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[Sunshine]

Can vinegar be used to lower the pH of water and be used to water plants with no ill effects? How much run of the mill distilled vinegar would I need to add per gallon to turn distilled water with a pH of 7.0 to 5.5? Also, could apple cider vinegar be used?

Thanks!
-Sunny

[LIBERTYNY]

Distilled water does not have a neutral PH . . .   It should be around 5.8

 I tryed useing distilled vinegar to lower tap water's PH, and it did not work out well for me, I cant say it was the vinegar for sure but once I switched over to rain water the problem started to clear up

 You can buy 160, 1-12 PH test strips shipped from china for 0.70 cents, on e-bay.  Hard to go wrong even if they are not the most accurate 

[mj]

tap water will have a ph of around 7.4 - 8.4 and can be higher. One to two table spoons of vinigar (regular or cider does not matter) per gallon will bring it down to around 6.1 this from my recent research into this. A Brita filter will bring down the ph by at least one point. Rain water or melted snow will bebelow 5.6 - 5.8 in ph. Hope that helps.

[plantlight]

I'm thinking that water ph is probably location dependent.  I just calibrated my ph meter and tested my collected rainwater ph =6.8 and distilled water just purchased ph = 6.9.  I recommend testing your own water. 

I use either rainwater or distilled for watering my plants and do not have any first hand knowledge of using vinegar to lower ph.  However, I've read that there are issues with using organic vinegar in hydroponic solutions because of the mother.  I don't know if this would be an issue in soil based applications but in hydroponics, it seems that the mother continues to further reduce ph.

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