Vacation and Water Ph

[PastryBaker]

I am going on vacation in a few months and I have friends who water my trees. But the last times I have been away, it was only for a few days.
This time I will be gone for 12 days.

I have to change my water ph every time I water because the water out here is around 8.0-8.3.
When I was gone before I would fill a couple buckets and change the ph.
This will not work for this trip because I have experimented and the water does not stay at that ph for longer than a few days.
My question is, will using the water out of the hose for that period have major effects on my trees?

I was thinking of getting one of those attachments (see pic) for my hose that people use for fertilizer or insecticide and figuring how much acid I would have to put in there to make the hose water be a lower ph.
Any other ideas?

Thanks

 

[Wood]

I am no expert in this, but my impression was that water pH effects take a while to build up. Are you sure that 2 weeks in spring won't be detrimental if you start correcting it when you get home?

 

[WNC Bonsai]

For a short period like that I wouldn’t worry. I water my trees with tap water all the time and they lime the heck out of it here to suppress lead solubility in pipes. I have been considering dosing the tap water to drop the pH with an infection system feeding the hose. Just need to find one that works reliably.

 

[MHBonsai]

I do the same. Should be fine for a few weeks. Especially if there is rain in the forecast.

 

[PastryBaker]

For a short period like that I wouldn’t worry. I water my trees with tap water all the time and they lime the heck out of it here to suppress lead solubility in pipes. I have been considering dosing the tap water to drop the pH with an infection system feeding the hose. Just need to find one that works reliably.

Let me know if you find a system that does that.

 

[PastryBaker]

I do the same. Should be fine for a few weeks. Especially if there is rain in the forecast.

I am in the desert, it rarely rains. I wish it would.

 

[Ruddigger]

You’ll be fine. I’d worry more about your friends’ ability to water properly, than the quality of the water.

 

[PastryBaker]

You’ll be fine. I’d worry more about your friends’ ability to water properly, than the quality of the water.

Thank you. They are great at watering. Mainly because I take care of their cat and plants when they are gone. I do have a back up they can contact if they cannot make it. I have showed them how to deep water. Hoping the bonsai bug will rub off on them. lol

 

[bwaynef]

What are you using to acidify your water?

 

[Desert O'Piñon]

I do the same. Should be fine for a few weeks. Especially if there is rain in the forecast.

Those of us living in the desert don't see rain very often. At all. @PastryBaker has a mostly similar climate, but he probably gets hotter in the summer by a couple degrees. The last measurable precipitation we had here was .44" on November 17. Sometime in September we got about an inch. Our bonsai challenges are far different than most. But we don't have near the problems with disease in such a dry climate. When I moved here in 2000 to get married, it was very eye-opening in many ways, but especially the climatic change.

 

[WNC Bonsai]

Watch Eric Schrader’s video

 

[PastryBaker]

What are you using to acidify your water?

Citric Acid aka Vitamin C.

 

[PastryBaker]

Watch Eric Schrader’s video

I did a while back that is why I used the same to lower the PH. Great video.

 

[bwaynef]

Citric Acid aka Vitamin C.

I've only dabbled in lowering my pH (as yet), but I believe there are chemicals with longer lasting pH-downing effects.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Citric Acid aka Vitamin C.

Vitamin C is ascorbic acid, it acts as an antioxidant. Citric acid is a different molecule; a weak acid that can donate and take up a hydrogen atom.
If you know how much you use per watering can, you can make aliquots for your friends: "Use one cup of citric acid from this bottle in the fridge per cannister of water".

 

[PastryBaker]

Vitamin C is ascorbic acid, it acts as an antioxidant. Citric acid is a different molecule; a weak acid that can donate and take up a hydrogen atom.
If you know how much you use per watering can, you can make aliquots for your friends: "Use one cup of citric acid from this bottle in the fridge per cannister of waterI don't know why

I don't know why I thought Vitamin C was Citric Acid and I was originally a microbiology major. lol
Maybe I should try a stronger acid in liquid form for them to use.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Maybe I should try a stronger acid in liquid form for them to use.

Absolutely not, please! They aren't trained and they might overdo it. Not everyone, I think most people actually, don't understand log scales by default.
Citric is perfectly fine and the pH should be "in the ballpark of OK" for plants; they regulate their soil pH quite a bit by exudating bases or acids if needed. They can raise or drop the soil pH by about 2 points by themselves if they have enough water and solutes in their system.
From what I've heard and read, citric and acetic acid are the best pH downers because of their molecular structure; the plants can use them for biochemistry as whole molecules. Sulfuric, nitric, hydrochloric acids not so much. The latter tends to cause some chlorine issues too, from what I've heard - never observed. In the plant lab I worked at, those type of plants didn't care a whole lot and we used hydrochloric acid.

As a former microbiology dude, you probably know there are precise students that stick to the protocol, and this thing they call "future managers" who just eyeball everything without knowing anything and "researchers" who eyeball everything with a base of knowledge to back up the fact that they just made 50L of perfectly blend medium because it was easier to not dilute the salts - and now the fridges are stocked to the brim and they have to work into the night because they can now do triplicates instead of duplicates.
If you give them a maximum amount of reagent B to add to the water in vessel A - with 50% leeway because it's a weaker acid. It doesn't matter what type of person they are, they can't screw it up unless that step 1 comes before step 2. In that case, they will run out of acid pretty fast and probably find out that they are doing something wrong.

I've set up fool proof feeding schedules for some friends where I dissolved some nutrients in an old coke bottle and marked on the bottle how much they should use every watering. With citric acid you can do scoops, but that would require some mixing. So dissolving some citric acid, putting it in a bottle and marking the bottle every 50mL of something might be your fool-proof method of letting them dose right.
For my watering at home, I make videos of how people should shower the plants; three seconds for every square foot and three minutes later, another time. In 7 years, never lost a tree from going on holidays for 10+ days.

 

[MHBonsai]

Amazon.com

General hydroponics pH down

I use this with a soap dispenser pump. Works great, a small measured dose per watering can.

 

[PastryBaker]

Absolutely not, please! They aren't trained and they might overdo it. Not everyone, I think most people actually, don't understand log scales by default.
Citric is perfectly fine and the pH should be "in the ballpark of OK" for plants; they regulate their soil pH quite a bit by exudating bases or acids if needed. They can raise or drop the soil pH by about 2 points by themselves if they have enough water and solutes in their system.
From what I've heard and read, citric and acetic acid are the best pH downers because of their molecular structure; the plants can use them for biochemistry as whole molecules. Sulfuric, nitric, hydrochloric acids not so much. The latter tends to cause some chlorine issues too, from what I've heard - never observed. In the plant lab I worked at, those type of plants didn't care a whole lot and we used hydrochloric acid.

As a former microbiology dude, you probably know there are precise students that stick to the protocol, and this thing they call "future managers" who just eyeball everything without knowing anything and "researchers" who eyeball everything with a base of knowledge to back up the fact that they just made 50L of perfectly blend medium because it was easier to not dilute the salts - and now the fridges are stocked to the brim and they have to work into the night because they can now do triplicates instead of duplicates.
If you give them a maximum amount of reagent B to add to the water in vessel A - with 50% leeway because it's a weaker acid. It doesn't matter what type of person they are, they can't screw it up unless that step 1 comes before step 2. In that case, they will run out of acid pretty fast and probably find out that they are doing something wrong.

I've set up fool proof feeding schedules for some friends where I dissolved some nutrients in an old coke bottle and marked on the bottle how much they should use every watering. With citric acid you can do scoops, but that would require some mixing. So dissolving some citric acid, putting it in a bottle and marking the bottle every 50mL of something might be your fool-proof method of letting them dose right.
For my watering at home, I make videos of how people should shower the plants; three seconds for every square foot and three minutes later, another time. In 7 years, never lost a tree from going on holidays for 10+ days.

Oh, I have trained my friends on how to water. Deeply and twice. Especially since the temps in June will be in the triple digits. I use a PH meter every time I water.
I have a filter on my hose to remove chlorine and other things. The water in the desert is not good. Most everyone drinks bottled water. I even give my animals filtered water.

 

[shohin_branches]

We have hard water so I use rain barrel water as often as I can.