Alkaline soil & water.

Where I live the soil is around 8 and my well water is also 8. Wont this make the nutrients unavailable to my plants? I was thinking of adding sulfur to my beds, but still leaves the well water. Is there a large pressurized RO system that would be able to handle watering a 12x20 GH, and also a evaporated cooler?

Keith,

You could get a siphon and instead of/or with fertilizer, add sulfuric acid to the solution. Thats what I do to bring the PH down. works in a few days, but you have to keep doing it. I use 35% strength which is just battery acid, I buy it at a car parts store. I think a qt costs about $4, but you can get it even cheaper in a slightly larger container. I add about 1 T per gallon of solution which brings the PH of the water (mine is about 6.3 before the solution) down to about 3.5
Here is the siphon http://homeharvest.com/waterfertilizerinjectors.htm

WOW, fourks! Been there, done that! Thought I was the only one in the whole wide world! Yes, there are massive RO systems available, but I found their cost prohibitive. You may not. What I did was started applying Aluminum Sulphate/Iron Sulphate along with my fertilizing program (depending on the plants). Also switched from deep-well water as a source to pond water for key ornamental areas. The pH of the well water was 8.4, pond water was 7.4---no brainer, except it's a small pond, and I need a lot of water! We've gotten some salt water intrusion into the Aquifer(well water), courtesy of modern developers...
The soil around here is typically classified as "acidic". Right. Show me! On top of that, we had a really cheap source of compost here in Charleston at the local land-fill operation ($10 a pick-up load!), which I used copiously, everywhere for years. Plants didn't do well, so one year I disguised a sample of the compost as "garden 2, flower bed", and sent it off to Clemson Univ. for analysis. Came back pH 8.9! After some further digging, found they use coliche rock (aka "limestone) as filler instead of (pH neutral)sand. So much for cheap compost... Don't use that anymore. But I use copious amounts of Aluminum Sulphate, Iron Sulphate, and Gypsum to counteract past transgressions...with a fond hope of returning to stability one day. Maybe even in my lifetime!

tigerlily,

If I add a strong acid will this remove the salts? I'm concerned that I would still have a build-up, and eventual failure with my crops.

StonoRiver,

I also found my cheap compost to have a higher PH then my native soil! I wish I had a pond with a natural PH reducer. I wonder If I could just use peat in a barrel to reduce PH. Of course, this won't remove salts. I'm leaning to a RO system into a 40 gallon barrel. and repressurize with a pump on the other side. I'm on a well, so the waste water will just return to the ground. I tested my RO drinking water today and found it about 6. This would be idea, and would keep from having salt build-up.

I was hoping not to have to battle the PH thing:-( just one more thing to work on this spring.

fourks-here is a good article where they started to apply sulfuric acid to reduce the PH and leach out the salts around the plants -http://www.holmeslandscape.com/refer02.htm The only thing that I would add is that I use more sulfuric acid to achieve a lower PH of the water coming out of the solution .

I just read several articles about your problem-most of them advise working gypsum into the soil-if possible, and improving soil drainage so the salts can leach out easier by adding sand.

Yes you will have a nutrient tie up by having too high a PH (as will you if you have too low a PH)

I know that at least some of the commercial operations around here use sulfuric acid to bring down the pH of the water. I believe that it is done commonly.

I have a similar problem with alkalinity, so I don't use my well water except in case of emergencies. I was able to use an RO system to supply all of the water and misting for my 20x23 GH, so yes, it can be done. Remember that the rating for an RO system assumes that the water and the system are at 77F (25C). For every drop in the temp of your water by 10F there is something like a 12-15% drop in RO water output. Here is a chart: http://www.labwater.com/page59.html I used a 90 gpd membrane. With a booster pump, a huge deep well water tank, and care with watering, I could do it.

However, this past year I made some improvements. I put 3 44gal water storage containers in the GH and now I collect rainwater. I added another membrane and now I use the 180 gpd RO system only as a backup. I find that I have enough rainwater to supply the entire GH for all but perhaps 4-6 weeks out of the year. Tres cool. LMK if you want details.

SB

Wow, what a great article! Sulfuric acid might be the easiest solution for my PH/salt problem. Plus, I could use it on my garden beds. Here's a quote.

" by injecting the water treatment into the water supply we were able to convert the bicarbonates and lime in the water to create calcium sulfate or a diluted solution of gypsum !! The dilute solution of calcium sulfate should react with the soil particle surface causing the release of unwanted salts especially sodium which we had a very toxic level."

What I'm reading is that the injection of acid will permanently acidify your soil allowing the uptake of nutrients, and will also cause the salts to go into solution and leach out. Sounds like a cheap answer! I wonder if there are any draw backs to this approach? how it will work with misters? I bet I will still have problems with build up, but heard those magnets work well. I was also thinking that one could up the acid ratio a bit and do a annual soaking/leaching of the beds.


Thanks for all the great help !!!

I don't think that I made something clear-this is a short term solution, in that if you stop with the solution than the PH will rise again. So everytime that you water or liquid fert, than you should add the sulfuric acid. When I grow a pansy crop, I add the sulfuric acid with the fert every week (or with the vincas-they get that fert/acid solution whereas all the other annuals just get the fert). The acid won't permanently lower the PH without constant application

The siphon is based on 1:16 ratio per gallon. So if you have a 4 gal bucket, add 4 gallons of water and multiple your numbers x 4. If you use 3 gallons of water, then multiple x 3 etc. You can also use a acidic fertilizer if you are using liquid, or use a 14-14-14 slow release that is sulfur coated-that will drop your PH in a hurry and will last about 5 months (at least the release of the fert will, after the coating is gone, then the PH might rise after a few months)
If you do use the siphon, let me know and I will tell you some of the tricks to using it. Also if you want to put liquid fert thru it, I can tell you the amt based on what you are using (the numbers of the fert) and what ppm you want (the strength)

I guess I just assumed that if your leaching salts, that the end result would be lower PH soil. I do understand that is something I need to do regularly. I do plan on using a siphon, and the link you provide looks like the nicest for the price. I was also looking at those expensive units that are adjustable. But, with a little simple math the I think this on will work fine. I plan on mostly vegetables and flower, and have not decided on the fert. But I would love any suggestion you have! I did find this article on Gypsum that I found interesting. Not sure if it will lower the PH of my sandy soil?

http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda%20Chalker-Scott/Horticultural%20Myths_files/Myths/Gypsum.pdf

Keith,

I was wondering why you could not use the acidic fertilizers and achieve the same thing. Is it just a cost issue or what? I'm a newbie to GH production this year so any info would be appreciated.

i would think that with the dilution ratio you could not achieve a PH reduction without over fertilizing. I'm looking into using both as tigerlily suggested. I spent yesterday adding Sulfur,peat,bonemeal,bloodmeal per soil test. Will be interesting to see what my soil PH is at planting time

Yes, the acidic fert by itself will not reduce the PH by much-maybe a few tenths at that. Where it helps is to help stop the rise in PH.

fourks, if you are adding straight peat and sulfur, then you are already radically lowering the PH. The peat will already show up right away, but the pellet sulfur (I assume thats what you are using to amend the bed?) will take a month or so-depending the microbes in your soil ( they break the sulfur down into sulfuric acid) to change the PH. You may want to monitor the PH before you start adding the sulfuric acid on a regular basis. This may get kind of tricky. Its easy to go to far the other way!

Yeah, I always seem to over due it:-) That's why I amended now. I will re-test in a month. If my soil is around 7/6.5 i plan on bringing my water PH about the same. I'll have to be careful that the sulfuric acid doesn't cause the pellets to dissolve to fast. I'm just concerned that the high PH of the well water might bring the nutrients the the root at to high PH for plant use.

What kind of water pressure do you have after siphon?

The siphon definitely cuts down on water pressure. You also have to use a 100' or less hose as the end hose, you can't use more or it will affect the ratio.. So you can either attach the siphon to the spigot and attach a 100' or less hose to the siphon, or you can run whatever length hose from the spigot to where you are using it, set up your buckets and attach your siphon to that hose and then put another hose at the other end of the siphon.

You asked earlier about injectors. I have one of those as well, and I love it. The water pressure is not affected at all, and it rarely stops working (its usually the O rings etc) but I don't think its worth the money (mine cost about $400 I think) if you are doing a small amount, like you probably are. I use mine at a ratio of 1:200 and that 4 gallons of concentrate lasts awhile. You can see how you don't have to make up as many buckets of concentrate.
I don't think that the sulfuric acid will affect the pellets-only the microbes in your soil will convert it to acid.