Testing and adjusting your soil ph is very important and it helps a lot in ensuring that you provide the most ideal environment for growth of your plants. Different types of crops each require different levels of soil acidity. The sensitivity of plants to soil PH varies a lot and this is something that you must never overlook as a gardener.
What is soil PH?
Ph is the measure of the alkalinity or acidity of soil. PH stands for potential hydrogen ions which show the amount of calcium or lime contained in the soil. Soils found in a moist climate are ideally acidic while soils in regions of dry climates are usually alkaline. It is essential that you adjust the PH of your soil in order to meet the plant requirements.
Why test your soil PH?
The soil should be able to provide healthy plants will all the nutrients necessary for their growth. However, when your garden soil is too alkaline or too acidic, the necessary nutrients will unfortunately not be available regardless of the amount of fertilizer you add. The acidity greatly affects the plants’ ability to take up more nutrients from the soil as well as ensuring that soil organisms thrive healthily.
Testing soil PH
Before you even start thinking about improving the soil PH in your garden, it is essential that you know how to test it in the first place and know where it stands.
While you can have the PH of your soil tested at your local garden center, it is also possible to do it all by yourself. All you just need to do is to buy a cheap PH test kit which is old in most hardware stores or nurseries, both online and offline. A typical test kit will generally come with a test tube, the testing solution you will use and also a color chart to help you know where the PH stands.
The process of testing soil PH is incredibly easy as you just need to put the sample of your garden soil in a tube and then add some few drops of the test solution. Then, shake up the solution and then leave it for about an hour to settle. Depending on the alkalinity or acidity of your garden soil, the color of the solution in the tube will change accordingly. When this happens, now you just need to compare the color in the sample solution to the one shown on the color chart in your kit. Just match the colors and you will be able to determine your soil’s PH. Some of the kits available even come with some advisory booklets that come in handy when it comes to result interpretation.
Improving your soil PH
As highlighted above, the main reason why you test your soil for PH is so that you can know how to adjust it and improve it depending on what you are growing. After you have determined your soil’s PH, you just need to amend it accordingly. There are different materials that you can use during your gardening endeavors to adjust the PH of your soil as highlighted here below:
Raising your soil PH
The soil PH is raised in efforts of increasing its alkalinity. Generally speaking, increasing the alkalinity of the acid is much easier than making the soil more acid. Since different types of soils tend to react in varying ways to the lime, more lime needs to be added to peaty soils and clay soils compared to what should be added to sandy soils in order to achieve similar results. If the soil PH shows that your garden is overly acidic, it is essential that you come up with a plan of correcting the acidity in the long run. This is best achieved when done as a long term project instead of just trying to accomplish it in just one year. Experts usually recommend that you test the PH of your soil each and make gradual adjustments. Adding hardwood ash crushed marble, bone meal or even crushed oyster shells can also help a lot in raising the PH of the soil.
Lowering your soil PH
The objective of lowering the PH of the soil is to increase its acidity. If after doing the tests you realize that you need to make your garden soil more acidic, you may use sulfur for lowering the PH. If you want to lower the PH of the soil by just 1.0 point, just mix 1.2 oz of the ground rock sulfur in every square yard for sandy soil. Other soils will do with 3.6 oz/ square yard. Before you plant, make sure that you thoroughly mix the sulfur into the soil. You can also lower the PH by using other materials such as composted leaves, sawdust, cottonseed meal, wood chips and even leaf mold as well.
Tips to remember
When you are improving the soil PH in your garden using chemical products, it is essential that you read the manufacturers recommendations always and follow them to the lender. Make sure that you make use of appropriate protection as well like gloves and dust mask. Also, it is advisable that you think about long term when adjusting the PH of your soil rather than thinking about short term. What this means is that you should eye at gradually improving the PH over several seasons.
Even though use of lime in adjusting soil PH is very common, this should however be used only when it is deemed to be very necessary. For soil that is alkaline excessively, sometimes it might be a better idea to create a raised bed rather than using topsoil bought from a nursery. Balancing the PH of your soil is an ideal short cut towards growing healthy foods. Once you have improved your soil PH considerably, treating mineral deficiencies is much easier. Improving soil PH helps in ensuring that you create an ideal environment for growth of plants.
Luster Leaf 1612 Rapitest pH Soil Tester
Oakton EcoTestr pH 2 Waterproof pH Tester, 0.0 to 14.0 pH Range
No comments:
Post a Comment