You’ll find that almost every soil mix, commercial or homemade, has its own pH issues that change over time.

First of all, if you have a customized soil mix stacked with nutrients built in, don’t use hydroponics nutrients and bloom boosters at the recommended dosages. If you’ve followed the recipe, your soil mix is already stuffed with earthworm castings, guano, greensand and other organic goodies that will transfuse into your roots unless you haven’t allowed your self-made soil mix to age properly before you use it.

So start by using a quarter as much nutrients or bloom boosters as the manufacturer suggests - and watch for nutrient burn, especially on the tips of leaves.

Also remember that your soil mix has to be biologically active with beneficial bacteria and fungi that protect roots and transform organic materials into nutrition your plants can use. Pro-Mix HP comes with beneficial fungi onboard. You can buy or make compost tea, or buy hydroponics beneficial microbes, to add these living helpers into your soil or other grow room root zone media. The benefits include increased nutrients uptake, faster growth, larger yields, and healthier roots that resist diseases.

Using a commercial or customized soil mix is not going to be as easy as growing in Grodan rockwool. I highly recommend you get a soil pH tester. Measuring soil pH to see if it’s in the 6.0-6.5 pH range is very useful. You’ll find that almost every soil mix, commercial or homemade, has its own pH issues that change over time. That’s because various organic elements are aging and changing, and so are your plants’ nutritional needs.

Some hydroponics growers have a customized soil mix for grow phase, and one for bloom phase. They start in their grow mix, which is highly nitrogenated for strong early growth. Then they transplant their plants into larger containers that have a bloom mix that contains more phosphorus and potassium…perfect for bigger blooms.

Also be aware that there’s a learning curve and a need for flexibility when you’re working with something other than sterile root zone media. Especially if you’re a newbie to growing with a customized soil mix that you make yourself, test your mix on just a couple of plants first before you plunge an entire cycle of plants into the stuff.

Test your mix on just a couple of plants first before you plunge an entire cycle of plants into the stuff.

Testing may reveal that your mix is running too “hot,” which means too much nitrogen, or it may have some other problem such as that the pH is too high and you need to adjust the mix with dolomite or some other soil amendment to get it into an ideal pH of 6-6.5.

Check out our other articles on this topic, and please use our comments section to share with us your wisdom about the root zone media and hydroponics nutrients and bloom booster program that works best for you. And remember, if you’re going to share your hydroponics soil mix recipes with us, make sure you have tested them thoroughly and grown the biggest, tastiest flowers the world has ever seenJ

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