Phosphorus deficiency?

So I woke up to these spots on 2 of my plants this morning. It appears to be a phosphorus deficiency but I just added a pinch of blood, bone, crab, and kelp meal about 2 days ago. My second thought was nutrient lockout from ph. I don’t currently have a ph meter but I have been using distilled water and I’ve added dolomite lime to the soil. Anyone have any suggestions?


Ph is king and you need to have a way to test it. It’s looking like lockout from ph is causing deficiencies :v::bear:

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dilly dilly! All hail the king.

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Seems like you answered your own questions, and we all agree haha. Hard to say otherwise without having ph and ppm data.

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I had this problem once upon a time. Distilled or not distilled is around 8.9-9.4

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Everything I’ve read on the subject has said that distilled and purified water have a neutral ph of 7. Can anyone verify that?

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Potential Hydrogen or PH measured by electrical conductivity can show a wide variation in distilled water simply because there are so few solids. This is a spurious reading because the low solids means that it will adopt the PH of whatever you mix it with.

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Okay wow. Thanks for the info. I used distilled water through my first grow and didn’t have an issue but that’s good to know. I’ve been wanting to get a meter for a long time just don’t have the funds right now. But it’s definitely the next thing on my list.

So, one more question fellow growers. I finally got a ph/ppm meter ordered! Its supposed to be here in 2 days. My question is, how long can a plant suffer from this before it reaches the point of no return? I’m hoping they’ll make it through the next 2 days. I can upload more pics if necessary.

So I flushed all my plants last night with 6.4 ph water. Most of my plants had a runoff reading of under 7, which I plan to drop some more next watering. But I still have like 3 plants which I’ve flushed multiple times with 6.4 ph but can’t seem to get the runoff ph under 7. Any suggestions to help me get these plants runoff lower?? Any help is appreciated.

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Top dress your soil with dolomite lime?

If the plants are happy I wouldn’t get too stressed over it.

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I did top dress with dolomite lime. Ph in was 6.3 and runoff came out at 7.4.



And they don’t look too happy:(

I was wondering, if I can’t get their soil in the right ph range, I can prep some soil to the right ph and just clone them and plant them in the prepped soil. Is there a chance they’ll survive this?

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It usaully take a few day for the lime to work what i do to get my ph right is put 6 tbsp of lime in water and let it desolve for 5 to 10 min then add it to soil and usaully by the next day it will drop sometimes 2 or 3 day after if u make your own soil like i use to i would add lime a week or so befor i put my plants in and never had soil ph problem after that just check it every day and it should drop and the 6 tbsp is for a 5 galoon buckit

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Great. Thanks for the info! I added lime to the soil before I transplanted but it was only a couple days and I don’t think I added enough.

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If I have a runoff ph of 6.9-6.95 what would the lowest recommended PH be to drop my runoff ph just a little bit more?

If you are in soil, 6.2; if in soilless or coco, 5.5

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Okay cool. Thanks. I was worried I’d have problems if I went under 6.3. And yeah, I’m using soil.

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