can you add pure ro water into an organic living soil or can it potentially
strip minerals or if you add a 7 8 um water consistently in a living soil bed
you may not see any deficiencies it it you know living soil beds and living soil
typically has incredible buffering capacity i wouldn't worry as much about the fluoride or
or chlorine because that can that can definitely volatilize um it and you know gas off in in
about 12 hours or 24 hours so ph changes within centimeters millimeters of the root atmosphere
the the the rhizosphere microbes can create a ph of 6.0 when they when they want to you know
fix nitrogen for example or something like that they'll create an anaerobic environment
do you ever wonder why the ph of your ro water fluctuates quickly
well in this video we're going to get into it you're here with avsai and mark bowell on perfect
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can i shift the topic to water it seems like water is always an issue throughout
the community and and the source primarily where people have tap water or or ro water
or well water and i just transitioned into ro water a two to one system
um and it's putting out zero ppm and coming in at a ph about 7.8 to 8.0
and my question is in my mind i need to add something back into it to stabilize it
to properly stabilize the water to get my ph where i want it
to before i add it to my soil and i guess my question would be can you add pure ro water
into an organic living soil or can it potentially strip minerals or hold on to it since it's so
hungry or it has nothing in it to where even when you stir it you know this it goes extremely acidic
so it it'll it'll go on acidic alkaline oh my if i stir my ro water it starts at 7.8 i can stir it
if i stir for two minutes it'll go down to 4.8 5.4 and then and then if you let it settle back
will it rise again uh yes okay um yeah so i mean yeah definitely uh you know dissolved
oxygen is is always important to maintain a high level dissolved oxygen so you you want to
make sure that it's at least you know i i like 10 parts per million uh so if you can do that
uh it's always nice to know what's what's in your uh our water that's causing um uh the high ph if
it's uh if it's leftover calcium or magnesium in that um or potassium that way you know if
you're running into any of these uh deficiencies or you'll know what to top up because if you add
a 7 8 water consistently in a living soil bed you may not see any deficiencies it it you know living
soil beds and living soil typically has incredible buffering capacity um and and you know you could
add things like a humic acid as well to increase the buffering capacity of of your water um but
if you if you continue to use that you might start seeing things like a zinc deficiency or a
of an iron deficiency iron chlorosis or um perhaps even a phosphorus deficiency because you're you're
rising your ph uh you know beyond something that the the organic matter can can counteract right um
is it was there a reason why you couldn't just use your well water or tap water i i personally
i have i have city water yeah um and the main reason is just the additives um the chlorine
chloramine fluoride and stuff like that and and originally uh i had a hard time stabilizing that
ph so originally and we did a little experiments in house here at perfect gardens because
i could what say ph my city water uh to 6.5 uh and the very next day it'd be back alkaline at 8.0
um and then i could ph it again in in i'm just trying to create where if i want to consistently
get a 6.5 6.6 6.7 that i have that so i just got the ro system and i and i
find that i can stabilize it if i add a little bit something into it so i kind of been doing
further experiments where i added like 75 percent um ro water 25 like spring water
and maybe with a little bit of calcium um and a little bit of magnesium and drops of balance
and all of a sudden boom it holds at 6.7 and where it won't fluctuate so that's why my mind
my mindset was this water starving for something i literally stripped it of everything
but at the same time it's very accepted it's it wants something and it can take it super quick
and by me stirring it and taking it what i would think what the co2 out of there is what makes it
drive down the ph that if i introduce minerals back into it it'd be more stable
so when you're stirring it and it had a small aha moment tell me if i'm correct on this when
you're stirring it's creating a high oxidation experience so it's dropped by ph and then when
it settles it's sucking the co2 out of the air creating an alkaline experience and that's making
me wonder because the ro is so sensitive the water is so stripped it is so sensitive
we're seeing it right there it's like you oxidize it drops ph you uh you don't and
it settles it sucks sucks the co2 back out of the environment is am i thinking that correct
and i'm i'm i'm gonna have to you know defer to to that or or or perhaps your viewers
um my my i've got limited knowledge on on exactly what where because you know our our
water and how it acidifies and and becomes alkaline not not one of my strong points
oh you canadians out there with your great water i'm i'm tired of hearing
that crap man he's a soil biology he's not a water biologist
you know and i go back to to the idea of a living soil living soils just make so much things easier
because they've got that buffering capacity and so on but i know you can run into problems of
getting extremely high ph especially if you're using amendments like coco coir and and it's
not properly charged or um you can run run high phs and and you know dave it's it's really it's
important that you you know express things like the fact that uh um i wouldn't worry as much
about the fluoride or or chlorine because that can that can definitely volatilize um it and you
know gas off in in about 12 hours or 24 hours so if you have a good water reservoir that'll
happen but chloramines um you you really actually have to boil those to to rid a water of chlorine
and i know that with with soil you know and i've seen it because throughout my last grow
measuring the ph of the soil i can consistently water at 6.5 6.5 6.5 and then at certain points
that ph in the soil is 6.8 and then at other points it might be at 6.4 so in my mind i'm
like okay there's got to be good biology in the soil right now and the bad biology is
communicating and they're doing what they need to do and adjust it by adding certain amendments or
higher ph water to get it back up but just trusting that the microbial life and that soil is
doing its part and i've seen these fluctuations all the time these minor fluctuations and and
when we just let it happen it seems that uh we don't play chemist at that point they they thrive
and i think this really increases the power of observation as you as a grower you if you
go out in your garden every day and you're looking for those hey am i starting to see
some calcium deficiencies or you know am i you know that the characteristic rust spots and those
lower leaves or mid leaves and or am i seeing a magnesium deficiency of that inner venoclerosis
that's so critical because when we try to use instrumentation to really try to understand
that soil ecosystem it it's we're we're unver invariably we're going to be wrong because
the the ph changes within centimeters millimeters of the root atmosphere the the the rhizosphere
microbes can create a ph of 6.0 when they when they want to um you know fix nitrogen for example
or something like that they'll create an anaerobic environment to fix nitrogen uh all of these
things can happen and then you know less than a millimeter away you could have a ph of 6.2 right
and and i think that's a super important thing for for for the people that are listening because
i think so often at least i would i see throughout the canada you know home growing community is
that they feel like if they water in at 6.5 the runoff should be 6.5 their plants are perfectly
healthy but they feel to add something like i need to add dolomite lime i need to add this
and and it just complicates i think the system that much more to where if you can establish a
good healthy soil good microbial life it balances it shows that it it does all the work for you
yeah i think going back to mark's comments uh you know that says it all we're here to
mimic nature and you know it all starts by observing nature and what nature's doing and
um i think that's that's your perfect gardens perfect that's great we look forward to doing
that with you too yeah yeah i i'm uh yeah very excited great thanks thanks
for having me where can they where can they find you have you guys covered that already
no we did not i want to make sure to post that i'm going to put that in the description but where
can they find you where where if they people are looking for you for business or or licensing or
other things what's the best way of contacting you um yeah unfortunately it's going to be uh av fs
you know my the email that you've been sending my stuff yeah
halfway when you were speaking mark i said i just said oh that's that's how i must sound
i was just i was following your train of thought i i think i whenever people whenever whenever
i talk i am always imagining i'm on that sitcom where it's like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa no
it's a holistic answer and so it's going to be you know it's everything it's circular it's connected
it is i agree yeah well i enjoyed it i've i've got this you know grin on my face i enjoyed the
just the whole idea so thanks so much thank you thank you very much hey mike just want
to say thank you brother so much for pushing this media man and just making the connection because
this was like a two-year connection or something with that with mike it just
and then and then we got in the fall with only within a week or two so
thank you for helping save all this time i love the imagery of of uh canadian bacon
yeah dave made the artwork oh beautiful dave great job thank you cheers everyone cheers to you
cheers only on perfect gardens tv
it's so important to recognize that
the soil is is so incredibly dynamic that within seconds you can have species that are turning off
and species that are turning on and once again thanks to all the work that elaine ingham did to
highlight this we now know that there's there's thousands and thousands of different species