Hey,
do any of you guys add vinegar to your water for your cactuses or is this crazy talk?
thanks!
Sure you can add vinegar to your water to adjust your ph. but it all depends on the composition of your municipalities water, type of cacti you plan on growing and the ph range you're looking for..you can play around with a ph meter and vinegar to see how it changes the acidity.
im wondering mainly about watering lophs. i've never added anything extra to trichocereus or other cacti and they have always grown well. at least they have never shown any signs of discontent. they never get tap water though either rain water or reverse osmosis + low strength shultz. i've never tried to make my water acidic for lophs. what is the ideal pH?
Quote from: Chief BigTittyFlapFlaps on October 09, 2014, 10:30:32 PM
what is the ideal pH?
For Lophophora sp. it is up for debate. Some say the ideal soil pH range is 7.9 to 8.3 and others will say 6.5-7.2.
yeah for the soil.. i read somewhere that although they want alkaline soil the want slightly acidic water...
Sulfur can be added in spots for acid patches in soil help to help with trace element absorption or you can purchase chelated trace elements as I'm assuming many want the acid to help with the proper absorption of trace elements.
Hydrogen peroxide is another weak acid that has the added benefit of releasing oxygen as it decomposes. Hydrogen peroxide is the same stuff hospitals and mom use to disinfect wounds. Hydrogen peroxide is both an antifungal and an antibacterial, but care must be taken to use it in low concentrations when working with plants or for yourself for that matter as I've burned my skin with the stuff in higher concentrations. Hydrogen peroxide is useless in lower concentrations once fungal spores have germinated though.
Chamomile tea is high in sulfur thus helping to produce a more acidic water, but then again hydrogen peroxide is also slightly acidic as is coffee or coffee grains. I think the bottom line here is that there are about as many different treatments for soil as there are cacti soil mixes out there. To quote old Ben Franklin, an ounce of prevention is worth an ounce of cure. Sterilize your soil and find what works for you. I find that adding hydrogen peroxide and diatomaceous earth to my soil also helps, but it is probably more important to keep the contaminants out once your soil is sterilized. To me, most of my mistakes stem from being too impatient. My first grafts failed or were only partly successful in part because I was always peaking under the hood at different stages trying to see when they would be done. Often times I'd pull the graft that was just barely attached from the stock when I would peak at them. Suffice it to say that with anything whether it be soil mixes or grafting that different environmental variables, types of cacti, and growth will affect what is best for each person. Trace elements are best absorbed in an acid environment by your plants unless they are in chelated form. The easy fix would then seem to be to buy chelated trace element containing fertilizer depending on your goals.
right now their all getting distilled water + half strength schultz cactus. i believe you described another of my problems with my first graft attempt. being too impatient. i poked at the cactus too much.
Yes, impatience has gotten the better of me many times over when I've first started a new project such as teaching myself to graft and it doesn't stop there... when I've learned a new grafting style in the past or switched over to a different group of plants/cacti to graft the same thing... impatience creeps in and I find my first attempts are generally failures. It has been probably 15 years or so since I made my first grafts however and I've come a long way since then. Practice, practice, practice... its the only way.
Back to your vinegar solution however, I'm wondering why serious gardeners wouldn't just use humic acid to improve the uptake of minerals already present in the soil? Humic acid can also be added to commercial fertilizers to improve their uptake. Azomite does has many rare elements and minerals for optimum plant/cacti growth as well though.... with over 70+ trace elements, chelated elements, etc. Still, then there is the old standby Kelp and seaweed fertilizers.... as you can tell... I'm a big proponent of natural fertilizers. I've even used fish emulsion which when in the high strength concentrations you need for some plants to get optimum growth can be quite unpleasant to smell.
you know i read about the vinegar thing from a vendors website. they were adamant that although loph's need alkaline soil, failing to provide slightly acidic water with have deleterious effects over time. they reasons were the same as the ones you previously described. that's also the reason i've stayed away from peat moss. i hear you about fish emulsion. you don't want to use that stuff inside unless you live in nancy grace's laundry basket. i would have thought it would have too much nitrogen though.
Dilution is the key to everything when it comes to decreasing strength. However, I used to use fish emulsion in some pretty copiously thick amounts when growing out Trichocereus more than a foot in height as they seemed to be able to take just about anything I could push at them when it concerned natural fertilizers such as blood meal, fish emulsion, bone meal, and the like. I'm not sure I'd try to push them as hard as you could say a Brugmansia by any means. Apples and oranges to say the least. Suffice it to say, I've Trichs that stunk to high heaven of fish emulsion and had no problems other than the almost unbearable smell of fish. Something's are best left to the outdoors when it comes to experiments to say the least.