🧪PH vs EH, Nutrient Uptake, and Hydrogen, with Nik from Rooted Leaf

Jordan River56min

Jordan River

00:00

Greetings listeners from around the world. Jordan River here back with more grow cast for your ears. PH, perfect. Every time today we have Nick from root relief back on the line. You love this nutrient deep dive series. We're taking a little bit of a left turn with it. We're talking about pH, that's right. We're talking about pH, eh, nutrient uptake. Lots of good stuff in this episode. I know you're gonna absolutely love it before we jump into it with Nick though, shout out to AC infinity. That's right. Acinity.com, code grow cast one five to get your savings on the best grow gear that you can get your hands on, my favorite grow tents. They've got lights, fans, pots, scissors, everything you need. It's at AC infinity.com. They've got grow kits. If you need to get started growing it's the best way to get started, in my opinion, go grab a three by three grow kit or a four by four grow kit. Use code grow cast one, five, and get that whole setup delivered to your door. Everything you need to get started, it's all there at AC infinity.com plus they've got lots of new and great items, like their new spray technology that they've released. They've got a new cloud forge humidifier. Now they have green lights that you can put in your tent, that you can use as work lights during your dark period. AC Infinity has it all. Code grow, cast one, five at AC infinity.com, that's what you need to do. That's how you get the savings and grab the best tents in the game, the best fans in the game, and so much more. Thank you to our partners, AC infinity. All right, let's get into it with Nick Thank you for listening and enjoy the show. Hello, podcast listeners who are now listening to grow cast. I'm your host, Jordan River, and I want to thank you for tuning in again today before we get started as always, I urge you to share this show. Tell a grower about grow cast, or better yet, turn someone on to growing. It's the best way you can help us on our mission of overgrowing the nation and the world. Make sure you're subscribed. Hit that follow button on Spotify iTunes. Wherever you're listening, we're all over the place. And of course, grow cast podcast.com, for all the things, the seeds, the membership, everything you'll find there. Special thank you to the members. You do make the show possible. We are back with a nutrient deep dive series. This is one of the most requested, one of the most well received series that we've ever done, and that's largely thanks to our guest, Nick from rooted leaf is back on the line. What's up? Nick, Hey, Jordan, how's it going? Excellent. Man, excellent. We're continuing this series today. We're going a little bit different with it, a little bit of a curve ball, before we jump into all of the stuff we're going to discuss today. Quick update on rooted leaf. What's been going on that the lush green v2 was so cool. Man, people loving this new v2 you said it's physically heavier because it's got more carbon in it. I thought that was funny, of course, rootedleaf.com code, grow cast. But what's been happening at rooted leaf? Nick everything? Good.

Speaker 1

02:45

Yeah. Things are great. We actually stayed busier in November and December of this year than we have ever been, actually. So it was the busiest, you know, holiday season for us in the company's existence. We definitely felt the love and the support of the Grow cast community. So thank you all. If you're listening out there and you bought products from us sometime, you know, between the Black Friday sale and the Christmas holiday sale that we had, want to thank you guys for all your support, continued support along the way. Yeah, we just been staying busy. I've been making a lot of product, and it's been sort of like this nice little back and forth. You know, when I'm in the plant making product, it's a nice quiet time. I guess you could say, I don't really get disturbed too much, and so I have an opportunity to kind of think critically and deeply about some of the concepts that then I get to turn around and talk about on a show like this. Yeah,

Jordan River

03:31

man, I love it. Been killing it over the holidays, people using the rooted leaf and the discord and all sorts of different applications, and loving it. So we like to get into the nitty gritty with Nick. I try to make it digestible for you listeners and dig into that big, beautiful brain Nick. Generally, in these episodes, we've been focusing on plant available, or I should, I should say, like soil minerals, right? We focus on nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, I think we started with calcium, right? But today, we're taking a little bit of a different approach. We're talking about different elements, not the soil, fertilizer elements, but rather things like hydrogen and oxygen. I'm excited to talk about this, where, today we're talking about the redox cycle. We're talking about pH. We're getting into the different ancillary elements here. And this is very exciting to me. So are you ready to dive into all things pH and Redux? Oh,

Speaker 1

04:24

absolutely. Yeah, I definitely am. And it's one of those topics that I think is very complex. I think we've been trying to record an episode like this for actually quite a while now, and I haven't fully wrapped my mind around how exactly we're going to go through these concepts. And I was kind of thinking about it over the past few weeks, and I'm like, What's the best way that I could possibly describe what this conversation is going to be around? And interestingly enough, there was an animal that came to mind, octopus. You know how some octopuses can change not only the color of their skin, but also the texture? You ever seen that? So in this kind of way, it's like the topic of redox. Chemistry and pH is this thing that is constantly changing its color and its shape and its texture, and it's really difficult to actually get a good grasp on it in a short amount of time. I mean, you could spend decades and decades just focused on redox chemistry and what its implications are for plant metabolism, and you would never it's like the endless rabbit hole. I mean it literally Pandora's box. So this is going to be one of those topics or conversations where there's, you know, seemingly endless amounts of rabbit holes that we can go down. And we're going to try to kind of, you know, stay on track. We'll, we'll start off by looking at the broad picture, kind of overview. Hey, what exactly is this, and where are the sort of boundaries, and then we'll start to look more specifically at some of the nuances and how those nuances translate to real and effective information that growers can use in their garden.

Jordan River

05:48

Oh, that's perfect, man, yeah, let's see if we can't scratch the surface and not fall so far down one of those rabbit holes. We'll do a part two and maybe even a part three, I'm sure. Let's start with pH. Let's start with something that I can kind of already explain a little bit, which, again, I want to start like you said, from a 30,000 foot view. What is pH, as in, what does it stand for? And how would you describe it, and specifically the relation to what it actually is, and this idea of acidity? Yeah,

Speaker 1

06:18

so pH is oftentimes used in the context of acid base chemistry, and what it actually stands for is something like potential of hydrogen, or parts hydrogen, power of hydrogen. I've, you know, seen all three of these various phrases used to describe it, but the important thing is that it's just a measurement of the concentration of hydrogen ions in solution. The hydrogen ions are different than hydrogen atoms. The hydrogen atoms themselves, they are. They're comprised of one proton and one electron. So what happens is, when that electron gets lost, you're left with just a proton, and the concentration of those protons is what we measure pH as. So the greater the concentration of those protons, the lower the pH, meaning it's more acidic, quote, unquote. And then the decrease in that concentration of proton results. Eventually you get it to a pH of seven, which is fairly neutral. And then once you start going above seven, obviously there's different implications, because it's not, you know, you're dealing with hydroxyl rather than proton concentrations. It's a little bit different. But the point that I want to try to make is where we're talking about, you know, acids, and we're talking about pH even when we're looking at the nuances of, like, how does pH affect nutrient availability? These are going to be things that revolve around concentrations of protons. And in a larger sort of context, a lot of the compounds that we describe as acids, like organic acids, you know, I talk about them quite a bit, like the the citric acids, the fulvic acids, the acetic acids. They're considered acids because they have the ability to donate these protons in a solution. So you put them in water, they lower the pH. They're acids because they can donate that but they have other properties, other qualities to them, that allow them to then bind with minerals, or complex with cations like calcium, potassium, magnesium, so on and so forth, in a way that increases their availability. And so there's there's connective tissue, if you look under the hood a little bit. But the general idea is that, yes, the you know, the concentration of hydrogen or protons in the solution can actually dictate or inform the way that nutrient metabolism, nutrient transfer occurs. But is a complex topic.

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