Adjusting ph in coco before germinating

I'm relatively new to growing indoor & when growing outdoors I just put some seeds in the ground and they grew.Now I'm growing indoor with coco & my question is do you want your ph in your growing medium the same as when watering before you germinate? I try to keep it 5.8 or so. Another question is I'm using dry ammendments in coco is it hard to get your ph right can you adjust it like soil using lime to raise it and iron sulfate to lower it?

From what i understand coco is a self "buffer" meaning it changes the PH by buffering it for you, but ive always still PH'd my water to 5.8/6.4 and I use straight coco

CapollaLabs said:

From what i understand coco is a self "buffer" meaning it changes the PH by buffering it for you, but ive always still PH'd my water to 5.8/6.4 and I use straight coco

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Do you check your ph before germinating?

Autoflowering grower said:

Do you check your ph before germinating?

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Using iron sulfate in coco will lower your ph in the coco. I just tried it.

Also peat moss lowers ph

Bignutes said:

Also peat moss lowers ph

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How much peat moss? Do you just have to play around with it or is there a formula?

You have to play with the percentages, I always ph my water to 7 so its neutral for this test. Ph the runoff. Repeat with different percentages until you get the outflow ph you want. You can also start with whatever your water source is and that way you don't have to change your ph every time you water. Just make sure your water source isn't above 7.5 ish otherwise the swing is too large. My water is generally 6.9 so for me to start with ph 7 is pretty close anyways.

I generally like peat over adding sulfur because it can imbalance the sulfur needed esp if coco is resilient to change its ph. Peat doesn't have this problem.