Evergreen graveyard

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Bubbeez Fond Du Lac, WI(Zone 5a) Jan 02, 2007

Until recently there were 30 year old evergreen bushes and shrubs growing against the front of my house. They were overgrown and raggedy looking so my husband took a chainsaw to them. When we purchased the house I had dreams of planting perennials and non-evergreen shrubs in this area. I'm worried that the more acidic environment of the evergreen graveyard will affect my future plantings in a bad way. Am I limited in what I can plant or can I treat the soil somehow to make it more hospitable?

Any advice would be appreciated!
Thanks!

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ecrane3 Dublin, CA(Zone 9a) Jan 02, 2007

You may not need to do anything at all--I don't think the evergreens would have made the soil so acidic that you would have problems with average type plants--most plants can tolerate a range of pH's so you could probably grow most things unless they're the sort that need a lot of lime/alkaline pH. The first thing I would do is find out what the soil pH actually is--if it is very acidic, you could either go with acid lovers like rhodies/azaleas, etc or you can amend the soil with lime to bring the pH up, or if it's only slightly acidic then you can plant pretty much whatever you want. And by the time you dig out the stumps of the old shrubs and fill in the holes left behind with new soil and nice organic amendments, your pH may be closer to neutral anyway. Whatever you do, I wouldn't start amending it with things to bring the pH up or plant only acid lovers (unless that's what you wanted to plant anyway!) until you check and find out what the pH really is.

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Bubbeez Fond Du Lac, WI(Zone 5a) Jan 02, 2007

Thank you for your reply ecrane3! :)

Can you recommend a good, easy-to-use soil tester? I see some sold in seed catalogs but I'm not sure which to choose.

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ecrane3 Dublin, CA(Zone 9a) Jan 03, 2007

I don't have too much experience with using them--never grew anything that was sensitive enough to pH that I needed to check! I wouldn't recommend the ones that are a dual purpose moisture meter/pH meter, I don't think those are that accurate for the pH measurement, but I think most of the soil test kits that you can buy would probably work OK for this purpose. You could also go over to the Garden Products forum and ask if anyone there has one they would recommend.

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