef tank or African Cichlids! Most community tanks are 7.0, and some South American Cichlids like 6.0...