Soil pH

FINDING THE pH OF YOUR SOIL

Soil pH simply means the range of acidity to alkalinity of your dirt. If you don’t know your soil type, you can buy a test kit and find out. Or you can try calling your county extension service – they can be a wonderful resource for many things agricultural – and ask them for help. Most plants prefer a fairly neutral soil, so on a large scale you would want a pH of around 7.

SOIL AMENDMENT

Soils can be amended and most will need to be. But trying to change an alkaline soil into an acid one, for instance, would, on a large scale, be a major job and would require constant labor. If you have alkaline soil and want to grow acid loving plants, I suggest you confine them to one small bed or containers. And if your water is alkaline as well, you’ll be fighting a losing battle unless you’re willing to water your plants with  bottled water.

Soil amendment is usually confined to texture. Perfect garden loam rarely exists in home gardens. Most soil is too sandy, is clay, is too rocky or too compacted. With soil, after pH, texture and type are everything.

SOIL TEXTURE

The texture of a soil determines its viablility as a growing medium and there are three basic types – clay, sand and loam. Head out to an existing area where you want to plant and water it. Twenty-four hours later go back and pick up a handful of your dirt and squeeze it. If it clumps together in a sticky ball you have clay soil. If it crumbles you have sandy soil. If it is a bit crumbly but sticks together loosely – congratulations, you have loam, the perfect gardening soil.

In my next post I will discuss what to do to fix your soil, and most of you will need to fix it.  So sorry. Just remember, if you get it right the first time you’ll avoid spending hours and hours for years and years trying to compensate for bad dirt.