Just curious how many of you regularly measure the Ph of the soil in various locations around your gardens ...As some of you know I host a gardening class at the local library ,last week I managed to get a guest speaker from the USDA soil conservation service ,and he did a presentation on the right way to take soil samples..And answered questions on soil testing and it was very enlihgtning ,he stressed that the most important part of the test results would the Ph.of your soil and the things needed to bring it into balance...I did not submit any samples for testing as I have mostly raised beds and a single test would only give me an average ...
Soil Ph
Good on you, Grits. I wish we had something like that going on around here> I would have loved to attend!
I did a soil test this year and learned so much from it!
One of the confusing things to me was Dg comments from very knowledgeable people saying pH is not that important???.....
How I now understand it now, someone please correct me if I'm wrong, I find all this fascinating. Still learning.
Really, Ph can be a factor or 'tool' in correcting calcium, not just alkalinity or acidity, unless your growing crops/flowers reliant on such extremes, like blueberries.
Lime added to acidic soils is calcium and Mg.
Gypsum added to alkaline soils is calcium sulfate, you could be on top of a limestone base garden and still not have have calcium available without acids and the surface area to make them available.
Calcium is the most important building block for plant life. By testing Ph, it's the easiest method (tho not the most accurate) to determine what amendments are needed to add calcium and, or, release calcium and make it "available" to the plants.
Calcium reacts and interacts with the major nutrients, P and K and minors like Na, and Mg.
Calcium has to be soluble (from acids) for salts to flush from the soil. The higher the salt levels, poorer plant production and soil texture.
Calcium needs to be available to microbes as well...this really comes into play with plants that rely on microbes, like the legume family.
Even my soil analysis has a note by the PH, "Ph should not be used as an absolute recommendation as it is a very nebulous dynamic measurement at best, too many factors influence a soil test pH measurement for it to be a reliable representation of the natural soil pH in the field that affects plant growth".
So, in short, you could pour vinegar on the ground and change your pH. But the standard pH correcting recommendations (gypsum and lime) are more about calcium and it's availability. They just happen to change the pH as well.
Am I on the right track, Grits?
what the young man from the soil conservation service told us was that the Ph must be correct for each plant or within certain parameters before the plants can properly utilize the available neutrients and the hand outs he gave us strongly urged the use of organic material within the soil mostly to allow the roots better penetration in the soil...Some experiments in class demonstrated how rapidly the Ph can change due to evaporation and heat and cold ..We used small jars of tap water and added some Gypsum into another one some epsom salts and into the third one some Bicarbonate of soda ..gotta go results in just another few minutes
For me I know the PH is high. There is Limestone everywhere and I use Well Water so that cant help. I do add a lot of OM. I think 1 reason people on DG dont worry about it too much is because of the above reasons #1 being that it can change so quickly.
I do what I can to keep the PH as close to neutral as possible but I cant cater to every plant and I get decent yields. I dont grow plants that need acid soil. lol If I tried to keep the PH within the rate range I would obsess about it and get nothing else done. It can change so quickly and be different at different locations in the garden.
You may want to post this topic on the soil and compost forum. It is very important and interesting.
pH is the measurement of the acidity or alkalinity of a solution. A molecule of water (H2O) breaks down into two particles called ions — one hydrogen (H+) and one hydroxyl (OH-). When there an equal number of H+ and OH- ions the solution is said to be neutral — that's a 7 on a scale of 0 - 14. Extra hydrogen ions in the solution makes the solution acidic and extra hydroxyl ions turn the solution alkaline. The chemical make up of the soil determines whether the soil is acidic or alkaline. Soil pH is important because it determines the availability of plant nutrients. The following link gives you an idea of how different pH levels affect nutrient availability.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:NhfWW5_iYKkJ:soils.usda.gov/sqi/publications/files/indicate.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjRpjTF6poGyceH7C0XnvX2UV70Hp8uN-zpX-reLd5y3VpiZNVswDeuDUvyS2IA6ICbvP1SB-cXJkrGMWd6rzz5KsqBEIBUFsdEecgC6agDBlsw0McqVhnlLIUIUKOihDMuibCh&sig=AHIEtbTkRHwHPl6YHvA-wETKAI8elnlnnw
Changes in soil pH are temporary at best. Drastic changes for large plants usually don't work well because you would have to add larger amounts of amendments to larger areas as the plant grows. The best thing to do is to stick to plants that can handle the soil type you have. If you absolutely must have a plant, such as blueberries, which require soil vastly different than what you have, it would be better to grow the plant in a large pot filled with the appropriate soil mix. Small changes in soil pH are possible, but it has to be done gradually with frequent pH soil testing. So give yourself plenty of time to make the changes before you purchase plants.
just got back to the puter the jar with gysum showed the largest change went from dead neutral 7.0down to 5.8 really quick the bicarbonate soda went to an acid condition but almost as quickly changed back to neutral epsom salts went to 6.2 >>>1 tb.per cup of water
I did not know there was a forum for soil and compost LOL sometimes I just get overwhelmed by all that is on the internet just sign me born 40 years too late
There's a lot of stuff I haven't found on DG but the soil and compost forum has some VERY knowledgeable people that are very willing to help. It very interesting.
My friendly neighborhood nursery man told me that he constantly monitors the Ph. of the city water supply since it varies quite a lot and if it spikes too high he switches to his pond untill the Ph. goes back into a neutral range ...If you happen to own a Ph. meter then just for fun stick the probe into a bag of commercial potting mix it was an eye opener for me it went into the minus 6 range so I am thinking the folks at Miracle gro must know something...