Can concrete effect soil

In cleaning out the broken concrete from my basement, I thought I might be able to use it to secure some of my slope areas around my yard. The slope areas are less than 14 degrees. Can the concrete effect the pH? If so, would it be more or less acidic? I'd like to plant native perrenials in that area. Thanks.

Concrete can leach lime into soil, that's why you can sometimes run into trouble if you plant acid lovers like rhodies & azaleas near the foundation of a house. But as long as you're planting things that don't need acidic soil, you should be fine, it won't raise the pH enough to cause problems with most plants.

Thanks ecrane3. Would it raise it enough to grow alkaline lovers?

If you're soil's not already close to alkaline enough for them to be happy, probably not...I'd measure what your pH is now and then you'll have a better idea. If you really want to grow alkaline lovers you can always amend the soil with lime on purpose too rather than counting on the concrete to do it. The effect of the concrete is fairly minimal, where it causes an effect is when you have soil that's already a little borderline for the acid lovers, then you add in a little lime leaching from the concrete, and it's enough to cause problems. But it's really not going to have a huge effect on your pH.

Thanks Ecrane3. I bought an electronic soil pH tester and tried it out in a couple of places in my yard which is about 5.8 to 6.0. So I'm pretty much neutral, which I thought as there are no pine needles or fallen leaves.

Actually 5.8 to 6 is a bit acidic...7 is neutral and the pH scale is a log scale, which means that pH 6 is actually quite a bit more acidic than pH 7. It's not so acidic that it would prevent you from growing most plant though. But if you want to grow alkaline loving plants, you're going to need a lot more amendments than just your concrete, so I'd stick to growing plants that like neutral or somewhat acidic pH

Thanks, Ecrane3

Sarahn, I will swap you some of my alkaline soil for some of your acdic!!

ecrane3, when you refer to a log scale does that mean PH 6 is 10 times more acdic than PH 7? Seem to remember something like that from high schoos chem. A loooong time ago.

Yep, that's what it means.

I'll swap with you Geneivey as soon as Texas moves next door to NH! :-)