Garden Soil Chemistry Made Simple

Sometimes a plant’s poor performance results from the wrong pH. Test your soil to determine its degree of acidity or alkalinity. Your County Agent can tell you how to send soil to the state university for testing, or you can buy a home test kit. Do this in the fall. There’s less waiting then, since soil labs are not as busy. If the test indicates that lime is needed, applying it in the fall means the soil and lime have time to react before spring planting.

Some plants that like sweet soils: alfalfa, clover, asparagus, brassicas, legumes, cucurbits, beets, chard, clematis, lilacs, iris.

Some plants that like acid soils: watermelon, blueberries, strawberries, potatoes, broad-leaves evergreens.

Potatoes must have either acid or very alkaline soil. If the soil is acid (below a pH of 5) or alkaline (above a pH of 7.5) then they are fine. Otherwise, they get scab. In the East, it’s easier to make sure the soil is acid. In Idaho, the alkaline soil gives the characteristic dry, mealy quality to that state’s famous potatoes.

To make soil more acid, add elemental sulfur (one-third pound per twenty-five square feet to lower pH one unit).

To make soil more alkaline, add lime (one pound per twenty- five square feet to raise pH one unit). Wood ashes also increase the alkalinity of soil. Use half the amount.

You know that ashes from the fireplace are fine for the garden, but you’re not about to trudge through the snow to scatter them there. So you dump them in a cardboard box and put it in the garage. That spells TROUBLE. If there’s a single ember in those ashes, it’s likely to set the cardboard afire. Use a metal can — a trash can is fine — for wood ashes. It will keep them dry until you scatter them in the spring. Limit the ashes to one or two ten-quart pails to 1,000 square feet each year. In the North, we’re finding vegetable gardens with soils too alkaline, because wood-burning families have been piling the ashes on for several years.

Have fun with hydrangea color by controlling the pH of the soil. Acid soil (a pH of 4.5 to 5.5) produces blue flowers. Alkaline soil (a pH of 7 to 7.5) gives pink ones.

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